Then he got up and closed the Book. "I think I'll go to bed now,"
he said. "I am very, very tired. I've had a long and a very
weary day, Mrs. Bunting."

After he had disappeared into the back room, Mrs. Bunting climbed
up on a chair and unhooked the pictures which had so offended Mr.
Sleuth. Each left an unsightly mark on the wall--but that, after
all, could not be helped.

Treading softly, so that Bunting should not hear her, she carried
them down, two by two, and stood them behind her bed.



CHAPTER IV

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 comfortable it was to know that upstairs, just over her head,
lay, in the well-found bed she had bought with such satisfaction at
an auction held in a Baker Street house, a lodger who was paying two
guineas a week! Something seemed to tell her that Mr. Sleuth would
be "a permanency." In any case, it wouldn't be her fault if he
wasn't. As to his--his queerness, well, there's always something
funny in everybody. But after she had got up, and as the morning