initial commit of ebook 16092HEADmain

6 files changed, 26979 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/16092-8.txt b/old/16092-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ec8860
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/16092-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8950 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Wharf by the Docks, by Florence Warden
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Wharf by the Docks
+       A Novel
+
+
+Author: Florence Warden
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 19, 2005  [eBook #16092]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHARF BY THE DOCKS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Mary Meehan, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE WHARF BY THE DOCKS
+
+A Novel
+
+by
+
+FLORENCE WARDEN
+
+Author of "The Mystery of the Inn by the Shore," etc.
+
+1896
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+SOMETHING AMISS.
+
+
+Everybody knows Canterbury, with its Old-World charms and its
+ostentatious air of being content to be rather behind the times, of
+looking down upon the hurrying Americans who dash through its cathedral
+and take snap-shots at its slums, and at all those busy moderns who
+cannot afford to take life at its own jog-trot pace.
+
+But everybody does not know the charming old halls and comfortable,
+old-fashioned mansions which are dotted about the neighboring country,
+either nestling in secluded nooks of the Kentish valleys or holding a
+stately stand on the wooded hills.
+
+Of this latter category was The Beeches, a pretty house of warm, red
+brick, with a dignified Jacobean front, which stood upon the highest
+ground of a prettily wooded park, and commanded one of those soft,
+undulating, sleepy landscapes which are so characteristically English,
+and of which grazing sheep and ruminating cows form so important a
+feature. A little tame, perhaps, but very pleasant, very homely, very
+sweet to look upon by the tired eyes that have seen enough of the
+active, bustling world.
+
+Mr. George Wedmore, of the firm of Wedmore, Parkinson and Bishop,
+merchants of the city of London, had bought back the place, which had
+formerly belonged to his family, from the Jews into whose hands it had
+fallen, and had settled there to spend in retirement the latter end of
+his life, surrounded by a family who were not too well pleased to
+exchange busy Bayswater for what they were flippant enough to call a
+wilderness.
+
+Dinner was over; and Mr. Wedmore, in a snug easy-chair by the
+dining-room fire, was waiting for Doctor Haselden, who often looked in
+for a smoke and a game of chess with the owner of The Beeches.
+
+A lean, fidgety man, with thin hair and grayish whiskers, Mr. Wedmore
+looked less at home in the velveteen suit and gaiters which he persisted
+in wearing even in the evening, less like the country gentleman it was
+his ambition to be, than like the care-laden city merchant he at heart
+still was.
+
+On the other side of the table sat his better half, in whom it was easy
+to see he must have found all the charm of contrast to his own
+personality. A cheery, buxom woman, still handsome, full of life and
+fun, she had held for the whole of her married life a sway over her lord
+and master all the greater that neither of them was conscious of the
+fact. A most devoted and submissive wife, a most indulgent and
+affectionate mother, Mrs. Wedmore occupied the not unenviable position
+of being half slave, half idol in her own household.
+
+The clock struck eight, and the bell rang.
+
+"There he is! There's the doctor!" cried Mrs. Wedmore, with a beaming
+nod. Her husband sat up in his chair, and the troubled frown which he
+had worn all the evening grew a little deeper.
+
+"I should like you, my dear, to leave us together this evening," said
+he.
+
+Mrs. Wedmore jumped up at once, gathering her balls of wool and big
+knitting-needles together with one quick sweep of the arm.
+
+"All right, dear," said she, with another nod, giving him an anxious
+look.
+
+Mr. Wedmore perceived the look and smiled. He stretched out his hand to
+lay it gently on his wife's arm as she passed him.
+
+"Nothing about me. Nothing for you to be alarmed about," said he.
+
+Mrs. Wedmore hesitated a moment. She had her suspicions, and she would
+dearly have liked to know more. But she was the best trained of wives;
+and after a moment's pause, seeing that she was to hear nothing further,
+she said, good-humoredly: "All right, dear," and left the room, just in
+time to shake hands with Doctor Haselden as she went out.
+
+Now, while the host found it impossible to shake off the signs of his
+old calling, the doctor was a man who had never been able to assume
+them. From head to foot there was no trace of the doctor in his
+appearance; he looked all over what at heart he was--the burly,
+good-humored, home-loving, land-loving country gentleman, who looked
+upon Great Datton, where his home was, as the pivot of the world.
+
+However he was dressed, he always looked shabby, and he could never have
+been mistaken for anything but an English gentleman.
+
+He shook hands with Mr. Wedmore, with a smile. These poor Londoners,
+trying to acclimatize themselves, amused him greatly. He looked upon
+them much as the Londoner looks upon the Polish Jew immigrants--with
+pity, a little jealousy, and no little scorn.
+
+"Where's Carlo?" asked he.
+
+"Oh, Carlo was a nuisance, so I've sent him to the stable," said Mr.
+Wedmore, with the slightly colder manner which he instantly assumed if
+any grievance of his, however small, was touched upon.
+
+Carlo was a young retriever, which Mr. Wedmore, in the stern belief that
+it was the proper thing in a country house, had encouraged about the
+house until his habits of getting between everybody's legs and helping
+himself to the contents of everybody's plate had so roused the ire of
+the rest of the household that Mr. Wedmore had had to give way to the
+universal prejudice against him.
+
+The doctor shook his head. Lack of capacity for managing a dog was just
+what one might have expected from these new-comers.
+
+Mr. Wedmore turned his chair to face that of the doctor, and spoke in
+the sharp, incisive tones of a man who has serious business on hand.
+
+"I've been hoping you would drop in every night for the last fortnight,"
+said he, "and as you didn't come, I was at last obliged to send for you.
+I have a very important matter to consult you about. You've brought your
+pipe?" The doctor produced it from his pocket. "Well, fill it, and
+listen. It's about young Horne--Dudley Horne--that I want to speak to
+you, to consult you, in fact."
+
+The doctor nodded as he filled his pipe.
+
+"The young barrister I've met here, who's engaged to your elder
+daughter?"
+
+"Well, she was all but engaged to him," admitted Mr. Wedmore, in a
+grudging tone. "But I'm going to put a stop to it, and I'll tell you
+why." Here he got up, as if unable to keep still in the state of
+excitement into which he was falling, and stood with his hands behind
+him and his back to the fire. "I have a strong suspicion that the young
+man's not quite right here." And lowering his voice, Mr. Wedmore touched
+his forehead.
+
+"Good gracious! You surprise me!" cried the doctor. "He always seemed to
+me such a clever young fellow. Indeed, you said so to me yourself."
+
+"So he is. Very clever," said Mr. Wedmore, shortly. "I don't suppose
+there are many young chaps of his age--for he's barely thirty--at the
+Bar whose prospects are as good as his. But, for all that, I have a
+strong suspicion that he's got a tile loose, and that's why I wanted to
+speak to you. Now his father was in a lunatic asylum no less than three
+times, and was in one when he died."
+
+The doctor looked grave.
+
+"That's a bad history, certainly. Do you know how the father's malady
+started?"
+
+"Why, yes. It was the effect of a wound in the head received when he was
+a young man out in America, in the war with Mexico in '46."
+
+"That isn't the sort of mania that is likely to come down from father to
+son," said the doctor, "if his brain was perfectly sound before, and the
+recurrent mania the result of an accident."
+
+"Well, so I've understood. And the matter has never troubled me at all
+until lately, when I have begun to detect certain morbid tendencies in
+Dudley, and a general change which makes me hesitate to trust him with
+the happiness of my daughter."
+
+"Can you give me instances?" asked the doctor, although he began to feel
+sure that whatever opinion he might express on the matter, Mr. Wedmore
+would pay little attention to any but his own.
+
+"Well, for you to understand the case, I must tell you a little more
+about the lad's father. He and I were very old friends--chums from
+boyhood, in fact. When he came back from America--where he went from a
+lad's love of adventure--he made a good marriage from a monetary point
+of view; married a wharf on the Thames, in fact, somewhere Limehouse
+way, and settled down as a wharfinger. He was a steady fellow, and did
+very well, until one fine morning he was found trying to cut his throat,
+and had to be locked up. Well, he was soon out again that time, and
+things went on straight enough for eight or nine years, by which time he
+had done very well--made a lot of money by speculation--and was thinking
+of retiring from business altogether. Then, perhaps it was the extra
+pressure of his increased business, but, at any rate, he broke out
+again, tried to murder his wife that time, and did, in fact, injure her
+so much that she died shortly afterward. Of course, he had to be shut up
+again; and a man named Edward Jacobs, a shrewd Jew, who was his
+confidential clerk, carried on the business in his absence. Now, both
+Horne and his wife had had the fullest confidence in this Jacobs, but he
+turned out all wrong. As soon as he learned, at the end of about twelve
+months, that Horne was coming out again, he decamped with everything he
+could lay his hands on; and from the position of affairs you may guess
+that he made a very good haul. Well, poor Horne found himself in a maze
+of difficulties; in fact, his clerk's fraud ruined him. Everything that
+could be sold or mortgaged had to go to the settlement, and when his
+affairs had been finally put straight, there was only a little bit left,
+that had been so settled upon his wife that no one could touch it. He
+made a good fight of it for a little while, with the help of a few old
+friends, but, in the end, he broke down again for the third time. But he
+escaped out of the asylum and went abroad, without seeing his friends or
+his child, and a few months afterward the announcement of his death in
+an American asylum was sent by a correspondent out there. Happily there
+were no difficulties about securing the mother's money for the son, and
+it was enough to educate the boy and to give him a start; but, of
+course, he had to begin the world as a poor man instead of a rich one.
+Perhaps that was all the better for him--or so I thought until lately."
+
+"And what are these signs of a morbid tendency that you spoke of?" asked
+the doctor.
+
+"Well, in the first place, after being almost extravagant in his
+devotion to my daughter, Doreen, he now neglects her outrageously--comes
+down very seldom, writes short letters or none. Now, my daughter is not
+the sort of girl that a sane man would neglect," added Doctor Wedmore,
+proudly.
+
+"Certainly not," assented the doctor, inwardly thinking that it was much
+less surprising than it would have been in the case of one of his own
+girls.
+
+"In the second place, he is always harping upon the subject of Jacobs
+and his peculations--an old subject, which he might well let rest. And,
+in the third place, he has become moody, morose and absent-minded; and
+my son, Max, who often visits him at his chambers in Lincoln's Inn, has
+noticed the change even more than I, who have fewer opportunities of
+seeing him."
+
+The doctor was puffing stolidly at his pipe and looking at the fire.
+
+"It is very difficult to form an opinion upon report only," said he.
+"Frankly, I can see nothing in what you have told me about the young man
+which could not be explained in other and likelier ways. He may have got
+entangled, for instance, with some woman in London."
+
+Mr. Wedmore took fire at this suggestion.
+
+"In that case, the sooner Doreen forgets all about him the better."
+
+"Mind, I'm only suggesting!" put in the doctor, hastily. "There may be a
+dozen more reasons--"
+
+"I shall not wait to find them out," said Mr. Wedmore, decisively. "He
+and Max are coming down together this evening. My wife would have them
+to help in organizing some affair they're getting up for Christmas. I'll
+send him to the right-about without any more nonsense."
+
+"But surely that is hardly--"
+
+"Hardly what?" snapped out Mr. Wedmore, as he poked the fire viciously.
+
+"Well, hardly fair to either of the young people. Put a few questions to
+him yourself, or better still, let your wife do it. It may be only a
+storm in a teacup, after all. Remember, he is the son of your old
+friend. And you wouldn't like to have it on your conscience that you had
+treated him harshly."
+
+The doctor's advice was sane and sound enough, but Mr. Wedmore was not
+in the mood to listen to it. That notion of an entanglement with another
+woman rankled in his proud mind, and made him still less inclined to be
+patient and forbearing.
+
+"I shall give Doreen warning of what I am going to do at once," said he,
+"before Horne turns up."
+
+The doctor shrugged his shoulders. He was obstinate himself.
+
+Mr. Wedmore crossed the long room to the door, and opened it sharply.
+
+The hall was full of people and of great bales of goods, which were
+piled upon the center-table and heaped up all around it.
+
+"Doreen!" he called, sharply.
+
+Out of the crowd there rushed a girl--such a girl! One of those radiant
+creatures who explain the cult of womanhood; who make it difficult even
+for sober-minded, middle-aged men and matrons to realize that this is
+nothing but flesh and blood like themselves; one of those beautiful
+creatures who claim worship as a right and who repay it with kindness
+and brightness and sweetness and laughter.
+
+No house was ever dull that held Doreen Wedmore.
+
+She was a tall girl, brown-haired, brown-eyed, made to laugh and to live
+in the sunshine. Nobody could resist her, and nobody ever tried to.
+
+She sprang across the hall to her father and whirled him back into the
+dining-room, and put her back against it.
+
+"Dudley's come!" said she. "He's in the hall--among the blankets!"
+
+"Blankets!"
+
+"Yes." She was crossing the room by this time to the doctor, whom she
+had quickly perceived, and was holding out her hand to him. "You must
+know, doctor, that we are up to our eyes in blankets just now, and in
+bundles of red flannel, and in soup and coals. Papa has been reading up
+Christmas in the country in the olden time, and he finds that to be
+correct you must deluge the neighborhood with those articles. They are
+not at all what the people want, as far as I can make out. But that
+doesn't matter. It pleases papa to demoralize the neighborhood; so we're
+doing it. And mamma helps him. She dates from the prehistoric period
+when a wife _really_ swore to obey her husband; so she does it through
+thick and thin. Of course, she knows better all the time. She could
+always set papa right if she chose. Whatever happens, papa must be
+obeyed. So when he wants to run his dear old head into a noose, she
+dutifully holds it open for him, when all the time she knows how
+uncomfortable he'll be till he gets out."
+
+"You're a saucy puss, Miss!" cried her father, trying to frown, but
+betraying his delight in his daughter's merry tongue by the twinkle in
+his eyes.
+
+"And that's the right sort of woman for a wife," said the old doctor,
+enthusiastically. "I must say I think it's a bad sign when young girls
+think they can improve upon their own mothers."
+
+"She doesn't mean half she says," said her father, indulgently.
+
+"Oh, yes, she does," retorted Doreen. "And she wants to know, please,
+what it is you have to say to Dudley."
+
+The doctor rose from his chair, and Mr. Wedmore frowned.
+
+"And it's no use putting me off by telling me not to ask questions. I'm
+not mamma, you know."
+
+"I intend to ask him--something about you."
+
+It was the girl's turn to frown now.
+
+"Please don't, papa," said she, in a lower voice. "I know you're going
+to worry him, and to put your hands behind your back and ask him
+conundrums, and to make all sorts of mischief, under the impression that
+you are putting things right. And if you only just wouldn't, everything
+would soon be as right as possible. While if you persist--"
+
+But Mr. Wedmore interrupted her, not harshly, as he would have done
+anybody else, but with decision.
+
+"You must trust me to know best, my dear. It is better for you both that
+we should come to some understanding. Haselden, you'll excuse me for
+half an hour, won't you? And you, Doreen," and he turned again to his
+daughter, "stay with the doctor here, and try to talk sense till I come
+back again."
+
+And Mr. Wedmore went quickly out of the room, without giving the girl a
+chance of saying anything more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+MAX MAKES A DISCOVERY.
+
+
+Doreen's bright face lost a little of its color and much of its gayety
+as her father disappeared. The doctor felt sorry for her.
+
+"Come, come; cheer up, my dear," he said. "If he loves you honestly, and
+I don't know how he can fail to do so, a few words with your father will
+put matters all right. There is nothing to look so sad about, I think."
+
+But Doreen gave him one earnest, questioning look, and then her eyelids
+fell again.
+
+"You don't know," she said, in a low voice. "Papa doesn't understand
+Dudley; but I think I do. He is very sensitive and rather reserved about
+himself. If papa interferes now, he will offend him, and Dudley may very
+likely go off at once, and perhaps never come near me again. He is
+proud--very proud."
+
+"But if he could behave like that," replied the doctor, quickly, "if he
+could throw over such a nice girl as you for no reason worth speaking
+of, I should call him a nasty-tempered fellow, whom you ought to be glad
+to be rid of."
+
+"Ah, but you would be wrong," retorted Doreen, with a little flush in
+her face. "It is quite true that he has neglected me a little lately,
+written short letters, and not been down to see me so often. But I am
+sure there was some better reason for his conduct than papa thinks. And
+if I feel so sure, and if I am ready to trust him, why shouldn't papa
+be?"
+
+The doctor smiled at her ingenuousness.
+
+"Your father is right in claiming that he ought to be made acquainted
+with the young man's reason for conduct which looks quite unwarrantable
+on the face of it," said he.
+
+But Doreen gave a little sigh.
+
+"I don't think that a man has a right to turn inquisitor over another
+man, just because the second man is ready to marry the first man's
+daughter," said she. "And I'm sure papa wouldn't have stood it when
+_he_ was young."
+
+The doctor laughed.
+
+"He ought to put up with any amount of questioning rather than lose the
+girl of his choice," said he decisively. "And if he has the stuff of a
+man in him he will do so."
+
+"But he is unhappy. I know it," said Doreen.
+
+"Unhappy!" cried the doctor, indignantly. "And what's he got to be
+unhappy about, I should like to know? He ought to be thanking Heaven on
+his knees all day long for getting such a nice girl to promise to marry
+him. That's the attitude a young man used to take when I was young."
+
+"Did you go down on your knees all day long when Mrs. Haselden promised
+to marry you?" asked Doreen, recovering her sauciness at the notion.
+"And why should he do it till he knows what sort of a wife I am going to
+make? And why should he go down on his knees more than I on mine? When
+there are more women in the world than men, too!"
+
+The doctor shook his head.
+
+"Ah, there is no arguing with you saucy girls," said he. "But I know
+that I, for my part, don't know of a man in the whole world who is
+worthy to marry one of my daughters."
+
+As the doctor finished speaking, the door was opened quickly, and Mr.
+Wedmore came in, looking white and worried.
+
+Doreen ran to him with an anxious face.
+
+"What have you done, papa, what have you done? Did you see him? What did
+you say? What did you say?"
+
+Mr. Wedmore put his arm around his daughter, and kissed her tenderly.
+
+"Don't trouble your head about him any more, my dear child," said he in
+a husky voice. "He isn't worth it. He isn't worthy of you."
+
+Doreen drew away from her father, looking into his face with searching
+eyes and with an expression full of fear.
+
+"Papa, what do you mean? You have sent him away?"
+
+Mr. Wedmore answered in a loud and angry voice; but it was clear enough
+that the anger was not directed against his daughter.
+
+"I did not send him away. He took himself off. I had hardly begun to
+speak to him--and I began quite quietly, mind--when he made the excuse
+of a letter which he found waiting for him, to go back to town. Without
+any ceremony, he rushed out of the study into the hall, and snatched up
+his hat and coat to go."
+
+"And is he gone?" asked Doreen, in a low voice, as she staggered back a
+step.
+
+"Oh, yes, I suppose so. And a good riddance, too. There was no letter at
+all for him, I suppose."
+
+"Yes, there was a letter!" faltered Doreen.
+
+She gave a glance round her; seemed to remember suddenly the presence of
+a third person, for she blushed deeply on meeting the doctor's eyes;
+then, without another word, she sprang across the room to the door.
+
+"Where are you going?" cried her father, as he followed her into the
+hall.
+
+But she did not answer. The hall-door was closing with a loud clang.
+
+Doreen was not the girl to lose her lover for want of a little energy.
+She was fonder of Dudley than people imagined. There is always an
+inclination in the general mind to consider that a person of lively
+temperament is incapable of a deep feeling. And Mr. Wedmore had only
+shown a common tendency in believing that his beautiful and brilliant
+daughter would easily give up the lover whom he considered unworthy of
+her. But he was wrong. Much too high-spirited and too happy in her
+temperament and surroundings to brood over her lover's late negligence,
+she was perhaps too vain to believe that she had lost her hold upon his
+heart. At any rate, she liked him too well to give him up in this
+off-hand fashion without making an effort to discover the reason of his
+present mysterious conduct.
+
+That letter which he had used as an excuse for his sudden departure had
+arrived at The Beeches by the afternoon post. Doreen had seen it with
+her own eyes; had noted with some natural curiosity that the direction
+was ill-spelled, ill-written; that the chirography was that of an almost
+illiterate female correspondent; and that the post-mark showed that it
+came from the East End of London. Rather a strange letter for the smart
+young barrister to receive, perhaps. And the thought of it made Doreen
+pause when she had got outside the door on the broad drive between the
+lawns.
+
+Only for the moment. The next she was flying across the rougher grass
+outside the garden among the oaks and the beeches of the park. She saw
+no one in front of her, and for a few seconds her heart beat very fast.
+She thought she had missed him.
+
+There was no lodge at the park entrance; only a modest wooden gate in
+the middle of the fence. Doreen was hesitating whether to go through or
+to go back, when she saw the figure of Dudley Horne coming toward the
+gate from the stables.
+
+So she waited.
+
+As he came nearer, she, hidden from his sight by the trunk of an old
+oak-tree, grew uneasy and shy. Dark though it was, dimly as she could
+see him, Doreen felt convinced, from the rapid, steady pace at which he
+walked, that he was intent upon some set purpose, that he was not driven
+by pique at her father's words.
+
+He came quite close to her, so that she saw his face. A
+dark-complexioned, strong face it was, clean-shaven, not handsome at
+all. But, on the other hand, it was just such a face as women admire;
+full of character, of ambition, of virility. Doreen had been debating
+with herself whether she dared speak to him; but the moment she got a
+full look at his face, her courage died away.
+
+It was plain to her that, whatever might be the subject of the thoughts
+which were agitating his mind, she had no share in them.
+
+So she let him pass out, and then crept back, downcast, shocked,
+ashamed, up the slope to the house.
+
+She got in by the billiard-room, at the window of which she knocked.
+Max, her brother, who was playing a game with Queenie, his younger
+sister, let her in, and cried out at sight of her white face:
+
+"Hello! Doreen, what's up? Had a row with Dudley? Or what?"
+
+"I have had no 'row' with any one," answered the girl, very quietly.
+"But--you must all know all about it presently, so you may as well hear
+it at once--Dudley has gone away."
+
+"What?"
+
+Max stopped in the act of trying for a carom, and stared at his sister.
+
+"Why, he only came when I did, ten minutes ago!"
+
+"He's gone, I tell you!" repeated Doreen, stamping her foot. "And--and
+listen, Max, I'm frightened about him! He's got something on his mind.
+When he went away, I saw him; I was standing by the gate; he looked
+so--so _dreadful_ that I didn't dare to speak to him. _I!_ Think of
+that!"
+
+"Had papa been speaking to him?" put in the shrewd younger sister, who
+was chalking her cue at the other end of the room.
+
+The younger sister always sees most of the game.
+
+"Ye--es, but--I don't know--I hardly think it was that," answered Doreen
+quickly. "At any rate, Max, I want you to do this for me; I want you to
+go up to town to-morrow and see him. I shan't rest until I know
+he's--he's all right--after what I saw of his face and the look on it.
+Now, you will do this, won't you, won't you? Without saying anything to
+anybody, mind. Queenie, you can hold your tongue, too. Now, Max, there's
+a dear, you'll do it, won't you?"
+
+Max told her that she was "off her head," that he could do no good, and
+so on. But he ended in giving way to the will of his handsome sister,
+whom he adored.
+
+Max Wedmore was a good-looking fellow of five-and-twenty, with a
+reputation as a ne'er-do-weel, which, perhaps, he hardly deserved. His
+father had a great idea of bringing the young man up to some useful
+calling to keep him out of mischief. Not very terrible mischief, for the
+most part: only the result of too much leisure and too much money in
+inexperienced hands. The upshot of this difference of opinion between
+father and son was that while Mr. Wedmore was always finding mercantile
+situations for his son, Max was always taking care to be thrown out of
+them after a few weeks, and taking a rest which was by no means well
+earned.
+
+This errand of his sister's was by no means unwelcome to him, since it
+took him back to town, where he could amuse himself better than he could
+in the country.
+
+So, on the following morning, he found some sort of excuse to take him
+up, and started on his journey with the blessings of Doreen, and with
+very little opposition from his father, who was subdued and thankful to
+have got rid of Dudley with so little trouble.
+
+It was soon after three when Max arrived at Dudley Horne's chambers in
+Lincoln's Inn. Of course, Dudley was out; so Max scribbled a note for
+his friend and left it on the table while he went to the Law Courts to
+look for him. Not finding him anywhere about, Max filled up the day in
+his own fashion, and returned to Dudley's room at about seven o'clock,
+when he supposed that his friend would either return to dinner or look
+in on his way to dine elsewhere.
+
+He waited an hour, then went away and filled up his time at a
+music-hall, and returned once more at a quarter to eleven. Dudley, so he
+was told by the old woman who gave him the information, had not, as far
+as she knew, been in his rooms since the morning.
+
+Max, who was a great friend of Dudley's, and could take any liberty he
+pleased in his precincts, lit the gas and the sitting-room fire, and
+installed himself in an arm-chair with a book. He could not read,
+however, for he was oppressed by some of Doreen's own fears. He was well
+acquainted with all his friend's ways, and he knew that for him to be
+away both from his chambers and from the neighborhood of the Courts for
+a whole day was most unusual with that particularly steady, plodding
+young man. He began to worry himself with the remembrance that Dudley
+had not been himself of late, that he had been moody, restless and
+unsettled without apparent cause.
+
+Finally, Max worked himself into such a state of anxiety about his
+friend that when he at last heard the key turned in the lock of the
+outer door, he jumped up excitedly and made a rush for the door.
+
+Before he reached it, however, he heard footsteps in the adjoining
+bedroom, the heavy tread of a man stumbling about in the dark, the
+overthrowing of some of the furniture.
+
+Surely that could not be Dudley!
+
+Max stood still at the door, listening. He thought it might be a thief
+who had got hold of the key of the chambers.
+
+As he stood still, close by the wall, the door which led from the one
+room to the other was thrown open from the bedroom, almost touching him
+as it fell back; and there staggered into the sitting-room, into the
+light thrown by the gas and the fire, a figure which Max could scarcely
+recognize as Dudley Horne. His face was the grayish white of the dead;
+his eyes were glassy; his lips were parted; while the grime of a London
+fog had left its black marks round his mouth and eyes, giving him an
+appearance altogether diabolical. He was shaking like a leaf as he
+stumbled against a chair and suddenly wheeled round to the light.
