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Concordance, Mrs. Bunting?"
      She shook her head; she had no idea what a
Concordance could be, but she was quite sure that she had nothing
of the sort about.
      And then her new lodger proceeded to tell her what
it was he desired her to buy for him. She had supposed the bag he
had brought with him to contain certain little necessaries of
civilised life - such articles, for instance, as a comb and brush,
a set of razors, a toothbrush, to say nothing of a couple of
nightshirts - but no, that was evidently not so, for Mr. Sleuth
required all these things to be bought now.
      After having cooked him a nice breakfast Mrs.
Bunting hurried out to purchase the things of which he was in
urgent need.
      How pleasant it was to feel that there was money in
her purse again - not only someone else's' money, but money she was
now in the very act of earning so agreeably.
      Mrs. Bunting first made her way to a little barber's
shop close by. It was there she purchased the brush and comb and
the razors. It was a funny, rather smelly little place, and she
hurried as much as she could, the more so that the foreigner who
served her insisted on telling her some of the strange, peculiar
details of this Avenger murder which had taken place forty-eight
hours before, and in which Bunting took such a morbid interest.
      The conversation upset Mrs. Bunting. She didn't want
to think of anything painful or disagreeable on such a day as
this.
      Then she came back and showed the lodger her various
purchases. Mr. Sleuth was pleased with everything, and thanked her
most courteously. But when she suggested doing his bedroom he
frowned, and looked quite put out.
      "Please wait till this evening," he said hastily.
"It is my custom to stay at home all day. I only care to walk about
the streets when the lights are lit. You must bear with me, Mrs.
Bunting, if I seem a little, just a little, unlike the lodgers you
have been accustomed to. And I must ask you to understand that I
must not be disturbed when thinking out my problems - " He broke
off short, sighed, then added solemnly, "for mine are the great
problems of life and death."
      And Mrs. Bunting willingly fell in with his wishes.
In spite of her prim manner and love of order, Mr. Sleuth's
landlady was a true woman - she had, that is, an infinite patience
with masculine vagaries and oddities.
      When she was downstairs again, Mr. Sleuth's landlady
met with a surprise; but it was quite a pleasant surprise. While
she had been upstairs, talking to the lodger, Bunting's young
friend, Joe Chandler, the detective, had come in, and as she walked
into the sitting-room she saw that her husband was pushing half a
sovereign across the table towards Joe.
      Joe Chandler's fair, good-natured face was full of
satisfaction: not at seeing his money again, mark you, but at the
news Bunting had evidently been telling him - that news of the
sudden wonderful change in their fortunes, the coming of an ideal
lodger.
      "Mr. Sleuth don't want me to do his bedroom till
he's gone out!" she exclaimed. And then she sat down for a bit of a
rest.
      It was a comfort to know that the lodger was eating
his good breakfast? and there was no need to think of him for the
present. In a few minutes she would be going down to make her own
and Bunting's dinner, and she told Joe Chandler that he might as
well stop and have a bite with them.
      Her heart warmed to the young man, for Mrs. Bunting
was in a mood which seldom surprised her - a mood to be pleased
with anything and everything. Nay, more. When Bunting began to ask
Joe Chandler about the last of those awful Avenger murders, she
even listened with a certain languid interest to all he had to
say.
      In the morning paper which Bunting had begun taking
again that very day three columns were devoted to the extraordinary
mystery which was now beginning to be the one topic of talk all
over London, West and East, North and South. Bunting had read out
little bits