Page:Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes - The Lodger.djvu/100

Rh A great idea had come into his mind.

"No! What makes you think that?"

"If they catches him, and if you comes along with me to see our at the Yard, you’ll certainly see the knife, Miss Daisy. They keeps all them kind of things there. So if, as I say, this weapon should lead to the conviction of The Avenger—well, then, that knife ’ull be there, and you’ll see it!"

"The Black Museum? Why, whatever do they have a museum in your place for?" asked Daisy wonderingly. "I thought there was only the British Museum"

And then even Mrs. Bunting, as well as Bunting and Chandler, laughed aloud.

"You are a goosey girl!" said her father fondly. "Why, there’s a lot of museums in London; the town’s thick with ’em. Ask Ellen there. She and me used to go to them kind of places when we was courting—if the weather was bad."

"But our museum’s the one that would interest Miss Daisy," broke in Chandler eagerly. "It’s a regular Chamber of ’Orrors!"

"Why, Joe, you never told us about that place before," said Bunting excitedly. "D’you really mean that there’s a museum where they keeps all sorts of things connected with crimes? Things like knives murders have been committed with?"

"Knives?" cried Joe, pleased at having become the centre of attention, for Daisy had also fixed her blue eyes on him, and even Mrs. Bunting looked at him expectantly. "Much more than knives, Mr. Bunting! Why, they’ve got there, in little bottles, the real poison what people have been done away with."