A STRANGE PAIR.
As Carrie, with her feminine acuteness, had guessed, Dudley Horne had
never had any intention of returning to his chambers for her and Max.
On the contrary, he was delighted to have the opportunity of slipping
quietly away, and of evading the solicitude of his friend, as well as
the society of Carrie herself, of whom he had a strong but not unnatural
mistrust.
No sooner did he reach the street than he hailed a hansom and directed
the driver to take him to Limehouse, and to lose no time. Then he sat
back in the cab, staring at the reins, while the haggard look on his
face grew more intense and the eager expression of expectancy and dread
of something impending became deeper every moment.
During the last fortnight, Max, having had his thoughts occupied with
his own affairs, had not had so much time for the consideration of those
of his friend; and he had lost sight altogether of the theory that
Dudley was mad. But if he could have seen Dudley now, with the wild look
in his eyes, could have noted the restless movements of his hands, the
twitching of his face, the impatience with which he now leaned forward,
now back, as if alternately urging the horse forward and holding him
back, Max would have felt bound to admit that the case for the young
barrister's insanity was very strong.
As soon as the hansom began to thread the narrow streets which lie
between Commercial Road and the riverside, Dudley sprang out, paid the
man his fare, and walked off at a rapid pace. It was a frosty night, and
the ill-clad women who shuffled past him looked pinched and miserable.
Even they, with cares enough of their own on their shoulders, turned to
look at him as he passed. There was a glare in his black eyes, an
uncanny something in his walk, in his look, which made them watch him
and wonder who he was, and where he was going to.
But by the time he had reached the riverside street to which his steps
were directed, even a chance passer-by was a rarity; and the gas-lamps
had become so few and far between that no notice would have been taken
of him if the traffic had been greater.
His footsteps echoed in the silent street until he reached the wooden
door which was the entrance by night to Plumtree Wharf.
The door was shut, and Dudley, apparently surprised by the circumstance,
gave it an impatient shake. Then he heard a slight sound within which
told him of the approach of some living creature, and the next moment
the door was opened a few inches, and the face of Mrs. Higgs appeared at
the aperture.
She uttered a little mocking laugh when she saw who her visitor was and
let him in without any other comment.
Dudley strode in, with a frown of displeasure on his face, and waited
under the piles of timber while Mrs. Higgs relocked the door. There was
a lamp just outside the wooden boarding which shut the wharf in, and by
the light of it Dudley got a good look at the old woman's face before
she rejoined him; and it seemed to him that the placid expression she
usually wore had given place to a look more sinister, more repellent.
She passed him, still without a word, but with a nod which he took for
an invitation to him to follow her. They passed through the little
wash-house into the inner room, and Mrs. Higgs seated herself by the
fire, and gave her visitor another nod to imply that he might be seated
also.
But Dudley was not in a friendly mood. He would not even come near the
hearth, but remained close to the door by which he had entered, and gave
searching look round the room.
The apartment was so small and so bare that it was not difficult to take
stock of its contents, and Mrs. Higgs laughed ironically.
"Isn't the place furnished to your liking?" she asked in a mocking tone.
"Are you looking for the sofas and the sideboards and the silver and the
plate?"
Dudley cast at the old woman a look which was more eloquent than he knew
of hatred and disgust.
"No," said he, shortly. "I was looking to see whether any of your
precious pals were about."
Mrs. Higgs drew her chair nearer to the deal table, and leaning on it
with her head resting in her hands, stared at him malignantly.
"My precious pals! My precious pals!" muttered she to herself in an
angry tone. "That's the way he talks to me! To me, he owes so much to!
Ah! Ah! Ah!"
These three last ejaculations were uttered with so much suppressed
passion, and there gleamed in her dull eyes such a dull look of stupid
ferocity, that Dudley withdrew his attention from the cupboard and walls
and transferred it wholly to her. After a pause, during which the two
seemed to measure each other with cautious eyes, he said, abruptly:
"Do you know why I have come here to-night?"
"To show me a little gratitude at last, perhaps," suggested Mrs. Higgs,
sharply. "To do your duty--yes, it's no more than your duty, you know,
to do what I tell you--and to help yourself in helping me. That's true,
isn't it?"
Dudley stared at her in silence for a few moments before he answered:
"Duty is an odd word to use--a very odd word. But we won't waste time
discussing that. You sent a message to me by a girl this evening?"
Mrs. Higgs nodded.
"You want me to defend one of the rascals who make this place their
hole, their den?"
Again Mrs. Higgs signified assent.
"Well, I shall do nothing of the kind. I have done more than enough for
you already. I have offered you the means of taking yourself off and of
living like a decent creature. I have done everything you could expect,
and more. But I will not be mixed up with you and the gang you choose to
make your friends; and I will not lift a finger to save your friend the
pickpocket from the punishment he deserves."
Dudley spoke with decision, but he made no impression worth speaking of
upon his hearer. She continued to look at him with the same expression
of dull malignity; and when she spoke, it was without vehemence.
