THE SWORD FALLS.
When Max turned, he found that Carrie had retreated within the door of
the sitting-room. He followed her into the room.
"I hope he'll give us the full ten minutes," said he, "for I had no
luncheon to-day, and when I'm hungry I always get very cross. Is that
your experience?"
Carrie looked at the table with a strange smile.
"You ought to know," said she.
His face showed that he had not forgotten.
"Those biscuits!" said he. "I remember. Does your granny treat you
better now?"
Carrie's face grew gloomy and cold. And Max noticed that, thin as she
had been when he saw her last, she was much thinner now. The outline of
her cheek was pathetically pinched, almost sunken.
"No. Worse," she said at last, in a low voice.
"You don't mean that she--_starves_ you?"
To his dismay, he saw the tears welling up in the girl's blue eyes,
which looked preternaturally large in her wasted face.
"Pretty nearly," said she.
Max stared at her for about the space of a second; then he went behind
her, put his hands lightly on her shoulders and inducted her into the
chair Dudley had placed for himself at the dinner-table.
"It is evident," said he, gravely, "that Providence has appointed me
purveyor of food to you, for this is the second time, within a
comparatively short acquaintance, that I have had the honor of providing
you with a repast. This time it's quite in the manner of 'The Arabian
Nights,' isn't it?"
It was indeed a fairy-tale banquet, this dinner of steak and chip
potatoes, followed by _méringues à la crême_, and finishing up with
bread and butter and cheese and celery.
There was enough for two, the only drawback being a deficiency of
plates, which Max put right, in homely fashion, by eating his share from
the dish. Such a tragedy it was to him to find a beautiful girl who was
hungry, actually hungry from want of food, that the appetite he had
talked so much about failed him, and he found it difficult to eat his
share and to keep up the light tone of talk which he judged to be
necessary to the situation.
He wanted to ask her a hundred questions about the people at the wharf
and the awful thing which had happened there; but none of these subjects
seemed appropriate to the dinner-table, and Max decided to leave them to
another and a better opportunity.
In the meanwhile he was getting more forgetful of Dudley's warning every
moment. Carrie seemed to guess his feelings, and to be grateful for
them. She said very little, but she listened and she laughed, and gave
him such pretty, touching glances, such half-mournful, half-merry looks
when she thought he was not looking, that by the time they came to the
cheese he was in a state of infatuation, in which he forgot to notice
what a very long ten minutes Dudley was giving them.
He thought, as he watched Carrie in the lamplight, that he had greatly
underrated her attractions on the occasion of their first meeting. She
had been so deadly white, so pinched about the cheeks; while now there
was a little trace of pink color under the skin; and her blue eyes were
bright and sparkling with enjoyment.
And it struck him with a pang that she looked so lovely, so bewitching,
because of the change from cold and hunger which, as he knew, and as she
had acknowledged, were her usual portion.
"Shall we sit by the fire?" asked he suddenly.
And he jumped up from the table, and turned Dudley's biggest and coziest
arm-chair round toward the warmth and the glow.
Carrie hesitated. She rose slowly from her chair, and took up from the
side-table, on which Max had placed it, the shabby black cape.
"Oh, you needn't be in such a hurry," said Max. "I dare say he'll be a
great deal more than the ten minutes he said he should take."
It was her action which had recalled Dudley to his mind. And, for the
first time, as he uttered these words, a doubt sprang up as to his
friend's good faith. What if Dudley meant to give them both the slip,
and to go off to the wharf by himself, after all?
Carrie's eyes met his; perhaps she guessed what was passing in his mind.
"Oh, yes, he is sure to be longer than that," said she at once; and,
putting her cape down again, she took the chair Max had placed for her,
while he sat in the opposite one.
"It's beautiful to be warm!" cried she, softly, as she held out her
hands to the blaze which Max had made.
Then there was a long pause. Max had so much to say to her that he
didn't know where to begin. And in the meantime to sit near her and to
watch the play of the firelight on her happy face was pleasant enough.
But presently perceiving that she threw another uneasy glance in the
direction of her cape, he broke the silence hastily.
