Page:Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes - The Lodger.djvu/85

Rh Bunting began to walk up and down the room. His wife gave him a furtive glance; she wondered what he was thinking about.

"Didn’t you get a paper?" she said at last.

"Yes, of course I did," he answered hastily. "But I’ve put it away. I thought you’d rather not look at it, as you’re that nervous."

Again she glanced at him quickly, furtively, but he seemed just as usual—he evidently meant just what he said and no more.

"I thought they was shouting something in the street—I mean just before I was took bad."

It was now Bunting’s turn to stare at his wife quickly and rather furtively. He had felt sure that her sudden attack of queerness, of hysterics—call it what you might—had been due to the shouting outside. She was not the only woman in London who had got the Avenger murders on her nerves. His morning paper said quite a lot of women were afraid to go out alone. Was it possible that the curious way she had been taken just now had had nothing to do with the shouts and excitement outside?

"Don’t you know what it was they were calling out?" he asked slowly.

Mrs. Bunting looked across at him. She would have given a very great deal to be able to lie, to pretend that she did not know what those dreadful cries had portended. But when it came to the point she found she could not do so.

"Yes," she said dully. "I heard a word here and there. There’s been another murder, hasn’t there?"