fierce-looking devil, the chap must be. It's that description that
was circulated put us wrong. I don't believe it was the man that
knocked up against that woman in the fog--no, not one bit I don't.
But I wavers, I can't quite make up my mind. Sometimes I think it's
a sailor--the foreigner they talks about, that goes away for eight
or nine days in between, to Holland maybe, or to France. Then,
again, I says to myself that it's a butcher, a man from the Central
Market. Whoever it is, it's someone used to killing, that's flat."

"Then it don't seem to you possible--?" (Bunting got up and walked
over to the window.) "You don't take any stock, I suppose, in that
idea some of the papers put out, that the man is"--then he
hesitated and brought out, with a gasp--"a gentleman?"

Chandler looked at him, surprised. "No," he said deliberately.
"I've made up my mind that's quite a wrong tack, though I knows that
some of our fellows--big pots, too--are quite sure that the fellow
what gave the girl the sovereign is the man we're looking for. You
see, Mr. Bunting, if that's the fact--well, it stands to reason the
fellow's an escaped lunatic; and if he's an escaped lunatic he's got
a keeper, and they'd be raising a hue and cry after him; now,
wouldn't they?"

"You don't think," went on Bunting, lowering his voice, "that he
could be just staying somewhere, lodging like?"

"D'you mean that The Avenger may be a toff, staying in some
West-end hotel, Mr. Bunting? Well, things almost as funny as that
'ud be have come to pass." He smiled as if the notion was a funny
one.