"You said," began he, abruptly, "that you were not going back to the
wharf. Where were you going, then?"
"I don't know," said Carrie, after a pause.
Her face had clouded again. Her manner had changed a little also; it had
become colder, more reserved.
"Do you mean that--really? Or do you only mean that you don't mean to
tell me, that I have no business to ask?"
"I mean just what I said--that I didn't know."
"You are going to leave Mrs. Higgs and her friends, then?" asked Max, in
a tone between doubt and hope.
"Yes."
She made this answer rather by a motion of the head than by her voice.
"Well, I am very glad to hear it--very glad."
"Are you? I'm not. Oh, it is dreadful, dreadful to lose one's home, any
sort of home."
"But could you call that a home? A hole like that? Among people like
this Mrs. Higgs and this Dick!"
"Oh, poor Dick! If they had all been like him it would not have
mattered."
"What! A pickpocket!" cried Max in disgust.
"What difference did that make? Do you suppose the wives and daughters
of the men in the city, financiers and the rest, love them the less
because they pass their lives trying to get the better of other people?
Isn't it just as dishonest to issue a false prospectus to get people to
put their money into worthless companies as to steal a watch? It's
nonsense to pretend it isn't."
Carrie spoke sharply. She had grown warm in defense of her felonious
friend.
Max thought a little before he answered.
"But you're not this man's wife or his daughter."
"Well, no. But he wanted to marry me; and if he hadn't been caught
yesterday, perhaps I should have let him."
"What?"
"Don't look so disgusted. He would have been kind to me."
"And _do_ you think you couldn't find a better husband than a--than
a pickpocket?"
"He would have been honest if I'd married him," said Carrie, quietly.
"He _says_ so, of course; but he wouldn't. A man says anything to
get the girl he's fond of to promise to marry him. Do you think it's
possible to change the habits of years, of all a man's life, perhaps,
like that?"
"I know it would have been possible," persisted she, obstinately. "I
know I could have worried him, and nagged at him, and worked for him,
till I made him do what I wanted."
And Max saw in her face, as she looked solemnly at the fire, that
dogged, steady resolution of the blue-eyed races.
"Well," said he crossly, "then I'm very glad he's been caught."
"Ah!" cried she, quickly, "you don't know what it will lead to, though.
He knows something, and if your friend, Mr. Horne, won't try to get him
off, why, he'll be sorry."
Max looked worried and thoughtful at this threat.
"I won't believe," said he, stoutly, "that my friend had anything to do
with--with what happened at the place. It's monstrous!--impossible!"
Carrie said nothing.
"Who would believe this pack of thieves against a man like Dudley
Horne?"
Carrie laughed cynically.
"Then why is he afraid?"
This indeed was the question which made the mystery inexplicable. What
reason could Dudley have for wishing to hush up the matter unless he
himself had brought about Edward Jacobs's violent death This was the
old, old difficulty in which any discussion of the subject or any
meditation on it always landed him.
He got up from his chair and began to walk about the room.
"Why are you leaving Mrs. Higgs?" asked he at last, suddenly.
Max was not without hope that the answer might give him a clue to
something more.
"I couldn't bear it any longer. She has been different lately. She has
left me alone for days together, and besides--besides--she has been
changed, unkind, since Christmas."
Now Max remembered that it was on Christmas Eve that he had met Mrs.
Higgs in the barn at The Beeches; and he wondered whether that amiable
lady had visited upon Carrie her displeasure on finding that he had
escaped alive from the wharf by the docks.
"I believe," said he, suddenly, "that it was your precious Mrs. Higgs
that murdered the man. I'm quite sure she's capable of it, or of any
other villainy."
Carrie leaned forward and looked at him earnestly.
"But what should he want to shelter Mrs. Higgs for, if _she_ had
done it?"
And to this Max could find no answer.
"And why, if he had nothing to do with the murder, should he be so much
afraid of Mrs. Higgs that he steals away by himself to see her when she
sends him a message?"
Max sprang up.
"Steals away! By himself!" faltered he.