+
+Then, unbuttoning his overcoat quickly, he looked down at his clothes
+underneath. He passed his hand over them and held it in the light, with
+a shudder.
+
+Max uttered a sharp cry.
+
+The stain on Dudley's hand, the wet patches which glistened on his dark
+clothes, were stains of blood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+DUDLEY EXPLAINS.
+
+
+As the cry of horror escaped the lips of Max, Dudley wheeled quickly
+round and met his eyes.
+
+For a moment the two men stood staring at each other without uttering a
+word. It seemed to Max that his friend did not recognize him; that he
+looked like a hunted man brought to bay by his pursuer, with the furtive
+expression in his eyes of a creature trying to devise some means of
+escape.
+
+It was the most shocking experience that Max had ever known, and the
+blood seemed to freeze in his veins as he stood by the table watching
+his friend, trying to conjure back a smile to his own face and look of
+welcome into his own eyes.
+
+He found his voice at last.
+
+"Why, Horne," cried he, and he was angry with himself as he noted that
+his voice was hoarse and tremulous, and that he could not manage to
+bring out his natural tones, "what have you been doing with yourself?
+I--I've been backward and forward here all day long, and now I've been
+waiting for you ever so long!"
+
+There was a pause. Dudley was still staring at him, but there was
+gradually coming over his face a change which showed recognition,
+followed by annoyance. He drew himself up, and, after a pause, asked,
+stiffly:
+
+"What did you want with me?"
+
+He spoke more naturally than Max had managed to do, and as the latter
+replied, he took out his pocket-handkerchief very calmly and began to
+wipe the stain off his right hand.
+
+Max shuddered.
+
+"Why, is it such a very unusual thing for me to drop in upon you and to
+want to see you?" he asked, with another attempt at his ordinary manner,
+which failed almost as completely as the first had done.
+
+There was another short pause. Dudley, without looking again at his
+friend, examined his hand, saw that it was now clean, and replaced the
+soiled handkerchief in his pocket. He seemed by this time to be
+thoroughly at his ease, but Max was not deceived.
+
+"Of course not," said Dudley, quickly. "I only meant
+that--considering"--he paused, and seemed to be trying to recollect
+something--"considering what took place down at Datton yesterday and how
+anxious your father seemed to be rid of me--"
+
+"But what has my father got to do with me, as far as you are concerned,
+Dudley, eh?" said Max.
+
+There had come upon him suddenly such a strong impression that his
+friend was in some awful difficulty, some scrape so terrible as to make
+him lonely beyond the reach of help, that Max, who was a good-hearted
+fellow and a stanch friend, spoke with something which might almost be
+called tenderness:
+
+"We've always been chums, now, haven't we? And a row between you and
+Doreen, or between you and my father, wouldn't make any difference to
+me. I--I suppose you don't mean to give me the cold shoulder for the
+future, eh?"
+
+Dudley had turned his back upon him, and was standing on the hearth-rug,
+looking down at the fire, in an attitude which betrayed to his friend
+the uneasiness from which he was suffering. It was an attitude of
+constraint, as different as possible from any in which Max had ever seen
+him.
+
+Another pause. Dudley seemed unable on this occasion to give a simple
+answer to a simple question without taking thought first. At last he
+laughed awkwardly and half turned toward Max.
+
+"Why, of course not," said he, but without heartiness. "Of course not.
+Though it will be rather awkward, mind, for us to see much of each other
+just at first, after my having got kicked out like that, won't it?"
+
+The tone in which Max answered betrayed considerable surprise and
+perplexity.
+
+"Kicked out!" he exclaimed. "My father said he hardly got a word out
+before you took yourself off in a huff."
+
+Dudley turned round quickly and faced him this time, with a sullen look
+of defiance on his dark face.
+
+"Well, the wise man doesn't wait to be kicked out," said he. "He removes
+himself upon the slightest hint that such a proceeding on his part would
+be well received."
+
+"You were a little too quick on this occasion," replied Max, dryly, "for
+my father has got himself into hot water, and mother had a fit of
+crying, while Doreen--"
+
+Something made Max hesitate to tell his friend how Doreen had taken his
+desertion. Max himself was ready to stand by his friend, whatever
+difficulties the latter might be in. But Doreen, his lovely sister, must
+have a lover without reproach.
+
+At the mention of the girl's name there came a slight change over
+Dudley's face--a change which struck the sensitive Max and touched him
+deeply. Dudley took a step in the direction of his bedroom, and pulled
+out his watch. As he did so a railroad ticket jerked out of his pocket
+with the watch and fell to the ground.
+
+Max saw it fall, but before he could pick it up or draw attention to it
+his ideas were diverted by Dudley's next words:
+
+"Well, you '11 excuse me, old chap. I've got to see a friend off by the
+midnight train to Liverpool."
+
+As he spoke Dudley turned, with his hand on the door, to cast a glance
+at Max. He seemed to be asking himself what he should tell the other.
+And then he took a step toward his friend and began an explanation,
+which, as his shrewd eyes told him, Max required.
+
+"The fact is that I got into the way of a beastly accident at Charing
+Cross just now. Woman run over--badly hurt. Got myself covered with
+blood. Ugh!"
+
+Max was convinced that the shudder was genuine, although he had
+doubts--of which he was ashamed--about the tale itself.
+
+And how did that explain the proposed journey?
+
+Dudley went on:
+
+"I've only just got time to change my clothes and make myself decent.
+See you in a day or two. Sorry I can't stay and have a pipe with you and
+one of our 'hard-times' suppers."
+
+He was on the point of disappearing into the inner room, when Max
+stopped him.
+
+"Oh, but you can," said he. "I have something particular to say to you,
+and I can wait till you come back, if it's two o'clock, and I can bring
+in the supper myself."
+
+Dudley frowned impatiently, and again he cast at Max the horrible,
+furtive look which had been his first greeting.
+
+"That's impossible," said he, quickly. "I may have to go on to Liverpool
+myself. Good-night."
+
+And he shut himself into the bedroom.
+
+Max felt cold all over. After a few minutes' hesitation, he went out of
+the chambers, down the stairs and out of the house.
+
+At the door a cab was waiting. The driver spoke to him the moment he
+stepped out on the pavement. Evidently he took him for Dudley, his late
+fare.
+
+"The lady's got out an' gone off, sir. I hollered after her, but she
+wouldn't wait. Oh, beg pardon, sir," and the man touched his hat,
+perceiving his mistake; "I took you for the gentleman I brought here
+with the lady."
+
+"Oh, he'll be down in a minute or two," answered Max.
+
+And then he thought he would wait and see what new developments the
+disappearance of the lady would lead to. He was getting sick with alarm
+about his friend. These instances of the blood-stained clothes, the
+possible journey to Liverpool, and the flight of the mysterious lady,
+were so suspicious, taken in conjunction with each other, that Max found
+it impossible to rest until he knew more. He walked a little way along
+the pavement, and then returned slowly in the middle of the road. He had
+done this for the third time when Dudley dashed out of the house with
+rapid steps, and had reached the step of the hansom before he discovered
+that the vehicle was empty.
+
+An exclamation of dismay escaped his lips, and to the cabman's statement
+of the lady's disappearance he replied by asking sharply in which
+direction she had gone. On receiving the information he wanted, he gave
+the man his fare, and walked rapidly away in the direction the cabman
+had indicated.
+
+Max followed.
+
+Every moment increased his belief that some appalling circumstance had
+occurred by which Dudley's mind had for the time lost its balance. Every
+word, look and movement on the part of his friend betrayed the fact. Now
+he was evidently setting off in feverish haste in pursuit of this woman
+whom he had left in the cab; and Max, who believed that his friend was
+on the brink of an attack of the insanity which old Mr. Wedmore feared,
+resolved to dog his footsteps, and not to let his friend go out of his
+sight until the latter got safely back to his chambers.
+
+Dudley went at a great pace into Holborn, and then he stopped. The
+traffic had dwindled down to an occasional hansom and to a thin line of
+foot-passengers on the pavements. He looked to right, to left, and then
+he turned suddenly and came face to face with Max.
+
+"Hello!" cried he. "Where are you going to? Where are you putting up?"
+
+"At the Arundel," answered Max, taken aback, and stammering a little.
+
+Dudley had recovered his usual tones.
+
+"Come to my club," said he. "We can get some supper there and have that
+pipe."
+
+"But how about Liverpool and the friend you had to see off?" asked Max.
+
+Dudley hesitated ever so slightly.
+
+"Oh, he's given me the slip," he answered, in a tone which sounded
+careless enough. "Gone off without waiting for me. So my conscience is
+free on his score."
+
+Max said nothing for a moment. Then he thought himself justified in
+setting a trap for his friend.
+
+"Who is he?" asked he. "Anybody I know?"
+
+"No," replied Dudley. "A man I met in the country, who showed me a good
+deal of kindness. From Yorkshire. Man named Browning. Very good fellow,
+but erratic. Said he'd wait for me in the cab, and disappeared before I
+could come down. Had an idea I should make him lose his train, I
+suppose. Well, never mind him. Come along."
+
+Max went with him in silence. Dudley had not only got back his usual
+spirits, but seemed to be in a mood of loquacity and liveliness unusual
+with him. When they got to the club, he ordered oysters and a bottle of
+champagne, and drank much more freely than was his custom.
+
+It was Max, the ne'er-do-weel, the extravagant one, who drank little and
+did the listening. Dudley had cast off altogether the gravity and
+taciturnity which sometimes got him looked upon as a bit of a prig, and
+chatted and told his friend stories, with a tone and manner of
+irresponsible gayety which became him ill.
+
+And Max, who was usually the talker, listened as badly as the other told
+his stories. For all the time he was weighed down with the fear, so
+strong that it seemed to amount to absolute knowledge, of some horrible
+danger hanging over his friend.
+
+Abruptly, before he made the expected comment on the last of Dudley's
+stories, Max rose from his chair and said he must go home.
+
+"I'll see you as far as your diggings first," said he. "It's not much
+out of way, you know."
+
+At these words Dudley's high spirits suddenly left him, and the furtive
+look came again into his face.
+
+"Oh," said he, "oh, very well. And on the way I can tell you the whole
+story of the accident that I saw at Charing Cross, this evening, just
+before I met you."
+
+So they went out together, and Dudley, as he had suggested, gave his
+friend a long and extremely circumstantial account of the way in which
+the wheel went over the woman, and of the difficulty he and the
+policeman had experienced in getting her from between the wheels of the
+van by which she had been crushed.
+
+Max heard him in silence, but did not believe a word. Whatever had
+reduced Dudley to the plight in which he had returned to his chambers,
+Max was convinced that it differed in some important details from the
+version of the affair which he chose to give.
+
+"We won't talk any more about it," he went on, without seeming to remark
+his friend's silence. "It's a thing I want to forget. It has quite upset
+me for a time; you could see that yourself when you met me. I--I don't
+know quite what to do to get the thing out of my mind. I think I shall
+run down to Datton with you, and see what that will do. What do you
+think?"
+
+Now, although he had drunk more wine than usual, Dudley knew perfectly
+well what he was saying, and Max stared at him in astonishment.
+
+"What?" he exclaimed. "After what you told me? About my father?"
+
+"Oh, yes, yes. But I can explain everything. I can, and I will,"
+returned Dudley, quickly. "I have not been myself lately. I have had
+certain business worries. But they are all settled now, and I feel more
+like myself than I have done for weeks."
+
+Max stopped short and stared at his friend by the light of a gas-lamp.
+
+"Well, you don't look it," said he, shortly.
+
+Dudley laughed loudly, but rather uneasily.
+
+"Don't you think I could give an explanation which would satisfy your
+father, if I wished?" he asked, with a sudden relapse into gravity.
+
+"I'm hanged if I know," retorted Max, energetically. "You haven't given
+any explanation which would satisfy _me_."
+
+Dudley stared into his face for a few seconds inquiringly, and then
+quietly hooked his arm and led him along the Strand.
+
+"You don't want to be satisfied, old chap," said he, in a low voice.
+"You know me."
+
+Again Max was deeply touched. This was a sudden and unexpected peep
+under the surface of deception into the real heart of his old chum. He
+replied only by a slight twitching of the arm Dudley had taken.
+
+They walked on at a quicker pace, and ran up the stairs to the door of
+Dudley's rooms in silence.
+
+Dudley went first into the sitting-room and turned up the gas. It did
+not escape Max that he shot a hurried glance around the room, taking in
+every corner, as he entered. Talking all the time about the cold and the
+fog, Dudley went into the adjoining room, and Max saw him pull aside the
+bed-curtains and look behind them.
+
+Then Max, not wishing to play the spy on his friend, turned his back;
+and as he did so he caught sight of the railway ticket which had fallen
+to the floor from Dudley's pocket before they went out.
+
+Max picked it up, and noted that it was the return half of a first-class
+return ticket from Fenchurch Street to Limehouse, and that it was dated
+that very day.
+
+He had scarcely noted this, mechanically rather than with any set
+purpose, when he was startled to find Dudley at his elbow.
+
+Max turned round quickly, but Dudley's eyes were fixed upon the railway
+ticket.
+
+"You dropped this when you--" began Max, handing it to his friend.
+
+It was not until then, when Dudley took the ticket from him and tossed
+it into the fireplace with a careless nod, that it flashed into the mind
+of Max that the incident had some significance.
+
+What on earth had Dudley been doing at Limehouse? His parents had had
+property there, certainly, many years ago. But not a square foot of the
+grimy, slimy, auriferous Thames-side land, not a brick or a beam of the
+warehouses and sheds which had been theirs in the old days, had
+descended to Dudley. Owing to the fraudulent action of Edward Jacobs,
+all had had to go.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+A PARAGRAPH IN "THE STANDARD."
+
+
+Max did not stay long with his friend, but made the excuse that he was
+half asleep, after a few minutes' rather desultory conversation, to go
+back to his hotel.
+
+It was with the greatest reluctance that he left his friend alone; but
+Dudley had given him intimations, in every look and tone and movement,
+that he wished to be by himself; and this fact increased the heaviness
+of heart with which Max, full of forebodings on his friend's account,
+had gone reluctantly down the creaking stairs.
+
+Again and again Max asked himself, during his short walk from Lincoln's
+Inn to Arundel Street, why he had not had the courage to put a question
+or two straightforwardly to Dudley. As a matter of fact, however, the
+reason was simple enough. The relative positions of the two men had been
+suddenly reversed, and neither of them, as yet, felt easy under the new
+conditions.
+
+Dudley, the hard-working student, the rising barrister, the abstemious,
+thoughtful, rather silent man to whom Max had looked up with respect and
+affection, had suddenly sunk, during the last few hours, by some
+unaccountable and mysterious means, to far below Max's own modest level.
+It was he, the careless fellow whom Dudley had formerly admonished, who
+had that evening been the sober, the temperate, the taciturn one; it was
+he who had watched the other, been solicitous for him, trembled for him.
+
+Max could not understand. He lay awake worrying himself about his
+friend, feeling Dudley's fall more acutely than he would have felt his
+own, and did not fall asleep until it was nearly daylight.
+
+In these circumstances he overslept himself, and it was eleven o'clock
+before he found himself in the hotel coffee-room, waiting for his
+breakfast.
+
+He was in the act of pouring out his coffee, when his name, uttered
+behind him in a familiar voice, made him start. The next moment Dudley
+Horne stood by his side, and holding out his hand with a smile, seated
+himself on the chair beside him.
+
+"I--I--I overslept myself this morning," stammered Max.
+
+He was in a state of absolute bewilderment. Not only had the new Dudley
+of the previous night disappeared, with his alternate depression and
+feverish high spirits, his furtive glances, his hoarse and altered
+voice, but the old Dudley, who had returned, seemed happier and livelier
+than usual.
+
+"Town and its wicked ways don't agree with you, my boy, nor do they with
+me. If I were in your shoes, I shouldn't tread the streets of Babylon
+more than once a twelvemonth."
+
+"You think that now," returned Max, "because you see more than enough of
+town."
+
+"Well, I'm not going to see much more of it at present," retorted
+Dudley. "This afternoon I'm off again down to Datton, and I came to ask
+whether you were coming down with me."
+
+"I thought you had had a row, at least a misunderstanding of some sort,
+with--with my father?"
+
+"Why, yes, so I had," replied Dudley, serenely, as he took a newspaper
+out of his pocket and folded it for reading. "But I've written to him
+already this morning, explaining things, and telling him that I propose
+to come down to The Beeches this evening. He'll get it before I turn up,
+I should think, for I posted it at six o'clock this morning."
+
+"Why, what were you doing at six o'clock in the morning?" said Max, in a
+tone of bewilderment, as before. "Didn't you go to bed at all last
+night?"
+
+"No," answered Dudley, calmly. "I had some worrying things to think
+about, and so I took the night to do it in."
+
+A slight frown passed over his face as he spoke, but it disappeared
+quickly, leaving him as placid as before.
+
+"About one of the things I can consult you, Max. You know something
+about it, I suppose. Do you think I have any chance with Doreen?"
+
+Max stared at him again.
+
+"You must be blind if you haven't seen that you have," he said, at last,
+in a sort of muffled voice, grudgingly. He moved uneasily in his seat,
+and added, in a hurried manner: "But, I say, you know, Dudley, after
+last night, I--I want to ask you something myself. I'm Doreen's brother,
+though I'm not much of a brother for such a nice girl as she is.
+And--and--what on earth did you think of going to Liverpool for _with a
+woman_? I've a right to ask that now, haven't I?"
+
+Max blurted out these words in a dogged tone, not deterred from
+finishing his sentence by the fact that Dudley's face had grown white
+and hard, and that over his whole attitude there had come a rapid
+change.
+
+There was a pause when the younger man had finished. Dudley kept his
+eyes down, and traced a pattern on the table-cloth with a fork, while
+Max looked at him furtively. At last Dudley looked up quickly and asked,
+in a tone which admitted of no prevarication in the answer he demanded:
+
+"You have been playing the spy upon me, I see. Tell me just how much you
+saw."
+
+It was such a straightforward way of coming to the point that Max, taken
+aback, but rather thankful that the ground was to be cleared a little,
+answered at once without reserve:
+
+"I did play the spy. It was enough to make me. I saw the hansom waiting
+outside your door last night; the cabman mistook me for you, and told me
+the lady had walked away. I couldn't help putting that together with
+what you had told me about seeing a friend off to Liverpool, and,
+perhaps, going there yourself. Now, who could have helped it?"
+
+Dudley did not at once answer. He just glanced inquiringly at the face
+of Max while he went on tracing the pattern on the cloth.
+
+"You didn't see the lady," he said at last, not in a questioning tone,
+but with conviction.
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, if you had seen her you would have been satisfied that it was not
+her charms which were leading me astray," said he, with a faint smile.
+"Are you satisfied now, or do you still consider," he went on with a
+slight tone of mockery in his voice, "that my character requires further
+investigation before you can accept me for a brother-in-law?"
+
+Max moved uneasily again.
+
+"What rot, Horne!" said he, impatiently. "You know very well I've always
+wanted you to marry Doreen. I've said so, lots of times. I still say it
+was natural I should want to understand your queer goings-on last night.
+And now--and now--"
+
+"And now that you don't understand them any better than before, you are
+ready to take it for granted it's all right?" broke in Dudley, with the
+same scoffing tone as before.
+
+Max grew very red, began to speak, glanced at Dudley, and got up.
+
+"Yes, I suppose that's about the size of it," said he, stiffly.
+
+"And are you going down with me to-night? I can catch the seven o'clock
+train."
+
+"Oh, yes, I suppose so. I'll meet you at Charing Cross."
+
+Max's enthusiasm on his friend's behalf had been much damped by his
+behavior, and he gave him a nod, turned on his heel and left him without
+another word. He gave up trying to understand the mystery which hung
+about Dudley, and left it to Doreen and to his father to unravel.
+
+The two young men did not meet again, therefore, until seven that
+evening, when they took their seats in the same smoking-carriage. Max
+felt quite glad that the presence of a couple of strangers prevented any
+talk of a confidential sort between himself and Dudley, who on his side
+seemed perfectly contented to puff at his pipe in silence.
+
+Dudley's letter had evidently been received, and well received, for at
+the station the two friends found the dog-cart waiting to take them the
+mile and a half which lay between the station and The Beeches.
+
+At the house itself, too, the front door flew open at their approach,
+and Mr. Wedmore himself stood in the hall to welcome them.
+
+Queenie was there. Mr. Wedmore was there. But there was never a glimpse
+of Doreen.
+
+"I got your letter, my dear boy," began Mr. Wedmore, holding out his
+hand with so much heartiness that it was plain he was delighted to be
+able to forgive his old friend's son, "and I am very glad, indeed, that
+you have found your way back to us so soon. I am heartily glad to hear
+that the worries which have been making you depressed lately are
+over--heartily glad. And so, I am sure," added he, with a significant
+smile, "Doreen will be."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Dudley. "You are very kind, very indulgent. I am
+not ungrateful, I assure you."
+
+Max, behind them, was listening with attentive ears. He did not feel so
+sure as his father seemed to be that all was now well with Dudley.
+
+"Where's Doreen?" he asked his younger sister.
+
+"Don't know, I'm sure. She's taken herself off somewhere. Probably
+somebody else will find her quicker than you will."
+
+The younger sister was right. The younger sister always is on these
+occasions.
+
+Within five minutes of his arrival, Dudley found his way into the
+breakfast room, where Doreen, a pug dog and a raven were sitting
+together on the floor, surrounded by a frightful litter of paper and
+shavings and string, wooden boxes, hampers, and odds and ends of cotton
+wool.
+
+She just looked up when Dudley came in, gave him a glance and a little
+cool nod, and then, as he attempted to advance, uttered a shrill little
+scream.
+
+"One step farther, and my wax cupids will be ruined!"
+
+"Wax cupids!" repeated Dudley, feebly.
+
+"Yes, for my Christmas tree. It's to be the greatest success ever known
+in these parts, or the greatest failure. Nothing between. That's what I
+must always have--something sensational--something to make people howl
+at me, or to make them want to light bonfires in my honor. That's
+characteristic, isn't it?"
+
+And Doreen, who was dressed in a black skirt, with a scarlet velvet
+bodice which did justice to her brilliant complexion and soft, dark
+hair, paused in the act of turning out a number of glittering glass
+balls into her lap.
+
+"Very," said Dudley, as he made his way carefully to the nearest chair
+and sat down to look at her.
+
+He was up to his knees in brown-paper parcels, over which barricade he
+stretched out his hand.
+
+Doreen affected not to see it. She began to tie bits of fancy string
+into the little rings in the glass balls, cutting off the ends with a
+pair of scissors.
+
+"Aren't you going to shake hands with me?" asked Dudley, impatiently.
+
+Doreen answered without looking tip.
+
+"No. Not yet."
+
+"What's the matter now?"
+
+"Oh, I am offended."
+
+"What have I done now?"
+
+Doreen threw up her head.
+
+"What have you _not_ done? We have all of us--I among the
+others--had a good deal to put up with from you, lately, in the matter
+of what I will call general neglect. And you put a climax to it the day
+before yesterday by rushing out of the house without a word of good-bye
+to anybody."
+
+"There was a reason for it," interrupted Dudley, quickly.
+
+"I suppose so. But I'm not going to take the reason on trust, Mr.
+Horne."
+
+"Not if you're satisfied that you will meet with no more neglect in the
+future? That my conduct shall be in every respect what you--and the
+others--can desire?"
+
+"Not even then," replied Doreen decisively.
+
+"But if your father is satisfied?"
+
+"Then go and talk to my father."
+
+There was a pause and their eyes met. Dudley, who had acknowledged to
+himself the patience with which Doreen had put up with his recent
+neglect, was astonished by the resolution which he saw in her eyes.
+
+"What is it you want to know?" he asked, in a condescending and
+indulgent tone.
+
+"A great deal more than you will tell me," answered Doreen, promptly.
+
+Whereat there was another pause. Dudley took up one of the brown-paper
+parcels and turned it over in his hands. Perhaps it was to hide the fact
+that an irrepressible tremor was running through his limbs.
+
+If he had looked at her at that moment he would have seen in her eyes a
+touching look of sympathy and distress. The girl knew that something had
+been amiss with him--that something was amiss still. She cared for him.
+She wanted his confidence, or at least so much of it as would allow her
+to pour out upon him the tender sympathy with which her innocent heart
+was overflowing. And he would have none of it. He wanted to treat her
+like a beautiful doll, to be left in its cotton wool when his spirits
+were too low for playthings, and to be taken out and admired when things
+went better with him.
+
+This was what Doreen mutinously thought and what her lips were on the
+point of uttering, when the door was opened by Mr. Wedmore, who came
+into the room with a copy of the _Evening Standard_ in his hand.
+
+"Look here, Horne, did you see this?" said he, as he folded the paper
+and handed it to Dudley. "Here's an odd thing. Of course it may be only
+a coincidence. But doesn't it seem to refer to the rascal who ruined
+your prospects--Edward Jacobs?"
+
+"A middle-aged Jewish woman, who found some difficulty in making
+herself understood, from an impediment in her speech, applied to
+Mr. ----, of ---- Street Police Court, for advice in the following
+circumstances: She and her husband had returned to England in
+reduced circumstances, after a long residence abroad, and her
+husband was in search of employment. He had received a letter from
+Limehouse, offering him employment and giving him an appointment
+for yesterday afternoon, which he started to keep. He had not
+returned; she had been to Limehouse police station to make
+inquiries, but could learn nothing of her husband. She seemed to be
+under the impression that he had met with foul play, and made a
+rambling statement to the effect that he had 'enemies.' It was only
+after much persuasion, and the assurance that the press could not
+help her without the knowledge, that she gave her name as Jacobs,
+and her husband's first name as Edward. She described him as of the
+middle height, thin, with gray hair and a short gray beard. The
+magistrate said he had no doubt the press would do what they could
+to help her, and the woman withdrew."
+
+Dudley Horne read this account, and gave the paper back to Mr. Wedmore.
+
+He tried to speak as he did so, but, though his mouth opened, the voice
+refused to come.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ONE MAN'S LOSS is ANOTHER MAN'S GAIN.
+
+
+"Confound the Christmas tree!" grumbled Mr. Wedmore, as he stumbled over
+a parcel of fluffy rabbits, whose heads screwed off to permit the
+insertion of sweets.
