“Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness.” Psalm 88:18...

Robert Bunting and Ellen his wife sat before their dully burning, carefully-banked-up fire. The room, especially when it be known that it was part of a house standing in a grimy, if not exactly sordid...

Mrs. Bunting jumped nervously to her feet. She stood for a moment listening in the darkness, a darkness made the blacker by the line of light under the door behind which sat Bunting reading his paper....

But what was a little snub compared with the intense relief and joy of going down and telling Bunting of the great piece of good fortune which had fallen their way? Staid Mrs. Bunting seemed to make b...

Mrs. Bunting woke up the next morning feeling happier than she had felt for a very, very long time. For just one moment she could not think why she felt so different⁠—and then she suddenly remembered....

How quietly, how uneventfully, how pleasantly, sped the next few days. Already life was settling down into a groove. Waiting on Mr. Sleuth was just what Mrs. Bunting could manage to do easily, and wit...

Mr. Sleuth’s bell rang again. Mr. Sleuth’s breakfast was quite ready, but for the first time since he had been her lodger Mrs. Bunting did not answer the summons at once. But when there came the secon...

Just as twelve was striking a four-wheeler drew up to the gate. It brought Daisy⁠—pink-cheeked, excited, laughing-eyed Daisy⁠—a sight to gladden any father’s heart. “Old Aunt said I was to have a cab ...

Perhaps because his luncheon was served to him a good deal later than usual, Mr. Sleuth ate his nice piece of steamed sole upstairs with far heartier an appetite than his landlady had eaten her nice s...

The moment she passed though the great arched door which admits the stranger to that portion of New Scotland Yard where throbs the heart of that great organism which fights the forces of civilised cri...

By what she regarded as a fortunate chance, Mrs. Bunting found herself for close on an hour quite alone in the house during her husband’s and Daisy’s jaunt with young Chandler. Mr. Sleuth did not ofte...

It was only Joe. Somehow, even Bunting called him “Joe” now, and no longer “Chandler,” as he had mostly used to do. Mrs. Bunting had opened the front door only a very little way. She wasn’t going to h...

“All I can say is, I think Daisy ought to go. One can’t always do just what one wants to do⁠—not in this world, at any rate!” Mrs. Bunting did not seem to be addressing anyone in particular, though bo...

Daisy’s father and stepmother stood side by side at the front door, watching the girl and young Chandler walk off into the darkness. A yellow pall of fog had suddenly descended on London, and Joe had ...

“There he is at last, and I’m glad of it, Ellen. ’Tain’t a night you would wish a dog to be out in.” Bunting’s voice was full of relief, but he did not turn round and look at his wife as he spoke; ins...

The Buntings went to bed early that night. But Mrs. Bunting made up her mind to keep awake. She was set upon knowing at what hour of the night the lodger would come down into her kitchen to carry thro...

Bunting began moving about the room restlessly. He would go to the window; stand there awhile staring out at the people hurrying past; then, coming back to the fireplace, sit down. But he could not st...

Mrs. Bunting slept well the night following that during which the lodger had been engaged in making his mysterious experiments in her kitchen. She was so tired, so utterly exhausted, that sleep came t...

Any ordeal is far less terrifying, far easier to meet with courage, when it is repeated, than is even a milder experience which is entirely novel. Mrs. Bunting had already attended an inquest, in the ...

It seemed to Mrs. Bunting that she had been sitting there a long time⁠—it was really about a quarter of an hour⁠—when her official friend came back. “Better come along now,” he whispered; “it’ll begin...

It was not late even now, for the inquest had begun very punctually, but Mrs. Bunting felt that no power on earth should force her to go to Ealing. She felt quite tired out and as if she could think o...

It was a very cold night⁠—so cold, so windy, so snow-laden was the atmosphere, that everyone who could do so stayed indoors. Bunting, however, was now on his way home from what had proved a really ple...

Feeling amazingly lighthearted, almost lightheaded, Bunting lit the gas-ring to make his wife her morning cup of tea. While he was doing it, he suddenly heard her call out: “Bunting!” she cried weakly...

All afternoon it went on snowing; and the three of them sat there, listening and waiting⁠—Bunting and his wife hardly knew for what; Daisy for the knock which would herald Joe Chandler. And about four...

Each hour of the days that followed held for Bunting its full meed of aching fear and suspense. The unhappy man was ever debating within himself what course he should pursue, and, according to his moo...

Daisy’s eighteenth birthday dawned uneventfully. Her father gave her what he had always promised she should have on her eighteenth birthday⁠—a watch. It was a pretty little silver watch, which Bunting...

Madame Tussaud’s had hitherto held pleasant memories for Mrs. Bunting. In the days when she and Bunting were courting they often spent there part of their afternoon-out. The butler had an acquaintance...

In vain Mr. Hopkins invited Mrs. Bunting and her pretty stepdaughter to step through into the Chamber of Horrors. “I think we ought to go straight home,” said Mr. Sleuth’s landlady decidedly. And Dais...