"Well," she began, leaning forward a little more and keeping her eyes
fixed upon him, "perhaps you won't have the chance of defending anybody
long. There's been a woman about here lately, making inquiries and
hunting about, and one of these fine days she may light upon something
that'll put her upon your track."
"What do you mean? Whom do you mean?"
"Why, Edward Jacobs's widow, of course. She had an idea where to look,
you see."
Dudley could not hide the fact that he was much disturbed by this
intelligence.
"Poor woman! Poor woman! Who can blame her?" said he at last, more to
himself than to Mrs. Higgs, "I've done what I could for her, sent her
money every week since--"
To his amazement, Mrs. Higgs suddenly interrupted him, bringing her fist
down upon the table with a sounding thump.
"You fool!" screamed she. "You--fool! You've given yourself away! You
deserve all you'll certainly get! Do you suppose a Jewess wouldn't have
wits enough to trace you by that? By the fact that you sent her money?"
"But I sent it anonymously," said Dudley.
"That doesn't matter. Money? Postal-orders, I suppose?"
"Yes."
"Well, they can be traced. Oh, you fool, you wooden-headed fool!"
There was a pause. Mrs. Higgs appeared to have exhausted herself in
vituperation, while Dudley considered this new aspect of the affair in
silence.
"Well," said he at last, "if she does trace me, who will be the
sufferer, do you suppose--you or I?"
"Why, you, you, you, of course!" retorted the old woman with heat. "You
will be hanged, while I can bury myself like a mole in the ground and be
forgotten, lost sight of altogether."
She said this with unctuous satisfaction, and Dudley gave her a glance
of horror.
"And what particular pleasure will it give you, even supposing such an
outcome possible, to see me hanged?"
The old woman's indecent delight faded gradually from her face as she
looked at him. Then she rose slowly from her chair and came a step
nearer to Dudley, who instinctively recoiled from the threatened touch.
She noticed this movement, and resented it fiercely.
"Why do you go back? Why do you want to get away? Always to get away?"
she asked, angrily. "That's what makes me so mad! Why do you try to get
out of the business in the way you do? Sneaking out of it, as if it had
nothing to do with you? Why don't you throw in your lot with me and go
away with me, as I wished you to, as you once were ready to do?"
Dudley looked searchingly into the wrinkled face.
"I was never ready to go," said he. "I did affect to be ready. I was
ready to go as far as Liverpool with you, to get you safely out of the
country, out of danger to me and to yourself. But I should never have
gone farther than that. I never meant to. I would run any risk rather
than that."
Mr. Higgs never blinked. Staring steadily up into his face, with a
malignity more pronounced than ever, she asked, in a mocking tone:
"Why? Why?"
Dudley was silent.
Mrs. Higgs laughed, and shook her head with a look of unspeakable
cunning.
"You needn't answer," said she, dryly, "for I know the reason. You won't
leave England because of a girl."
Dudley did not start, but the quiver which passed over his features
betrayed him.
"Ha, ha!" laughed Mrs. Higgs. "It's not much use telling me a fib when I
want to know anything. You wouldn't own up, so I went ferreting on my
own account, and I found out what I wanted. You're in love with a girl
named Wedmore--Doreen Wedmore--and it's on her account that you won't
leave England, and throw in your lot with me, like a man!"
Dudley's face had grown gray with fear. When he spoke it was in a
changed tone. He had lost his confidence, his defiant robustness. He
almost seemed to be begging for mercy, as he answered:
"I don't deny it. I don't deny anything. I did care for a girl; I do
now. But I have given her up. I was bound to, with this ghastly business
hanging to my heels. I shall never see her again."
Mrs. Higgs cut in with decision:
"No, that you won't. I'll answer for it!"
Dudley looked at her, but did not dare to speak. There was something in
the spiteful tones of her voice, when she mentioned Doreen, which filled
him with vague dread. It was in a subdued and conciliatory voice that he
presently tried to turn the conversation to another subject.
"Who was the girl you sent this evening, the girl who brought your
message?"
"Nobody of any consequence," answered Mrs. Higgs, as if the subject was
not to her taste. "A girl who lives here. We call her Carrie."
"And her other name?"
His tone betrayed his suspicions. Mrs. Higgs shrugged her shoulders.
"What does that matter to you? She is your half-sister, but I don't
suppose you wish to claim relationship?"
"Does she know--anything?"
"Something, perhaps. Not too much, I think. But it doesn't matter. She
is a weak, namby-pamby creature, and I'm sick of the sight of her white
face. So I've got rid of her."
"How?"
"I've given her notice to quit. I don't expect her back again."
"And aren't you afraid that she may give information?"
"Ah! Your solicitude is for yourself, eh? No, she'll hold her tongue for
her own sake." And Mrs. Higgs's features relaxed into a menacing grin.
"She's seen enough of me to know she must be careful!"
Dudley moved restlessly.
"Isn't it rough on the girl to bring her up like this? In this hole,
among these human vermin? She seems to have some decent instincts."
Mrs. Higgs frowned.
"She was brought up as well as she had any right to expect," said she,
shortly; "educated fairly well into the bargain. She has not had much to
complain of."