+
+"Oh, papa, you'll be saying 'Confound Christmas' next!"
+
+And Doreen, with one watchful eye on Dudley all the time, made a lane
+through her boxes and her hampers to admit the passage of her father to
+a chair.
+
+By this time Dudley had recovered himself a little, and was able to
+answer the question Mr. Wedmore now put to him.
+
+"What do you think of that, Horne?"
+
+"I think, sir, that it must be more than a coincidence; that Mrs. Jacobs
+must be the wife of the man who was my father's manager."
+
+"Well, I think so, too. I know Jacobs's wife had an impediment in her
+speech. The odd part of the business is that he should have disappeared
+at Limehouse, the very place where one would have thought he would have
+an objection to turning up at all, connected as it was with his old
+peculations. I suppose he thought they were forgotten by this time."
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+Dudley still looked very white. He took up the paper again, as if to
+re-read the paragraph. But Doreen, from her post of vantage on the
+floor, saw that he held it before him with eyes fixed. Mr. Wedmore,
+after a little hesitation, and after vainly trying to get another look
+at the face of the younger man, went on again:
+
+"I thought you would be struck by this; the subject turning up again in
+this odd way, just when you've been interesting yourself so much in the
+old story!"
+
+Down went the paper, and Dudley looked into the face of Mr. Wedmore.
+
+"Interesting myself in it! Have I? How do you mean?"
+
+"Well, you've asked a good many questions about this Jacobs, and
+wondered what had become of him. I fancy you have the answer in that
+paragraph."
+
+There was a pause, and Dudley seemed to recollect something. Then he
+said:
+
+"Oh, yes, I think I have. The man has fallen upon bad times, evidently.
+I--I--I'm sorry for his wife."
+
+"And the man himself--haven't you forgiven him yet?"
+
+Dudley started, and glanced quickly round, as if the simple words had
+been an accusation.
+
+"Forgiven him? Oh, yes, long ago. At least--" He paused a moment, and
+then added, inquiringly: "What had I to forgive?"
+
+"Well, to tell the truth, Horne, that's just what I have often asked
+myself, when you have insisted upon raking up all the details of poor
+Jacobs's misdeeds! Why, your poor father, who was ruined by his
+dishonesty, never showed half the animosity you do. I could have
+understood it if you had suffered by his frauds. But have you? You have
+been well educated; you have started well in life. And on the whole, no
+man who has arrived at your age can honestly say that it would have been
+better for him to start life with a fortune at his back, eh?"
+
+"No."
+
+Dudley got up from his chair. He seemed agitated and uneasy, and soon
+took advantage of Mr. Wedmore's suggestion, somewhat dryly made, that he
+was tired after his journey and would like to go to bed.
+
+When he had left the room, Mr. Wedmore turned angrily to his daughter.
+
+"Now, Doreen, I will have no more of this nonsense. Dudley is beginning
+all the old tricks over again--absence of mind, indifference to you--did
+he even look at you as he said good night?--and morbid interest in this
+old, forgotten business of Jacobs and his misdoings. I won't have any
+more of it, and I shall tell him plainly that we don't care to have him
+down here until he can bring a livelier face and manner with him!"
+
+Doreen had risen from her humble seat on the floor and had crawled on
+her knees to the side of his chair, where she slid a coaxing, caressing
+hand under his arm and put her pretty head gently down on his shoulder.
+
+"No, you won't, papa dear. You won't do anything of the kind," she
+whispered in his ear very softly, very humbly. "You would not do
+anything to give pain to your old friend's son if you could help it, and
+you would not do anything to hurt your own child, your little Doreen,
+for a hundred thousand pounds, now would you?"
+
+"Yes, I would, if it was for her good," replied Mr. Wedmore, in a very
+loud and determined voice, which was supposed to have the effect of
+frightening her into submission. "And it's all rubbish to think to get
+around me by calling yourself 'little Doreen,' when you're a great, big,
+overgrown lamp-post of a girl, who can take her own part against the
+whole county."
+
+Doreen laughed, but still clung persistently to the arm which he
+pretended to try to release from her clutches.
+
+"Well, I don't know about the county, but I think I can persuade my old
+father into doing what I want," she purred into his ear with gentle
+conviction. "You see, papa, it isn't as if Dudley and I were engaged.
+We--"
+
+"Why, what else have you been but engaged ever since last Christmas?"
+said her father, irritably. "Everybody has looked upon it as an
+engagement, and Dudley was devoted enough until a couple of months ago;
+but now something has gone wrong with the lad, I'm certain, and it would
+be much better for you both to make an end of this."
+
+"Why, there's nothing to make an end of," pleaded Doreen. "Just 'let
+things slide,' as Max says, and let Dudley come down or stay away as he
+likes, and the matter will come quite right one way or the other, and
+you will find there was really nothing for you to trouble your dear old
+head about, after all."
+
+There was really some excellence in the girl's suggestion; and her
+father, after much grumbling, gave a half consent to it. He was forced
+to admit to himself that there was some grounds for Dudley's agitation
+on reading the paragraph concerning the disappearance of Edward Jacobs,
+since he had been interesting himself of late in that person's history.
+But it was the degree of the young man's agitation which had seemed
+morbid. Mr. Wedmore found it difficult to understand why a mere
+suggestion of the man's disappearance--if it were indeed _the_
+man--should affect Dudley so deeply. And the idea of incipient insanity
+in young Horne grew stronger than ever in Mr. Wedmore's mind.
+
+Now, Doreen was by no means so sanguine as she pretended to be. She was
+one of those high-spirited, lively girls who find it easy to hide from
+others any troubles which may be gnawing at their heart. Such a nature
+has an elasticity which enables it to throw off its cares for a time,
+when in the society of others, only to brood over them in hours of
+loneliness.
+
+Nobody in the house knew--what, however, shrewd Queenie half guessed
+that Doreen had many an anxious hour, many a secret fit of crying, on
+account of the change in Dudley's manner toward her. The brilliant,
+proud-hearted girl was more deeply attached to him than anybody
+suspected. If any remark was made by outsiders as to the comparative
+rarity of the young barrister's visits during the past two months, it
+was always accompanied by the comment that Miss Wedmore would not be
+long in consoling herself.
+
+And everybody knew that the curate, the Rev. Lisle Lindsay, was
+hungering to step into Dudley's shoes.
+
+He was not quite to be despised as a rival, this "snowy-banded,
+dilettant, delicate-handed priest." In the first place, he was a really
+nice, honorable young fellow, with no much worse faults than a
+pedantically correct pronunciation of the unaccented vowels; in the
+second place, he was considerably taller than the race of curates
+usually runs; and in the third place, he had a handsome allowance from
+his mother, and "expectations" on a very grand scale indeed. Miss
+Wedmore, if she were to decide in his favor, might well aspire to be the
+wife of a bishop some day. And what could woman wish for more?
+
+He was no laggard in love either. On the very morning after the arrival
+of Max and Dudley, Mr. Lindsay called soon after breakfast to make
+inquiries about the amount of holly and evergreens which would be
+available for the decoration of the church, and was shown into the
+morning-room, where most of the great work of preparation for Christmas
+was taking place.
+
+Mrs. Wedmore and all the young people were there, Max and Dudley having
+been pressed into the service of filling cardboard drums with sweets for
+what Max called "the everlasting tree." The tree itself stood in a
+corner of the room, a colossal but lop-sided plant with a lamentable
+tendency to straggle about the lower branches, and an inclination to run
+to weedy and unnecessary length about the top.
+
+Max was a hopeless failure as an assistant. He was always possessed with
+a passionate desire to do something different from what he was asked to
+do; and when they gave way and indulged his fancy, the fancy
+disappeared, and he found that he wanted to do something else.
+
+"It's always the way with a man!" was Queenie's scornful comment on her
+brother's failing.
+
+Queenie herself looked upon the whole business of the tree as a piece of
+useless frivolity unworthy the time and attention of grown-up people.
+And she went about the share in it which she had been persuaded to
+undertake with a stolid and supercilious manner which went far to spoil
+the enjoyment of the rest.
+
+Dudley entered, into the affair with some zest, but it was noticeable
+that he devoted himself to Queenie, and exchanged very few remarks with
+Doreen. There was a certain barrier of constraint springing up between
+him and Doreen which had risen to an uncomfortable height by the time
+the curate entered.
+
+Doreen, whose cheeks were much flushed and whose eyes were unusually
+bright, was extremely gracious. She offered to take Mr. Lindsay into the
+grounds to interview the gardener, so that they might come to an
+understanding about the evergreens to be used. She glanced at Dudley as
+she made this proposal. He glanced back at her; and in his black eyes
+she fancied for a moment that she saw a mute protest, a plea.
+
+For a moment she hesitated. Standing still in the middle of the room,
+not far from where he was busy helping Queenie to tie up a particularly
+limp and fragile box of chocolates, she seemed to wait for a single
+word, or even for another look, to turn her from her purpose.
+
+But Dudley turned away, and either did not see or did not choose to
+notice the pause. Then the tears sprang to the girl's eyes, and she ran
+quickly to the door.
+
+"Come, Mr. Lindsay," said she, "we must make haste. At this stage of
+things, every minute has to be weighed out like gold, I assure you."
+
+She went quickly out into the large hall, and the curate followed with
+alacrity. Max and his mother were engaged in a wrangle over some soup
+and coal tickets which somebody had mislaid, and in the search for which
+the whole room, with its parcels and bundles, had to be overturned.
+
+Queenie, who was at work at the end of the room, near the window,
+uttered a short laugh. Dudley, who was standing a little way off, drew
+nearer, and asked what she was laughing at.
+
+"Oh, that misguided youth who has just gone out!"
+
+"Misguided?"
+
+"Yes," said Queenie, shortly. "If he hadn't been misguided, he would
+have devoted his attention to me, not to Doreen. By all the laws of
+society, curates' wives should be plain. They should also be simple in
+their dress, and devoted to good works. Doreen says so herself. Why,
+then, didn't he see that I was the wife for him and not the beauty?"
+
+"Don't you think she will have him, then?" asked Dudley, very stiffly,
+after a short pause. "She seems to like him. There was no need, surely,
+for her to have been in such a hurry to take him into the grounds, if
+she had felt no particular pleasure in his society."
+
+Queenie looked up rather slyly out of her little light eyes. She was
+distressed on account of her sister's trouble about this apparently
+vacillating lover, and irritated herself by his strange conduct. But at
+the bottom of her heart she believed in him and in his affection for
+Doreen, just as her sister herself did, and she would have given the
+world to make things right between two people whom she chose to believe
+intended by nature for each other.
+
+"I think there are other people in the world whose society Doreen likes
+better," she said at last, below her breath.
+
+The wrangle at the other end of the room was still going on, and nobody
+heard her but Dudley. He flushed slightly and looked as if he
+understood. But he instantly turned the talk to another subject.
+
+"Would you have liked that sleek curate yourself, really?"
+
+"Sleek? What do you mean by sleek? You wouldn't have a minister of the
+church go about with long hair and a velveteen coat and a pipe in his
+mouth, would you?"
+
+"Not for worlds, I assure you. He is a most beautiful creature, and I
+admire him very much, though he is perhaps hardly the sort of man I
+should have expected both you girls to rave about. And as for you, I
+thought you were too good to rave about anybody! You are unlike yourself
+this morning, and more like Doreen."
+
+Queenie laughed again that satirical little laugh which made a man
+wonder what her thoughts exactly were.
+
+"You say that because you don't know anything about me. I don't talk
+when Doreen is talking, because then nobody would listen to me. I could
+talk, too, if anybody ever talked to me."
+
+"But one sees so little of you," pleaded Dudley. "You are generally out
+district-visiting, or busy for Mrs. Wedmore, so that one hasn't a chance
+of knowing you well. And one has got an idea that you are too good to
+waste your time in idle conversation with a mere man!"
+
+"Good!" cried Queenie contemptuously. "There's nothing good about my
+district-visiting. I like it, Doreen goes about telling people it is
+good of me. But that's only because she wouldn't care about it herself.
+I like fussing about and thinking I am making myself useful. It's like
+mamma's knitting, which gets her the reputation of being very
+industrious, while all the time she enjoys it very much."
+
+"But you yourself said you were 'devoted to good works,' I quote your
+very words."
+
+"That was only in fun. It's what Doreen says of me. You must have heard
+her. She is much better than I am--really much, more unselfish--much
+more amiable. Only because she's always bright and full of fun, she
+doesn't get the credit of any of her good qualities. People think she's
+only indulging her own inclination when she keeps us all amused and
+happy all day long. But they don't know that she can suffer just as much
+as anybody else, and that it costs her an effort to be lively for our
+sakes when she feels miserable."
+
+Queenie spoke with a little feeling in her usually hard, dry voice.
+Dudley was silent for a long time when she had finished speaking. At
+last they looked up at the same moment and met each other's eyes. And
+the reserved, harassed man felt his heart go out to the girl, with her
+quiet shrewdness and undemonstrative affection for her brilliant sister.
+
+"Your quiet eyes see a great deal more than one would think, Queenie,"
+he said at last. "I suppose they have seen that there is
+something--something wrong--with--"
+
+He spoke very slowly, and finally he stopped without finishing the
+sentence.
+
+Queenie gravely took it up for him.
+
+"Something wrong with you? Of course I have. Well?"
+
+"I don't know why I am telling you this. I didn't mean to tell any one.
+But--but--well, I've begun; I may as well finish. You're not a person
+who would talk about anybody else's secrets more than about your own."
+
+"A secret? Are you going to tell me a secret?"
+
+Dudley smiled very faintly, and then his expression suddenly changed.
+Something like a spasm of fear and of pain shot quickly across his face,
+frightening her a little. Then he shook his head.
+
+"No," said he. "I hardly think you will consider it a secret, after what
+you have just told me. I am only going to tell you this: I have had a
+great trouble, a great affliction, hanging over me for some time now.
+Sometimes I have thought it was going to clear away and leave me as I
+was before. Sometimes I have felt myself quite free from it, and able to
+go on in the old way. But with this consciousness, this knowledge
+hanging over me always, I have behaved in all sorts of strange ways,
+have hurt the feelings of my friends, have not been myself at all. You
+know that, Queenie."
+
+Queenie slowly bowed her head. Mrs. Wedmore and Max, still occupied in
+their search for the missing soup tickets, had now extended their
+operations to the hall, and left the room in possession of the other
+two. Dudley went on with his confession.
+
+"And now something has happened which has cut me off from my old self,
+as it were. I don't know how else to express what I mean. I came down
+last night with the intention of speaking to--to Doreen for the last
+time, of trying to explain myself, if not to--to justify myself to her.
+You know what I mean, don't you?"
+
+Again Queenie bowed her head. Her father's suspicions as to Dudley's
+perfect sanity had, of course, reached her ears, and she felt so much
+pity for the poor fellow whose confession she was then hearing that she
+dared not even raise her eyes to his face again. He went on, hurrying
+his words, as if anxious to get his confession over:
+
+"But I thought it all over last night, and I decided to say nothing to
+her, after all. I don't think I could, without making a fool of myself.
+For you know--you know my feelings about her; everybody knows. I had
+hoped--Oh, well, you know what I hoped--"
+
+There was a pause. Dudley was afraid of breaking down.
+
+"Oh, Dudley, is it really all over, then, between you? Oh, it is
+dreadful! For, you know, she cares, too!"
+
+"Not as I do. I hope and think that is impossible," said Dudley,
+hoarsely.
+
+There was another pause, a longer one. Then Queenie gave utterance to a
+little sob. Dudley, who was sitting on the table at which she was at
+work, got upon his feet with an impatient movement. His dark face looked
+hard and angry. As he paced once or twice up and down the small space
+available in the disordered room, the inward fight which was going on
+between his passion and his sense of right convulsed his face, and
+Queenie shuddered as, glancing at him, she fancied she could see in the
+glare of his black eyes the haunting madness at which he seemed so
+plainly to have hinted.
+
+She rose in her turn.
+
+"But, Dudley--" she began.
+
+And then, unable to express what she felt, what she thought, any better
+than he had done, she turned abruptly away and sat down again.
+
+There was silence for a few moments, and then she heard the door close.
+Looking round, she saw that he had left the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE LITTLE STONE PASSAGE.
+
+
+Queenie kept Dudley's half-confessed secret to herself for the whole of
+that day. She was hoping against hope that he would change his mind
+again and speak to Doreen himself. Since there must be a definite and
+final breach, she thought it would be better for the principals
+themselves to come to an understanding, without the intervention of
+outsiders. She would have told him so, but she got no further
+opportunity of speaking to him alone.
+
+The day passed uncomfortably for everybody, although the only person who
+gave vent to his feelings by open ill-temper was Mr. Wedmore, who was
+waiting for the promised explanation which Dudley never attempted to
+give. And before dinner-time that evening the young barrister returned
+to town.
+
+Mr. Wedmore, who had been out shooting with Doctor Haselden, was
+furious, on returning home, to learn of Dudley's departure.
+
+"He has left a note for you, papa, in the study," said Doreen, who was,
+perhaps, a little paler than usual, but who gave no other outward sign
+of her feelings.
+
+Her father went into the study, after a glance at his daughter, and read
+the letter. It was not a very long one. Following the lines of his
+guarded confession to Queenie, Dudley expressed the sorrow he felt at
+having to give up the hopes he had had of being something more than the
+mere old friend he had been for so many years. He had thought it better,
+at the last, to say this on paper instead of by word of mouth, and he
+ended by expressing the deep gratitude he should always feel for the
+kindness shown to him by Mr. Wedmore and all his family during the
+happiest period of his life.
+
+Mr. Wedmore read this letter with little astonishment. It was, in fact,
+what he had been prepared to hear. He read it to his wife, who cried a
+great deal, but acquiesced in her husband's desire that Dudley should
+drop not only out of the ranks of their intimate friends, but even, as
+much as possible, out of their conversation.
+
+"Let us do our best," said he, "to make Doreen forget him."
+
+Mr. Wedmore showed the letter also to Doctor Haselden, who, perhaps,
+from pure love of contradiction, persisted in maintaining that the
+letter confessed nothing, and that the cause of the young man's
+withdrawal was, in all probability, quite different from what Mr.
+Wedmore supposed. The two gentlemen had quite a wrangle over the matter,
+at the end of which each was settled more firmly in his own opinion than
+before.
+
+When they went upstairs for the night, Doreen came to Queenie's room and
+demanded to know what her younger sister and Dudley had been talking
+about so earnestly in the breakfast-room that morning.
+
+"What do you mean by talking earnestly?" said Queenie, in the calm, dry
+manner which would have made any one but her sister think she was really
+surprised.
+
+"Max told me," said Doreen, "and I mean to stay here until I know."
+
+It needed very little reflection to tell Queenie that it was better for
+her sister to hear the truth at once. So she told her.
+
+Doreen listened very quietly, and then got up and wished her sister good
+night.
+
+"Well," said Queenie, "you take it very quietly. What do you think about
+it?"
+
+"I'll tell you--when I know myself," answered Doreen, briefly, as she
+left the room. The first result of the talks, however, was a
+conversation, not with Queenie, but with her brother, Max. Doreen ran
+after him next morning as he was on his way to the stables and made him
+take a walk through the park with her instead of going for a ride.
+
+"Max," she said, coaxingly, when they had gone out of sight of the
+house, "you have been my confidant about this unhappy affair of
+Dudley's--"
+
+But her brother interrupted her, and tried to draw away the arm she had
+taken.
+
+"Look here, Doreen," said he earnestly, "you'd better not think any more
+about him--much better not. I do really think the poor fellow's right in
+what he hinted to my father, and that he's going off his head; or,
+rather, I _know_ enough to be sure that he's not always perfectly
+sane. Surely you must see that, in the circumstances, the less you think
+about him the better."
+
+"There I disagree with you altogether," said Doreen, firmly. "Max, papa
+and mamma can't understand; they've forgotten how they felt when they
+were first fond of each other. Queenie's not old enough, and she's too
+good besides. Now, you do know, you do understand what it is to be head
+over ears in love."
+
+"Good heavens, Doreen, don't talk like that! You mustn't, you know!"
+
+"Don't talk nonsense," interrupted his sister, sharply. "I tell you I
+love Dudley, and ever so much more since I've found out he is in great
+trouble; as any decent woman would do. Now I don't feel nearly so sure
+as everybody else as to what his trouble is, but I want you to find out,
+and to help me if you can."
+
+"What, play detective--spy? Not me. It's ridiculous, unheard of. I've
+done it once on your account, and I never felt such a sneak in my life.
+I won't do it again, even for you, and that's flat."
+
+And Max thrust his hands deep into his pockets.
+
+"Won't you?" said Doreen, with a quiet smile. "Then I must, and I will."
+
+Her brother started and stared at her.
+
+"You! _You!_ What nonsense!"
+
+"It's not nonsense, as you will find when you hear me get permission to
+go up to town to stay with Aunt Betty."
+
+Max grew sincerely alarmed.
+
+"Look here, Doreen, be reasonable," said he. "You can do no good to
+Dudley, believe me. He has got into some dreadful mess or other; but
+it's nothing that you or I or any earthly creature can help him out of.
+I confess I didn't tell you all I found out when I went up to town. I
+couldn't. I can't now. But if you will persist, and if nothing else will
+keep you quietly here, I--well, I promise to go up again. And I'll
+warrant if I do I shall learn something which will convince even
+_you_ that you must give up every thought of him."
+
+"Will you promise," said Doreen, solemnly, "to tell me all you find
+out?"
+
+"No," replied Max, promptly, "I won't promise that. I can't. But I think
+you can trust me to tell you as much as you ought to know."
+
+With this promise Doreen was obliged to be content. And when, at
+luncheon time, it was discovered that certain things were wanted from
+town, and Max offered to go up for them, Doreen and her brother
+exchanged a look from which she gathered that he would not forget her
+errand.
+
+Max had plenty of time, while he was being jolted from Datton to Cannon
+Street, to decide on the best means of carrying out his promise. He
+decided that a visit to Limehouse, to the neighborhood where the
+property of the late Mr. Horne had been situated, would be better than
+another visit to Dudley.
+
+Plumtree Wharf was, he knew, the name of the most important part of the
+property which had belonged to Dudley's father. Putting together the two
+facts of the discovery of a ticket for Limehouse in Dudley's possession,
+and of the disappearance of Edward Jacobs after a visit to that locality
+on the same day, Max saw that there was something to be gleaned in that
+neighborhood, if he should have the luck to light upon it.
+
+It was late in the afternoon, and already dark, before he got out of the
+train at Limehouse station, and began the exploration of the unsavory
+district which fringes the docks.
+
+Through street after street of dingy, squalid houses he passed; some
+broken up by dirty little shops, some presenting the dull uniformity of
+row after row of mean, stunted brick buildings, the broken windows of
+many of which were mended with brown paper, or else not mended at all.
+Here and there a grimy public house, each with its group of loafers
+about the doors, made, with the lights in its windows, a spot of
+comparative brightness.
+
+Many of the streets were narrow and tortuous, roughly paved, and both
+difficult and dangerous to traverse by the unaccustomed foot passenger,
+who found himself now slipping on a piece of orange peel, the pale color
+of which was disguised by mud, now risking the soundness of his ankles
+among the uneven and slimy stones of the road.
+
+Max had to ask his way more than once before he reached the Plumtree
+Wharf, the entrance to which was through a door in a high wooden fence.
+Rather to his surprise, he found the door unfastened and unguarded. And
+when he had got through he looked round and asked himself what on earth
+he had expected to find there.
+
+There was nothing going on at this late hour, and Max was able to take
+stock of the place and of the outlook generally. Piles of timber to the
+right of him, the dead wall at the side of a warehouse on the left, gave
+him but a narrow space in which to pursue his investigations. And these
+only amounted to the discovery that the troubled waters of the Thames
+looked very dark and very cold from this spot; that the opposite bank,
+with little specks of light, offered a gloomy and depressing prospect,
+and that the lapping of the water among the black barges which were
+moored at his feet in a dense mass was the dreariest sound he had ever
+heard. He turned away with a shudder, and walked quickly up the narrow
+lane left by the timber, calling himself a fool for his journey.
+
+And just as he was reaching the narrow street by which he had come he
+was startled to find a girl's face peering down at him from the top of a
+pile of timber.
+
+Max stopped, with an exclamation. In an instant the girl withdrew the
+head, which was all he had seen of her, and he heard her crawling back
+quickly over the timber, out of his sight.
+
+Although he had seen her for a moment only, Max had been chilled to the
+bone by the expression of the girl's face. Ghastly white it had looked
+in the feeble light of a solitary gas lamp some distance away, and
+wearing an expression of fear and horror such as he had never seen on
+any countenance before. He felt that he must find out where she had
+gone, his first belief being that she was a lunatic. Else why should she
+have disappeared in that stealthy manner, with the look of fear stamped
+upon her face? There was nothing in the look or manner of Max himself to
+alarm her; and if she had been in need of help, why had she not called
+to him?
+
+He got a footing upon the timber and looked over it. But he could see
+nothing more of the girl. Beyond the stacks were some low-roofed
+outbuildings and the back of a shut-up warehouse. Reluctantly he got
+down, and passed into the narrow street. Not willing to leave at once a
+neighborhood which he had come so far to investigate, he turned, after
+going some dozen yards down the street, into a narrow passage on his
+left hand which led back to the river.
+
+The width between the high walls and the warehouses on either side was
+only some five feet. It was flagged with stone, very dark. About ten
+yards from the entrance there was a small warehouse, on the left hand,
+on which hung an old board, announcing that the building was "To Let."
+And next door to this was a dingy shop, with grimy and broken windows,
+the door of which was boarded up. This shop, also, was "To Be Let," and
+the board in this case had been up so long that the announcement had to
+be divined rather than read.
+
+Rather struck by the dilapidated appearance of these two buildings in a
+place where he supposed land must be valuable, Max paused for an
+instant. And as he did so, he became aware that there was some one by
+his side.
+
+Looking down quickly, he saw the young girl of whom he had caught a
+glimpse a few minutes before.
+
+He started.
+
+She looked up at him, and, still with the same look of stereotyped
+horror on her thin, white face, whispered, in a hoarse voice, as she
+pointed to the boarded-up shop-door with a shaking forefinger:
+
+"You daren't go in there, do you? There's a dead man in there!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+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."
