A QUESTIONABLE GUIDE.
Max started violently at the girl's voice.
"A dead man? In there? How do you know?"
In a hoarse voice the girl answered:
"How do I know? The best way possible. _I saw it done!_"
There was an awful silence. Max was so deeply impressed by the girl's
words, her looks, her manner, by the gloom of the cold, dark passage, by
the desolate appearance of the two deserted buildings before which they
stood, that his first impulse was an overpowering desire to run away.
Acting upon it he even took a couple of rapid steps in the direction of
the street he had left, passing the girl and getting clear of the
uncanny boarded-up front of the shop.
A moan from the girl made him stop and look around at her. Emboldened by
this, she came close to him again and whispered:
"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."