"You're a man; you ought to have more pluck than I've got. It's two days since it happened—"

"Two days!" muttered Max, remembering that it was two days ago that he had surprised Dudley with his blood-stained hands.

"And for those two days I've been outside here waiting for somebody to come because I daren't go inside by myself. Two days! Two days!" she repeated, her teeth chattering.

Max looked at her with mixed feelings of doubt, pity and astonishment. It was too dark in the ill-lighted passage for him to see all the details of her appearance. She was young, quite young; so much was certain. She looked white and pinched and miserably cold. Her dress was respectable, very plain, and bore marks of her climbing and crawling over the timber on the wharf.

"Won't you go in with me?" she asked again, more eagerly, more tremulously than before. "I can show you the road—round at the back. You will have a little climbing to do, but you won't mind that."

"But what do you want me to do if I do get inside?" said Max. "It's the police you ought to send for, if a man has died in there. Go to the police station and give information."

The girl shook her head.

"I can't do that," she whispered. Then, after a shuddering pause, she came a step nearer and said, in a lower whisper than ever: "He didn't die—of his own accord. He was murdered."

Max grew hot, and cold. He heartily wished he had never come.

"All the more reason," he went on in a blustering voice, "why you should inform the police. You had better lose no time about it."

"I can't do that," said the girl, "because he—the man who did it—was kind to us—kind to Granny and me. If I tell the police, they will go after him, and perhaps find him, and—and hang him. Oh, no," and she shook her head again with decision, "I could not do that."

Max was silent for a few moments, looking at her for the first few seconds with pity and then with suspicion.

"Why do you tell all this to me, then—a stranger—if you're so afraid of the police finding out anything about it?"

The girl did not answer for a moment. She seemed puzzled to answer the question. At last she said:

"I didn't mean to. When I saw you first, at the wharf, at the back there, I just looked at you and hid myself again. And then I thought to myself that as you were a gentleman perhaps I might dare to ask you what I did."

Max, not unnaturally, grew more doubtful still. This apparently deserted building, which he was asked to enter by the back way, might be a thievish den of the worst possible character, and this girl, innocent as she certainly looked, might be a thieves' decoy. Something in his face or in his manner must have betrayed his thoughts to the shrewd Londoner; for she suddenly drew back, uttering a little cry of horror. Without another word she turned and slunk back along the passage and into the street.

Now, if Max had been a little older, or a little more prudent, if he had indeed been anything but a reckless young rascal with a taste for exciting adventure, he would have taken this opportunity of getting away from such a very questionable neighborhood. But, in the first place, he was struck by the girl's story, which seemed to fit in only too well with what he knew; and in the second place, he was interested in the girl herself, the refinement of whose face and manner, in these dubious surroundings, had impressed him as much as the expression of horror on her face and the agony of cold which had caused her teeth to chatter and her limbs to tremble.

Surely, he thought, the suspicions he had for a moment entertained about her were incorrect. He began to feel that he could not go away without making an effort to ascertain if there were any truth in her story.

He went along the passage and got back to the wharf by the same means as before. Making his way round the pile of timber upon which he had first seen the girl, he discovered a little lane, partly between and partly over the planks, which he promptly followed in the hope of coming in sight of her again.

And, crouching under the wall of a ruinous outhouse, in an attitude expressive of the dejection of utter abandonment, was the white-faced girl.

The discovery was enough for Max. All considerations of prudence, of caution, crumbled away under the influence of the intense pity he felt for the forlorn creature.

"Look here," said he, "I'll go in, if you like. Have you got a light?"

"No—o," answered the girl, in a voice which was thick with sobs. "But I can show you where to get one when you get inside."

Max had by this time reached the ground, which was slimy and damp under the eaves; and he pushed his way, with an air of recklessness which hid some natural trepidation, into the outhouse, the door of which was not even fastened.

"Why," said he, turning to the girl, who was close behind him, "you could have got in yourself easily enough. At least you would have been warmer in here than outside."

His suspicions were starting up again, and they grew stronger as he perceived that she was paying little attention to him, that she seemed to be listening for some expected sound. The place in which they now stood was quite dark, and Max, impatient and somewhat alarmed by the position in which he found himself, struck a match and looked round him.

"Now," said he, "find me a candle, if you can."

Even by the feeble light of the match he could see that he was in a sort of a scullery, which bore traces of recent occupation. A bit of yellow soap, some blacking and a couple of brooms in one corner, a pail and a wooden chair in another, were evidently not "tenant's fixtures."

And then Max noted a strange circumstance—the two small windows were boarded up on the inside.

By the time he had taken note of this, the girl had brought him a candle in a tin candlestick, which she had taken from a shelf by the door.

"That's the way," she said, in a voice as low a before, pointing to an inner door. "Through the back room, and into the front one. He lies in there."

Max shuddered.

"I can't say that I particularly want to see him," said he, as he took stock of her in the candle-light, and was struck by the peculiar beauty of her large blue eyes.

He felt a strong reluctance to venturing farther into this very questionable and mysterious dwelling; and he took care to stand where he could see both doors, the one which led farther into the house and the one by which he had entered.

The girl heaved a little sigh, of relief apparently. And she remained standing before him in the same attitude of listening expectancy as he had remarked in her already.

"What are you waiting for—listening for?" asked Max sharply.

"Nothing," she answered with a start. "I'm nervous, that's all. Wouldn't you be, if you'd been waiting two days outside an empty house with a dead man inside it?"

Her tone was sharp and querulous. Max looked at her in bewilderment.

"Empty house!" he repeated. "What were you doing in it, then?"

And he glanced round him, assuring himself afresh by this second scrutiny of the fact that the brick floor and the bare walls of this scullery had been kept scrupulously clean.

The girl's white face, pale with the curious opaque pallor of the Londoner born and bred, flushed a very little. She dropped her eyelids guiltily.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," she said, at last, rather sulkily. "I was living here. Is that enough?"

It was not. And her visitor's looks told her so.

"I was living here with my grandmother," she went on hurriedly, as she saw Max glance at the outer door and take a step toward it. "We're very poor, and it's cheaper to live here in a house supposed to be empty than to pay rent."

"But hardly fair to the landlord," suggested Max.

"Oh, Granny doesn't think much of landlords, and, besides, this is part of the property which used to belong to her old master, Mr. Horne—"

"Ah!" ejaculated Max, with new interest.

The girl looked at him inquiringly.

"What do you know about him?" she asked, with eagerness.

"I have heard of him," said Max.

But the astute young Londoner was not to be put off so easily.

"You know something of the whole family, perhaps? Did you know the old gentleman himself?"

"No."

"Do you know—his son?"

"Yes."

"Oh!" She assumed the attitude of an inquisitor immediately. "Perhaps it was he who sent you here to-day?"

"No."

She looked long and scrutinizingly in his face, suspicious in her turn. "Then what made you come?"

Max paused a moment, and then evaded her question very neatly.

"What made me come in here? Why, I came by the invitation of a young lady, who told me she was afraid to go in alone."

The girl drew back a little.

"Yes, so I did. And I am very much obliged to you. I—I wanted to ask you to go into that room, the front room, and to fetch some things of mine—things I have left there. I daren't go in by myself."

Max hesitated. Beside his old suspicions, a new one had just started into his mind.

"Did you," he asked, suddenly, "know of some letters which were written to Mr. Dudley Horne?"

A change came over the girl's face; the expression of deadly terror which he had first seen upon it seemed to be returning gradually. The blue eyes seemed to grow wider, the lines in her cheek and mouth to become deeper. After a short pause, during which he noticed that her breath was coming in labored gasps, she whispered:

"Well, what if I do? Mind, I don't say that I do. But what if I do?"

Her manner had grown fiercely defiant by the time she came to the last word. Max found the desire to escape becoming even stronger than his curiosity. The half-guilty look with which his companion had made her last admission caused a new light to flash into his mind. This "Granny" of whom the girl spoke, and who was alleged to have disappeared, was a woman who had known something of the Horne family. Either she or this girl might have been the writer of the letter Dudley had received while at The Beeches, which had summoned him so hastily back to town. What if this old woman had accomplices—had attempted to rob Dudley? And what if Dudley, in resisting their attempts, had, in self-defence, struck a blow which had caused the death of one of his assailants? Dudley would naturally have been silent on the subject of his visit to this questionable haunt, especially to the brother of Doreen.

"I think," cried Max, as he strode quickly to the door by which he had come in, "that the best thing you can do is to sacrifice your things, whatever they are, and to get out of the place yourself as fast as you can."

As he spoke he lifted the latch and tried to open the door. But although the latch went up, the door remained shut.

Max pulled and shook it, and finally put his knee against the side-post and gave the handle of the latch a terrific tug.

It broke in his hand, but the door remained closed.

He turned round quickly, and saw the girl, with one hand on her hip and with the candle held in the other, leaning against the whitewashed wall, with a smile of amusement on her thin face.

What a face it was! Expressive as no other face he had ever seen, and wearing now a look of what seemed to Max diabolical intelligence and malice. She nodded at him mockingly.

"I can't get out!" thundered he, threateningly, with another thump at the door.

The girl answered in the low voice she always used; by contrast with his menacing tones it seemed lower than ever:

"I don't mean you to—yet. I guessed you'd want to go pretty soon, so I locked the door."



CHAPTER VIII.

FOREWARNED, BUT NOT FOREARMED.

"By Jove!" muttered Max. Then, with a sudden outburst of energy, inspired by indignation at the trap in which he found himself, he dashed across the floor to the zinc pail he had previously noticed, and swinging it round his head, was about to make such an attack upon the door as its old timbers could scarcely have resisted, when the girl suddenly shot between him and the door, placing herself with her back to it and her arms spread out, so quickly that he only missed by a hair's breadth dealing her such a blow as would undoubtedly have split her skull.

In the effort to avoid this, Max, checking himself, staggered and slipped, falling on the brick floor, pail and all.

"Oh, I am sorry! So sorry!"

Again the oddly expressive face had changed completely. Her scarlet lips—those vividly red lips which go with an opaque white skin—were instantly parted with genuine terror. Her eyes looked soft and shining, full of tender feminine kindness and sympathy. Down she went on her knees beside him, asking anxiously:

"Are you hurt? Oh, I know your wrist is hurt!"

Max gave her a glance, the result of which was that he began to feel more afraid of her than of the locked door. About this strange, almost uncannily beautiful child of the riverside slum there was a fascination which appealed to him more and more. The longer he looked at the wide, light-blue eyes, listened to the hoarse but moving voice, the more valiantly he had to struggle against the spell which he felt her to be casting upon him.

"I've strained my wrist a little, I think. Nothing to matter," said he.

But as he moved he found that the wrist gave him pain. He got up from the floor, and stood with his left hand clasping the injured right wrist, not so eager as before to make his escape.

"Why don't you let me out?" he asked at last, sharply, with an effort.

The girl looked at him with yet a new expression on her mobile face—an expression of desperation.

"Because I couldn't bear it any longer," she whispered. And as she spoke her eyes wandered round the bare walls and rested for a moment on the inner door. "Because when you've been all alone in the cold, without any food, without any one to speak to for two days and two nights, you feel you must speak to some one, whatever comes of it. If I'd had to wait out there, listening, listening, for another night, I should have been mad, raving mad in the morning."

"But I don't understand it at all," said Max, again inclining to belief in the girl's story, impressed by her passionate earnestness. "Where has your grandmother gone to? Why didn't she take you with her? Can't you tell me the whole story?"

The girl looked at him curiously.

"Just now you only thought of getting away."

"I don't care to be detained by lock and key, certainly," said Max. "But if you will unlock the door, I am quite ready to wait here until you have unburdened your mind, if you want to do that."

She looked at him doubtfully.

"That's a promise, mind," said she at last. "And it's a promise you wouldn't mind giving, I think, if you believed in half I've gone through."

She took a key from her pocket, unlocked the outer door and set it ajar.

"Will that do for you?" asked she.

"Yes, that's all right."

She took up the candle, which she had put on a shelf while she knelt to find out whether he was hurt, and crossing the brick floor with rapid, rather stealthy steps, she put her fingers on the latch of the inner door.

"Keep close!" whispered she.

Max obeyed. He kept so close that the girl's soft hair, which was of the ash-fair color so common in English blondes who have been flaxen-headed in their childhood, almost touched his face. She opened the door and entered what was evidently the back room of the deserted shop.

A dark room it must have been, even in broadest daylight. Opposite to the door by which they had entered was one which was glazed in the upper half; this evidently led into the shop itself, although the old red curtain which hung over the glass panes hid the view of what was beyond. There was a little fireplace, in which were the burnt-out ashes of a recent fire. There was a deal table in the middle of the room, and a cloth of a common pattern of blue and red check lay in a heap on the floor. A couple of plain Windsor chairs, and a third with arms and a cushion, a hearth-rug, a fender and fire-irons, completed the furniture of the room.

And the one window, a small one, which looked out upon the wharf, in a corner formed by the outhouse on the one side and a shed on the other, was carefully boarded up.

Grimly desolate the dark, bare room looked, small as it was; and a couple of rats, which scurried over the floor as Max entered, added a suggestion of other horrors to the deserted room. The girl had managed to get behind Max, and he turned sharply with a suspicion that she meant to shut him into the room by himself.

"It's all right—it's all right," whispered she, reassuringly. "He isn't in here. But he's there."

And she pointed to the door with the red curtain.

Max stopped. The farther he advanced into this mysterious house the less he liked the prospect presented to his view. And the girl herself seemed to have forgotten her pretext of wanting something fetched out of that mysterious third room. She remained leaning against the wall, close by the door by which she and Max had entered, still holding the candlestick and staring at the red curtain with eyes full of terror. Max found his own eyes fascinated by the steady gaze, and he looked in the same direction.

Staring intently at the bit of faded stuff, he was almost ready to imagine, in the silence and gloom of the place, that he saw it move. His breath came fast. Overcome by the uncanny influences of the dreary place itself, of the hideous story he had heard, of the girl's white face, Max began to feel as if the close, cold air of the unused room was like the touch of clammy fingers on his face.

Even as this consciousness seized upon him, he heard a moan, a sliding sound, a thud, and the light went suddenly out.

In the first impulse of horror at his position Max uttered a sharp exclamation, but remained immovable. Indeed, in the darkness, in this unknown place, to take a step in any direction was impossible. He stood listening, waiting for some sound, some ray of light, to guide him.

All he heard was the scurrying of the rats as they ran, disturbed by the noise, across the room and behind the wainscot in the darkness.

At last he turned and tried to find the door by which he had come in. He found it, and had his hand upon the latch, when his right foot touched something soft, yielding. He opened the door, which was not locked, as he had feared, and was about to make his way as fast as he could into the open air, when another moan, fainter than before, reached his ears.

No light came into the room through the open door; so he struck a wax match. His nerves were not at their best, and it was some time before he could get a light. When he did so, he discovered that the thing his foot had touched was the body of the girl, lying in a heap on the floor close to the wainscot.

Now Max was divided between his doubts and his pity; but it was not possible that doubt should carry the day in the face of this discovery. Whether she had fainted, or whether this was only a ruse on her part to detain him, to interest him, he could not leave her lying there.

The tin candlestick had rolled away on the floor, and the candle had fallen out of it. The first thing Max had to do was to replace the one in the other, and to get a serviceable light. By the time he had done so he saw a movement in the girl's body. She was lying with her head on the floor. He put his arm under her head to raise it, when she started up, so suddenly as to alarm him, leaned back against the wall, still in her cramped, sitting position, and glared into his face.

"Look here," she said faintly, "I couldn't help it. You know—I think—I'm almost—starving."

"Heavens! Why didn't I think of it! Poor child! Get up; let me help you. Come to this chair. Wait here, only a few minutes. I'll get you something to eat and drink."

He was helping her up; had got her on her feet, indeed, when she suddenly swung round in his arms, clinging to his sleeve and staring again with the fixed, almost vacant look which made him begin to doubt whether her reason had not suffered.

"No, no, no," cried she, gasping for breath; "I can't stay here. I know, I know you wouldn't come back. If you once got out, got outside in the air, you would go back to your home, and I should be left here—alone—with the rats—and—that!"

And again she pointed to the curtained door.

Max felt his teeth chattering as he tried to reassure her.

"Come, won't you trust me? I'll only be a minute. I want to get you some brandy."

"Brandy? No. I dare not."

And she shook her head. But Max persisted.

"Nonsense—you must have it. There's a public-house at the corner, of course. Come out on to the wharf, if you like and wait for me."

It was pitiful to see the expression of her eyes as she looked in his face without a word. She was leaning back in the wooden arm-chair, one hand lying in her lap, the other hanging limply over the side of the chair. Her hair, which had been fastened in a coil at the back of her head, had been loosened in the fall, and now drooped about her head and face in disorder, which increased her pathetic beauty. And it was at this point that Max noticed, with astonishment, that her hands, though not specially beautiful or small or in any way remarkable, were not those of a woman used to the roughest work.

She made an attempt to rise, apparently doubting his good faith and afraid to lose sight of him, as he retreated toward the door. But she fell back again, and only stared at him dumbly.

The mute appeal touched Max to the quick. He was always rather susceptible, but it seemed to him that he had never felt, at the hands of any girl, such a variety of emotions as this forlorn creature roused in him with every movement, every look, every word.

He hesitated, came back a step and leaned over the table, looking at her.

"I'll come back," said he, in a voice hardly above a whisper. "Of course I'll come back. You don't think I'd leave you like this, do you?"

For a moment she stared at him with doubt in her eyes; then, as if reassured, her lips parted in a very faint smile, and she made a slight motion with her head which he was fain to take as a sign of her trust.

He had reached the door, when by a weak gesture she called him back again.

"If—if you should meet anybody—I'm expecting Granny all the time—I'm sure she wouldn't leave me altogether like this—you will come back all the same, won't you?"

Her earnestness over this matter had given her back a little strength. She leaned forward over one arm of the chair, impressing her words upon him with a bend of the head.

"Oh, no, I shan't mind Granny," replied Max, confidently.

"Well, you wouldn't mind her if she was in a good humor," went on the girl, doubtfully, "but when she's in a bad one, oh, well, then," in a lowered voice of deep confidence, "I'm afraid of her myself!"

"That's all right. It would take more than an old woman to frighten me! Tell me what she's like and what her name is, and I can present myself to her as a morning caller."

The girl seemed to have recovered altogether from her attack of faintness, since she was able to detain him thus from his proposed errand on her behalf. She smiled again, less faintly than before, and shook her head.

"I don't think there's much to describe about Granny. She was a housekeeper at old Mr. Horne's house in the city, you know, and she looks just as old housekeepers always look. Her name's Mrs. Higgs. But," and the girl looked frightened again, "don't tell her you've come to see me. She's very particular. At least—I mean—"

A pretty confusion, a touch of hesitancy, the first sign of anything girlish which Max had seen in this strange creature, made her stop and turn her head away. And, the effort of speaking over, she drooped again.

"I won't be long."

And Max, puzzled himself by the feelings he had toward this strange little white-bodied being, went through the outhouse into the open air.

Outside, he found himself staggering, he didn't know why—whether from the emotions he had experienced or from the clammy, close hair of the shut-up room; all he knew was that by the time he reached the public-house, which he had correctly foreseen was to be found at the corner, he felt quite as much in want of the brandy as his patient herself.

It occurred to him, as he stood in the bar, swallowing some fiery liquid of dubious origin which the landlord had sold to him as brandy, to make a casual inquiry about Mrs. Higgs.

"Yes," said the landlord, "I do know a Mrs. Higgs. She comes in here sometimes; she likes her glass. But they know more about her at The Admiral's Arms, Commercial Road way," and he gave a nod of the head to indicate the direction of that neighborhood.

"Do you know her address?" asked Max.

The landlord smiled.

"It 'ud take a clever head to keep the addresses of all the chance customers as comes in here. For the matter of that, very few of 'em have any addresses in particular; it's one court one week, and t'other the next."

"But she's a very respectable woman, the Mrs. Higgs I mean," said Max, tentatively.

"Oh, yes, sir; I've nothin' to say ag'inst her," and the landlord, with a look which showed that he objected to be "pumped," turned to another customer.

Max took the brandy he had bought for the girl and hurried back to the place where he had left her. As he went, an instinct of curiosity, natural enough, considering his recently acquired knowledge, made him go down the passage and try to look in through the grim, dusty window of the shop. But this also was boarded up on the inner side, so that no view could be obtained of what was within.

It seemed to Max, however, as he stood there, with his eyes fixed on the planks, trying to discover an aperture, that between the cracks of the boards there glimmered a faint light. It seemed to flicker, then it died out.

Surely, he thought, the girl has not summoned enough courage to go into the room by herself?

He hurried back down the passage, and made his way as before to the wharf. Stumbling round the piles of timber, he found the lane by which he had entered and left the house. It seemed to him, though he told himself it must be only fancy, that some of the loose planks had been disturbed since his last journey over them. Reaching the door of outhouse, which he had left ajar, he found it shut.

He was now sure that some one had gone in, or come out, since he left; and for a moment the circumstance seemed to him sufficiently suspicious to make him pause. The next moment, however, the remembrance of the girl's white face, of the pleading blue eyes, returned to him vividly, calling to him, drawing him back by an irresistible spell. He pushed open the door boldly, crossed the brick floor and reentered the inner room. The candle was still burning on the table, but the girl was not there.

Max looked round the room. He was puzzled, suspicious. As he stood by the table staring at the wall opposite the fireplace, wondering whether to go out or to explore further, he found his eyes attracted to a spot in the wall-paper where, in the feeble light, something like two glittering beads shone out uncannily in the middle of the pattern. With a curious sensation down his spine, Max took a hasty step back to the door, and the beads moved slowly.

It was a pair of eyes watching him as he moved.



CHAPTER IX.

THE MAN WHO HESITATES.

Max had become accustomed, in the course of this adventurous visit, to surprises and alarms. Every step in the enterprise he had undertaken had brought a fresh excitement, a fresh horror. But nothing that he had so far heard or seen had given him such a sick feeling of indefinable terror as the sight of these two eyes, turning to watch his every movement. For a moment he watched them, then he made a bold dash for the place where he had seen them, and aimed a blow with his fist at the wall.

He heard the loose plaster rattle down; but when he looked for the result of his blow, he saw nothing but the old-fashioned, dirty paper on the wall, apparently without a hole or tear in it.

The discovery made him feel sick.

He turned to make his escape from the house, to which he felt that he was a fool to have returned at all, when the door by which he had entered opened slowly, and the girl came in.

A little flash, as of pleased surprise, passed over her white face. Then she said, under her breath:

"So you have come back. I didn't think you would. I—I am sorry you did."

Max looked rather blank. The girl's attraction for him had increased during the short period he had been absent from her. He had had time to think over his feelings, to find his interest stimulated by the process. Imagination, which does so much for a woman with a man, and for a man with a woman, had begun to have play. He had come back determined to find out more about the girl, to probe to the bottom of the mystery in which, perhaps, consisted so much of the charm she had for him.

Even now, upon her entrance, the first sight of her face had made his heart leap up.

There was a pause when she finished speaking. Max, who was usually fluent enough with her sex, hesitated, stammered and at last said:

"You are sorry I came back? Yet you seemed anxious enough to make me promise to come back!"

He observed that a great change had come over her. Instead of being nerveless and lifeless, as he had left her, with dull eyes and weak, helpless limbs, she was now agitated, excited; she glanced nervously about her while he spoke, and tapped the finger-tips of one hand restlessly with those of the other as she listened.

"I know," she replied, rapidly, "I know I was. But—Granny has come back. She came in while you were gone."

Max glanced at the wall, where he had fancied he saw the pair of watching eyes.

"Oh," said he, "that explains what I saw, perhaps. Where is your grandmother?"

"She has gone upstairs to her room under the roof."

"Ah! Are you sure she is upstairs? That she is not in the next room, for instance, watching me through some secret peep-hole of hers?"

The girl stared at him in silence as he pointed to the wall, and as he ran his hand over its surface.

"I saw a pair of eyes watching me just now," he went on, "from the middle of this wall. I could swear to it!"

The girl looked incredulous, and passed her hand over the wall in her turn. Then she shook her head.

"I can feel nothing," said she. "It must be your fancy. There is no room there. It is the ground-floor of an old warehouse next door which has been to let for years and years—longer than this."

He still looked doubtful, and she added, sharply:

"You can see for yourself if you like."

As she spoke, she was turning to go back into the outhouse, with a sign to him to follow her. But even as she did so, another thought must have struck her, for she shut the door and turned back again.

"No," she said, decisively, "of course you don't want to see anything so much as the outside of this gloomy old house. Don't think me ungrateful; I am not, but"—she came a little nearer to Max, so that she could whisper very close to his ear—"if Granny knew that I'd let a stranger into the place while she was away, I should never hear the last of it; and—and—when she's angry I'm afraid of her."

Max felt a pang of compassion for the girl.

"If you are afraid of her being angry," said he, "you had better let her see me and hear my explanation. I can make things right with her. I have great powers of persuasion—with old ladies—I assure you; and you don't look as if you were equal to a strife of tongues with her or with anybody just now; and I'd forgotten; I've brought something for you."

Max took from the pocket of his overcoat the little flat bottle filled with brandy with which he had provided himself; but the girl pushed it away with alarm.

"Don't let Granny see it!" she whispered.

"All right. But I want you to taste it; it will do you good."

She shook her head astutely.

"I am not ill," she said, shortly, "and I don't know that I should take it if I were. I see too much of those things not to be afraid of them. And, now, sir, will you go?" After a short pause she added, in an ominous tone—"while you have the chance."

Max still lingered. He had forgotten his curiosity, he had almost forgotten what had brought him to the house in the first instance. He did not want to leave this girl, with the great, light-blue eyes and the scarlet lips, the modest manner and the moving voice.

When the silence which followed her words had lasted some seconds, she turned from him impatiently, and leaving him by the door, crossed the little room quickly, opened one of the two wooden doors which stood one on each side of the fireplace, revealing a cupboard with rows of shelves, and took from the bottom a few chips of dry wood, evidently gleaned from the wharf outside, a box of matches and part of a newspaper, and dropping down on her knees on the hearth, began briskly to rake out the ashes and to prepare a fire.

Max stood watching her, divided between prudence, which urged him to go, and inclination, which prompted him to stay.

She went on with her work steadily for some minutes, without so much as a look behind. Yet Max felt that she was aware of his presence, and he knew also, without being sure how the knowledge came to him, that the girl's feeling toward himself had changed now that she was no longer alone in the house with him. The constraint which might have been expected toward a person of the opposite sex in the strange circumstances, which had been so entirely absent from her manner on their first meeting, had now stolen into her attitude toward him.

Yet, although the former absence of this constraint had been a most effective part of her attraction for him, Max began to think that the new and slight self-consciousness which caused her to affect to ignore him was a fresh charm. Before, while she implored him to come into the house with her, it was to a fellow-creature only that the frightened girl had made her appeal. Now that her grandmother had returned, and she was lonely and unprotected no longer, she remembered that he was a man.

This change in her attitude toward him was strikingly exemplified when, having lit the fire, she rose from her knees, and taking a kettle from the hob, turned toward the door.

"You haven't gone then?" said she.

"No!"

She came forward, taking the lid off the kettle as she walked.

"You won't be advised?"

She was passing him swiftly, with the manner of a busy housewife, when Max, encouraged by her new reserve, and a demure side-look, which was not without coquetry, seized the hand which held the kettle, and asked her if he was to get no thanks for coming to her assistance as he had done.

"I did thank you," said she, not attempting to withdrew her hand, but standing, grave and with downcast eyes, between him and the door.

"Well, in a way, you did. But you didn't thank me enough. You yourself admit it was a bold thing for a stranger to do!"

The girl looked suddenly up into his face, and again he saw in her expressive eyes a look which was altogether new. Like flashes of lightning the changes passed over her small, mobile features, to which the absence of even a tinge of healthy pink color gave, perhaps, an added power of portraying the emotions which might be agitating her. There was now something like defiance in her eyes.

"What was your boldness compared to mine?" said she. "You are a man; you have strong arms, at any rate, I suppose. I am only a girl, and you are a gentleman, and gentlemen are not chivalrous. Who dared the most then, you or I?"

"So gentlemen are not chivalrous?" said Max, ignoring the last part of her speech. "All gentlemen are not, I suppose you mean? Or rather, all the men who ought to be gentlemen?"

"No," answered the girl, stubbornly. "I mean what I said. You with the rest. You'd act rightly toward a man, I suppose, as a matter of course. You can't act rightly toward a woman, a girl, without expecting to be paid for it."

Max was taken aback. Here was a change, indeed, from the poor, clinging, pleading, imploring creature of twenty minutes before. He reddened a little and let her hand slip from his grasp.

"I believe you are right," he said, at last, "though you are rather severe. But let me tell you that the word 'chivalry' is misleading altogether. It is applied to those middle-aged Johnnies—no, I mean those Johnnies of the Middle Ages—who were supposed to go about rescuing damsels in distress, isn't it? Well, you don't know what happened after the rescue was effected; but I like to suppose, myself, that the girl didn't just say 'Thanks—awfully' and cut him dead forever afterward."

"You think the knight expected payment, just as you do, for his services?"

"I think so. A very small payment, but one which he would appreciate highly."

The girl leaned against the wall by the door and looked at him with something like contempt for a moment. Then she smiled, not encouragingly, but with mockery in her eyes.

"You have a tariff, I suppose," said she, cuttingly, "a regular scale of charges, as, perhaps, you will say the knights had. Pray, what is your charge in the present instance? A kiss, perhaps, or two?"

Now, Max had, indeed, indulged the hope that she would bestow upon him this small mark of gratitude. It came upon him with a shock of surprise that a girl who had been so bold as to summon him should make so much fuss about the reward he had certainly earned. He had expected to get it with a laugh and a blush, as a matter of course. For his modest suggestion to be taken so seriously was a disconcerting occurrence. He drew himself up a little.

"I don't pretend I should have been generous enough to refuse such a payment if you had shown the slightest willingness to make it," said he. "But as it's the sort of coin that has no value unless given voluntarily, we will consider the debt settled without it."

He made a pretense of leaving her at this point, without the slightest intention of persisting in it. This curious conference had all the zest of a most novel kind of flirtation, which was none the less piquant for the girl's haughty airs.

There are feminine eyes which allure as much while they seem to repel as they do when they consciously attract; and the light-blue ones which shone in the white face of this East End enchantress were of the number.

Max opened the door and slowly stepped into the outhouse. At the moment of glancing back—an inevitable thing—he saw that she looked sorry, dismayed. He took his gloves out of his pocket and began to draw them on, to fill up the time. By the time the second finger of the first glove was in its place, for he was deliberate, the girl had come into the outhouse, passed him, and was drawing water from the tap into her kettle. He watched her. She knew it, but pretended not to notice. The circumstance of the water flowing freely in the house which was supposed to be deserted made an excuse for another remark, and a safe one.

"I thought they cut the water off from empty houses; that is, houses supposed to be empty."

She turned round with so much alacrity as to suggest that she was glad of the pretext for reopening communications. And this time there was a bright look of arch amusement on her face instead of her former expression of outraged dignity.

"So they do. But—the people who know how to live without paying rent know a few other things, too."

Max laughed a little, but he was rather shocked. This pretty and in some respects fastidiously correct young person ought not surely to find amusement in defrauding even a water company.

The fact reminded him of that which the intoxication caused by a pretty face had made him forget—that he was in a house of dubious character, from which he would be wise in escaping without further delay. But then, again, it was the very oddness of the contrast between the character of the house and the behavior of the girl which made the piquancy of the situation.

"Oh, yes; of course; I'd forgotten that," assented Max, limply.

And then he fell into silence, and the girl stood quietly by the tap, which ran slowly, till the kettle was full.

And then it began to run over.

Now this incident was a provocation. Max was artful enough to know that no girl who ever fills a kettle lets it run over unless she is much preoccupied. He chose to think she was preoccupied with him. So he laughed, and she looked quickly round and blushed, and turned her back upon him with ferocity.

He came boldly up to her.

"I'm so sorry," said he, in a coaxing, confidential, persuasive tone, such as she had given him no proper encouragement to use, "that we've had a sort of quarrel just at the last, and spoiled the impression of you I wanted to carry away."

He was evidently in no hurry to carry anything away, though he went on with the glove-buttoning with much energy.

She listened, with her eyes down, making, kettle and all, the prettiest picture possible. There was no light in the outhouse except that which came from a little four-penny brass hand-lamp, which the girl must have lit just before her last entrance into the inner room. It was behind her, on a shelf against the wall; and the light shone through the loose threads of her fair hair, making an aureole round the side view of her little head.

She was bewitching like that, so the susceptible Max thought, while he debated with himself whether he now dared to try again for that small reward. And he reluctantly decided that he did not dare. And again there was something piquant in the fact of his not daring.

The girl, after a short pause, looked up; perhaps, though not so susceptible as he, she was not insensible to the fact that Max was young and handsome, well dressed, a little in love with her, and altogether different from the types of male humanity most common to Limehouse.

"If," she suggested at last, with some hesitation, "you really think it better to see my grandmother, she will be down very soon. I'm going to make some tea; and you could wait, if you liked, in the next room."

"I should be delighted," said Max.

Off came the gloves; and as the girl tripped quickly into the adjoining room, he followed with alacrity.

"Mind," cried she suddenly, as she turned from the fireplace and stood by the table in an attitude of warning, "it is at your own risk, you know, that you stay. You can guess that the people who belong to a hole-and-corner place like this are not the sort you're accustomed to meet at West-End dinner tables, nor yet at an archbishop's garden-party. But as you've stayed so long, it will be better for me if you stay till you have seen Granny, as she must have heard me talking to you by this time."

Now Max, in the interest of his conversation with the girl, had forgotten all about less pleasant subjects. Now that they were suddenly recalled to his mind, he felt uneasy at the idea of the unseen but ever-watchful "Granny," who might be listening to every word he uttered, noting every glance he threw at the girl.

And then the natural suspicion flashed into his mind: Was there a "Granny" after all? or was the invisible one some person more to be dreaded than any old woman?

Another glance at the girl, and the fascinated, bewildered Max resolved to risk everything for a little more of her society.



CHAPTER X.

GRANNY.

There was some constraint upon them both at first; and Max had had time to feel a momentary regret that he had been foolish enough to stay, when he was surprised to find the girl's eyes staring fixedly at a small parcel which he had taken from his coat-tail pocket and placed upon the table.

