Page:Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes - The Lodger.djvu/188

Rh and so’s we all. The public have just gone daft—in the West End, that is, to-day. As for the papers, well, they’re something cruel—that’s what they are. And the ridiculous ideas they print! You’d never believe the things they asks us to do—and quite serious-like."

"What d’you mean?" questioned Mrs. Bunting. She really wanted to know.

"Well, the Courier declares that there ought to be a house-to-house investigation—all over London. Just think of it! Everybody to let the police go all over their house, from garret to kitchen, just to see if The Avenger isn’t concealed there. Dotty, I calls it! Why, ’twould take us months and months just to do that one job in a town like London."

"I’d like to see them dare come into my house!" said Mrs. Bunting angrily.

"It’s all along of them blarsted papers that The Avenger went to work a different way this time," said Chandler slowly.

Bunting had pushed a tin of sardines towards his guest, and was eagerly listening. "How d’you mean?" he asked. "I don’t take your meaning, Joe."

"Well, you see, it’s this way. The newspapers was always saying how extraordinary it was that The Avenger chose such a peculiar time to do his deeds—I mean, the time when no one’s about the streets. Now, doesn’t it stand to reason that the fellow, reading all that, and seeing the sense of it, said to himself, ‘I’ll go on another tack this time’? Just listen to this!" He pulled a strip of paper, part of a column cut from a newspaper, out of his pocket: