And then it came again, that loud, tremulous, uncertain double knock; not a knock, so the listener told herself, that boded any good.  Would-be lodgers gave sharp, quick, bold, confident raps.  No; this must be some kind of beggar.  The queerest people came at all hours, and asked—­whining or threatening—­for money.

Mrs. Bunting had had some sinister experiences with men and women —­especially women—­drawn from that nameless, mysterious class made up of the human flotsam and jetsam which drifts about every great city.  But since she had taken to leaving the gas in the passage unlit at night she had been very little troubled with that kind of visitors, those human bats which are attracted by any kind of light but leave alone those who live in darkness.

She opened the door of the sitting-room.  It was Bunting’s place to go to the front door, but she knew far better than he did how to deal with difficult or obtrusive callers.  Still, somehow, she would have liked him to go to-night.  But Bunting sat on, absorbed in his newspaper; all he did at the sound of the bedroom door opening was to look up and say, “Didn’t you hear a knock?”

Without answering his question she went out into the hall.

Slowly she opened the front door.

On the top of the three steps which led up to the door, there stood the long, lanky figure of a man, clad in an Inverness cape and an old-fashioned top hat.  He waited for a few seconds blinking at her, perhaps dazzled by the light of the gas in the passage.  Mrs. Bunting’s trained perception told her at once that this man, odd as he looked, was a gentleman, belonging by birth to the class with whom her former employment had brought her in contact.

“Is it not a fact that you let lodgings?” he asked, and there was something shrill, unbalanced, hesitating, in his voice.

“Yes, sir,” she said uncertainly—­it was a long, long time since anyone had come after their lodgings, anyone, that is, that they could think of taking into their respectable house.

Instinctively she stepped a little to one side, and the stranger walked past her, and so into the hall.

And then, for the first time, Mrs. Bunting noticed that he held a narrow bag in his left hand.  It was quite a new bag, made of strong brown leather.

“I am looking for some quiet rooms,” he said; then he repeated the words, “quiet rooms,” in a dreamy, absent way, and as he uttered them he looked nervously round him.

Then his sallow face brightened, for the hall had been carefully furnished, and was very clean.

There was a neat hat-and-umbrella stand, and the stranger’s weary feet fell soft on a good, serviceable dark-red drugget, which matched in colour the flock-paper on the walls.

A very superior lodging-house this, and evidently a superior lodging-house keeper.

“You’d find my rooms quite quiet, sir,” she said gently.  “And just now I have four to let.  The house is empty, save for my husband and me, sir.”