It was a paper of biscuits which he had brought from the public-house. He had forgotten them till that moment.

"I brought these for you—" he began.

And then, before he could add more, he was shocked by the avidity with which she almost snatched them from his hand.

"I—I'd forgotten!" stammered he.

It was an awful sight. The girl was hungry, ravenously hungry, and he had been chatting to her and talking about kisses when she was starving!

There was again a faint spot of color in her cheeks, as she turned her back to him and crouched on the hearth with the food.

"Don't look at me," she said, half laughing, half ashamed. "I suppose you've never been without food for two days!"

Max could not at first answer. He sat in one of the wooden chairs, with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped, calling himself, mentally, all sorts of things for his idiotic forgetfulness.

"And to think," said he, at last, in a hoarse and not over-steady-voice, "that I dared to compare myself to a knight-errant!"

The biscuits were disappearing rapidly. Presently she turned and let him see her face again.

"Perhaps," suggested she, still with her mouth full, "as you say, one didn't hear quite all about those gentlemen. Perhaps they forgot things sometimes. And perhaps," she added, with a most gracious change to gratitude and kindness, "they weren't half so sorry when they forgot as you are."

Max listened in fresh amazement. Where on earth had this child of the slums, in the cheap-stuff frock and clumsy shoes, got her education, her refinement? Her talk was not so very different from that of the West-End dinner-tables she had laughed at. What did it mean?

"Do you really feel so grateful for the little I have done?" he asked suddenly.

The girl drew a long breath.

"I don't dare to tell you how grateful."

"Well, then, will you tell me all about yourself? I'm getting more puzzled every moment. I hope it isn't rude to say so, but—you and this place don't fit."

For a moment the girl did not answer. Then she put the paper which had held the biscuits carefully into the cupboard by the fireplace, and as she did so he saw her raise her shoulders with an involuntary and expressive shrug.

"I suppose it is rather surprising," she said at last, as she folded her hands in her lap and kept her eyes fixed upon the red heart of the fire. "It surprises me sometimes."

There was a pause, but Max would not interrupt her, for he thought from her manner that an explanation of some sort was coming. At last she went on, raising her head a little, but without looking at him:

"And very likely it will astonish you still more to hear that in coming to this place I made a change for the better."

Max was too much surprised to make any comment.

"If you want to know my name, date of birth, parentage and the rest of it," went on the girl, in a tone of half-playful recklessness, "why, I have no details to give you. I don't know anything about myself, and nobody I know seems to know any more. Granny says she does, but I don't believe her."

She paused.

"Why, surely," began Max, "your own grandmother—"

"But I don't even know that she is my own grandmother," interrupted the girl, sharply. "If she were, wouldn't she know my name?"

"That seems probable, certainly."

"Well, she doesn't, or she says she doesn't. She pretends she has forgotten, or puts me off when I ask questions, though any one can understand my asking them."

This was puzzling, certainly. Max had no satisfactory explanation to offer, so he shook his head and tried to look wise. As long as she would go on talking, and about herself, too, he didn't care what she said.

"What does she call you?" asked he, after a silence.

"Carrie—Carrie Rivers. But the 'Rivers' is not my name, I know. It was given me by Miss Aldridge, who brought me up, and she told me it wasn't my real name, but that she gave it to me because it was 'proper to have one.' So how can I believe Granny when she says that it is not my name? Or at least that she has forgotten whether I had any other? If she had really forgotten all that, wouldn't she have forgotten my existence altogether, and not have taken the trouble to hunt me out, and to take me away from the place where she found me?"

"Where was that?" asked Max.

The girl hung her head, and answered in a lower voice, as if her reply were a distasteful, discreditable admission:

"I was bookkeeper at a hotel—a wretched place, where I was miserable, very miserable."

Max was more puzzled than ever.

Every fresh detail about herself and her life made him wonder the more why she was refined, educated. Presently she looked up, and caught the expression on his face.

"That was after Miss Aldridge died," she said, with a sigh. "I had lived with her ever since I was a little girl. I can hardly remember anything before that—except—some things, little things, which I would rather forget." And her face clouded again. "She was a very old lady, who had been rich once, and poor after that. She had kept a school before she had me; and after that, I was the school. I had to do all the learning of a schoolful. Do you see?"

"Ah," said Max, "now I understand! And didn't she ever let you know who placed you with her?"

"She said it was my grandmother," answered Carrie, doubtfully.

"This grandmother? The one you call Granny?"

"I don't know. You see, Mrs. Higgs never turned up till about ten months ago, long after Miss Aldridge had died. She died the Christmas before last."

"And how did you get to the hotel?"

"I had to do something. Miss Aldridge had only her annuity. I had done everything for her, except the very hardest work, that she wouldn't let me do; and when she died, suddenly, I had to find some way of living. And somebody knew of the hotel. So I went."

"Where was it?"

"Oh, not so very far from here. It was a dreadful place. They treated me fairly well because I am quick at accounts, so I was useful. But, oh, it wasn't a place for a girl at all."

"But why didn't you get a better one? Anything would have been better, surely, than coming here, to live like this!"

Max was earnest, impassioned even. The girl smiled mournfully as she just caught his eyes for a moment, and then looked at the fire again.

"You don't understand," she said, simply. "How should you? I should have had no reference to give if I had wanted another situation. The name of the place where I had been living would have been worse than none."

"But there are lots of places where you could have gone, religious and philanthropic institutions I think they call themselves, where they would have listened to what you had to say, and done their best to help you."

Carrie looked dubious.

"Are there?" said she. "Well, there may be, of course. But I think not. Plenty of institutions of one sort and another there are, of course. But those for women are generally for one class—a class I don't belong to."

Max shuddered. This matter-of-fact tone jarred upon him. It was not immodest, but it revealed a mind accustomed to view the facts of life, not one nourished on pretty fancies, like those of his sisters.

"And even if," she went on, "there were a home, an institution, a girl like me could go to and obtain employment, it wouldn't be a life one would care for; it would be a sort of workhouse at the best, wouldn't it?"

"Wouldn't it be better than—this?"

"I don't even know that. Granny's fond of me in her way. That's the one thing no sort of institution can give you, the feeling that you belong to some one, that you're not just a number."

"Well, but you're well educated—and—"

He was going to say "pretty," but her look stopped him.

It was almost a look of reproach.

"Do you think I'm the only fairly-educated girl in London who doesn't know how to get a living? Haven't you ever found, in poor, wretched little shops, girls who speak well, look different from the others? Don't you know that there are lots of girls like me who are provided for, well provided for at the outset, and then forgotten, or neglected, and left to starve, to drift, to get on the best way they can? Oh, surely you must know that! Only people like you don't care to think about these things. And you are quite right, quite right. Why should you?"

Suddenly the girl sprang up and made a gesture with her hands as if to dismiss the subject. Max, watching her with eager interest, saw pass quickly over her face a look which set him wondering on whose countenance he had seen it before. In an instant it was gone, leaving a look of weariness behind. But it set him wondering. Who was she? Who were the mysterious parents of whom she knew nothing?

Carrie glanced at the door which led into the outhouse. The tapping of a stick on the stone-flagged floor announced the approach of "Granny" at last. The girl ran to open the door.

Max had sprung up from his chair, full of curiosity to see the old lady of whom Carrie seemed to be somewhat in awe.

He was rather disappointed. There was nothing at all formidable or dignified about Mrs. Higgs, who was a round-shouldered, infirm old woman in a brown dress, a black-and-white check shawl, and a rusty black bonnet.

She stopped short on seeing Max, and proceeded, still standing in the doorway, to scrutinize with candid interest every detail of his appearance. When she had satisfied herself, she waved her stick as an intimation to him that he could sit down again, and, leaning on the arm of the young girl, crossed the room, still without a word, and took her seat in the one arm-chair.

As Carrie had said, there was nothing singular or marked about her face or figure by which one could have distinguished her from the general run of old women of her modest but apparently respectable class. A little thin, whitish hair, parted in the middle, showed under her bonnet; her eyes, of the faded no-color of the old, stared unintelligently out of her hard, wrinkled face; her long, straight, hairy chin, rather hooked nose and thin-lipped mouth made an ensemble which suggested a harmless, tedious old lady who could "nag" when she was not pleased.

Conversation was not her strong point, evidently, or, perhaps, the presence of a stranger made her shy. For, to all Carrie's remarks and inquiries, she vouchsafed only nods in reply, or the shortest of answers in a gruff voice and an ungracious tone.

"Who is he?" she asked at last, when she had begun to sip her cup of tea.

She did not even condescend to look at Max as she made the inquiry.

"A gentleman, Granny—the gentleman I told you of, who came in with me because I was afraid to come in by myself."

"But what's he doing here now? You're not by yourself now."