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+It was "Poaching Wilson" who pulled the bell, after some difficulty in
+finding the handle, owing to the liberality with which he had "treated
+himself" as a preparation for the journey.
+
+Max, alarmed at the invasion, had made his way round to the
+billiard-room door at the back, bolted it on the inside, and hastened to
+give directions to the servants to lock all the other doors, and to
+secure the ground-floor windows.
+
+Then he rushed into the hall, just as his father had come out from the
+dining-room, serviette in hand, to learn the cause of the noise outside.
+
+"Hello, Max! Is it you back again? And have you brought down half the
+population of London with you?"
+
+"No, sir, they didn't come with me. They are guests of yours, I
+understand. And they expect to be treated to unlimited beer, so I gather
+from their remarks. They've brought some firewood, I believe."
+
+At this moment the clanging of the front-door bell resounded through the
+house for the second time. The frightened butler, who was a young man
+and rather nervous, stood by the door, not daring to open it. The ladies
+of the household had by this time come out of the dining-room; Mrs.
+Wedmore looked flush and frightened; the girls were tittering. Smothered
+explosions of laughter came from time to time to the ears of the master
+of the house, from the closed door which led to the servants' hall.
+
+"Shall--shall I see who it is, sir?" asked the butler, who could hear
+the epithets applied to him on the other side of the door.
+
+"No, no!" cried Doreen. "Not on any account! Tell them to put the thing
+down and go away."
+
+There was a pause, during which the bell rang again, and there was a
+violent lunge at the door.
+
+"They won't--they won't go away, Miss, without they get something
+first," said the butler, who was as white as a sheet.
+
+"Tell them," began Mr. Wedmore, in a loud tone of easy confidence, "to
+take it round to the back door, and--and to send a--deputation to me in
+the morning; when--er--they shall be properly rewarded for their
+trouble."
+
+"They ought to reward us for _our_ trouble, papa, don't you think?"
+suggested Doreen.
+
+"There! They've begun to reward themselves," said Queenie, as a stone
+came through one of the windows.
+
+Mr. Wedmore was furious. He saw the mistake he had made, but he would
+not own it. Putting strong constraint upon himself, he assumed a gay
+geniality of manner which his looks belied, and boldly advanced to the
+door. But Mrs. Wedmore flung her arms round her husband in a capacious
+embrace, dragging him backward with an energy there was no use
+resisting.
+
+"No, no, no, George! I won't have you expose yourself to those horrid
+roughs! Don't open the door, Bartram! Put up the bolt!"
+
+"Nonsense! Nonsense, my dear!" retorted Mr. Wedmore, who was, perhaps,
+not so unwilling to be saved from the howling mob as he wished to
+appear. "It's only good-humored fun--of a rough sort, perhaps, but quite
+harmless. It's some mischievous boy who threw the stone. But, of course,
+they must go round to the back."
+
+"Cook won't dare to open the door to 'em, sir," said the butler.
+
+The situation was becoming serious. There was no denying that the house
+was besieged. Mrs. Wedmore began to feel like a châtelaine of the
+Cavalier party, with the Roundhead army at the doors clamoring for her
+husband's blood. The cries of the villagers were becoming more derisive.
+
+As a happy thought, Mrs. Wedmore suggested haranguing the mob from an
+upper window. This course seemed rather ignominious, but prudence
+decided in its favor.
+
+There was a rush upstairs, and Mr. Wedmore, followed by all the ladies,
+flung himself into the bathroom and threw up the window.
+
+It was not at all the sort of thing that merry squire of the olden times
+might have been expected to do. In fact, as Doreen remarked, there were
+no bathrooms in the olden time to harangue a mob from. But Mr. Wedmore's
+medieval ardor being damped, he submitted to circumstances with
+fortitude.
+
+"Yah! There 'e is at last!" "'Ow are you, old un?" "Don't put your nose
+out too fur this cold night!"
+
+These and similar ribald remarks greeted Mr. Wedmore as he appeared at
+the window, telling him only too plainly that the merry days of old were
+gone, never to be restored, and that the feudal feeling which bound (or
+is supposed to have bound) rich and poor, gentle and simple, in one
+great tie of brotherhood had disappeared forever.
+
+Doreen and Queenie were secretly enjoying the fun, though they had the
+sense to be very quiet; but Mrs. Wedmore was in an agony of sympathy
+with her husband, and of fear for the results of his enterprise. He
+began a speech of thanks, but the noise below was too great for him to
+be heard. Indeed, it was his own servants who did the most toward
+drowning his voice by their well-meant endeavors to shout down the
+interrupting cries.
+
+"They're most of them tipsy, I think," whispered Doreen to her mother,
+who said, "Sh-sh!" in shocked remonstrance, but secretly agreed with her
+daughter's verdict.
+
+"Throw them some coppers, papa," suggested the sage and practical
+Queenie.
+
+Mr. Wedmore turned out his pockets, taking care to disperse his largesse
+as widely as possible. The girls helped him, hunting high and low for
+coins, among which, urged by the crowd in no subdued voice to "come down
+handsome," sixpences and shillings presently made their welcome
+appearance.
+
+"Oh, the hollies!" whispered Doreen to her sister.
+
+"Thank goodness, the look of the garden to-morrow morning will be an
+object-lesson to papa!"
+
+For the invaders, well aware of the value of such wares at Christmas
+time, filled out the pauses by slashing at the berry-bearing trees with
+their pocket-knives, secure in the safety of numbers.
+
+By the time the shower of money ceased the crowd had begun to thin;
+those members of it who had been lucky enough to secure silver coins had
+made off in the direction of the nearest public-house, and those who had
+cut down the holly had taken themselves off with their booty.
+
+There remained in front of the door, when this clearance had been
+effected, the Yule log itself, the laborers who had drawn it along and a
+group of manageable size.
+
+Max, who had been watching the proceedings from the study, after turning
+out the light, judged that the moment had come for negotiations to
+commence. So he told the butler to throw open the front door, and he
+himself invited the unwelcome guests to enter. He had taken the
+precaution to have all portable articles removed from the hall and all
+the doors locked except that which led to the servants' hall and the
+staircases.
+
+In they came, a little subdued, and with their first disastrous energy
+sufficiently exhausted for them to be able to listen and to do as they
+were told.
+
+The oaken center-table had been pushed on one side, and there was a
+clear space, wide, carpetless, from the front door to the big stone
+fireplace opposite.
+
+"This way with the log! Now, boys, pull with a will!" cried Max, not
+insensible to the novelty and picturesqueness of the situation, as a
+motley crowd, some in smock-frocks, some in corduroy and some in gaiters
+and great-coats, pressed into the great hall dragging the log after them
+with many a "Whoop!" and shout and cry.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Wedmore and the two girls hurried downstairs on hearing the
+door open, and stood by the fireplace, with a little glow of
+satisfaction and pleasure at the turn affairs had taken.
+
+It _was_ a log! Or, rather, it was more than a log; for it was half
+a tree. Slowly the huge thing came in, scraping the nicely polished
+floor, rolling a little from side to side, and threatening all those
+within a yard of it. And then, when its appearance had spread
+consternation through the household, the inevitable question came: What
+was to be done with it?
+
+The fire-basket had been taken out of the hearth on purpose for its
+reception, but it was evident that, even after this careful preparation,
+to think of burning it whole was out of the question. There was nothing
+for it but to send for a saw and to reduce the log then and there to a
+manageable size.
+
+This was done, amid considerable noise and excitement, drinking of the
+health of the family by villagers who had been drinking too much
+already, and much scraping of the polished floor by muddy, hob-nailed
+boots.
+
+Finally the deputation was got rid of, and the interrupted dinner was
+allowed to proceed, much to the comfort of Max, who had eaten nothing
+since breakfast, and much to the dismay of Mrs. Wedmore, who was then
+able to ascertain the extent of the damage done by the invaders.
+
+It was lucky for Max that he had arrived at such an opportune moment.
+His father had been grumbling at the number of visits he had made to
+town lately, and the young man would have found him in no very good
+humor if he had not discovered to his hand the opportunity of making
+himself conspicuously useful.
+
+It is scarcely necessary to say that Max did not tell anyone about the
+adventures he had met with. He knew that he should have to go through
+the ordeal of an interview with his sister, Doreen, who would want to
+know a great deal more than he was willing to tell her; but he was
+tired, and he made up his mind that he would not be interrogated that
+evening. So he gave her no opportunity for the confidential talk she was
+dying to have with him, but spent the remainder of the evening in
+dutiful attendance upon his mother.
+
+The following day was Christmas Eve. Max came down late to breakfast,
+and he had scarcely entered the morning-room when his father handed him
+the _Standard_, pointing to a certain paragraph without any comment
+but a glance at the girls, as a hint to his son not to make any remark
+which would recall Dudley and his affairs to their minds.
+
+The paragraph was as follows:
+
+"SHOCKING DISCOVERY!
+
+"The body of a man was found floating in the river close to
+Limehouse Pier late yesterday evening. Medical evidence points to
+death by violence, and the police are making inquiries. It is
+thought that the description of the body, which is that of a man of
+a Jewish type of countenance, rather under than over the middle
+height, aged between fifty and fifty-five, gray hair and short,
+gray beard, tallies with that given a few days ago by a woman who
+applied at the ---- Street Police Court, alleging that her husband
+had disappeared in the above neighborhood. The police are extremely
+reticent, but at the present they have no clue to the authors of
+the outrage. The body awaits identification at the mortuary, and an
+inquest will be held to-day."
+
+"I wonder whether Dudley will see that?" said Mr. Wedmore, in a low
+voice, as soon as his daughters were engaged in talk together. "It looks
+like the sequel to the other paragraph which upset him so the other
+evening, doesn't it? I shall watch the papers for the result of the
+inquest. It seems to me pretty certain that it was Edward Jacobs.
+Curious affair, isn't it, that he should be murdered in a slum, after
+making a fortune at other people's expense? Retribution--just
+retribution! Curious, isn't it!"
+
+To Max it was so much more than merely "curious," knowing what he did,
+that he felt sick with horror. Surely this body, found floating near
+Limehouse Pier, was the one he had touched in the dark!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+IS IT BLACKMAIL?
+
+
+Mr. Wedmore repeated his comment: "Curious, isn't it?" before Max could
+reply. At last he nodded, and handed back the paper to his father. Then
+he turned his chair toward the fire, and stared at the blazing coals. He
+had lost his appetite; he felt cold, miserable.
+
+His father could not help noticing that something was wrong with him;
+and, after watching him furtively for a few minutes, he said, with an
+abruptness which made Max start:
+
+"Did you see anything of Dudley when you were in town?"
+
+Max changed color, and glanced apprehensively at his father, as if
+fearing some suspicion in the unexpected question.
+
+"No, sir," he answered, after a moment's hesitation. "I called at his
+chambers; but they told me he had gone away for the holidays and had
+left no address. All letters were to be kept for him till his return."
+
+Both question and answer had been uttered very softly, but Max saw, by
+the look on Doreen's face, as she glanced over from the other side of
+the table, that she guessed what they were talking about, if she had not
+heard their words.
+
+"Aren't you going to have any breakfast, Max?" asked she, as she came
+round to him. "We've kept everything about for you, and we want the
+table."
+
+"Well, you can have it," said he, jumping up, quickly, and making for
+the door. "I don't want any breakfast this morning."
+
+"Nonsense. You will not be allowed to leave the room until you have had
+some," retorted his sister, as she sprang at him and attempted to pinion
+his arms. "We allow no ill-temper on Christmas Eve, especially as we've
+got a surprise for you--a beautiful, real surprise. Guess who is coming
+this morning to stay till New Year!"
+
+Queenie had come up by this time, and the two girls between them brought
+their brother back to the table, where the younger sister began to pour
+out his coffee.
+
+But Max refused to show the slightest interest in the coming guest, and
+would not attempt to guess who it was. So they had to tell him.
+
+"It was all on your account that we asked her," said Doreen, hurt by his
+indifference. "You took such a fancy to her, and she to you, apparently,
+at the Hutchinsons' dance, that we thought you'd be delighted.
+_Now_, don't you know who it is?"
+
+To their great disappointment, both girls saw that he didn't. Mr.
+Wedmore, from the other end of the room, was observing this little
+incident with considerable annoyance. The young lady in question, Miss
+Mildred Appleby, was very pretty, and would be well dowered, and Mr.
+Wedmore had entered heartily into the plan of inviting her to spend
+Christmas with them, in the hope that Max would propose, be accepted,
+and that he would then make up his mind to settle.
+
+"Why, it's Mildred Appleby," said Doreen, impatiently, when her
+brother's blank look had given her the wrong answer. "Surely, you don't
+mean to say you've forgotten all about her?"
+
+"Oh, no, I remember her," answered Max, indifferently. "Tall girl with a
+fashion-plate face, waltzes pretty well and can't talk. Yes, I remember
+her, of course."
+
+"Is that all you have to say about her?" cried Doreen, betraying her
+disappointment. "Why, a month ago she was the nicest and the jolliest
+and the everythingest girl you had ever met."
+
+"He's seen somebody else since then," remarked the observant Queenie, in
+her dry, little voice. "When he was in town yesterday, perhaps."
+
+Max looked at his sister with a curious expression. Was she right? Had
+he, in that adventurous thirty-six hours in London, seen somebody who
+took the color out of all the other girls he had ever met? He asked
+himself this question when Queenie's shrewd eyes met his, and he
+remembered the strange sensation he had felt at the touch of Carrie's
+hand, at the sound of her voice.
+
+Before he could answer his sister, Mr. Wedmore spoke impatiently:
+
+"Rubbish!" cried he, testily. "Every young man thinks it the proper
+thing to talk like that, as if no girl was good enough for him. Miss
+Appleby is a charming girl, and she will find plenty of admirers without
+waiting for Max's valuable adoration."
+
+He had much better not have spoken, blundering old papa that he was. And
+both daughters thought so, as they saw Max raise his eyebrows and gather
+in all the details of the little plot in one sweeping glance at the
+faces around him. He drank his coffee, but he could not eat. Doreen sat
+watching him, ready to spring upon him at the first possible moment, and
+to carry him off for the _tête-à-tête_ he was so anxious to put off.
+
+What should he tell his sister of that adventure of his in the slums of
+the East End? Would she be satisfied if he told a white lie, if he said
+he had found out nothing?
+
+Max felt that Doreen would not be satisfied if he got himself out of the
+difficulty like that. In the first place, she would not believe him. He
+saw that her quick eyes had been watching him since his return, and he
+felt that he had been unable to hide the fact that something of greater
+significance had occurred during that brief stay in town. What then
+should he tell her? Perfect frankness, perfect confidence was out of the
+question. To look back now, in the handsome, spacious house of his
+parents, from the snug depths of an easy-chair, on the time he had
+passed on and about the wharf by the docks, was so strange that Max
+could hardly believe in his own experiences.
+
+Who would believe the story of his adventures, if he himself could
+scarcely do so? Would Doreen, would anybody give credence to the story
+of the dead body that he touched, but never saw, the eyes that looked at
+him from an unbroken wall, the girl who lured him into the shut-up
+house, and then let him out again with an air of secrecy and mystery?
+
+The transition had been so abrupt from the gloomy wharf, with its
+suspicious surroundings and the heavy, fog-laden air of the riverside,
+back to the warmth and light and brightness of home, that already his
+adventures had receded into a sort of dreamland, and he began to ask
+himself whether Carrie, with her fair hair and moving blue eyes, her
+vibrating voice and changeful expression, were not a creature of his
+imagination only.
+
+He was still under the influence of the feelings roused by this dreamy
+remembrance, when he snatched the opportunity afforded by Doreen's being
+called away by Mrs. Wedmore, to go out into the grounds, on his way to
+the stables. A ride through the lanes in the frosty air would, he
+thought, be the best preparation for the trying ordeal of that
+inevitable talk with Doreen, whose wistful eyes haunted him as she
+waited for a chance of speaking to him alone.
+
+In the garden a scene of desolation met his eye.
+
+The lawns were torn up and trodden down; the gravel path from the
+stables looked like a freshly plowed field; every tree and every bush
+bore the marks of the marauder.
+
+The head gardener was in a condition of unapproachable ferocity, and it
+was generally understood that he had given notice to leave. The
+under-gardeners kept out of the way, but could be heard at intervals
+checking outbursts of derisive laughter behind the shrubberies. The
+story of the Yule log and its adventures was the best joke the country
+had had for a long time, and it was bound to lose nothing as it passed
+from mouth to mouth. And poor Mr. Wedmore began to dread the ordeal of
+congratulations he would have to go through when he next went to church.
+
+Max felt sorry for his father. As he entered the stable-yard, which was
+a wide expanse of flagged ground at the back of the house, round which
+were many outbuildings, he came upon a group of snickering servants, all
+enjoying the story of the master's freak.
+
+The group broke up guiltily on the appearance of Max, the laundry-maids
+taking flight in one direction, while the stablemen became suddenly busy
+with yard-broom and leather.
+
+Max put a question or two to the groom who saddled his horse for him.
+
+"There was no great harm done last night, was there, except in the
+garden? You have not heard of anything being stolen, eh?"
+
+"Well, no, sir. But it brought a lot of people up as had no business
+here. There was a person come up as we couldn't get rid of, asking
+questions about the family, sir; and about Mr. Horne, too, sir. She
+wouldn't believe as he wasn't here, an' she frightened some of the
+women, I believe, sir. They didn't know where she'd got to, an' nobody
+saw her go out of the place, so they've got an idea she's hiding about.
+A fortune-telling tramp, most likely, sir," added the man, who wished he
+had held his tongue about the intruder when he saw how strongly the
+young master was affected by this story.
+
+The fact was that Max instantly connected this apparition of a woman
+"who asked questions about Mr. Horne" with the ugly story told him at
+the house by the wharf, and he was glad that Dudley was not spending
+Christmas at The Beeches.
+
+He was oppressed during the whole of his ride by this suggestion that
+the questionable characters of the wharfside were pursuing Dudley; it
+gave color to Carrie's statement that it was Dudley who killed the man
+whom Max believed to have been Edward Jacobs; and it looked as if the
+object of the woman's visit was to levy blackmail.
+
+Or was it--could it be that the woman was Carrie, and that her object
+was to warn Dudley? To associate Carrie herself with the levying of
+blackmail was not possible to the susceptible Max in the present state
+of his feelings toward her.
+
+And, just as he was meditating upon this mystery, all unprepared for a
+meeting with his sister, Doreen waylaid him. He was entering the house
+by the back way, muddy from his ride, when she sprang upon him from an
+ambush on the stairs.
+
+"I've been waiting all the morning to catch you alone," said she, as she
+ran out from behind the tall clock and seized his arm. "You've been
+trying to avoid me. Don't deny it. I say you have. As if it was any use!
+No, you shall not go upstairs and take off your boots first. You will
+just come into the study, mud and all, and tell me--tell me what you
+_know_, not what you have been making up, mind! I'm going to have
+the truth."
+
+"Well, you can't," returned her brother, shortly, as he allowed himself
+to be dragged across the hall, which looked cheerless enough without a
+fire, and with the great, clumsy, hideous, maimed old Yule log filling
+up the fireplace and reminding everybody of all that it had cost.
+
+Doreen pushed him into the study and shut the door.
+
+"Why can't I know the truth?" asked she, eying him steadily. "Do you
+mean that you have found out Dudley doesn't care for me."
+
+Max glanced at his sister's face, and then looked away. He had not known
+till that moment, when he caught the tender look of anxiety in her big
+brown eyes, how strong her love of Dudley was. An impulse of anger
+against the man seized him, and he frowned.
+
+"Why, surely you know already that he doesn't care for you, in the way
+he ought to care, or he would never have neglected you, never have given
+you up!" said he, ferociously.
+
+"I'm not so sure about that. At any rate I want to know what you found
+out. Don't think I'm not strong enough to bear it, whatever it is!"
+
+"Well, then, I'll tell you. He _is_ off his head. He has got mixed
+up in some way with a set of people no sane man would trust himself with
+for half an hour, and--and--and--well, they say--the people say he's done
+something that would hang him. There! Is that enough for you?"
+
+He felt that he was a brute to tell her, but he could see no other way
+out of the difficulty in which her own persistency had placed him. She
+stared at him for a few seconds with blanched cheeks, clasping her
+hands. Then she said in a whisper:
+
+"You don't mean--murder?"
+
+Her brother's silence gave her the answer.
+
+There was a long pause. Then she spoke in a changed voice, under her
+breath:
+
+"Poor Dudley!"
+
+Max was astonished to see her take the announcement so quietly.
+
+"Well, now you see that it is impossible to do anything for him, don't
+you?"
+
+"Indeed, I do not!" retorted Doreen, with spirit. "We don't know the
+story yet. We don't know whether there is any truth in it at all; or, if
+there is, what the difficulties were that he was in. Look, Max. You must
+remember how worried he has been lately. I have heard him make excuses
+for people who did rash things, and I have always agreed with him. You
+see, I knew how good-hearted he was, and I know that he would never have
+done anything mean or underhand or unworthy."
+
+"Don't you call murder, manslaughter--whatever it is--unworthy?" asked
+Max, irritably.
+
+"Not without knowing something about it," answered she. "And I think
+there's generally more to be said for the man who commits murder than
+for any other criminal. And--and"--her voice gave way and began to shake
+with tears--"I don't care what he's done, I'm sorry for him. I--I want
+to help him, or--or, at least, I want to see him to tell him so!"
+
+Max was alarmed. Knowing the spirit and courage of his brilliant sister,
+he was afraid lest she should conceive the idea of starting off herself
+on some mad enterprise; so he said hastily:
+
+"He's away now, you know. He's gone without leaving any address. Perhaps
+I was wrong, after all. Perhaps when he comes back he will be himself
+again, and--and everything will be cleared up. We can only wait and
+see."
+
+But this lame attempt at comfort met with no warm response from his
+sister. She looked at him with a poor little attempt at a contemptuous
+smile, and then, afraid of breaking down altogether, sprang up from the
+arm-chair in which she had been sitting and left him to himself.
+
+Max did not recover his usual spirits at luncheon, where everybody else
+was full of mirthful anticipation of the household dance, another idea
+of Mr. Wedmore's, which was to be a feature of the evening. And after
+that meal, instead of offering to drive to the station to meet Miss
+Appleby, as everybody had expected, Max took himself off, nobody knew
+where, and did not return home until dusk.
+
+Coming through a little side gate in the park, he got into the great
+yard behind the house, where the stables stood on one side and a huge
+barn, which was only used as a storage place for lumber, on the other.
+And it occurred to him that if the woman of whom the groom told him were
+still hanging about the premises, as the servants seemed to think, this
+was the very place she might be expected to choose as a hiding-place.
+
+So he pushed open the great, creaking door of the barn and went in. It
+was very dark in there, and the air was cold and damp. A musty smell
+from old sacks, rotting wood and mildewed straw came to his nostrils, as
+he made his way carefully over the boards with which the middle part of
+the barn had, for some forgotten purpose or other, been floored.
+
+Little chinks of light from above showed great beams, some with ropes
+hanging from them, and stacks of huge lumber of fantastic shapes to
+right and left.
+
+Max stood still in the middle of the floor and listened for a sound. But
+he heard nothing. Suddenly he thought of the signal by the use of which
+he had summoned Carrie to the door of the house by the wharf.
+
+Getting close to one of the piles of lumber, he gave two taps on the
+panel of a broken wooden chest, waited a couple of seconds, and then
+gave two taps more.
+
+There was a shuffling noise along the boards on the other side of the
+stack, followed by the striking of a match.
+
+Max was around the obstacle in a moment. Holding a piece of candle in
+her bony hand was Mrs. Higgs.
+
+"Hello!" said he.
+
+She said nothing. But the candle shook in her hand, and by the glassy
+look of dull yet fierce surprise in her colorless eyes Max saw that this
+woman, who had connived at his imprisonment in the room with the dead
+man, had never expected to see him again--alive.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+MR. WEDMORE'S SECOND FREAK.
+
+
+Even if Max had not had such an ugly experience of the ways of Mrs.
+Higgs, even if this meeting with her in the barn had been his first, his
+sensations would hardly have been agreeable ones. There was something
+uncanny about the old woman, something which her quiet, shuffling
+movements and her apparent lack of interest in what went on around her
+only served to accentuate. Even now, while suffering the shock of a
+great surprise, Max could feel rather than see the effect which the
+unexpected meeting had upon her.
+
+For she uttered no cry, no word; her eyes scarcely opened wider than
+before. Her jaw dropped a little, and then began to move rapidly up and
+down; that was all. And yet, as Max looked at her--at this helpless,
+infirm old creature with the palsied hands and the lackluster eyes--he
+shivered.
+
+"You vile old hag!" thought he to himself. And then his thoughts flew to
+Carrie, and he asked himself what the attraction could be which bound
+her to this wicked old woman.
+
+Mrs. Higgs, after staring at him in dead silence for what seemed a long
+time, asked, as composedly as if their meeting had been the most natural
+thing in the world:
+
+"Where's your friend, young man?"
+
+"W--what friend?" stammered Max.
+
+"Oh, you don't know, I suppose!" retorted Mrs. Higgs, derisively. "No
+more than you know what you wanted to come spying about Plumtree Wharf
+for, eh?"
+
+Max made no answer. There came a vixenish gleam into the old woman's
+faded eyes.
+
+"What did you come for, eh?" pursued she, sharply. "Who sent you? Not
+he, I know! When he's got anything to do at the wharf he comes himself."
+
+And Mrs. Higgs gave an ugly, mirthless chuckle.
+
+As Max stared at the withered, lined face, which was growing each moment
+more repulsive in his eyes, a feeling of horror and of intense pity for
+Dudley seized him. To be pursued, as his friend evidently was pursued,
+by this vicious old hag, was a fate hideous enough to expiate every
+crime in the Decalogue.
+
+A little rapid reflection made him decide that a bold course of defiance
+was the best to be taken. Whatever Dudley might have done, and whatever
+terrors Mrs. Higgs might hold over his head, it was very certain, after
+all, that the evidence of such a creature, living in such an underground
+fashion, could never be a serious danger to a man in his position.
+Dudley himself seemed rather to have lost sight of this fact, certainly;
+but it could not be less than a fact for all that.
+
+"Mr. Horne is not likely to trouble you or the rest of the thieves at
+the wharf again," said Max, with decision. "He's gone abroad for a
+holiday. And if you don't take yourself off at once, or if you turn up
+here again, or if you attempt to annoy us or Mr. Horne, in any way
+whatever, you'll find the police at your heels before you know where you
+are."
