Page:Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes - The Lodger.djvu/98

Rh "Then The Avenger may be quite a different sort of man?" said Bunting slowly, disappointedly.

"Well, of course he may be. But, no; I think that description fits him all right," said Chandler; but he also spoke in a hesitating voice.

"You was saying, Joe, that they found a weapon?" observed Bunting insinuatingly.

He was glad that Ellen allowed the discussion to go on—in fact, that she even seemed to take an intelligent interest in it. She had come up close to them, and now looked quite her old self again.

"Yes. They believe they’ve found the weapon what he does his awful deeds with," said Chandler. "At any rate, within a hundred yards of that little dark passage where they found the bodies—one at each end, that was—there was discovered this morning a very peculiar kind o’ knife—‘keen as a razor, pointed as a dagger’—that’s the exact words the boss used when he was describing it to a lot of us. He seemed to think a lot more of that clue than of the other—I mean than of the description people gave of the chap who walked quickly by with a newspaper parcel. But now there’s a pretty job in front of us. Every shop where they sell or might a’ sold, such a thing as that knife, including every eating-house in the East End, has got to be called at!"

"Whatever for?" asked Daisy.

"Why, with an idea of finding out if anyone saw such a knife fooling about there any time, and, if so, in whose possession it was at the time. But, Mr. Bunting"—Chandler’s voice changed; it became businesslike, official—"they’re not going to say anything about that—not in