Max himself could hardly help laughing at this question and comment.

"I thought I ought to explain to you my appearance here," said he, modestly.

"Very well, then; you can go as soon as you like."

"Granny!" protested the girl in a whisper; "don't be rude to him, Granny. He's been very kind."

"Kind! I dare say!"

Max thought it was time to go, and he rose and stood ready to make a little speech. At that moment there was a noise in the outhouse, and both Mrs. Higgs and Carrie seemed suddenly to lose their interest in him, and to direct their attention to the door.

Then Mrs. Higgs made a sign to Carrie, who went out of the room and into the outhouse. As Max turned to watch her, the light went out.

By this time Carrie had shut the door behind her, and Max was, as he supposed, alone with the old woman. He was startled, and he made an attempt to find the door leading into the outhouse and to follow the girl; but this was not so easy.

While he was fumbling for the door, he found himself suddenly seized in a strong grip, and, taken unawares, he was unable to cope with an assailant so dexterous, so rapid in his movements, that, before Max had time to do more than realize that he was attacked, he was forced through an open doorway and flung violently to the ground.

Then a door was slammed, and there was silence.

As Max scrambled to his feet his hand, touched something clammy and cold.

It was a hand—a dead hand.

Max uttered a cry of horror. He remembered all that he had forgotten. He knew now that the girl's story was true, and that he was shut in the front room with the body of the murdered man.



CHAPTER XI.

A TRAP.

Max tried to find the door by which he had been thrown into the room. The upper portion was of glass, he supposed, remembering the red curtain which hung on the other side of it. But although he felt with his hands in the place where he supposed the door to be, he found nothing but wooden shelves, such as are usually found lining the walls of shops, and planks of rough wood.

He paused, looked around him, hoping that when his eyes got used to the darkness some faint ray of light coming either through the boarded-up front or through the glass upper half of the door, would enable him to take his bearings, or, at any rate, to help him avoid that uncanny "something" in the middle of the floor.

But the blackness was absolute. Strain his eyes as he might, there was no glimmer of light in any direction to guide him, and he had used up his last match. So he went to work again with his hands. These rough planks were placed perpendicularly against the wall to a width of about three feet—the width of the door. Passing his fingers slowly all round them, he ascertained that they reached to the floor, and to a height of about seven feet above it. Evidently, thought he, it was the door itself which opened into the shop which had been carefully boarded up. As soon as he felt sure of this, he dealt at the planks a tremendous blow with his fist. He hurt his hand, but did no apparent injury to the door, which scarcely shook. Then he tried to tear one of the boards away from the framework to which it was attached, but without result. The nails which had been used to fasten it were of the strongest make, and had been well driven in.

Foiled in his attempt to get out of the room by the way he had come, Max moved slowly to the left, and at the distance of only a couple of feet from the door found the angle of the wall, and began to creep along, still feeling with hands and feet most carefully, in the direction of the front of the shop.

This side of the room presented no obstacles. The wall-paper was torn here and there; the plaster fell down in some places at his touch. A board shook a little under his tread when he had taken a few paces, but at the next step he made the floor seemed firm enough.

On turning the next angle in the wall he came to the shop door—the one leading into the stone passage outside. Here he made another attempt to force an exit, but it was boarded up as securely as the inner one, and the window, which was beside it, was in the same condition.

It by no means increased the confidence of Max as to his own safety to observe what elaborate precautions had been used by the occupants of the house to secure themselves from observation. He could no longer doubt that he was in a house which was the resort of persons of the worst possible character, and in a position of the gravest danger.

While opposite the window, he listened eagerly for some sound in the passage outside. If a foot-passenger should pass, he would risk everything and shout for help with all the force of his lungs.

Even while he indulged this hope, he felt that it was a vain one. It was now late; traffic on the river had almost ceased; there was no attraction for idlers on the landing-stage in the cold and the darkness.

He continued his investigations.

At the next angle in the wall he came to more shelves, decayed, broken, left by the last tenant as not worth carrying away. And presently his feet came upon something harder, colder than the boards; it was a hearthstone, and it marked the place where, before the room was turned into a shop, there had been a small fireplace. And on the other side of this, near the wall, was a collection of rubbish, over the musty items of which Max stumbled as he went. Old boxes, bits of carpet, broken bricks; every sort of worthless lumber.

And so, without accident, without incident, without hearing a sound but the faint noise of his own movements, Max got back to the point where he had started.

Then he paused and listened at the inner door.

In spite of everything, he refused to yield to the suggestion that Carrie had anything to do with his incarceration. Would she not, on finding that he had disappeared, make an effort to get him out?

While he was standing between doubt and hope, on the alert for any sound on the other side which should suggest the presence of the girl herself and give him the cue to knock at the door again, his attention was attracted by a slight noise which thrilled him to the marrow; for it came, not from outside, but from some part of the room itself, in which he had supposed himself to be alone with the dead body of a man.

Instantly he put his back to the door and prepared to stand on the defensive against the expected attack of an invisible assailant.

That was the awful part of it, that he could not see. For a moment he thought of creeping back to the rubbish heap in the corner and trying to find, amongst the odds and ends lying there, some sort of weapon of defense. But a moment's reflection told him that the act of stooping, of searching, would put him more at the mercy of an assailant than ever. There was absolutely nothing to do but to wait and to listen.

And the noise he heard was like the drawing of a log of wood slowly along the floor. This was followed by a dull sound, like the falling of a log to the earth.

And then there followed two sounds which made his flesh creep: The first was the creaking, and cracking of wooden boards, and the second was a slow, sliding noise, which lasted, intermittently for what seemed an hour.

When the latter noise ceased something fell heavily to the ground. That was a sound there was no mistaking, and then the creaking went on for what seemed a long time, and ceased suddenly in its turn.

And then, again, there was dead silence, dead stillness.

By this time Max was as cold as ice, and wet from head to foot with the sweat of a sick terror. What the sounds meant, whence they proceeded, he could not tell, but the horror they produced in him was unspeakable, never to be forgotten.

He did not move for a long time after the sounds had ceased. He wanted to shout, to batter with his fists on the doors, the window. But a hideous paralysis of fear seemed to have taken possession of him and benumbed his limbs and his tongue.

Max was no coward. He was a daring rider, handy with his fists, a young man full of spirit and courage to the verge of recklessness, as this adventure had proved. But courage must have something to attack, or at least to resist, before it can make itself manifest; and in this sickening waiting, listening, watching, without the use of one's eyes, there was something which smacked of the supernatural, something to damp the spirits of the bravest man.

There was nothing to be gained, there was, perhaps, much to be risked, by a movement, a step. So Max felt, showing thereby that he possessed an instinct of sane prudence which was, in the circumstances, better than bravery.

And presently he discerned a little patch of faint light on the floor, which gradually increased in size until he was able to make out that it was thrown from above, and from the corner above the rubbish heap.

Max kept quite still. The relief he felt was exquisite. If once he could have a chance of seeing the man who was in the room with him, and who he could not doubt was the person who had thrown him in, Max felt he should be all right. In a tussle with another man he knew that he could hold his own, and a sight of the ruffian would enable him to judge whether bribery or force would be the better weapon with him.

In the meantime he watched the light with anxious eyes, determined not to move and risk its extinction until he had been able to examine every corner of the little shop.

And as he looked, his eyes grew round, and his breath came fast.

There was no counter left, no furniture at all behind which a man could hide. And the room, except for the rubbish in the corner, a small, straggling heap, was absolutely bare.

There was no other creature in it, dead or alive, but himself.



CHAPTER XII.

ESCAPE.

An exclamation, impossible to repress, burst from the lips of Max.

At the same moment he made a spring to the left, which brought him under the spot in the floor above through which the light was streaming.

And he saw through a raised trap-door in the flooring above the shrewish face of old Mrs. Higgs, and the very same candle in the very same tin candlestick that he had seen in use in the adjoining room.

The old woman and the young man stared at each other for a moment in silence. It seemed to Max that there was genuine surprise on her face as she looked at him.

"Well, I never!" exclaimed she, as she lowered the candle through the hole, and looked, not only at him, but into every corner of the shop. "Well, I never! How did you get in there, eh?"

Max was angry and sullen. How could he doubt that she knew more about it than he did! On the other hand, he was not in a position to be as rude as he felt inclined to be.

"You know all about that, I expect," said he, shortly.

"I? How should I know anything about it? I only know that I lost sight of you very quickly, and couldn't make out where you'd got to."

"Well, you know now," said Max, shortly, "and perhaps you'll be kind enough to let me out."

In spite of himself his voice shook. As the old woman still hesitated, he measured with his eye the distance between the floor where he stood and the open trap-door above. It was too far for a spring. Mrs. Higgs seemed to divine his thoughts, and she laughed grimly.