+
+Then into her dull eyes there came a look of malignity which made Max
+doubt whether he had done well to be so bold.
+
+"Thieves, eh? Tell your friend we're thieves, and see what he says to
+that! Police, eh? Tell your friend _that_, tell your friend
+_that_, and see whether he'll thank you for your interference!"
+
+"Mr. Horne is away, as I told you."
+
+"Away, is he? But he won't be away long. Oh, no; he'll come back--he'll
+come back. Or if he doesn't," added Mrs. Higgs, with complacency, "I'll
+fetch him."
+
+"Well, you've got to leave this place at once," said Max, with decision.
+"We don't allow strangers in the barn, and if you don't go quietly at
+once, I must send somebody to turn you out."
+
+Mrs. Higgs kept her eyes fixed upon him with her usual blank stare while
+he said this in a very loud and decided tone. When he had finished she
+suddenly blew out the light with so much unnecessary force that Max felt
+something like a gust of wind upon his face.
+
+"Turn me out!" and she laughed harshly. "Turn me out! Send for the
+police to do it, if you like."
+
+Max went out of the barn, listening to her cackling laugh, and not
+feeling comfortable until he had found his way into the open air. He at
+once gave orders to the stablemen and gardeners to search the barn and
+to turn out the strangers they might find there.
+
+But though they hunted in every corner, they found no one, and Max was
+only too glad to come to the conclusion that Mrs. Higgs had taken his
+advice, and got away with as little delay as possible.
+
+This incident, however, following so closely on the heels of his
+experiences at the wharf, took away all the zest with which Max should
+have entered into the programme which, by Mr. Wedmore's special wish,
+had been prepared for that evening; and while Doreen and Queenie and
+Mildred Appleby and two young nephews of Mr. Wedmore's chattered and
+laughed, and made dinner a very lively affair, Max was quiet and what
+his cousins called "grumpy," and threatened to be a wet blanket on the
+evening's entertainment.
+
+"Going to have all the servants in to dance Sir Roger!" cried he, in
+dismay, when Doreen told him the news. "Good heavens! Hasn't he had a
+lesson in yesterday's tomfoolery and what came of it? How do the
+servants like the idea?"
+
+"Of course they hate it," answered Doreen, "and mamma has been all day
+trying to coax the cook to indulge him, and not to walk off and leave us
+to cook the Christmas dinner. And, of course, this assurance that the
+notion was distasteful to everybody had made papa more obstinate than
+ever. Oh, we shall have a merry time."
+
+Now, down in the depths of his heart Mr. Wedmore had begun to feel some
+misgivings about his plans for keeping Christmas in the good old
+fashion. But the first failure, the colossal mistake of the Yule Log,
+had made him obstinate instead of yielding, and he had set his teeth and
+made up his mind that they should all be merry in the way he chose, or
+they should not be merry at all.
+
+The fact was that this prosaic middle-aged gentleman, who had passed the
+greater part of his life immersed in day-books and ledgers and the
+details of a busy city man's life, found time hang heavy on his hands in
+these prosperous days of his retirement, and in this condition he had
+had his mind inflamed by pictures of the life that was led in The
+Beeches by his forerunners, easy-going, hard-riding, hard-drinking
+country gentlemen, with whom, if the truth were known, he had nothing in
+common.
+
+Fired by the desire to live the life they led, to enjoy it in the
+pleasant old fashion, it had seemed to him an especially happy custom to
+give a dance at which masters and servants should join hands and make
+merry together. He had never assisted at one of these balls, and he
+refused to listen to his wife's suggestion that it should take place in
+the servants' hall, that the servants should be allowed to invite their
+own friends, and that the family should limit itself to one brief dance
+with their dependants and then leave them to enjoy themselves in their
+own way.
+
+No, it was his will that the dance should be held in the hall of the
+house, and that the pictures of the Illustrated Christmas Numbers should
+be realized to the utmost.
+
+Dinner, therefore, was scrambled over in a hurry, and the family with
+their guests went upstairs to the drawing-room or out to the
+billiard-room, while preparations were made for the great event of the
+evening, the lighting of the Yule Log and Sir Roger de Coverley.
+
+Then the first mishap occurred in the inopportune arrival of the Rev.
+Lisle Lindsay, whose rather sedate and solemn appearance cast a slight
+gloom upon everybody's spirits, which deepened when Queenie whispered to
+Mildred that he looked upon dancing as a frivolous and worldly amusement
+scarcely to be tolerated and never to be encouraged.
+
+He soon made an opportunity of devoting himself to Doreen, who was
+playing the lightest of light music at the piano in the corner of the
+room.
+
+It had been a fancy of Mr. Wedmore's, who had his own way in everything
+with his wife, to have this drawing-room, which was large and square and
+lighted by five windows, three at the front and two at the side,
+furnished entirely with old things of the style of eighty years back,
+with Empire chairs, sofas and cabinets, as little renovated as possible.
+The effect was quaint and not unpleasing; a little cold, perhaps, but
+picturesque and graceful.
+
+The grand piano had a case specially made for it, painted a dull
+sage-green and finished in a manner to give it a look of the less
+massive harpsichord.
+
+It was at this instrument that Doreen sat, making a very pretty picture
+in her white silk, square-necked frock, with bands of beaver fur on the
+bodice and sleeves and an edging of the same fur round the bottom of the
+skirt.
+
+"My purpose in coming here to-night, Miss Wedmore," said Mr. Lindsay,
+when he had delivered an unimportant message from the vicar's wife about
+the church decorations, "was really to bring you my good wishes for this
+blessed season. I am afraid I shall have no opportunity of speaking to
+you to-morrow, though, of course, I shall see you in the church."
+
+"Oh, yes, we shall all be at church," said Doreen, quickly.
+
+She noted something rather unusual in the curate's manner--a nervous
+excitement which presaged danger; and she dashed into an air from "The
+Shop-Girl" with an energy which was meant to have the effect of checking
+his solemn ardor.
+
+But the curate had the stuff of a man in him, and did not mean to be put
+off. This opportunity was really a good one, for the talk in the room,
+which his arrival had checked for an instant, was now going on merrily.
+Mrs. Wedmore did her best to keep up the conversation. Nothing would
+have pleased her better than to see Doreen transfer her tender feeling
+for the discredited Dudley to such a suitable and irreproachable person
+as Lisle Lindsay. She kept a hopeful eye on the pair at the piano while
+she went on talking to her husband's old friend, Mrs. Hutchinson, who
+was staying with them for Christmas.
+
+"And at the same time," went on Mr. Lindsay, as he moved his chair a
+little nearer, so that, under cover of the music, he could speak without
+being overheard, "to speak to you on a subject which is--is--in fact,
+very near my heart."
+
+This was worse than Doreen had expected. She glanced round at him with
+rather a frightened expression. "Oh, don't let us talk about
+anything--anything serious now," said she. "Just when we shall be going
+downstairs to--to dance--in a few minutes."
+
+It was a very inconsequent objection to make, and Mr. Lindsay simply
+ignored it.
+
+"It is, in fact, about myself that I wish to speak, Miss Wedmore," he
+pursued relentlessly. "You cannot have failed to notice what a--what a
+deep interest I take in all that concerns you. And latterly I have
+flattered myself that--"
+
+"But people should never flatter themselves about anything!" cried
+Doreen, desperately, as she suddenly laid her hands in her lap and
+turned from the piano to face the worst. "Now I'll give you an example.
+I flattered myself a little while ago that a man cared a great deal
+about me--a man I cared a great deal for myself. And all the while he
+didn't; or, at least, I am afraid he didn't. And yet, you know, I can't
+help hoping that perhaps I didn't only flatter myself, after all; that
+perhaps he will come back some day and tell me I was right."
+
+Mr. Lindsay heard her in silence, with his mild eyes fixed on the
+carpet. But when she had finished he looked up again, and she was
+shocked to find that the gentle obstinacy which had been in his face
+before was there still.
+
+"I am, indeed, sorry for your disappointment," he said sweetly. "Or
+rather I should be if it were such a one that you could not hope
+to--to--in fact, to get over it. But--but these are trials which may be,
+perhaps, only sent to show that you, even you, happily placed as you are
+and gifted of the Almighty, are human, after all, and not beyond
+suffering. And--and it may give you an opportunity of seeing that there
+are others who can appreciate you better, and who would only be too glad
+to--to--to--"
+
+"To step into his shoes!" finished Doreen for him, with a sigh. "I know
+what you were going to say, and if you won't be stopped, I suppose I
+must hear you out. But, oh, dear, I do wish you wouldn't!"
+
+He was not to be put off like that. In fact, he was not to be put off by
+any available means. He sighed a little, and persisted.
+
+"I am glad you have guessed what I was going to say, Miss Wedmore,
+though I should not have put it quite in that way. And why should you
+not want to hear it? I should have thought that even you must be not
+quite indifferent to any man's honest feelings of esteem and admiration
+toward you!"
+
+Doreen was looking at him helplessly, with wide-open eyes. Did he really
+think any girl was ever moved by this sort of address, deliberately
+uttered, with the words well chosen, well considered? As different as
+possible from the abrupt, staccato method used by Dudley in the dear old
+days!
+
+"Oh, I'm not indifferent at all!" said she, quickly. "I'm never
+indifferent to anything or anybody. But I'm sorry, very sorry that--that
+you should feel--"
+
+She stopped short, looked at him for a moment curiously, and asked with
+great abruptness:
+
+"_Do_ you feel anything in the matter? _Really_ feel, I mean?
+I don't think you do; I don't think you can. You couldn't speak so
+_nicely_, if you did."
+
+He looked at her with gentle reproach. His was not a very tempestuous
+feeling, perhaps, but it was genuine, honest, sincere. He thought her
+the most splendid specimen of handsome, healthy well-brought-up
+womanhood he had ever met, and he thought also that the beneficent
+influence of the Church, exercised through the unworthy medium of
+himself, would mold her into a creature as near perfection as was
+humanly possible.
+
+Her way of receiving his advances was perplexing. He was not easily
+disconcerted, but he did not answer her immediately. Then he said
+softly:
+
+"How could I speak in any way but what you call 'nicely' to _you_? To
+the lady whom I am asking to be my wife?"
+
+Doreen looked startled.
+
+"Oh, don't, please! You don't know what a mistake you're making. I'm not
+at all the sort of wife for you, really! Indeed, I couldn't recommend
+myself as a wife to anybody, but especially to you."
+
+"Why--especially to me?"
+
+"Well, I'm not good enough."
+
+"That sounds rather flattering. And yet, somehow, I don't fancy you mean
+it to be so."
+
+"Well, no, I don't," said Doreen, frankly; "for I mean by 'good' a lot
+of qualities that I don't think highly of myself, such as getting up in
+the middle of the night to go to early service, and being civil to
+people I hate, and--and a lot of things like that. Don't you know that
+I'm eminently deficient in all the Christian virtues?"
+
+This was a question the curate had never asked himself; but it came upon
+him at this moment with disconcerting force that she was right. Luckily
+for his self-esteem, it did not occur to him at the same time that it
+was this very lack of the conventional virtues, a certain freshness and
+originality born of her defiant neglect of them, which formed the
+stronger part of her attractiveness in his eyes.
+
+After a short pause he answered, with his usual deliberation:
+
+"Indeed, I am quite sure that you do yourself injustice."
+
+"Oh, but I'm equally sure that I don't. I not only leave undone the
+things which you would say I ought to do, and do the things which I
+ought not to do, but I'm rather proud of it."
+
+Still, Mr. Lindsay would not accept the repulse. He persisted in making
+excuses for her and in believing them.
+
+"Well, you fulfill your most important duty; you are the happiness and
+the brightness of the house. Your father's face softens whenever you
+come near him. Now, as that is your chief duty, and you fulfill it so
+well, I am quite sure that if you entered another state of life where
+your duties would be different, you would accommodate yourself, you
+would fulfill your new duties as well as you did the old."
+
+Doreen rewarded him for this speech with a humorous look, in which there
+was something of gratitude, but more of rebellion.
+
+"Accommodate myself? No, I couldn't. I think, do you know, that if I
+were ever foolish enough to marry--and it would be foolishness in a
+spoiled creature like me--I should want a husband who could accommodate
+himself to me. Now, you couldn't. Clergymen never accommodate themselves
+to anything or anybody."
+
+The Reverend Lisle Lindsay did at last look rather disconcerted.
+Mischievous Doreen saw her triumph and made the most of it.
+
+"So that settles the matter, doesn't it? I can't accommodate myself; you
+can't either. What could possibly come of a union like that?"
+
+"The greatest happiness this world is capable of affording, and the hope
+of a happiness more abiding hereafter," said he; "all the happiness that
+a true woman can bring to the man she loves."
+
+Doreen threw up her head quickly.
+
+"Ah! that's just it," cried she. "'To the man she loves!' But you are
+not the man I love, Mr. Lindsay. I suppose it's one of the things I
+ought not to do--one of the unconventional and so unchristian things--to
+own that I love a man who doesn't love me. But I do. Now, you know who
+it is, and everybody knows; but, for all that, you mustn't tell; you
+must keep it as a secret that Doreen Wedmore--proud, stuck-up Doreen--is
+breaking her heart for the sake of a man who--who--" Her voice broke and
+she paused for a moment to recover herself; then she said, in a lighter
+tone: "Ah, well, we mustn't be hard upon him, either, for we don't
+know--it's so difficult to know."
+
+She sprang up from her seat; and the curate rose too. By her tactful
+mention of her own unlucky love she had softened the blow of her
+rejection of him. She had been rather too kind indeed, considering the
+tenacity of the person she had to deal with; for the curate considered
+his case by no means so hopeless as it was; and instead of taking
+himself off forlornly, as she would have wished, he stayed on until the
+young men swarmed up from the billiard-room and bore the whole party
+down to the hall.
+
+Mr. Wedmore, in great glee at having carried his point in the face of
+the family resistance, led Mrs. Hutchinson down stairs, and then handed
+her over to Max, while he himself threw open the door leading to the
+servants' quarters, and invited the group of neat maids and stalwart
+young men from the garden and stable to enter.
+
+But here there was a hitch in the arrangements. The cook, in a bad
+temper, smarting with disapproval of the whole business, had refused to
+join the others, and, as nothing could be done without her, Mr. Wedmore
+had to penetrate into the servants' hall, where he found her sitting in
+state, and, luckily, dressed for the occasion.
+
+Never in his life had Mr. Wedmore exerted himself so much to please any
+woman as he now did to soften the outraged feelings of the cook, who was
+a stout, red-faced woman, whose days of comeliness and charm were long
+since gone by. He at last succeeded in inducing her to accompany him to
+the hall, where he arrived in triumph, with a flushed face and nervous
+manner, after an interval which had been put to great advantage by the
+younger gentlemen of the party, who were all anxious to dance with the
+prettiest housemaid.
+
+Their eagerness had the effect of annoying the rest of the maids, and
+effectually spoiling whatever enjoyment they might have got out of the
+dance in the circumstances, while it by no means pleased the ladies of
+the family and their friends, who stood a little apart and whispered to
+each other that this sort of thing was bound to be a failure, and why
+couldn't papa, dear old, stupid papa, leave _them_ out of the affair,
+and let the boys have a romp in the servants' hall without their
+assistance?
+
+The pause had made the ladies so frigid and the men-servants so shy, the
+pretty housemaid so merry and the plain ones so solemn, that disaster
+threatened the gathering, when Mr. Wedmore and the cook made their
+opportune appearance.
+
+Max, his cousins and young Hutchinson gave three cheers, in the midst of
+which demonstration the Rev. Lisle Lindsay endeavored to make his escape
+by the front door.
+
+Unhappily, Mr. Wedmore, elated by his victory over the cook, espied him,
+and straightway forbade him to leave the house until after "Sir Roger."
+In vain the curate protested; pleaded the privileges and exemptions of
+his sacred calling.
+
+Mr. Wedmore was obdurate; and, to the disgust of everybody, including
+himself, the Rev. Lisle Lindsay found himself told off to dance with the
+pretty housemaid, being the only man in the room who was not anxious for
+the honor.
+
+This mishap cast a gloom over the proceedings. The rest of the gentlemen
+found it hard to extract a word from the other maids, who all considered
+themselves slighted. And Mr. Wedmore had great difficulty in persuading
+the men-servants to come forward and take their places by the partners
+he chose for them. To get them to choose for themselves was out of the
+question, after one young gardener had availed himself of the invitation
+by darting across the floor and asking Miss Queenie, in a hoarse voice
+and with many blushes, if she would dance with him.
+
+Of course, this piece of daring made a sensation so great that to get
+another man follow the bold example was impossible.
+
+In the end, Mrs. Wedmore found a partner in the coachman, who was a
+portly and solemn person, with no talents in the way of dancing or of
+conversation. Doreen danced with the butler, who, between nervousness
+and gloom, found it impossible to conceal his opinion that master was
+making a fool of himself; and the rest of the company being quite as ill
+matched, "Sir Roger" was performed with little grace and less
+liveliness, while the Yule Log, after emitting a great deal of smoke,
+sputtered out into blackness, to everybody's relief.
+
+The end of it was, however, a little better than the beginning. As the
+dancers warmed to their work, their latent enthusiasm for the exercise
+was awakened; and "Sir Roger" was kept up until the fingers of the
+organist, who had been engaged to play for them on a piano placed in a
+corner of one of the passages, ached with the cold and with the hard
+work.
+
+When the dance was over and the party had broken up, Doreen, who had
+done her best to keep up the spirits of the rest, broke down. Max met
+her on her way to her room, and saw that the tears were very near her
+eyes.
+
+"What's the matter now?" said he, crossly. "You seemed all right
+downstairs. I thought you and Lindsay seemed to be getting on very well
+together."
+
+"Did you? Well, you were wrong," said she, briefly, as she shut herself
+into the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A MESSAGE FROM THE WHARF.
+
+
+Christmas was over, and The Beeches had subsided into its normal state
+of prosperous tranquility. Max had had a fresh situation discovered for
+him, and he was now wasting his time on a stool in a merchant's office,
+as he had wasted it in other offices many times before. His father's
+chronic state of exasperation with his laziness was growing acute, and
+he had informed Max that unless he chose to stick to his work this time
+he would have to be shipped off to the Cape. No entreaties on the part
+of Mrs. Wedmore or the girls were of any avail against this fixed
+resolution on Mr. Wedmore's part, or against the inflexible laziness of
+Max himself. He detested office work, and he confessed that if he was
+not to be allowed to lead the country life he loved, he would prefer
+enlistment in the Cape Mounted Police to drudgery in a dark corner of a
+city office.
+
+It was on a foggy evening in January that Max, for the first time in
+three weeks (an unprecedented interval), knocked at the door of Dudley
+Horne's chambers.
+
+There was a long delay, and Max, after a second knock, was going to
+withdraw, in the belief that Dudley was not in, after all, when he heard
+slow steps within, and paused.
+
+The door was opened a very little way, and Dudley looked out.
+
+Max stared at him for a moment without speaking. For over his friend
+there had passed some great change. Dudley had never been florid of
+complexion, but now he looked ghastly. His face had always been grave
+and strong rather than cheerful, but now the expression of his
+countenance was forbidding.
+
+He looked at Max, glanced down the stairs, and nodded without a smile.
+
+"Hello!" said he, with the letter of familiarity, but without its
+spirit. "Haven't seen anything of you for a century. Up in town again,
+eh?"
+
+"Yes. Can't I come in?" said Max.
+
+Dudley had come outside instead of inviting his friend in. At these
+words, however, he turned abruptly, and himself led the way into the
+little ante-chamber.
+
+"Oh, yes, oh, yes, come in, of course. Come in."
+
+Max accepted the cool invitation in silence, shut the door behind him,
+and followed his friend into the sitting-room, where the table was laid
+for a solitary dinner.
+
+But it was the writing-table which caught the eye of Max and riveted his
+attention. For a photograph lay there, a woman's photograph, and as it
+was just in front of the chair Dudley had been using, as if he had been
+occupied in looking at it, it was not unnatural that the brother of
+Doreen should be curious to know whose picture it was.
+
+So Max got around the table quickly by the opposite way to that which
+Dudley took, and threw himself into a chair by the writing-table in such
+a position that he could see what was on it. And he saw two things: One
+was that the photograph was that of Doreen; the other that a postal
+order for one pound, which lay beside the photograph, and upon which the
+ink was not yet dry, was made out to "Mrs. Edward Jacobs."
+
+Max felt himself blushing as Dudley snatched up the postal orders--there
+were two of them--and slip them into an envelope. Then the eyes of the
+two men met. And Dudley knew what Max had seen.
+
+He seemed to hesitate a moment, then glanced at Max again, sat down to
+the writing-table, and took up a pen. As he directed the letter, he said
+quietly:
+
+"Do you know whom I'm sending this money to?"
+
+"Well, I did catch sight of the name," stammered Max, unable to hide the
+fact that the question was an embarrassing one to him.
+
+"Yes," went on Dudley, as he showed him the directed letter, "it is to
+the widow of the poor devil who was found in the Thames the other
+day--man who was once in my late father's employment--Edward Jacobs."
+
+"Oh, yes, I've heard," stammered Max again.
+
+The incident of Dudley sending money to the woman would have seemed to
+him trivial and even natural enough, if it had not been for the curious
+look of hard defiance which Dudley gave him out of his black eyes. It
+was like a challenge; it set his friend wondering again, asking himself
+again all those tormenting questions about Edward Jacobs's death which
+he had allowed to slip into a back place in his thoughts.
+
+As he looked down at the end of the white table-cloth which touched the
+floor a loud laugh from Dudley startled him and made him look up. And
+when he did so the conviction that his friend was mad, or, at least,
+subject to attacks of insanity, flashed into his mind more strongly than
+ever. Dudley was leaning back, tilting his chair till it touched the
+dinner table, distending his jaws in a hard, mocking laugh as unlike
+mirth as possible.
+
+"Oh, yes, so I've heard--so I've heard!" repeated he, mockingly. "And,
+of course, that's all you've heard, isn't it? And you've never taken the
+trouble to make any personal inquiries in the matter? Or thought of
+taking a journey, say, as far as Plumtree Wharf to make any private
+investigations?"
+
+Max was startled. He saw clearly enough that which he would fain have
+denied--that Dudley was in communication with the people at the wharf,
+from whom he must have obtained this information. For a moment he was
+silent. It was not until Dudley's harsh laughter had died away, and he,
+rather surprised to see how quietly Max took his accusation, had wheeled
+round in his chair to look at his friend, that Max said:
+
+"Well, I did go to the wharf. And I'll tell you why. Doreen is breaking
+her heart about you, and she would have me find out what was wrong with
+you."
+
+Then there was silence.
+
+"God bless her!" said Dudley at last, in a hoarse whisper.
+
+Another silence.
+
+"What did you tell her?" whispered Dudley.
+
+"What could I tell her? I said you were mad."
+
+"And what did you--_think_?"
+
+"Well, I hardly know myself."
+
+"That's right! That's the proper attitude!" cried Dudley.
+
+And then he laughed again uproariously.
+
+And in the midst of his laughter there was a knock at the door.
+
+For a moment neither man moved. Then Dudley got up slowly and walked out
+of the room, closing the door behind him. Max heard him open the outer
+door, and then he heard a voice he knew--a young girl's voice--say:
+
+"This is Mr. Dudley Horne's place, and you are Mr. Dudley Horne?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then let me come in. I've come from--"
+
+The voice dropped, and Max did not catch the rest.
+
+"Stop! I'll speak to you here," said Dudley, trying to keep her in the
+little ante-room.
+
+But the girl came straight in. It was Carrie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+A SORCERESS.
+
+
+Max was standing on the other side of the lamp, and Carrie did not see
+him. She announced her errand at once in a straightforward and
+matter-of-fact manner.
+
+"Dick Barker's been nabbed for stealing a watch. You've got to get him
+off."
+
+"What do you mean? I've got to get him off?" cried Dudley, indignantly.
+
+Carrie laughed.
+
+"It's the message I was told to give you; that's all."
+
+"Well, take this message back: that I refuse to have anything to do with
+your pickpocket."
+
+Carrie turned to the door.
+
+"All right. I'm to say that to Mrs. Higgs?"
+
+"Stop!" thundered Dudley.
+
+Carrie paused, with her hand on the door.
+
+"Did Mrs. Higgs send you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then wait a minute."
+
+All the indignation, all the defiance, had gone from his tone. He looked
+anxious, haggard.
+
+Carrie sat down like an automaton in the chair nearest to the door.
+
+There was a silence of some minutes' duration when Carrie announced
+herself as a messenger from Mrs. Higgs.
+
+Dudley, who had either forgotten the presence of Max or was past caring
+how much his friend learned, since he already knew so much, walked up
+and down between the fireplace and the bookcase on the opposite wall,
+evidently debating what he should do. Carrie never once raised her eyes
+from the carpet, but sat like a statue beside the door, apparently as
+indifferent as possible as to the message she should take back.
+
+Max had risen from his seat and was standing where he could get a full
+view of her over the lamp on the dinner-table between them. Perhaps it
+was the yellow paper shade around the light which made the young girl's
+face look so ghastly, or the rusty black clothes she wore. A plain
+skirt, the same that she had worn when he saw her first, a black stuff
+cape of home-made pattern, and a big black straw hat which had evidently
+done duty throughout the summer; all were neatly brushed and clean, but
+well-worn and lusterless, and they heightened the appearance of deadly
+pallor which, struck Max so much.
+
+Her eyes he could not see; her scarlet lips were tightly closed, and her
+face seemed to him to wear an air of dogged determination which helped
+him to understand how it was that she had escaped the perils of her
+unprotected girlhood. Certainly it would have taken a good deal of
+courage, impudence or alcoholic excitement to make a man address to this
+statuesque and cold-faced creature a flippant word.
+
+She did not see Max, who kept so quiet that it was easy for her to
+overlook the presence of a third person in the room. He watched her
+intently, taking even more interest in her under these new conditions
+than he had done before. Would she retain her cold look and manner when
+he made his presence known to her, as he intended presently to do? The
+question was full of interest to him.
+
+Presently Dudley stopped short in his walk, right in front of Carrie,
+who seemed, however, unconscious of or indifferent to the fact.
