ic words she got up, and left the room.

CHAPTER XXIV

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 mood and to the state of his
mind at any particular moment, he would waver between various
widely-differing lines of action.

He told himself again and again, and with fretful unease, that the
most awful thing about it all was that he wasn't sure. If only he
could have been sure, he might have made up his mind exactly what
it was he ought to do.

But when telling himself this he was deceiving himself, and he was
vaguely conscious of the fact; for, from Bunting's point of view,
almost any alternative would have been preferable to that which to
some, nay, perhaps to most, householders would have seemed the only
thing to do, namely, to go to the police. But Londoners of Bunting's
class have an uneasy fear of the law. To his mind it would be ruin
for him and for his Ellen to be mixed up publicly in such a terrible
affair. No one concerned in the business would give them and their
future a thought, but it would track them to their dying day, and,
above all, it would make it quite impossible for them ever to get
again into a good joint situation. It was that for which Bunting,
in his secret soul, now longed with all his heart.

No, some other way than going to the police must be found--and he
racked his slow brain to find it.

The worst of it was that every hour that went by made his future
course more difficult and more delicate, and increased the awful
weight on his conscience.

If only he really knew! If only he could feel quite sure! And
then he would tell himself that, after all, he had very little to
go upon; only suspicion--suspicion, and a secret, horrible
certainty that his suspicion was justified.

And so at last Bunting began to long for a solution which he knew
to be indefensible from every point of view; he began to hope, that
is, in the depths of his heart, that the lodger would again go out
one evening on his horrible business and be caught--red-handed.

But far from going out on any business, horrible or other, Mr.
Sleuth now never went out at all. He kept upstairs, and often spent
quite a considerable part of his day in bed. He still felt, so he
assured Mrs. Bunting, very far from well. He had never thrown off
the chill he had caught on that b