"All right," said she. "All right. I'll come down. I wonder who can have put you in there now! It's one of those young rascals from over the way, I expect. They are always up to something. Don't you worry yourself; I'm coming!"

Her tone had become so reassuring that Max began to wonder whether the old woman might not be more innocent of the trick which had been played upon him than he had supposed. This impression increased when Mrs. Higgs went on:

"Why didn't you holloa out when you found yourself inside?"

"It wouldn't have been of much use," retorted Max. "I thumped on the door and made noise enough to wake the city."

"Well, I thought I heard a knock, some time ago," said Mrs. Higgs, who seemed still in no hurry to fulfill her promise of coming down. "But I thought it was nothing of any consequence, as I didn't hear it again."

"Where were you then?" To himself he added: "You old fool!"

"Eh?" said Mrs. Higgs.

Max repeated the question.

"Well, first I was downstairs, and then I came up here."

At last Max saw in the old woman's lackluster eyes a spark of malice.

"You're coming to open the door now?" asked he.

"All right," said she.

Down went the trap-door, and the light and the old woman disappeared together. Max wished he had asked for a candle, although he doubted whether his request would have been complied with.

And at the end of another five minutes, which seemed like hours, he began to have other and graver doubts. He had gone back to his former place near the door, and he stood waiting, with more and more eagerness, more and more anxiety, for the promised appearance of Mrs. Higgs.

Surely, slow as her steps might be, she could have got down by this time.

He grew restless, uneasy. The old suspicions—which her appearance and the artful simplicity of her manner had allayed—rose up in his mind with fresh vigor. And, to add to his anxiety, he suddenly remembered the pretext Carrie had given to try to get him into the front room.

She had told him there were things of hers in there which she wanted. He had believed her, at least, implicitly. But now he knew that her pretext was a lie. She also, therefore, had been an accomplice in the plot to get him into this room.

As this thought came into his mind, he heard again the creaking of the boards, and this time it was accompanied by another sound, faint, intermittent, but unmistakable—the sound of the splashing of water close to his feet.

Turning quickly to the door, he raised his fist and brought it upon the boards with a sounding crash; at the same time he shouted for "Help!" with all the strength of his lungs. He repeated the blow, the cry.

Again he heard, when he paused to listen, the faint splashing of the water, the creaking of the boards behind him. Then, just as he raised his hand for one more blow on the door, he felt it open a very little, pushing him back.

And at the same moment a voice whispered:

"Sh-sh!"

Very gradually the door was opened a little farther. A hand caught the sleeve of his coat. It was quite dark outside the door—as dark as in the front room.

"Sh-sh!" was whispered again in his ear, as he felt himself drawn through the narrow aperture.

He made no attempt to resist, for he knew, he felt, that the hand was Carrie's, and that this was rescue.

When he had passed into the second room, Max was stopped by a warning pressure of the hand upon his arm, and then he felt the touch of Carrie's lips upon his ear, so close did she come before she uttered these words:

"Don't make a sound. Come slowly, very quietly, very carefully. You're all right."

He heard her close the door through which he had just come, and then he let her lead him, in silence and in the darkness, until they reached another door. This she opened with the same caution, and Max, passing through with her, found himself, as he knew by the little step down onto the brick floor, in the outhouse.

"Who's that?" said a man's voice, startling Max, and confirming in an instant the suspicions he had had that the outrage to which he had been subjected was the work of a gang.

"It's me—Carrie," said the girl.

And opening the outer door, she drove Max out with a gentle push, and closed it between herself and him.

"Thank God!" was his first muttered exclamation, as he felt the welcome rush of cold night air and felt himself free again.

But the very next moment he turned back instinctively to the door and attempted to push it open. The latch was gone; he had broken it himself. But the door was now locked against him.

Of course, this circumstance greatly increased the desire he had for one more interview, however short, with Carrie. He wanted to understand her position. Too much interested in the girl to wish to doubt her, grateful to her for contriving his escape, Max yet found it difficult to reconcile her actions with the honesty her words had caused him to believe in.

However, finding that the door was inexorably closed upon him, he saw that there was nothing for it but to take himself off into safer if less interesting regions as quickly as possible. So he got out on the wharf, through and over the timber, and was on the point of crossing to the door in the fence, when he saw a man come quickly through, lock the door behind him and make his way through the piles of timber with the easy, stealthy step of a man accustomed to do this sort of thing, and to do it at night.

Before the man got near him, Max, who had stepped back a little under the wall of one of the outhouses, was sure that the newcomer was of doubtful character. When the latter got out into the light thrown by the street-lamp outside the wharf, this impression was confirmed.

A little man, young, of slight and active build, with a fair mustache, blue eyes and curly, light hair, he was undoubtedly good-looking, although there was something mean and sinister about the expression of his face. Max could scarcely see all these details; but, as it was, he made out enough for him to experience an idiotic pang of something like jealousy, as he made up his mind on the instant that the object of the young man's visit was to see Carrie.

The visitor wore a light overcoat, and had a certain look of being well off, or, at least, well dressed.

And, suspicion getting the upper hand again, the thought darted through the mind of Max that it was strange to find so many persons—this was the third of whom he had knowledge—hovering about the shut-up house, when Carrie had represented herself to have been alone for two whole days.

Against his better judgment, Max followed the newcomer, step by step, at a safe distance, and raised himself on the timber in such a way as to be able to watch what followed.

The man in the light coat made his way with surprising neatness and celerity over the timber to the door of the outhouse, at which he gave two short knocks, a pause, and then two more.

After waiting for a few moments, the man repeated this signal, more loudly than before.

And then the door opened, and Max heard the voice of Carrie, though it was too dark for him to see her at that distance.

"You, Dick? Come in."

And the young man, without answering, availed himself of the invitation; and the door was shut.

Max stared down at the closed door in perplexity and dismay. In spite of all his adventures in that very doubtful house, or, perhaps, because of them, his interest in Carrie, of the blue eyes and the wonderful voice, was as strong as ever. Hovering between trust and mistrust, he told himself at this point that she was nothing in the world but the thieves' decoy he had at first suspected. But in that case, why had he himself not been robbed? He wore a valuable watch; he had gold and notes in his purse. And no attempt had been made to relieve him of either the one or the other.

And the foolish fellow began to consider and to weigh one thing with the other, and to become more and more eager to see the girl again if it were only to upbraid her for her deceit, until he ended by slipping down to the ground, going boldly to the door of the outhouse, and giving two knocks, a pause, and two knocks more.

As he had expected, Carrie herself, after an interval of only a few seconds, opened the door.

There was a little light in the outhouse, and none outside; and Max, having taken a couple of steps to the left, she at first saw nobody. So she made a step forward. Max instantly put himself between her and the door.

On recognizing him, Carrie started, but uttered no sound, no word.

"I want to speak to you," said Max, in a low voice.

But all her boldness of their first interview, her coquetry of the second, her quiet caution of the third had disappeared. She was now frightened, shy, anxious to get away.

"Oh, why did you come back? Why did you come back? Go away at once and never come here again. Haven't you got a lesson?"

Her voice broke; her anxiety was visible. Max was touched, more interested than ever.

"I can't go away," he whispered back, "until I have spoken to you about something which is very serious. Can't you come out on the wharf, somewhere where we can talk without anybody over-hearing?"

"Oh, no, oh, no. I must go in. And you must go. Are you a fool," and she stamped her foot with sudden impatience, "to be so persistent?"

"A fool?" echoed Max, half to himself. "By Jove, I think I am. Look here," and he bent down so that he might whisper very close to her ear; "I must set the police on this place, you know; but I want you to get away out of it first."

She listened in silence. She waited for him to say more. But he was waiting on his side for the protests he expected. At last she laughed to herself derisively.

"All right," said she. "Set the police on us by all means. Oh, do—do! But—just mention first to your friend, Mr. Horne, that that's what you're going to do. Just mention it to him, and see the thanks you'll get for your trouble!"

These words came upon Max with a great shock. In the excitement of his own adventures in this place, he had quite forgotten his friend, Dudley Horne, and the errand which had first brought him into the neighborhood. He had forgotten, also, what he had from the first only half believed—the girl's words connecting Dudley with a murder committed within those walls.

Now that the remembrance was thus abruptly brought back to him, he felt as if he wanted to gasp for breath. Carrie watched him, and presently made a sign to him to follow her. Scrambling out to the open space on the wharf, she made for the spot close to the water where Max had stood to watch the man whom Carrie had called "Dick."

When Max came up to her, the girl was standing close under the eaves of the outhouse on the bank, leaning against the wall. He could scarcely see anything of her face in the darkness, but he was struck by something strangely moving in the tones of her voice as she broke the silence.

"Look here," she said, "I want you to make me a promise. Come, it ought not to be difficult; for I got you out of a nice mess; remember that. You've got to give me your word that you will say nothing about your adventures to-day, either to the police or to anybody else."

