Then he came past her door, and she thought--but could not be sure--that he sat down on the stairs.
At the end of ten minutes or so she heard him go down the passage again.

Very softly he closed the front door.

By then she had divined why the lodger had behaved in this funny fashion.

He wanted to get the strong, acrid smell of burning--was it of burning wool?
-- out of the house.
But Mrs.Bunting, lying there in the darkness, listening to the lodger creeping upstairs, felt as if she herself would never get rid of the horrible odour.
Mrs.Bunting felt herself to be all smell.
At last the unhappy woman fell into a deep, troubled sleep; and then she dreamed a most terrible and unnatural dream.

Hoarse voices seemed to be shouting in her ear: "The Avenger close here! The Avenger close here!" "'Orrible murder off the Edgware Road!" "The Avenger at his work again!" And even in her dream Mrs.Bunting felt angered--angered and impatient.