+
+"Who are you?" he asked, abruptly.
+
+Carrie looked up and surveyed him as if from a great distance.
+
+"I don't know," she answered, rather quaintly, but evidently unconscious
+of the oddity of her own answer. There was a moment's pause, and then
+she asked, briskly:
+
+"However, that doesn't matter to you, does it?"
+
+"Well, yes, it does. You come here as a messenger. Now, I want to know
+your credentials."
+
+"I don't know what you mean. I live with Mrs. Higgs. She makes me call
+her 'Granny.'"
+
+Dudley at once became strongly interested.
+
+"Live with her, do you, and call her Granny? I've never seen you when I
+have visited Mrs. Higgs."
+
+"I've seen you, though. I've seen--"
+
+She stopped.
+
+Dudley's hand, the one Max could see from where he stood, moved
+convulsively. After another short pause, Carrie raised her head, and
+their eyes met. Each evidently saw something oddly interesting in the
+face of the other.
+
+"I shall have to make some inquiries about you," said he at last.
+
+"Very well. You can go and make them."
+
+Her tone was matter-of-fact, but neither impudent nor defiant. She did
+not seem to care.
+
+"This Dick Barker, who has been nabbed, as you elegantly express it, is
+some sweetheart of yours, I suppose? And you have persuaded Mrs. Higgs
+to send me this absurd message, asking me to appear for him?"
+
+"No. He's nothing to me. Mrs. Higgs wants him got off, because if he's
+convicted he'll tell all he knows, or at least enough to set the police
+on."
+
+"And what is that to me?"
+
+Another pause, during which she looked down. Then Carrie raised her eyes
+again, and looked at him steadily.
+
+"Oh, well, you know best."
+
+Dudley turned away, muttering something under his breath. But the next
+moment he faced her again.
+
+"And you are waiting to take my answer back?"
+
+"Mrs. Higgs said there would be no answer."
+
+"Then what are you waiting for?"
+
+"To see whether there is one or not."
+
+"And you're going straight back with it to your granny, whatever it is?"
+asked Dudley, with the same sharp tone of cross-examination.
+
+"No. I am not going back to her. But I shall give the message to some
+one who is."
+
+There was another pause, longer than any of the previous ones. Then
+Dudley said, shortly:
+
+"You need not wait here any longer. I am going to see her myself."
+
+Carrie had got upon her feet in the automatic manner she had maintained
+throughout the interview.
+
+"Going to the wharf, are you?" she said, with the first sign of human
+interest she had shown. "Oh, very well."
+
+There was something noticeable in her tone, something which made Max
+suspicious and anxious on his friend's account. He came round the table
+with rapid steps, touched Dudley's shoulder, and said, in a low voice:
+
+"I'll go with you!"
+
+At the sound of his voice Carrie started violently, and looked up at
+Max, staring with eyes full of wonder and something very like delight.
+The rigidity with which she had held herself, the automatic manner, the
+hard, off-hand tone, all disappeared at once; and it was a new, a
+transformed Carrie, the fascinating, wayward, irresistible girl he had
+remembered, who gave him a smile and a nod, as she said, in a voice full
+of the old charm he remembered:
+
+"You! Is it you?" Then, breathlessly, with a change to anxiety in her
+voice: "And are you going, too?"
+
+"Yes. I'm going with my friend," said Max, as he came forward and held
+out a hand, into which she put hers very shyly; "from what I remember of
+my visit to your place, I think two visitors are better than one."
+
+"I don't know whether granny will think so," said Carrie, still in the
+same altered voice.
+
+She was shy, modest, charming. All her femininity had returned, and both
+the young men felt the influence of the change.
+
+Dudley, who had instinctively stepped back to make way for his friend,
+was watching them both with surprise and uneasiness.
+
+"We must risk Mrs. Higgs's displeasure," said Max, dryly, "unless,
+indeed, Dudley," and he turned to his friend, "you will give up this
+expedition altogether, as I strongly advise."
+
+But Dudley had made up his mind. He did not want Max to go with him, but
+he was resolved to go to the wharf. And his friend's heart failed within
+him at the news.
+
+"Don't you think it would be advisable to get a policeman to accompany
+you?" he hazarded in a low voice.
+
+But Dudley started violently at the suggestion.
+
+"Policeman!" repeated he in a louder tone than Max had used. "Good
+heavens, no!"
+
+Max, looking round, saw that Carrie had overheard; but she betrayed no
+emotion at the suggestion, even if she felt any.
+
+Dudley pulled out his watch.
+
+"I have an appointment for this evening," said he; "I must get out of
+it. Max, if you persist in going with me to the wharf, you're a fool.
+When your friends are doing well, you should stick to them; when they
+have got into a mess, you should have appointments elsewhere." Although
+he spoke cynically, there was underneath his scoffing tone a strain of
+tenderness. He turned quickly to the girl at this point, as if afraid of
+betraying more feeling than he had intended to do. "You've delivered
+your message," said he, sharply, "now you can go."
+
+But Carrie lingered. Looking shyly at Max, she said in a low voice:
+
+"Have you made up your mind that you will go with him?"
+
+"Yes," said Max.
+
+"All right," nodded Carrie. "Then I'll go, too."
+
+Dudley looked down at the girl with an impatient frown on his face.
+
+"Supposing we don't want you?" said he, dryly.
+
+"You will," she answered briefly, without even looking at him.
+
+Dudley considered for a moment, and then said shortly:
+
+"All right. We may as well keep an eye on you."
+
+Carrie laughed, and then remained silent. As for Max, he was struck with
+an odd likeness between the girl's dry, short manner of speaking to
+Dudley and Dudley's manner of speaking to her.
+
+At that moment there was an interruption in the shape of the waiter from
+a neighboring restaurant, who came in with the dinner Dudley had ordered
+for himself.
+
+"I shan't want it now," said Dudley, as the man put down the covered
+dishes on the table.
+
+"Why, surely you're not in such a hurry that you haven't time to dine?"
+said Max.
+
+Dudley made an impatient gesture.
+
+"I can get a biscuit somewhere, if I want it. I can't eat just now."
+
+"Let me eat your dinner for you, then," said Max. "I've had none. And if
+I'm to go rambling all over the town to look after you, I shall want
+something to keep me going."
+
+"All right," said Dudley. "I'm to come back here for you, then?"
+
+And he took up his overcoat. Max began to help him on with it.
+
+"Come in here a moment," said Dudley, in the same dry, abrupt manner as
+before; "I want to speak to you."
+
+Max followed him into the ante-room, and Dudley shut the sitting-room
+door.
+
+"That girl," said he, with, a frown--"where did you pick her up? At the
+wharf?"
+
+"I met her there. She was walking about outside, afraid to go in. The
+old woman had left her there alone, with a--a--dead body in the place."
+
+At these words a change came over Dudley's face.
+
+"You had better have left her alone," said he, sharply. "I wonder you
+hadn't more sense than to take up with a girl like that."
+
+Max fired up indignantly.
+
+"Like what? There's nothing wrong with the girl--nothing whatever.
+Surely her behavior to-night showed you that."
+
+"Her behavior!" said Dudley, mockingly. "Do you mean her behavior to me,
+or to you?"
+
+"Both. It was that of a modest, straightforward girl."
+
+"Very straightforward--to me. Very modest to you. But I would not waste
+too much time over her virtues if I were you."
+
+"I don't want to waste any," replied Max, shortly. "I don't see how we
+can shake her off, since she has offered to go back to the wharf with
+us. But I shall only be alone with her for the few minutes you leave us
+here. Or, better still, I'll go with you, and wait while you see your
+friend."
+
+"What friend?"
+
+"I thought you said you had an appointment with some one, and were going
+to put him off."
+
+"Oh, yes. Well, let us go to him now."
+
+And Dudley softly opened the outer door.
+
+Max perceived that what he proposed was to give Carrie the slip. He drew
+back a step.
+
+"We can't go without telling her, at least _I_ can't. The girl's
+quite right. It would be safer for her to go with us. For it's an awful
+place, not fit to trust oneself in."
+
+"And you think it would be the safer for the presence with us of one of
+the gang?"
+
+"She is not one of the gang!" cried Max, involuntarily raising his
+voice. "I'd stake my life on there being no harm in her!"
+
+The door of the sitting-room was opened behind them, and Carrie came
+out.
+
+"I couldn't help hearing what you said," she said, quietly. "But you
+needn't quarrel about me. One of you says there's no harm in me; the
+other says there is. I dare say you're both right. If you don't want me
+to go to the wharf with you, Mr. Horne, why, I won't go, of course. Good
+evening."
+
+She wanted to go out, but Dudley stood in the way, preventing her.
+
+"You're quite wrong, I assure you," said he, quickly. "There has been a
+little discussion about it, certainly; but I think you and my friend are
+quite right, and it would be much better if you would go with us--much
+better. Pray don't be annoyed at anything I've said. Remember, I have
+never seen you before, while my friend, who knows you better, naturally
+appreciates you more."
+
+Carrie maintained an attitude of cold stolidity while Dudley spoke.
+
+"Am I to go with you now, then?" she asked, coldly, when he had finished
+speaking.
+
+"Well, no, I think not. It will only take me ten minutes to go down into
+the Strand and put off the fellow I was going to the theatre with. I'll
+come back here, and we'll all go on together."
+
+Carrie looked at him steadfastly while he spoke, and he returned her
+gaze. For a few moments there was silence, and then it was broken by an
+exclamation from Max. He was staring first at one and then at the other
+with a face full of perplexity.
+
+"Do you know," cried he at last, "that when you both look like that, and
+I turn from one to the other, it is as if I were looking all the time
+_at the same face_?"
+
+Both Dudley and Carrie looked startled as they withdrew their eyes from
+each other's face. Then each sought the eyes of the other again as if it
+were furtively. Dudley seemed, of the two, the more impressed by his
+friend's words. He laughed with some constraint.
+
+"Fanciful, very fanciful," said he, mockingly. "What likeness can there
+be between a girl with a white face, fair hair and blue eyes," and he
+gave a glance at Carrie which had in it something of fear, "and a man of
+my type?"
+
+Max looked at him, and then said slowly:
+
+"It's not in the features, I know; it's not in the coloring; but it is
+there, for all that."
+
+"The young lady will not feel flattered," said Dudley, ironically. "I
+will leave you to make your peace with her, and when I come back, in ten
+minutes, I expect to find you both ready to start."
+
+He had his hand on the door, when some thought seemed to strike him, and
+he hesitated and turned to put his hand on the shoulder of Max. Then he
+swung the young man round in such a way that his own back was turned to
+Carrie. Looking steadily and with a certain look of affectionate regard
+into his friend's face, he formed with his lips and eyes a final warning
+against the girl. Then, with a nod, he went out, closing the door behind
+him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE PREY OF THE RIVER.
+
+
+"Help! Help!" shouted Dudley. "Do you want to drown me?"
+
+Great as the shock was of finding himself flung suddenly into what he
+supposed was a flooded cellar, Dudley did not at first believe that the
+old woman had any worse intention than that of playing him an ugly and
+malicious trick.
+
+But as he uttered this question he looked up, and saw her face half a
+dozen feet above him, wearing an expression of fiendish malignity which
+froze his blood.
+
+She was holding the candle so that she might see his face, and as he
+kept himself afloat in the small space available--for he had no room to
+strike out, and no foothold on the slimy earthen sides--he began to
+understand that she was in grim, deadly earnest, and that the place
+where the dead body of Edward Jacobs had been concealed was to be his
+own grave.
+
+Then he did not cry out. He saw that he would only be wasting his
+breath; that there was no mercy in the hard-light eyes, in the lines of
+the wicked, wrinkled mouth.
+
+He made a struggle to climb up one side of the pit in which he found
+himself; but the soft earth, slimy with damp, slipped and gave way under
+him. He tore out a hole with his fingers, then another, and another
+above that. And all the while she watched him without a word, apparently
+without a movement.
+
+But just as he came to a point in his ascent from which he might hope to
+make a spring for the top, she raised her thick stick and dealt him a
+blow on the head which sent him, with a splash and a gurgling cry, back
+into the water.
+
+He saw strange lights dancing before his eyes. He heard weird noises
+thundering in his ears, and above them all a chuckling laugh, like the
+merriment of a demon, as the boards of the displaced flooring were drawn
+slowly up by a cord from above until they closed over his head, shutting
+him down.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the police made their descent upon Dudley's chambers, Max, after
+giving his name and address, was allowed to go away without hindrance.
+
+He wanted Carrie to go with him, but as she persistently held down her
+head and refused to look at him, he came to the conclusion that she had
+her own reasons for wishing him to go away without her.
+
+So he went slowly down into the Strand, wondering whether he dared to go
+to the wharf to try to warn Dudley, or whether he would be drawing down
+danger upon his friend's head by doing so. For although he could not
+ascertain that he was himself shadowed, he thought that it might very
+possibly be the case.
+
+He had reached the corner of Arundel Street, when he found that Carrie
+was beside him. She was panting, out of breath.
+
+"Hello!" said he.
+
+"I've been such a round!" said she. "Just to see whether they were
+following me. But they weren't. I guessed you'd come this way, and I
+went down by the embankment and up to try to meet you. Are they after
+you?"
+
+"I don't think so. Dare we--"
+
+"Wharf? Yes, I think we may. By the way, I'll show you."
+
+She took him across Waterloo Bridge, where they took a cab and traversed
+southward to a point at which she directed the driver to stop.
+
+On the way, Max, from his corner of the hansom, watched the girl
+furtively. For a long time there was absolute silence between them. Then
+he came close to her suddenly, and peered into her face.
+
+"Carrie," said he, "I want you to marry me."
+
+Now Max had been some time making up his mind to put this
+proposition--some minutes, that is to say. He had been turning the
+matter over in his brain, and had imagined the blushing, trembling
+astonishment with which the lonely girl would receive his most
+unexpected proposal.
+
+But the astonishment was on his side, not on hers; for Carrie only
+turned her head a little, scarcely looking at him and staring out again
+in front of her immediately, remarked in the coolest manner in the
+world:
+
+"Marry you! Oh, yes, certainly. Why not?"
+
+Max was taken aback, and Carrie, at last stealing a glance at him,
+perceived this. She gave a pretty little kindly laugh, which made him
+expect that she would say something more tender, more encouraging.
+
+But she didn't.
+
+Turning her head away again, she went on quietly laughing to herself,
+until Max, not unnaturally irritated by this acceptance of his offer,
+threw himself back in his corner and tried to laugh also.
+
+"It's a very good joke, isn't it--an offer of marriage?" said he at
+last, in an offended tone.
+
+"Very," assented Carrie at once. "About the best I ever heard."
+
+And she went on laughing.
+
+"And I suppose," went on Max, unable to hide his annoyance, "that if I
+were to tell you it was not a joke at all, but that I spoke in downright
+earnest, you would laugh still more?"
+
+"Well, I think I should."
+
+"Well, laugh away, then. I was in earnest. I meant what I said. I was
+idiot enough to suppose you might find marrying me a better alternative
+than wandering about without any home. Extraordinary, wasn't it?"
+
+"Well," answered Carrie, subduing her mirth a little and speaking in
+that deep-toned voice she unconsciously used when she was moved--the
+voice which Max found in itself so moving--"I should say it was
+extraordinary, if I didn't know you."
+
+"If you didn't know me for an idiot, I suppose you mean," said Max,
+coldly, with much irritation.
+
+"Not quite that," replied she, in the same tone as before. "I meant if I
+hadn't known you to be one of those good-natured people who speak before
+they think."
+
+Max sat up angrily.
+
+"I have not spoken without thinking," said he, quickly. "I have done
+nothing but think of you ever since I first saw you; and my asking you
+to marry me is the outcome of my thinking."
+
+"Well, if I were you, I should think to better purpose than that."
+
+Her tone was rather puzzling to Max. There was mockery in it; but there
+was something more. He came to the conclusion, after a moment's
+consideration of it, and of the little that he could see of her face,
+that she felt more than she chose to show. So he put his arm around her
+and caught one of her hands.
+
+"Look here, Carrie," said he in a whisper. "I understand you. I know how
+you feel. I know you think it's neither decent nor wise to ask a girl to
+be your wife when you've only seen her twice. But just consider the
+circumstances. If I don't get you to say what I want you to say now, I
+shall lose sight of you to-night and never see you again. Now, I
+couldn't bear that--I couldn't, Carrie. I never saw a girl like you; I
+never met one who made me feel as you make me feel. And you like me,
+too. You wouldn't have troubled yourself about my going to the wharf if
+you hadn't cared. It's no use denying that you like me."
+
+Carrie turned upon him with energy.
+
+"Well, I don't deny it, if you care to hear that," said she, quickly. "I
+do like you. How could I help it? I liked you the moment I first saw
+you; I shouldn't have spoken to you if I hadn't; I should have been
+afraid. But what difference does that make? Do you think I'm a fool? Do
+you think I don't know that this feeling you have--and I believe in it,
+mind--is just because I'm a new sensation to you, who are a spoiled
+child--nothing more nor less. Oh, don't let's talk about it; it's
+silly."
+
+She had wrenched herself impatiently away from him, and now sat upright,
+frowning and looking straight in front of her as before.
+
+Max, not finally rebuffed, but rather puzzled what to make of this form
+of repulse, was silent for a few moments.
+
+"Well, if you won't let me talk about that," he said at last, "will you
+promise to let me know where you are going to, so that I shan't have to
+lose sight of you? Come, you like me well enough to agree to that, don't
+you?"
+
+Carrie hesitated.
+
+"I told you," she said at last, in a low voice, "that I didn't know
+myself where I was going. Have you forgotten that?"
+
+"But it wasn't true. You said it to put me off. You must know!"
+
+"Well, I shan't tell you. There!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because it would be the beginning of what I don't want and won't have.
+Because you'd come and see me, and I shouldn't have the heart to say you
+mustn't come; and in the end, if you persisted, I shouldn't have the
+heart to stop you from making a fool of yourself."
+
+"How, making a fool of myself?"
+
+"Why, by marrying me. Now don't pretend you don't know it's true.
+Marrying me would be just ruin--ruin! Oh, I know! What would your family
+say, and be right in saying? That you'd been got hold of by a girl
+nobody knew anything about, without any parents or friends, and who came
+from nobody knew where."
+
+"Ah, but when they knew you--"
+
+"They'd think less of me than they did before."
+
+"Nonsense! When they saw how beautiful you are and well educated and
+refined, they wouldn't believe you came from such a place as Limehouse."
+
+Carrie smiled.
+
+"I seem refined to you, because you didn't expect much where you found
+me. Put me beside your sisters and their friends, and I should be shy
+and awkward enough. No, I will not listen, and I want you to tell the
+driver to stop here."
+
+Whether this was the point she had proposed to reach or whether she
+wanted to cut short the subject, Max could not tell. But as the hansom
+stopped she sprang out and led the way hurriedly in the direction of the
+river. She knew her way about on this side of the river as well as on
+the other, for she went straight to the water's edge, got into a boat
+which was moored there with a dozen others, and, with a nod to a man
+with a pipe in his mouth who was loafing near the spot, she directed Max
+to jump in, and seized one oar while he took the other.
+
+"If we go from this side," she said, "we can make sure we're not
+followed, at all events."
+
+In the darkness they began to row across the river, where the traffic
+had practically ceased for the night.
+
+Threading their way between the barges, the great steam traders, with
+their ugly square hulks standing high out of the water, and the lesser
+craft that clustered about the larger like a swarm of bees round the
+hive, they came out upon the gray stream, slowly leaving behind one dim
+shore, with its gloomy wharves and warehouses, and nearing the other.
+The London lights looked dim and blurred through the mist.
+
+As they drew near the wharf, Carrie jerked her head in the direction of
+the little ugly cluster of buildings which Max remembered so well.
+
+"There's a passage under there," she said in a whisper, leaning forward
+on her oar, "through which they let the dead body of the man--you
+know--out into the river. It's just near here."
+
+Max shuddered, and at the same moment there burst from the girl's lips a
+hoarse cry.
+
+Max turned sharply, and saw that she was staring down into the water.
+
+"Look! Look there!" whispered she, gasping, trembling.
+
+"What is it?" cried he.
+
+But even as he asked, he knew that the dark object he saw floating in
+the water was the body of a man.
+
+By a dexterous movement of her oar, Carrie had brought the boat
+alongside the black mass, and then, with the boat-hook, which she used
+with an evidently practiced hand, she drew the body close.
+
+Max, sick with horror, leaned over just as Carrie's exertion's brought
+the face of the man to view.
+
+"He's dead!" cried he, hoarsely. "It's another murder by those vile
+wretches in there!"
+
+An exclamation burst from the girl's lips.
+
+"Look at him! Look at his face! Who is he?" whispered she, with
+trembling lips.
+
+Max looked, putting his hand under the head and lifting it out of the
+water.
+
+Then, with a great shout, he tore at the body, clutching it, trying to
+drag it into the boat.
+
+"Great Heaven! It's Dudley!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+A DUBIOUS REFUGE.
+
+
+The night was clammy and cold. The fog was growing thicker, blacker. And
+the water of the Thames, as Max plunged his hand into it, struggling to
+raise the body of his friend, was ice-cold to the touch.
+
+Carrie had seized her oar again, and was bringing the boat's head
+rapidly round, right under the stern of a barge which was moored close
+to Plumtree Wharf.
+
+"Hold him; don't let him go!" cried she imperiously. "But don't try to
+drag him into the boat until I get her alongside. You can't do it
+without help. And if you could you'd pull the boat over."
+
+The caution was necessary. Max had lost his head, and was making frantic
+efforts to raise the body of his friend over the boat's side.
+
+"But he may be alive still! And if there's a chance--oh, if there's the
+least chance--"
+
+"There'll be none if you don't do as I tell you!" cried Carrie, tartly.
+
+By this time a lad on board the barge was looking over the side at them,
+not seeing much, however, in the gloom. Carrie whistled twice.
+
+"Hello!" replied he, evidently recognizing a signal he was used to.
+
+"Is that Bob?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Lower a rope, and hold on like a man, Bob. We've got a man here drowned
+or half-drowned; and we want to get him on the wharf in a twinkling."
+
+"Right you are."
+
+The next moment the lad had lowered a rope over the side of the barge,
+and Carrie directed Max to pass it round the body of his friend. Then,
+she giving the orders as before, Bob from the barge above and Max from
+the boat below raised the body out of the water. Carrie had brought the
+little boat close to the barge, and held it in place with the boat-hook
+until the difficult task was safely accomplished, and the body of Dudley
+Horne laid upon the deck of the barge.
+
+"Now," said she to Max, "get up and help Bob to carry him ashore."
+
+Max, who was speechless with grief and as helpless as a child in these
+new and strange circumstances, obeyed her docilely, and climbed to the
+deck of the barge.
+
+"Now, Bob," went on Carrie, as she seized the second oar and prepared to
+row away, "carry him into the kitchen--you know your way--as fast as you
+can. And lay him down before the fire, if there is a fire; if not, make
+one. Sharp's the word, mind!"
+
+"All right, missus."
+
+Max looked down. Already she had disappeared in the gloom, and only the
+muffled sound of the oars as they dripped on the water told him that she
+had not yet gone far away.
+
+Suddenly he felt a rough pull at his arm.
+
+"Come on, mister!" cried Bob, briskly. "She said, 'Sharp is the word.'
+And when she says a thing she means it, you bet your life."
+
+Max pulled himself together and turned quickly, ashamed of his own lack
+of vigor in the face of Carrie's intelligence and energy. Bob and he
+raised the body of Dudley and carried it across the plank to the wharf,
+where Bob, who knew his way about there, led the way to the door which
+Max remembered so well.
+
+It was open, and they passed through the outhouse, meeting no one, to
+the kitchen, which was also deserted. There they laid Dudley on the
+hearth, as Carrie had directed, and Bob proceeded to rake up the fire,
+which had died down to a few embers.
+
+Meanwhile Max had taken off some of Dudley's clothes, and began to apply
+friction with his hands to the inanimate body. He had scarcely begun,
+when Carrie came in with an armful of dry towels and a couple of
+pillows.
+
+"He is dead, quite dead!" cried Max, hoarsely.
+
+Carrie never even looked at him. Placing herself at once on her knees
+behind Dudley's head, she curtly directed Max to raise the upper part of
+his body, and slipped the two pillows, one on the top of the other,
+under the shoulders of the unconscious man.
+
+"Now," said she, "go on with your rubbing--rub with all your might; and
+you, Bob, bring in a couple of big stone-bottles you'll find in the
+wash-house, fill them with hot water from the boiler, wrap them up in
+something, and put one to his feet and the other to the side that's away
+from the fire."
+
+While she spoke she was working hard in the endeavor to restore
+respiration, alternately drawing Dudley's arms up above his head and
+laying them against his sides, with firm and steady movements.
+
+For a long time all their efforts seemed to be useless. Max, indeed, had
+little or no hope from the first. He still worked on, however,
+perseveringly, but with despair in his heart, until he heard a sharp
+sound, like a deep sigh, from Carrie's lips.
+
+She had detected a movement, the slightest in the world, but still a
+movement, in the senseless body. With straining eyes she now watched,
+that her own movements might coincide with the natural ones which Dudley
+had begun to make, and that real breathing might gradually take the
+place of the artificial.
+
+"Let me do it. Let me help you," cried Max, who saw the strained look of
+utter fatigue which Carrie wore in spite of her excitement.
+
+"No, no; I dare not. I must go on!" cried the girl, without lifting her
+eyes.
+
+And presently another cry escaped her lips, a cry of joy.
+
+"He is alive!"
+
+"Thank God!"
+
+The tears sprang to the eyes of Max. It was more than he had hoped.
+
+"A doctor! Shall I fetch a doctor?" said he.
+
+Carrie shook her head.
+
+"A doctor could do no more than we've done," said she. "He'll be all
+right now--well enough to be got away, at all events. And the wound on
+his head isn't much, I think."
+
+"Wound on his head!"
+
+"Yes. It saved his life, most likely. Prevented his getting so much
+water into his lungs. Stunned him, you see."
+
+Something like a sigh from the patient stopped her and directed the
+attention of them all to him. Bob, who had been standing in the
+background, almost as much excited as the others, came a few steps
+nearer. There was a moment of intense, eager expectancy, and then Dudley
+half opened his eyes.
+
+Max uttered a deep sob and glanced at Carrie. She was deadly pale, and
+the tears were standing in her eyes.