Dudley made no answer to this for some minutes, and during this time
Mrs. Higgs kept him steadily under observation, not a movement of his
hands, a change of his expression, escaping her. At last he looked at
her, and seemed to be struck by something in her face. He put his
fingers upon the handle of the door as he turned to go.
"Well," said he--his voice sounded hollow, cold--"I have said what I
came to say. I need not stay here any longer. I don't wish to meet any
of your friends."
Mrs. Higgs got slowly to her feet.
"My friends!" cried she, angrily. "My friends! They've done you no harm,
at any rate; while your friends come spying round the place, poking
their noses into business which is none of theirs."
Dudley's hand dropped to his side.
"Do you mean Max Wedmore?" said he, earnestly. "Why, he is the son of
the man who has been a father to me, who brought me up, who saved me
from becoming the outcast that poor girl is--"
Mrs. Higgs interrupted him fiercely.
"That'll do. I'm sick of the very name of Wedmore. They've had their own
interests to serve, whatever they've done, depend upon it. And if he
comes fooling round here again, I'll treat him as you--"
Dudley broke in sharply, stopping her as her voice was growing loud and
her gestures threatening. After a short pause, during which she watched
him as keenly as ever, he asked, in a hoarse whisper:
"What did you do with--_him_? Did anybody help you--any of your
friends here? Or did you--"
Mrs. Higgs cut him short with an ugly laugh. At the mention of the dead
man her face had changed, and a strange gleam of mingled cunning and
ferocity came into her small, light eyes.
"Come and see--come and see," mumbled she, as she took up the
candlestick from the table and shuffled across the room to the door
which opened into the disused shop.
Dudley hesitated a moment; indeed, he glanced at the door by which he
stood as if he felt inclined to make his escape without further delay.
But Mrs. Higgs, slow as she seemed, turned quickly enough to divine his
purpose.
"No," said she, sharply, "not that way. This!"
Seizing him by the arm, she thrust a key into the lock of the door with
her other hand, and half led, half pushed him into the dark front room.
Dudley was seized with a nervous tremor when he found himself inside the
room. By the light of the candle the woman held, he could see at a
glance into every corner of the bare, squalid apartment--could see the
stains on the dirty walls, the cracks and defects in the dilapidated
ceiling, even the thick clusters of cobwebs that hung in the corners.
Having taken in all these details in a very rapid survey, he looked down
at the floor, at the very center of the bare, grimy boards, with a fixed
stare of horror which the old woman, by passing the candle rapidly
backward and forward before his eyes, tried vainly to divert.
Even she, however, seemed to be impressed by the hideous memory the room
called up in her, for she spoke, not in her usual gruffly indifferent
tones, but in a husky whisper.
"Tst--tst!" she began, testily. "Haven't you got over that yet? One Jew
the less in the world! What is it to trouble about? Be a man--come, be a
man! See, this is how I got rid of him."
As she spoke, Mrs. Higgs suddenly dropped Dudley's arm, which she had
been clutching tenaciously, and hobbling away from him at an unusual
rate of speed for her, she went back to the door, turned the key in the
lock, and then withdrew it and dropped it into her pocket. This action
Dudley was too much absorbed to notice.
Then she made her way at her usual pace, leaning heavily on the stout
stick she was never without, toward the corner where the heap of lumber
lay, on the left-hand side of what had once been the fireplace. Here she
stooped, lifted a couple of bricks and a broken box-lid from the floor,
and then easily raised the board on which they had stood, and beckoned
to Dudley to come nearer. He did so, slowly, and with evident
reluctance.
"Look here," said she, pointing down to the space where the board had
been. "Look down. Don't be afraid," she added, in a jeering tone.
"There's nothing there to frighten you. See for yourself."
Dudley stooped, and looking through the small opening available, saw
that there was a space hollowed out underneath.
"And you put him there--under the boards?" said Dudley, in a low voice.
"But it was in the water that the body was found--in the river outside."
"Why, yes, so it was," said the old woman, slowly, as she lifted the
board out of its place altogether, and displacing also the one next to
it, descended through the opening she had made.
Dudley watched her with fascinated eyes. Apparently the space below was
not very deep, for she had only disappeared as far as the knees
down-ward, and then knelt down, and for a moment was lost to sight
altogether. She appeared to be struggling with something, and Dudley,
consumed with horror, took a step back as he watched.
Presently she looked up. Her face was in shadow, but he could see that
she was panting, as if with some great exertion.
"Get back! Stand in the middle of the room there, if you're afraid,"
said she, mockingly. "Right out of my reach, mind, where I can't get at
you."
Instinctively Dudley obeyed, stepping back into the little patch of
light thrown by the candle.
He had scarcely reached the middle of the room when he felt the boards
under his feet give way. Staggering, he tried to retrace his steps, to
reach the end of the room where the old woman, now again on a level with
him, was watching him in silence.
But as he moved towards her she made a spring at him, and forcing him
back with so much suddenness that he, quite unprepared, was unable to
resist her attack, she flung him to the ground in the very middle of the
room.
As he fell he felt the flooring give way under him. The next moment he
was struggling, like a rat in a well, in deep water.