"Why, yes. Did you really think he would come back? Didn't you know that
the ten minutes he spoke of were only a blind, so that he could shake
you off, and not make Mrs. Higgs angry by taking another man with him?
Surely, surely, you guessed that! Surely, you knew that if the ten
minutes had not been an excuse, he would have been back here long ago."
Max felt the blood surging to his head. The girl was right, of course.
He leaned against the bookcase, breathing heavily.
"You knew! You guessed! Why didn't you--why didn't you tell me?"
Carrie stood up, as much excited as he was. Her blue eyes flashed, her
lips trembled as she spoke.
"What do I care--for him?" she said under her breath. "A man must take
the risk of the things he does, mustn't he? But you--you had done
nothing; and--and you have been kind to me. I didn't want you to go. I
couldn't let you go. So I tried to keep you. I didn't want you to
remember. And it was easy enough."
Max felt a pang of keen self-reproach. Yes, it had been easy enough for
a girl with a pretty face to make him forget his friend. He turned
quickly toward the door. But Carrie moved even more rapidly, and by the
time he reached it she was there before him.
"It's too late now," she said in that deep voice of hers, which, when
she was herself moved, was capable of imparting her own emotion to her
hearers. "He's been gone an hour. He'll be there by this time. What good
could you do him by going? There's an understanding between her and him.
He'll be all right. Now _you_ would not."
Max stared at the girl in perplexity. She spoke with confidence, with
knowledge. A great dread on his friend's account began to creep over
him. Why should Dudley be safe where he himself was not, unless he were
in league with the old hag? Or, again, was it possible that
Carrie--pretty, sweet-faced Carrie--was acting in concert with the gang,
detaining him so that Dudley might be an easier prey to her accomplices?
As this suspicion crossed his mind, he, knowing his own weakness,
resolved to act without the hesitation which would be fatal to his
purpose.
Seizing her by the arm, he drew her almost roughly out of the way, and,
opening the door, went out into the ante-room.
But before he could open the outer door, Carrie had overtaken him and
seized him by the arm in her turn.
"No, no," said she, passionately. "I will not let you go. You don't know
what you are rushing into; you don't know what I do."
"What do you mean?"
"That if you were to go into that house again, you wouldn't leave it
alive!"
"All the more reason," said Max, struggling to free himself from the
tenacious grasp of her fingers, which were a good deal stronger than he
had supposed, "why I should not let him go into such a place alone."
"Well, if you go, you will take me," said Carrie, almost fiercely.
"Come along, then."
He had his hand on the door, when he noticed that she had left her cape
in the room.
"Fetch your cloak," said he, shortly.
She hesitated.
"Give me your honor that you won't go without me."
"All right. I'll wait for you."
She disappeared into the sitting-room, leaving the door open, however.
While she was gone, Max, still with his fingers on the handle of the
door, heard the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. It was not
Dudley's tread, and, the sound being a common one enough, Max did not
pay particular attention to it, and he was surprised when Carrie
suddenly thrust forth her head through the sitting-room doorway, with a
look of excitement and terror on her face.
"Listen!" said she, in a very low whisper.
"Well, it's only some one going up the stairs," said he, in a reassuring
tone.
Carrie shook her head emphatically.
"Coming, not going," said she. "And it's a policeman's tread. Don't you
know that?"
Max grew rather cold.
"Oh, nonsense!" said he, quickly. "What should--"
She stopped him by a rapid gesture, and at the same moment there was a
ring at the bell. For a moment, Max, alarmed by the girl's words,
hesitated to open it. Carrie made a rapid gesture to him to do so, at
the same time disappearing herself into the sitting-room.
Max opened the door.
A man in plain clothes stood outside, and at the head of the stairs
behind him was a policeman in uniform.
"Mr. Dudley Horne?" said the man.
"These are his rooms, but Mr. Horne is not here."
"You are a friend of his, sir?"
"Yes. My name is Wedmore."
If the man had had a momentary doubt about him, it was by this time
dispelled. He stepped inside the door.
"I must have a look round, if you please, sir." Max held his ground. "I
have a warrant for Mr. Horne's arrest."
Max staggered back. And the man passed him and went in.