"I can't promise that. And why on earth do you want me to do so? Surely you can have no real sympathy with the people who do the things that are done in there—"

Carrie interrupted him, breaking in upon him abruptly:

"What things?"

"Murders, and—"

"The murder was done by your friend, not by us."

"'Us?' Surely you don't identify yourself with these people?"

"I do. They are my friends—the only friends I have."

"But they are thieves, blackmailers!" said Max, saying not what he knew but what he guessed.

"What have they stolen from you? What harm have they done to you or anybody that you know of? All this is because my Granny didn't approve of my having a stranger in, and had you shut into a dark room to give you a fright."

"But you forget you said just now you had got me out of a nice mess."

"I—I meant that you were frightened."

"And with good reason. After what I saw and heard in that room, I should be worse than a criminal myself if I didn't inform the police about the existence of the place. I believe it's one of the vilest dens in London."

Carrie was silent. She did not attempt to ask him what it was that he had heard and seen while in that room. And Max felt his heart sink within him. He would have had her question, protest, deny. And instead she seemed tacitly to take the truth of all his accusations for granted.

"Don't you see," he presently went on, almost in a coaxing tone, "that it's for your own good that you should have to go away? I won't believe—I can't—that you like this underground, hole-and-corner existence, this life that is dishonest all through. Come, now, confess that you don't like it—that you only live like this because you can't help it, or because you think you can't help it—and I'll forgive you."

There was a long pause. Then he heard a little, hard, cynical laugh. He tried hard to see her face; but although he caught now and then a gleam of the great eyes, the wonderful eyes that had fascinated him, he could not distinguish the expression, hardly even the outline of her features.

When she at last spoke, it was in a reckless, willful tone.

"Forgive me! What have you to forgive, except that I was fool enough to ask you into the house? And if you've suffered for that, it seems I shall have to, too, in the long run; and I'm not going to say I don't like the life, for I like it better than any I've lived before."

"What!"

"Yes, yes, I tell you. I'm not a heroine, ready to drudge away my life in any round of dull work that'll keep body and soul together. I'd rather have the excitement of living what you call a hole-and-corner life than spend my days stitch—stitch—stitching—dust—dust—dusting, as I used to have to do with Miss Aldridge, as I should have to do if I went away from here."

"Well, but there are other things you could do," pleaded Max, with vague thoughts of setting his own sisters to work to find this erratic child of the riverside some more seemly mode of life than her present one.

"What other things?"

"Why, you could—you could teach in a school or in a family."

"No, I couldn't. I don't know enough. And I wouldn't like it, either. And I should have to leave Granny, who wants me, and is fond of me—"

"And Dick!" burst out Max, spitefully. "You would have to give up the society of Dick."

It was possible, even in the darkness, to perceive that this remark startled Carrie. She said, in astonishment which she could not hide:

"And what do you know about Dick?"

"I know that you wouldn't care for a life that is repugnant to every notion of decency, if it were not for Dick," retorted Max, with rash warmth.

Carrie laughed again.

"I'm afraid you got your information from the wrong quarter," said she, quietly. "Not from Dick himself, that's certain."

There was some relief to Max in this confident assertion, but not much. Judging Dick by his own feelings, he was sure that person had not reached the stage of intimacy at which Carrie called him by his Christian name without hankering after further marks of her favor.

"He is fond of you, of course!" said Max, feeling that he had no right to say this, but justifying into himself on the ground of his wish to help her out of her wretched position.

"Well, I suppose he is."

"Are you—of course I've no right to ask—but are you fond of him?"

Carrie shook her head with indifference.

"I like him in my way," said she. "Not in his way. There's a great difference."

"And do you like any man—in his way?"

The girl replied with a significant gesture of disgust, which had in it nothing of coquetry, nothing of affectation.

"No," said she, shortly.

"Why do you answer like that?"

"Why? Oh, well, if you knew all that I've seen, you wouldn't wonder, you wouldn't want to ask."

"You won't always feel like that. You won't, when you have got away from this hole, and are living among decent people."

"The 'decent people' are those who leave me alone," said Carrie, shortly, "as they do here."

"As who do here? Who are the people who live in that shut-up house, besides you and your Granny, as you call her?"

"I—mustn't tell you. They don't belong to any county families. Is that enough?"

"Why are you so different now from what you were when we were sitting by the fire in there? You are not like the same girl! Are you the same girl?"

And Max affected to feel, or, perhaps, really felt, a doubt which necessitated his coming a little closer to Carrie, without, however, being able to see much more of her face than before.

"I'm the same girl," replied Carrie, shortly, "whom you threatened with the police."

"Come, is that fair? Did I threaten you with the police?"

"You threatened us. It's the same thing. Well, it doesn't matter. They won't find out anything more than we choose!"

She said this defiantly, ostentatiously throwing in her lot with the dubious characters from whom Max would fain have dissociated her.

"Do you forget," he asked, suddenly, "that these precious friends of yours left you, forgot you, for two whole days—left you to the company of a dead man, to a chance stranger? Is that what you call kindness—friendship—affection?"

She made no answer.

A moment later a voice was heard calling softly: "Carrie?"

The girl came out of the shelter of the eaves, and Max at last caught sight of her face. It was sad, pale, altogether different from what the reckless, defiant, rather hard tones of her latest words would have led him to expect. A haunting face, Max thought.

"I must go," said she. "Good-bye."

"Carrie!" repeated the voice, calling again, impatiently.

Max knew, although he could not see the owner of the voice, that it was "Dick." It was, he thought, a coarse voice, full of intimations of the swaggering self-assertion of the low-class Londoner, who thinks himself the whole world's superior.

Carrie called out:

"All right; I'm coming!" And then she turned to Max. "You are to forget this place, and me," said she, in a whisper.

The next moment Max found himself alone.



CHAPTER XIII.

THE SEQUEL TO A TRAGEDY.

It was on the evening after that of his expedition to Limehouse that Max Wedmore found himself back again at the modest iron gate of the park at The Beeches. He had not sent word what time he should arrive, preferring not to have to meet Doreen by herself, with her inevitable questions, sooner than he could help.

As he shut the gate behind him, and hurried up the drive toward the house, he felt a new significance in the words "Home, Sweet Home," and shuddered at the recollection that he had, in the thirty odd hours since he left it, given up the hope of ever seeing it again.

It was a little difficult, though, on this prosaic home-coming, to realize all he had passed through since he last saw the red house, with its long, dignified front, its triangular pediment rising up against the dark-blue night sky, and the group of rambling outbuildings, stables, laundries, barns, all built with a magnificent disregard of the value of space, which straggled away indefinitely to the right, in a grove of big trees and a tangle of brush-wood.

Lines of bright light streaming between drawn window curtains showed bright patches on the lawn and the shrubs near the house. As Max passed through the iron gate which shut in the garden from the park, a group of men and boys, shouting, encouraging one another with uncouth cries, rushed out from the stable yard toward the front of the house.

"What's the matter?" asked Max of a stable boy, whom he seized by the shoulders and stopped in the act of uttering a wild whoop.

"It's the log, sir," replied the lad, sobered by the sudden appearance of the young master, who seemed in no hilarious mood.

"The log! What log?"

"Master has ordered one for Christmas, sir, the biggest as could be got," answered the boy, who then escaped, to rush back and join the shouting throng.

And Max remembered that his father, in his passionate determination to have a real old English Christmas, with everything done in the proper manner, had given this order to the head gardener a few days before.

By this time the group had become a crowd. A swarm of men and boys, conspicuous among whom were all the idlers and vagabonds of the neighborhood, came along through the yard in one great, overwhelming wave, hooting, yelling, trampling down the flower-beds with, their winter covering of cocoanut fiber, breaking down the shrubs, tearing away the ivy, and spreading devastation as they went.

Poor Mr. Wedmore had instructed his servants not to prevent the villagers from joining in the procession. There was something reminiscent of feudal times, a pleasant suggestion of the cordial relation between the lord of the manor of the Middle Ages and his tenants and dependents, in this procession of the Yule log up to the great house. And Mr. Wedmore, full of his fancy for the grand old medieval Christmas festivities, hugged to his heart the thought of holding such revels as should make Christmas at The Beeches an institution in the countryside.

But, alas! the London merchant had become a country gentleman too late in life to appreciate the great gulf which lies between the sixteenth-century peasant (of the modern imagination) and the nineteenth-century villager of actual fact. His own small army from the stable and the garden were powerless to cope with the disorderly mob they had been encouraged to invite in this interesting celebration. And those most mischievous and conspicuous roughs whom the coachman had driven off with the whip on the way up, revenged themselves for this drastic treatment by coming in through the front gate of the park, breaking down the fence between park and garden, and every obstacle to their barbaric progress.