"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 pa.s.sage 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 bl.u.s.tering 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage 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 att.i.tude 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 circ.u.mstance--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 att.i.tude 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, a.s.suring 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!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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.