Bunting!" Then he looked round, and again he said her name, "Mrs.
Bunting--?"

He spoke in so odd, so thick a tone that she turned quickly. "Yes,
what is it, Joe?" she asked. And then, in sudden terror, "You've
never come to tell me that anything's happened to Bunting? He's
not had an accident?"

"Goodness, no! Whatever made you think that? But--but, Mrs.
Bunting, there's been another of them!"

His voice dropped almost to a whisper. He was staring at her with
unhappy, it seemed to her terror-filled, eyes.

"Another of them?" She looked at him, bewildered--at a loss.
And then what he meant flashed across her--"another of them"
meant another of these strange, mysterious, awful murders.

But her relief for the moment was so great--for she really had
thought for a second that he had come to give her ill news of
Bunting--that the feeling that she did experience on hearing
this piece of news was actually pleasurable, though she would
have been much shocked had that fact been brought to her notice.

Almost in spite of herself, Mrs. Bunting had become keenly interested
in the amazing series of crimes which was occupying the imagination
of the whole of London's nether-world. Even her refined mind had
busied itself for the last two or three days with the strange problem
so frequently presented to it by Bunting--for Bunting, now that they
were no longer worried, took an open, unashamed, intense interest in