+
+"You've saved him!" said Max, hoarsely.
+
+The sound of his voice seemed to rouse Dudley, who looked at him with a
+vacant stare, and then let his eyelids drop again.
+
+"So glad, old chap--so glad to--to see you yourself again!" whispered
+Max, huskily.
+
+But Dudley was not himself. He looked up again, then tried to smile, and
+at last turned his head abruptly and seemed to be listening.
+
+Carrie beckoned to Max and spoke low in his ear.
+
+"You'd better take him away from here as quickly as you can, for half a
+dozen reasons."
+
+Max nodded, but looked doubtful.
+
+"He's ill," said he. "How shall I get him away? And where shall I take
+him to?"
+
+"Down to your father's house" answered she at once.
+
+Max looked rather startled.
+
+"But--you know--the police!" muttered he, almost inaudibly. "Won't that
+be the very first place they'd come to--my home?"
+
+"Never mind that. You must risk it. He's going to be ill, I think, and
+he can't be left here. Surely you know that."
+
+She gave a glance round which made Max shiver.
+
+"And how am I to get him all that way to-night? The last train has gone
+hours ago."
+
+"Take him by road, then. We'll get a carriage--a conveyance of some sort
+or other--at once. I'll send Bob."
+
+She turned to the lad and gave him some directions, in obedience to
+which he disappeared. Then she turned fiercely to Max.
+
+"Don't you see," said she, "that if he wakes up and finds himself here,
+after what's happened, it'll about settle him?"
+
+The words sent a shudder through Max.
+
+"After what's happened!" repeated he, with stammering tongue. "What was
+it? Who did it?"
+
+But, instead of answering, Carrie threw herself down beside Dudley, who
+was now rapidly recovering strength, although he hardly seemed to
+understand where he was or by whom he was being tended.
+
+"Do you feel all right now?" she asked, cheerfully.
+
+He looked at her with dull eyes.
+
+"Oh, yes," said he. "But I--I don't remember what--"
+
+"Take a drink of this," interrupted Carrie, quickly, as she put to his
+lips a flask of brandy which Bob had fetched. "You've got to take a long
+drive, and you want something to warm you first."
+
+"A drive! A long drive!"
+
+Dudley repeated the words as if he hardly understood their meaning. But
+he was not satisfied, and as he sipped the brandy he looked at her
+curiously. His next words, however, were a criticism on the restorative.
+
+"What vile stuff!"
+
+"Never mind. It's better than nothing. Try a little more."
+
+But instead of obeying, he looked her steadily in the face.
+
+"Where did I see you? I remember your face!" said he. "And who was that
+I heard talking just now?"
+
+Suddenly, without any warning, he disengaged one hand from the hot
+towels in which he was swathed and sat up. A hoarse cry broke from his
+lips as full recognition of the place in which he found himself forced
+itself upon him. With a wild light of terror in his eyes, he looked
+searchingly round him.
+
+"Where is he? Where is he?" cried he, in a thick whisper.
+
+Carrie's face grew dark.
+
+"Here is your friend," she cried cheerily, "here is Mr. Wedmore. He's
+going with you; he's not going to leave you; be sure of that."
+
+"Yes, old chap, I'm going with you," said Max, hurrying forward and
+trying to shut out the view of the room with his person as he knelt down
+by his friend.
+
+Dudley frowned impatiently.
+
+"You, Max!" said he. "What are you doing here?"
+
+But he asked the question without interest, evidently absorbed in
+another subject.
+
+"I'm going to take you down to The Beeches," answered Max, promptly.
+
+To his infinite satisfaction, this reply had the effect of distracting
+Dudley's thoughts. Into his pallid face there came a tinge of color, as
+he looked intently into his friend's eyes, and repeated:
+
+"The Beeches! You don't mean that!"
+
+"I do; the carriage will be here in a minute or two. And in the meantime
+we must think upon getting you dressed."
+
+This question of clothing promised to be a difficult one, as Dudley's
+own things were saturated with water. Carrie sprang to her feet.
+
+"I'll see about that," said she, briskly, as she disappeared from the
+room.
+
+Max, alarmed at being left alone with Dudley, in whose eyes he could see
+the dawn of struggling recollection, babbled on about Christmas, his
+mother, his sisters, anything he could think of till Carrie came back
+again, with her arms full of men's clothes--a motley assortment.
+
+Max looked at them doubtfully. They were all new--suspiciously new.
+
+Carrie laughed, with a little blush.
+
+"Better not ask any questions about them," said she. "Take your choice,
+and be quick."
+
+With his lips Max formed the word: "Stolen?" but Carrie declined to
+answer. As there was no help for it, Max dressed his friend in such of
+the clothes as were a passable fit for him, while Carrie went out to
+watch for the expected carriage. When she returned to the kitchen,
+Dudley was ready for the journey. He was lying back in a chair, looking
+very white and haggard and exhausted, casting about him glances full of
+expectancy and terror, and starting at every sound.
+
+But he asked no more questions, and he made no mention of Mrs. Higgs.
+
+Bob had fulfilled his errand well. Outside the wharf they found a
+comfortable landau, with two good horses, hired from the nearest
+livery-stable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+TWO WOMEN.
+
+
+Bob grinned with satisfaction when Max, expressing his gratification,
+dropped into his hand a half-sovereign.
+
+"Thought you'd be pleased, sir," said he, as he helped to get Dudley
+into the carriage. "I said it was for a toff, a reg'lar tip-topper; and
+so it was, s' help me!"
+
+Dudley, who was very lame, and who had to be more than half carried,
+looked out of the window.
+
+Max was still outside, trying to get hold of Carrie, who was on the
+other side of the carriage.
+
+"You're coming, Max?"
+
+"Yes, oh, yes, rather."
+
+"And--you?"
+
+Dudley turned to Carrie, who drew back quickly and shook her head.
+
+"I? No."
+
+Max ran round at the back of the carriage and caught her by the arm as
+she was slinking quietly away.
+
+"Where are you going? Not back in there? You must come with us."
+
+"I!--come with you? To your father's house? Catch me!"
+
+"Well, part of the way, at any rate," urged Max, astutely. "I dare not
+go all that way with him alone. See, he wants you to go. You shall get
+out just when you please."
+
+Carrie hesitated. Although she saw through the kindly ruse which would
+protect her against her will, she saw, also, that Dudley was indeed in
+no fit state to take the long journey which was before him, and at
+length she allowed herself to be persuaded to accompany them on at least
+the first part of the journey.
+
+And so, in the fog and the gloom of a January night, they began their
+strange drive.
+
+The road they took was by way of Greenwich and Dartford to Chatham,
+where there would be no difficulty in getting fresh horses for the rest
+of the journey.
+
+Dudley, who had been made as comfortable as possible by a sort of bed
+which was made up for him in the roomy carriage, seemed, after a short
+period of restlessness and excitability, to sink into sleep.
+
+Max was rejoicing in this, but Carrie looked anxious.
+
+"It isn't natural, healthy sleep, I'm afraid," said she, in a low voice.
+"It's more like stupor. It wasn't the water that did it, it was a blow
+on the head. You saw the mark. I'm afraid it's concussion of the brain."
+
+"Ought he to travel, then?" asked Max, anxiously.
+
+Carrie, who was sitting beside Dudley, and opposite to Max, hesitated a
+little before answering:
+
+"What else could we do? We couldn't leave him there at the wharf, could
+we? And where else could we have taken him? Not back to his chambers,
+certainly!"
+
+There was silence. The carriage jogged on in the darkness through
+London's ugly outskirts, and the two watchers listened solicitously to
+the heavy breathing of their patient. It was a comfort to Max, a great
+one indeed, to have Carrie for a companion on this doleful journey. But
+she was not the same girl, now that she had duties to attend to, that
+she had been over that _tête-à-tête_ dinner, or even during the
+journey in the hansom. He himself felt that he now counted for nothing
+with her, that he was merely the individual who happened to occupy the
+opposite seat; that her interest, her attentions, were absorbed by the
+unconscious man by her side.
+
+"Why didn't you become a hospital nurse?" asked Max, suddenly.
+
+He heard rather than saw that she started.
+
+"That's just what I thought of doing," she answered, after a little
+pause. "I'm just old enough to enter one of the Children's Hospitals as
+a probationer. They take them at twenty."
+
+"I see. Then you couldn't have tried before."
+
+"No; they're very strict about age."
+
+"I should think you were cut out for the work, if only you are strong
+enough," said Max, with warmth. "You seem to do just the right thing in
+just the right way."
+
+"I've had plenty of experience," said Carrie, shortly, breaking in upon
+rhapsodies which threatened to become tender. "I did a lot of visiting
+among poor people who had no one to nurse them when I lived with Miss
+Aldridge. Down in these parts, the East End, you get practice enough
+like that, I can tell you!"
+
+"But the treatment of a drowning man--that requires special knowledge,
+surely!"
+
+"Yes, but down by the river is just the place to get it. He's the fifth
+person I've seen taken out for dead in the time I've lived there. Three
+out of the five were dead. The other two, a boy and a woman, were
+brought around."
+
+There was silence again.
+
+Presently Max whispered:
+
+"Do you know--can you guess--how he got into the water?"
+
+Carrie shivered.
+
+"Wait--wait till he can tell us himself," said she, hurriedly. "It's no
+use guessing. Perhaps it was an accident, you know."
+
+"You don't think so?"
+
+"Sh--sh!" said Carrie.
+
+But Max persisted.
+
+"You know as well as I do that that villainous old Mrs. Higgs is at the
+bottom of the affair."
+
+Carrie bent over Dudley, to assure herself that, if not asleep, he was
+at least unconscious of what was passing. Then she turned to Max.
+
+"You are wrong," said she then, quickly. "Mrs. Higgs was an agent only,
+in the hands of some one else. If I tell you what I believe, you will
+only laugh at me."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that she was a harmless, good-hearted, kind woman until--until
+Mr. Horne came to see her; that she was always good to me till then. And
+that, after that awful day when the man was killed--murdered by Mr.
+Horne--"
+
+"It's not true! It can't be true!" burst out Max.
+
+But Carrie went on, as if he had not spoken:
+
+"After that day she changed; she was irritable, unkind, neglectful--not
+like the same woman. She left me alone sometimes; she gave me no food at
+others; she hid herself away from me; she was angry at the least thing.
+And then--then," went on the girl, in a frightful whisper, "I found out
+something."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"That some one used to get into the place at night--I don't know how;
+some one she was afraid of--a man."
+
+"Well?" said Max, excited by her tone.
+
+"I have heard him--seen him twice," went on Carrie, in the lowest of
+whispers. "And I believe--"
+
+"Yes, yes; go on!"
+
+"That it was Mr. Dudley Horne."
+
+"Oh, rubbish!"
+
+Carrie was silent. Max went on, indignantly:
+
+"How could you take such a silly idea into your head? What reason should
+Mr. Horne have for creeping about a hole like that at night?"
+
+"Well, what reason should he have for coming to it at any time? Yet you
+know he came in the daytime."
+
+It was the turn of Max to remain silent. There was a long pause, and
+then Carrie went on:
+
+"I used to sleep in a little attic over the outhouse, just a corner of
+the roof it was. And twice at night I have heard a noise underneath, and
+looked through the cracks in the boards and seen a man down there, with
+a light. And each time, when the light was put out and the noise had
+stopped, I have gone downstairs and found the doors bolted still on the
+inside."
+
+"Well, the place seems to be honeycombed with ways in and ways out. The
+strange man either went out by some way even you knew nothing about, or
+else Mrs. Higgs let him out."
+
+"No, she didn't. I should have heard or seen her."
+
+"Well, but what reason can you have for supposing that this man was Mr.
+Dudley Horne?"
+
+"Once I saw his face," answered Carrie.
+
+"And you think it was the face of this man here beside you?"
+
+Max struck a light and held it over the face of the unconscious Dudley.
+Carrie looked at him steadily.
+
+"Well," she said at last, "it did look like him, that's all I can say."
+
+Max frowned uneasily. But after a few moments a new thought struck him,
+and he turned to her sharply. The match he had struck had burned itself
+out, and they were again in darkness.
+
+"If Mrs. Higgs was only a tool in his hands, as you suggest, for some
+mysterious purposes which nobody can understand or guess at, how do you
+account for her trying to drown him?"
+
+"They must have quarreled," said Carrie, quickly. Then, instantly
+perceiving that she had made an admission, she added: "That is,
+supposing she had anything to do with it."
+
+"Amiable old lady!" exclaimed Max.
+
+The mystery of the whole affair hung over both him and Carrie like a
+pall; and the long night-drive seemed never-ending in the death-like
+silence. Max tried from time to time to break it, but Carrie grew more
+reserved as the hours went by, until her curt answers ceased altogether.
+
+Then, when dawn came, the dull dawn of a foggy morning, and the carriage
+drew up at the hotel in Chatham where they were to change horses, Max
+discovered that she was asleep.
+
+Dudley opened his eyes when the carriage stopped, but shut them again
+without a word to Max, who asked him how he felt.
+
+Max, when the people of the hotel had been roused, succeeded in
+borrowing a rug, which he wrapped gently round Carrie, without waking
+her. And presently the carriage jogged on again on its journey, and the
+morning sun began to pierce the mist as the bare Kentish hop-fields and
+orchards were reached.
+
+Max leaned forward and looked at Carrie's sweet face with infinite
+tenderness. Now in her sleep she looked like a child, with her lips
+slightly parted and her eyelashes sweeping her thin, white cheeks. The
+alert look of the Londoner, which gave an expression of premature
+shrewdness to her waking face, had disappeared under the relaxing
+influence of slumber. She looked pitifully helpless, sad and weak, as
+her tired, worn-out little body leaned back in the corner of the
+carriage.
+
+Max looked at her with yearning in his eyes. This young ne'er-do-weel,
+as his father called him, had enjoyed the privilege of his type in being
+a great favorite with women. As usual in such cases, he had repaid their
+kindness with ingratitude, and had had numerous flirtations without ever
+experiencing a feeling either deep or lasting.
+
+Now, for the first time, in this beautiful waif of the big city he had
+found a mixture of warmth and coldness, of straightforward simplicity
+and boldness, which opened his eyes as to there being in her sex an
+attraction he had previously denied. He felt as he looked at her that he
+wanted her; that he could not go away and forget her in the presence of
+the next pretty face he happened to see.
+
+This shabbily dressed girl, with the shiny seams in her black frock and
+the rusty hat, inspired him with respect, with something like reverence.
+
+In his way he had been in love many, many times. Now for the first time
+he worshiped a woman.
+
+When the carriage stopped at the park gate of The Beeches, Max sprang
+out, and without waiting to answer the hurried questions of Carrie, who
+had awakened with a start, he ran across the grass and up the slope to
+the house.
+
+It was nine o'clock, and, when the door was opened by Bartram, Max came
+face to face with Doreen, who was entering the hall on her way to the
+breakfast-room.
+
+"Why, Max, is it you? What a strange time to arrive! And where have you
+been? You look as if you'd been up all night!" cried she, and she ran
+forward to kiss him, and swinging him round to the light, examined him,
+with an expression of amazement and horror.
+
+"I have been up all night," said he, briefly. "I've driven all the way
+from London--"
+
+"What!"
+
+"And--and I've brought some one with me--some one who is ill, who is in
+trouble. Some one--"
+
+A cry broke from her lips. She had grown quite white, and her hands had
+dropped to her sides.
+
+She understood.
+
+"Dudley!" she whispered. "Where is he? Why haven't you brought him in?"
+
+"He is at the gate. Where is my father? I must speak to him first, or to
+mother."
+
+Mrs. Wedmore herself, having been informed by Bartram of the arrival of
+her son, now came out of the breakfast-room to meet him. In a few words
+he informed her of the circumstances, adding, as he was bound to do,
+that there was a possibility that the police might come to make
+inquiries, if not to arrest Dudley. But Doreen, who insisted on hearing
+everything, overruled the faint objection which Mrs. Wedmore made, and
+determined to have him brought in before her father could learn anything
+about it.
+
+Max, therefore, went down to bring the carriage up to the door, and
+Dudley, having been roused into a half-conscious condition, was assisted
+into the house and up to one of the spare bedrooms--Max on one side and
+Bartram on the other.
+
+By this time Mr. Wedmore had, of course, become aware of what was going
+on; but it was now too late to interfere, even if he had wished to do
+so. When Dudley had been taken upstairs, Doreen met her brother as he
+came down.
+
+"Who is the girl with the sweet face inside the carriage?"
+
+Max stammered a little, and then said, by a happy inspiration:
+
+"Oh, that's the nurse. You see--he was so ill--"
+
+Doreen looked at him keenly, but did not wait for anymore explanations.
+
+"Why doesn't she come in, then? Of course she must come in."
+
+And she ran out to the door of the carriage, with Max not far behind.
+
+"Aren't you coming in? They've taken your patient upstairs," she said
+gently, as poor Carrie, who looked more dead than alive, sat up in the
+carriage and tried to put her hat and her cape straight.
+
+"Oh, I shan't be wanted now, shall I?" asked Carrie, with a timid voice
+and manner which contrasted strongly with her calm, easy assurance while
+she was at work.
+
+Max threw a glance of gratitude at his sister, as he quickly opened the
+door of the carriage and more than half dragged Carrie out.
+
+As the girl stepped, blinking, into the broad sunlight, Doreen stared at
+her intently, and then glanced inquiringly at her brother, who, however,
+did not see her questioning look. He led Carrie into the house and
+straight up the stairs toward the room where they had put Dudley.
+
+"Don't make me stay," pleaded she, in a low voice. "They will know I'm
+not a regular nurse, and--and I shall be uncomfortable, miserable. You
+can do without me now."
+
+She was trying to shrink away. Max stopped in the middle of the stairs,
+and answered her gravely, earnestly:
+
+"I only ask you to stay until we can get a regular nurse down. He is too
+ill to do without a trained attendant; you know that. Will you promise
+to wait while we send for one?"
+
+Carrie could scarcely refuse.
+
+"Yes, I will stay till then, if I am really wanted," assented she.
+
+"Ask my sister. Here she comes," said Max.
+
+Doreen was on the stairs behind them.
+
+"Is it really necessary--do you want me to stay while a nurse is sent
+for?" asked Carrie, diffidently.
+
+Doreen looked up straight in her face.
+
+"What more natural than that you should stay with him?" returned she,
+promptly; "since you are his sister."
+
+Max and Carrie both started. The likeness between Dudley and Carrie,
+which Max had taken time to discover, had struck Doreen at once. Carrie
+would have denied the allegation, but Max caught her arm and stopped
+her.
+
+"Quite true," said he quietly. "This is the way, Miss Horne, to your
+brother's room."
+
+Doreen was quick enough to see that there was some little mystery about
+the relationship which she had divined, and she went rapidly past her
+brother without asking any questions.
+
+It was about two hours after Dudley's arrival that Carrie, now installed
+in the sick-room, came to the door and asked for Max. Her face was rigid
+with a great terror. She seemed at first unable to utter the words which
+were on her tongue. At last she said, in a voice which sounded hard and
+unlike her own:
+
+"Don't send for a nurse. I must stay with him. He is delirious, and I
+have just learned--from him--from his ravings, a secret--a terrible
+secret--one that must not be known!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+THE BLUE-EYED NURSE.
+
+
+It was at the door of Dudley's sick-room that Carrie informed Max that
+she had learned a secret from the lips of the sick man, and Max, by a
+natural impulse of curiosity, nay, more, a deep interest, pushed the
+door gently open.
+
+Dudley's voice could be heard muttering below his breath words which Max
+could not catch.
+
+But Carrie pulled the young man sharply back by the arm into the
+corridor, and shut the door behind her. Her face was full of
+determination.
+
+"No," said she, "not even you."
+
+Max drew himself up, offended.
+
+"I should think you might trust me," he said, stiffly. "The doctor will
+have to hear when he comes. And the secret, whatever it is, will be
+safer with me than with old Haselden."
+
+Carrie smiled a little, and shook her head.
+
+"The doctor," said she, "wouldn't be able to make head or tail of what
+he says. Now, you would."
+
+"And if I did, what of that? Don't I know everything, or almost
+everything, already? Didn't I bring him down here, to my father's house,
+after I knew that there was a warrant out against him? What better proof
+do you want that the secret would be safe with me?"
+
+But Carrie would not give way. Without entering into an argument, she
+stood before him with a set look of obstinacy in her mouth and eyes,
+slowly shaking her head once or twice as he went on with his
+persuasions.
+
+"Do you think I should make a wrong use of the secret?" asked Max,
+impatiently.
+
+"Oh, no."
+
+"Do you think it would turn me against him?"
+
+But at this question she hesitated.
+
+"I don't know," said she, at last.
+
+"It is something that has given you pain?" Max went on, noting the
+traces of tears on her face and the misery in her eyes.
+
+"Yes, oh, yes."
+
+The answer was given in a very low voice, with such a heart-felt sob
+that Max was touched to the quick. He came quite close to her, and,
+bending down, so that his mustache almost brushed the soft fair hair on
+her forehead, he whispered:
+
+"I'm so sorry. Poor Carrie! I won't worry you, then; I won't ask any
+more questions, if only--if only you'll let me tell you how awfully
+sorry I am."
+
+He ventured to put his hand upon her shoulder, as he bent down to look
+into her face.
+
+And, as luck would have it, Mr. Wedmore at that very moment bounced out
+of one of the rooms which opened on the corridor, and caught sight of
+this pretty little picture before it broke up.
+
+Of course, Max withdrew his hand and lifted up his head so swiftly that
+he flattered himself he had been too quick for his father, who walked
+along the corridor toward the drawing-room as if he had seen nothing.
+
+But Max was mistaken. Mr. Wedmore, already greatly irritated by his
+son's repeated failures to settle down, found in this little incident a
+pretext for a fresh outburst of wrath.
+
+Unluckily for poor Carrie, Mrs. Wedmore was in a state of irritation, in
+which she was even readier than usual to agree with her husband. The
+arrival of Dudley, with a terrible charge hanging over his head, in such
+circumstances as to stir up Doreen's feelings for him to the utmost, was
+bad enough. But for him to descend upon them in the company of a young
+woman of whom she had never heard, and in whose alleged relationship to
+Dudley she entirely disbelieved, had reduced the poor lady to a state
+which Queenie succinctly described as "one of mamma's worst."
+
+As soon as Mr. Wedmore entered the drawing-room, where his wife and
+daughters were discussing some invitations to dinner which were to have
+been sent out, but about which there was now a doubt, he abruptly
+ordered the two girls to leave the room. They obeyed very quietly, but
+Doreen threw at her mother one imploring glance, and gently pulling her
+father's hair, told him that he was not to be a hard, heartless man.
+
+When the door was shut, however, Mr. Wedmore addressed his wife in no
+very gentle tones.
+
+"Ellen," said he, curtly, "you must get rid of that baggage they call
+the nurse. She's no more a nurse than you are!"
+
+"And she's no more his sister than I am, either!" chimed in Mrs.
+Wedmore, who had risen from her chair in great excitement.
+
+Mr. Wedmore stared at his wife.
+
+"Sister!" cried he, in a voice of thunder. "Whose sister? Dudley Horne
+never had a sister!"
+
+"I know that, but that's the story they have made up for us; and the
+girls--our girls--are ready to believe it, and I don't want them to know
+it isn't true."
+
+"Well, whatever she is, and whoever she is, I want her to be outside the
+house before lunch time," said Mr. Wedmore. "I've just caught Max with
+his arm around her, and I haven't the slightest doubt that it was he who
+made up the story. Any tale's good enough for the old people! Look at
+her face--look at her dress! She is some hussy who ought never to have
+been allowed inside the house!"
+
+"It was Doreen who brought her in. And, to do her justice, George, I
+believe the girl didn't want to come," said Mrs. Wedmore. "And it's
+about Doreen I wanted to talk to you, George. This coming of Dudley has
+upset all the good we did by never mentioning him to her. To-day she's
+as much excited, as anxious and as miserable as if they were still
+engaged. And--and--oh! if the police come here to the house and take him
+awa-a-ay,"--and here the poor lady became almost too hysterical to
+articulate--"it will break the child's heart, George; it will indeed.
+And, oh! do you think it possible he really did--really did--"
+
+"Did what?"
+
+"Oh, you know! It's to dreadful to say. Why do you make me say it? They
+say something about his having gone out of his mind, and--and--killed
+somebody. It isn't true, George, is it?"
+
+"I don't know, I'm sure. Who told you?"
+
+"Max first, and then I learned the rest from the guesses of the girls.
+Oh, it is dreadful--shocking! And to think of his having been planted
+down upon us like this, just when I was beginning to hope that Doreen
+was getting kinder to Mr. Lindsay."
+
+"It's all the doing of that idiot Max!" said Mr. Wedmore, angrily. "I'll
+send him out to the Cape, and make an end of it. He shall go next
+month."
+
+"Oh, I didn't want that," pleaded Mrs. Wedmore, with a sudden change to
+tenderness and self-reproach. "Don't do anything in a hurry, George,
+anything you will be sorry for afterward."
+
+"Sorry for! The only thing I'm sorry for is that I didn't send him
+before, and saved all this."
+
+"And as for the girl, no doubt it's her fault, and Dudley's, a great
+deal more than Max's," went on the mother of Max, with the usual
+feminine excuse for the darling scapegrace. "When she's gone he will
+forget all about her, as he always does."
+
+This speech was an unlucky one.
+
+"Yes, that's just what I complain of, that he always forgets," said he,
+turning sharply upon his wife. "If he would stick to anything or to
+anybody for so much as a week, or a day, or an hour, I shouldn't mind so
+much. But he isn't man enough for that. As soon as this girl's out of
+the house, he'll be looking about for another one."
+
+"I'm sure it wasn't his fault that she came here at all," persisted Mrs.
+Wedmore, who never opposed her husband except in the interest of her
+son. "And I'm sure you can't blame him for doing what he could for his
+friend, even if he does put us to a little inconvenience. After all,
+Dudley's been like a son to you for a great many years--"
+
+"That's just what I complain of--that he's so like a son," interrupted
+her husband. "That is to say, he has brought upon us no end of worry and
+bother, and a bill for five guineas for this pleasant little drive down
+from London."
+
+"Well, how could we refuse to take him in?"
+
+"How did he get into the mess?"
+
+"What mess?"
+
+"That's what I want to know, too--what mess? I am told he fell into the
+water, striking his head against the side of a bridge, or of a church,
+or it doesn't matter what, as he fell. They haven't thought it worth
+while to make up a good story. But whether he was drunk, or whether he
+was escaping from the police, or what he was doing, nobody seems to
+know. If I'd been consulted, if I hadn't been treated as a cipher in the
+matter, he should have driven straight back to London again with the
+girl, and with Max himself."
+
+Mrs. Wedmore thought it better to say nothing to this, but to let her
+husband simmer down. These ferocious utterances came from the lips only,
+as she very well knew, and might safely be disregarded.
+
+Fortunately his attention was diverted at this point by the arrival of
+the doctor, who had been out on his rounds when they first sent for him.
+
+Rather relieved to have a fresh person to pour out his complaints to,
+Mr. Wedmore hastened to give his old friend a somewhat confused account
+of the patient's arrival and condition, in which "cheap, ready-made
+clothes," "a bill for five guineas," "a baggage of a girl" and "the
+police" were the prominent items.
+
+But as for any details concerning the patient's state of health and the
+reasons for his needing medical care, Doctor Haselden could learn
+nothing at all until he had prevailed upon Mr. Wedmore to let him see
+Dudley instead of listening to abuse of him.
+
+Doctor Haselden was a long time in the sick-room, and when he came out
+he looked grave. Mr. Wedmore, who met him outside the door, was annoyed.
+
+"It's nothing, I suppose, that a few days' quiet won't set right?" he
+asked quickly.
+
+"I don't know, I'm sure," answered the doctor. "It's more serious than I
+thought by what you said--a great deal more serious. I don't know, I'm
+sure, whether we shall get him round at all."
+
+A little cry startled both men and made them look round. In a recess of
+the corridor above they could distinguish the figure of a woman, and Mr.
+Wedmore's heart smote him, for it was Doreen.
+
+"Go away, child! Go away!" said he, half petulantly, but yet with some
+remorse in his tone. "The girl's crazy about him," he added, with
+irritation, when his daughter had silently obeyed.
+
+"Poor child! Poor child!" said Doctor Haselden, sympathetically. "She's
+the real old-fashioned sort, with a warm heart under all her little
+airs. I hope he'll get round, if only for her sake. But--"
+
+"She couldn't marry him in any case," said Mr. Wedmore, shortly. "I
+thought I told you that affair was broken off--definitely broken
+off--weeks ago. And now--"
+
+He stopped and intimated by a gesture of the hand that the break was
+more definite than ever.
+
+The doctor was curious, but he tried not to show it.
+
+"I should wire up to town for another nurse, I think," said he. "This
+little girl can't do it all."
+
+Mr. Wedmore pricked up his ears.
+
+"Then I must wire for two--for two nurses," said he, decidedly. "We're
+going to send this girl off. She's not a nurse at all."
+
+"Ah, but she does very well," objected the doctor, promptly, "and you
+will be doing very unwisely if you send her away. It seems she
+understands all the circumstances of the case, and that counts for
+something in treating a patient who has evidently something on his mind.
+She seems to be able to soothe him, and in a case of concussion--"
+
+"But she's trying to get hold of my fool of a son Max!" protested Mr.
+Wedmore.
+
+"But it isn't a question of your son Max, but of young Horne," said
+Doctor Haselden, with decision. "As for Max, he can take care of
+himself; and, at any rate, he's got all his family about to take care of
+him. You keep the girl. She's got a head on her shoulders. Most uncommon
+thing, that--in a girl with such eyes!"
+
+And the doctor, with a humorous nod to his angry friend, went
+downstairs.
+
+After this warning of the real danger in which Dudley lay, it was, of
+course, impossible for Mr. Wedmore to send poor Carrie away, at any rate
+until the arrival of some one who could take her place. And as there was
+clearly some sense in the doctor's suggestion that her knowledge of the
+case was valuable, Mr. Wedmore ended by sending up for one trained nurse
+to relieve her, instead of for two, as he had proposed.
+
+And, after all, there seemed to be less danger in the direction of Max
+than he had supposed; for Carrie never once left the sick-room until the
+professional nurse arrived at ten o'clock that night. And as Mrs.
+Wedmore was then in waiting to mount guard over Carrie, and to carry her
+off to her supper and then to her bedroom, the first day's danger to the
+susceptible son and heir seemed to have been got through rather well.
+
+On the following morning, however, the well-watched Carrie escaped from
+the supervision of her jailers, and boldly made a direct attack upon Max
+under the family's nose.
+
+Carrie was looking out of one of the back windows of the house to get a
+breath of fresh air, before taking her turn of duty in the sick-room,
+when she saw Max talking to one of the grooms outside the stables. He
+saw her, and his face flushed. Mrs. Wedmore, who was standing on guard a
+few paces from Carrie, noted the fact with maternal anxiety. She rather
+liked the girl, whose modest manners were as attractive as her pretty
+face; but with the fear of "entanglements" before her eyes, she tried to
+check her own inclination. Carrie turned to her abruptly.
+
+"The nurse won't mind waiting a few minutes for me," said she, quickly.
+"I must speak a few words to Mr. Max."
+
+And before Mrs. Wedmore could get breath after this audacious statement,
+Carrie was down the stairs and half away across the yard, where Max
+hastened to meet her.
+
+"I have something to say to you," she began at once with a grave face.
+"Do you know that--_they've come_?"
+
+"Who? Who have come?"
+
+"The police."
+
+Max started.
+
+"Nonsense! What makes you think so? I've seen no one."
+
+"I have, though. I've been expecting them, for one thing, and it's made
+me sharp, I suppose. But I've seen in the park, among the trees, this
+morning before anybody was up almost, a man walking about, taking his
+bearings and looking about him."
+
+"One of the gardeners," said Max. "There are several."
+
+"Oh, no, it wasn't a gardener. Can't you trust my London eyes? And
+listen: Presently another one came up, and they talked together. Then
+one went one way and the other another, not like gardeners or
+workingmen, but like men on the lookout."
+
+"What should they be on the lookout for?" asked Max. "If they want
+Dudley, why don't they come up to the house? I don't doubt that by this
+time they know where he is."
+
+Carrie said nothing; but there was in her eyes, as she glanced
+searchingly round her, a peculiar look of wistful dread which puzzled
+Max and made him wonder what fear it was that was in her mind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+MAX MAKES A STAND AND A DISCOVERY.
+
+
+There was a pause, and then Carrie, without answering him, turned to go
+back into the house. But Max followed and caught her by the arm.
+
+"Carrie," said he, "they're making a slave of you, without a word of
+thanks. You look worn out."
+
+"No, I'm not," said she, briskly. "I've only taken my turns; I should
+look all right if it hadn't been for that long, tiring journey
+yesterday. I haven't quite got over that yet."
+
+She was trying to free her hand, which Max was holding in his.
+
+"You'll never be strong enough for a hospital nurse, Carrie!"
+
+"Oh, yes, but I shall!" retorted she. And as she spoke, the pink color,
+the absence of which made her usually look so delicate, came into her
+cheeks. "And you must remember that I shall be better fed, better
+clothed then. I am not really weak at all."
+
+"I repeat--you will never be strong enough for a nurse. Better take my
+advice and marry me, Carrie!"
+
+But at that, a sudden impulse of hot anger gave the girl the necessary
+strength to snatch her hand away from him. She faced him fiercely.
+
+"What! To be looked at always as your father, your mother, look at me
+now? As if I were a thief who must be watched, lest she should steal
+something? They needn't be afraid either, if only they knew! And before
+I go I'll tell them. Yes, I'll tell them what a mistake they make in
+thinking I want to take their son, their precious son, away from them!
+That for their son!"
+
+And Carrie, very ungratefully, to be sure, held her right hand close to
+the face of Max and snapped her fingers scornfully. She had seen Mrs.
+Wedmore's eyes over the half blind of one of the windows, and the minx
+thought this little scene would be a wholesome lesson.
+
+But Max, following the direction of Carrie's eyes, had also seen the
+watching face, and a manful spirit of defiance on the one hand, of
+passion on the other, moved him to show both Carrie and his mother how
+things were going with him.
+
+Seizing the girl round the waist when her little spurt of defiance was
+scarcely over, he held her head with his disengaged hand and pressed
+upon her eyes, her cheeks and her lips a dozen hot kisses.
+
+"There!" said he, when at last he let her go, and she, staggering,
+blushing, ran toward the shelter of the house. "That's what you get for
+being ungrateful, you little cat. And it's nothing to what you'll get
+from my mother, who's sure to say it's all your fault. And so--" roared
+he up the stairs after her, as she reached the top, "so it is, of
+course!"
+
+But Carrie found a refuge inside the sick-room, where Dudley, who had
+passed a better night than they had even hoped, was now lying with
+closed eyes, quiet and apparently calm.
+
+It was upon Max himself, for a wonder, that the vials of the family
+wrath were poured. Mrs. Wedmore, happening to meet her husband while the
+last grievance against the girl was fresh, and before she had had the
+time to meditate on the result of a premature disclosure, made known to
+him the outrage of which she had been a witness, taking care to dwell
+upon the audacity of the girl in pursuing and provoking Max.
+
+Mr. Wedmore listened in silence, and then said, curtly:
+
+"Where is he now? Send him to me."
+
+Max, bent upon making himself as conspicuous and, therefore, as
+offensive as possible, was whistling in the hall at the moment. And
+there was a defiant note in his very whistling which worked his father
+up to boiling point. Mr. Wedmore sprang off his chair and dashed open
+the door.
+
+"Max, you fool, come here!" was his unpromising summons.
+
+Max came at once, rather red in the face and bright of eyes. Mrs.
+Wedmore, standing, frightened and anxious, in the background, thought
+she had never seen her darling boy look so handsome, so manly. He came
+in very quietly, without swaggering, without defiance, as if he had not
+noticed the offensive epithet.
+
+His father, who was by this time on the post of vantage, the hearth-rug,
+with his hands behind him and his back to the fire, pointed imperiously
+to a chair.
+
+"Sit down, sir."
+
+Max sat down very deliberately on a chair other than the one his father
+had chosen for him, and looked down on the floor.
+
+"So you are at your old tricks, your old habits!" began Mr. Wedmore.
+
+Max looked up. Then he sat up.
+
+"What old tricks and habits do you mean, sir?"
+
+"Running after every girl you see, and in defiance of all decency, under
+your mother's very nose."
+
+Mrs. Wedmore would have interposed here, but her husband waved his hand
+imperially, and she remained silent. Max leaned back in his chair and
+met his father's eyes steadily.
+
+"You have made a mistake, sir, and my mother has made a mistake, too. It
+is quite true she may have seen me kissing Miss--Miss--Carrie, in fact.
+But I hope to have the right to kiss her. I want to marry her."
+
+"To marry this--this--"
+
+"This beautiful young girl, whom nobody has a word to say against,"
+interrupted Max, in a louder voice. "Come, sir, you can't say I'm at my
+old tricks _now_. I've never wanted to marry any girl before."
+
+For the moment Mr. Wedmore was stupefied. This was worse, far worse than
+he had expected. Mrs. Wedmore, also, was rather shocked. But the
+sensation, was tempered, in her case, with admiration of her boy's
+spirit in daring to make this avowal.
+
+"Mind, I only say I _want_ to marry her. Because, so far, she has
+refused to have anything to say to me."
+
+"Not refused to marry you!" broke in Mrs. Wedmore, unable to remain
+quiet under such provocation as this.
+
+"Yes, refused to marry me, mother. I have asked her--begged her."
+
+"Oh, it's only artfulness, to make you more persistent," cried Mrs.
+Wedmore, indignantly.
+
+"Or perhaps," suggested Mr. Wedmore, in his driest tones, "the girl is
+shrewd enough to know that I should cut off a son who was guilty of such
+a piece of idiocy and leave him to his own resources."
+
+Max said nothing for a moment; then he remarked, quietly:
+
+"You have been threatening to do that already, sir, before there was any
+question of my marrying."
+
+Mrs. Wedmore was frightened by the tone Max was using. He was so much
+quieter than usual, so much more decided in his tone, that she began to
+think there was less chance than usual of his coming to an agreement
+with his father.
+
+"You know, Max," she said, coming over to his chair and putting an
+affectionate hand on his head, "that your father has only spoken to you
+as he has done because he wanted to rouse up your spirit and make you
+ashamed of being lazy."
+
+Max rose from his chair and turned to her with flashing eyes.
+
+"And now, when there is a chance of my rousing myself at last, when I am
+ready and anxious to prove it, and to set to work, and to settle down,
+he is angrier with me than ever. Mother, you know I'm right, and you
+know it isn't fair."
+
+Mrs. Wedmore looked with something like terror into her son's handsome,
+excited face.
+
+"But, my dear boy, don't you see that this would be ruin, to tie
+yourself to a girl like that? Why, she told me herself that she didn't
+belong to anywhere or anybody."
+
+"And is that any reason why she should never belong to anywhere or to
+anybody? If there was anything wrong about the girl herself, I would
+listen to you--"
+
+"Listen to us! You'll have to listen!" interrupted his father.
+
+Max glanced at him, and went on:
+
+"But there is not."
+
+"And how do you know that? How long have you known her?"
+
+Max was taken aback. It had not occurred to him to think how short his
+acquaintance with Carrie had been.
+
+"Long enough to find out all about her," he answered, soberly; "and to
+make up my mind that I'll have her for my wife."
+
+"Then that settles it," broke in Mr. Wedmore, whose ill-humor had not
+been decreased by the fact that Max evidently considered it more
+important to conciliate his mother than to try to convince him. "You
+will go to the Cape next month; and if you choose to take this baggage
+with you, you can do so. It won't much matter to us what sort of a wife
+you introduce to your neighbors out there."
+
+But Max strode across the room and stood face to face with his father,
+eye to eye.
+
+"No, sir," he said, in a dogged tone of voice, thrusting his hands deep
+into his pockets and looking at him steadily. "I shall not go to the
+Cape. You have a right to turn me out of your house if you please. In
+fact, it's quite time I went, I know. It's time I did settle down. It's
+time I did try to do something for myself. And I'm going to. I'm going
+to try to earn my own living and to make enough to keep a wife--the wife
+I want. And I shall do it somehow. But I'm not going to be packed off to
+Africa, as if my marrying this girl were a thing to be ashamed of. I'm
+going to stay in England. I sha'n't come near you. You needn't be afraid
+of that. I shall be too proud of my wife to bring her among people who
+would look down upon her. And perhaps you'd better not inquire where I
+live or what I'm doing, for we sha'n't be able to live in a fashionable
+neighborhood, nor to be too particular about what we turn our hands to."
+
+While Max made this speech very slowly, very deliberately, his father
+listened to him with ever-increasing anger and disgust, and his mother,
+not daring to come too close while he was right under the paternal eye,
+hung over the table in the background, with yearning, tremulous love in
+her eyes, and with her lips parted, ready to utter the tender words of a
+pleading peacemaker.
+
+But the tone Mr. Wedmore chose to take was that of utter contempt,
+complete irresponsibility. When his son had finished speaking he waited
+as if to hear whether there was any more to come, and then abruptly
+turned his back upon him and began to poke the fire.
+
+"Very well," said he, with an affectation of extreme calmness. "Since
+you have made up your mind, the sooner you begin to carry out your plans
+the better. I'm very glad to see that you have a mind to make up."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Max.
+
+And he was turning to leave the room, when his mother sprang forward and
+stopped him.
+
+"No, no! Don't go like that! My boy! George! Don't say good-bye yet.
+Take a little time. Let him try a little trouble of his own for a
+change. He has made up his mind, he says. I'm sure he's old enough.
+Leave him alone."
+
+Max put his arm round his mother, gave her a warm kiss, disengaged
+himself, and left the room.
+
+The poor woman was almost hysterical.
+
+"He means it, George! He means it this time!" she moaned.
+
+And her husband, though he laughed at her, and though he said to himself
+that he did not care, was inclined to agree with her.
+
+Max went straight up to his own room, and began to do his packing with
+much outward cheerfulness. Indeed he felt no depression over the dashing
+step he was taking, although he felt sore over the parting with home and
+his mother and sisters.
+
+He was debating within himself whether he should try to see Carrie
+before he went, or whether he should only leave a note to be given to
+her after he was gone, when he heard the voice of his sister Doreen
+calling him. He threw open the door and shouted back.
+
+She was in the hall.
+
+"Max," cried she, in a hissing whisper, "I want to speak to you. Make
+haste!"
+
+He ran downstairs and found her standing with two of the maids, both of
+whom looked rather frightened.
+
+"Max," said Doreen, "there's an old woman hanging about the place--" Max
+started. He guessed what was coming. "The same old woman that came at
+Christmas time. She jumped up in the well-house at Anne, and sent her
+into hysterics. And now they've lost sight of her, just as they did last
+time, and we want you to help to ferret her out and send her away."
+
+"All right," said Max. "We'll pack her off."
+
+He was at the bottom of the staircase by this time, and was starting on
+his way to the yard, when a little scream from one of the two maids, as
+she glanced up the stairs, made him look around. Carrie had come down so
+lightly and so swiftly that she was upon the group before they had heard
+a sound. She beckoned to Max, who came back at once.
+
+Carrie was shaking like a leaf; her eyes were wide with alarm, with
+terror. Max went up a few stairs, to be out of hearing of the others, as
+she seemed to wish. Then she whispered:
+
+"You know who it is. I saw her. Leave her alone. I implore you to leave
+her alone! She'll do no harm. Let her rest. Let the poor creature rest.
+If--if the police--"
+
+At that moment there was a shout from the yard outside. Carrie sprang
+like a hare up the stairs to the window, and looked out with straining
+eyes.
+
+The afternoon was one of those dull misty winter days, with a leaden sky
+and an east wind.
+
+"I'll see that she isn't hurt!" called out Max, as he bounded down the
+stairs and ran into the yard behind the house.
+
+Here he found a motley group--the stablemen, the laundry-maids and the
+gardeners--all hunting in the many corners and crannies of the
+outbuildings for the old woman who had alarmed Anne.
+
+Max spoke sharply to the men.
+
+"Here, what are you about?" said he. "Hunting a poor old woman as if she
+were a wild animal? Go back to your work. She'll never dare to show her
+face while you are all about!"
+
+"She's left the well-house, sir, and, we think, she's got into the big
+barn," explained one of the lads, with the feeling that Mr. Max himself
+would want to join in the chase when he knew that the game was to hand.
+
+"Well, leave her there," answered Max, promptly. "She'll come out when
+you've all gone, and I'll send her about her business."
+
+Max saw, as he spoke, that there was a man standing at a little distance
+just outside the stable-gate, whom he did not recognize. Before he could
+ask who he was, however, the man had disappeared from view. He
+remembered what Carrie had said about the presence of a policeman, and
+he thought the time was come to take the bull by the horns.
+
+So he walked rapidly in the direction of the gate, and addressed the man
+whom he found there.
+
+"Are you a policeman?" he asked, abruptly.
+
+"Yes, sir," answered the man, touching his hat.
+
+"What is your business here?"
+
+"I'm on the lookout for some one I have a warrant for. Charge of murder,
+sir."
+
+"Man or woman?"
+
+"Man, sir."
+
+"Will you tell me his name?"
+
+"Horne, sir."
+
+Max thought a moment.
+
+"Why are you pottering about here, instead of going straight up to the
+house?"
+
+"Well, sir, I'm obeying orders."
+
+"Come with me," said Max suddenly. "There's an old hag hiding in the
+barn now, who knows more about this business than Mr. Horne."
+
+Behind the young gentleman's back the detective smiled, but he professed
+to be ready to follow him.
+
+"There's only one way out of this barn," explained Max, as he approached
+the door, beside which a groom was standing. "By this door, which is
+never locked. There is a window, but it's too high up for anybody to get
+out by."
+
+Telling the groom to guard the door, Max went into the barn, followed by
+the detective. There was still light enough for them to find their way
+about among the lumber.
+
+"Where's the window, sir?" asked the detective.
+
+Max pointed to a speck of light high in the south wall of the barn.
+
+"She couldn't get out there," said he, "even if she could climb up to
+it. Unless she could swarm a rope."
+
+And he touched one of the ropes which dangled from a huge beam.
+
+The detective, however, walked rapidly past him, and stopped short,
+pointing to something which was lying on the floor under the window.
+
+It was the body of a man, lying in a heap.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED.
+
+
+Max helped the detective raise the man from the ground. He was quite
+dead, and from the position in which they had found him, both men
+concluded that he had been in the act of climbing up to the high window,
+when the rope by which he was holding broke under his weight. It was
+evident that he had fallen upon an old millstone which was among the
+lumber on the floor beneath, and that the shock of the fall had broken
+his neck.
+
+They had found out all this before Max could form any opinion as to the
+identity of the dead man. He was short of stature, and apparently
+between fifty and sixty years of age, slightly built, but muscular. The
+body was dressed in the clothes of a respectable mechanic.
+
+There was very little light in the barn by this time, and Max directed
+the groom, who had been standing outside, and who had entered, attracted
+by Max's shout of discovery, to bring a lantern.
+
+"I suppose we'd better send for a doctor," said Max, "though the man's
+as dead as a doornail. In the meantime, just give a look around and see
+whether the woman is anywhere about."
+
+The detective appeared to follow the suggestion, for he at once
+proceeded to a further inspection of the building by the aid of one of
+the two lanterns which the groom had by this time brought. And presently
+he came back to Max with a bundle in his hand.
+
+Max, by the light of the lantern which the groom was holding for him,
+was looking at the face of the dead man, whom he guessed to be one of
+Mrs. Higgs's accomplices, perhaps the mysterious person whose influence
+over the old woman, according to Carrie, was so bad.
+
+While he was staring intently at the dead face, he heard a stifled cry,
+and looking up, saw that Carrie had stolen into the barn behind the
+groom, and had her eyes fixed upon the body.
+
+Max sprang up.
+
+"Do you know him? Is it the man who used to get into the place by
+night?" asked he, eagerly.
+
+Carrie, without answering, looked from the dead man to the detective,
+and from him to the bundle he was carrying.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed she.
+
+Max looked in his turn. The detective was displaying, one by one, a
+woman's skirt, bodice, bonnet, shawl and a cap with a "front" of woman's
+hair sewn inside it.
+
+"I think you can guess, sir, what's become of the woman now?" said the
+officer, grimly.
+
+Max started violently, shocked by a surprise which, both for the
+detective and for Carrie, had been discounted some time ago.
+
+"Mrs. Higgs" was a man.
+
+Even with this knowledge to help him, Max, as he stared again at the
+dead face, found it difficult to recognize in the still features those
+which in life had inspired him with feelings of repulsion.
+
+Just a quiet, inoffensive, respectable-looking man not coarse or low in
+type; this would have been his comment upon the dead man, if he had
+known nothing about him. Max shuddered as he withdrew his gaze; and, as
+he did so, he met the eyes of Carrie.
+
+He beckoned to her to come away with him, and she followed him as far as
+the door, toward which some members of the household, to whom the news
+had penetrated, were now hastening.
+
+"Carrie!" cried he, as he looked searchingly in her face, "you knew
+this? How long have you known it?"
+
+She could scarcely answer. She was shaking from head to foot, and was
+evidently suffering from a great shock.
+
+"Yes, I knew it, but only since I came here. It was part of what Mr.
+Dudley Horne let out in his raving."
+
+"Only part of it?" cried Max.
+
+But Carrie would confess nothing more. And, as Mr. Wedmore came across
+the yard at this moment, followed by Dr. Haselden, Carrie ran back into
+the house as Max met his father.
+
+"What's all this about a dead man found in the barn?" asked Mr. Wedmore,
+with all the arrogance of the country gentleman, who thinks that no one
+has a right to die on his premises without his permission.
+
+Max held his father back for a moment until the doctor had passed on. In
+the excitement of this occurrence, Mr. Wedmore was glad to have an
+opportunity of appearing to forget that there was any quarrel between
+them. On second thoughts, he inclined to think that he had perhaps, on
+this occasion, been a little too hard on his son, and he was anxious for
+some loop-hole by which he could creep out of the consequences of his
+own sternness. This, however, could hardly have been guessed by his
+manner, which was at least as arrogant as ever.
+
+"It's somebody who was mixed up in the death of Edward Jacobs, sir, I
+think," said Max, in a low voice. "A man who has been living down at the
+East End of London disguised as a woman, and who was, I believe, at the
+bottom of all the mischief."
+
+"Man disguised as a woman?" cried Mr. Wedmore, incredulously. "What an
+improbable story! And what should he do down here in my barn?"
+
+"I think he must have come down to see Dudley, sir. We believe that it
+was he who tried to drown Dudley, after he had succeeded in drowning
+Edward Jacobs."
+
+Mr. Wedmore frowned in perplexity.
+
+"Trying to drown Dudley! What on earth should he do that for? What had
+Dudley to do with him?"
+
+"Well, sir, we don't quite know. But Dudley was acquainted with this
+man, undoubtedly, though we don't know whether he knew him to be a man,
+or only as Mrs. Higgs, which was the name the man went by."
+
+"Let me see the man," said Mr. Wedmore.
+
+And, pushing past his son, he entered the barn.
+
+The doctor made way for him.
+
+"He is quite dead. He must have been killed instantly," said Doctor
+Haselden, as his friend came up.
+
+Mr. Wedmore took the lantern from the man who held it, and looked at the
+dead face. As he did so, his first expression of curiosity gave place to
+one of perplexity, followed by a stare of intense amazement and horror.
+
+"What is it? Do you know him?" asked Doctor Haselden, while Max, who had
+followed his father in, watched with intense interest and surprise.
+
+Mr. Wedmore did not seem to hear. He continued to look at the dead face
+for some moments with an appearance of utter absorption, and then,
+suddenly staggering back, he made for the open air without a word of
+explanation.
+
+Max stared at the doctor, and then followed his father out. But Mr.
+Wedmore was already half way to the house, where he shut himself into
+the study, and locking the door, refused to be disturbed.
+
+Max was more bewildered than ever by this new turn of affairs. With a
+dogged determination not to be kept any longer out of a secret of which
+everybody but himself seemed to know something, he went straight up to
+the sick-room in search of Carrie. His knock, however, was answered by
+the professional nurse, who opened the door and asked him what he
+wanted.
+
+"Oh, it doesn't matter," said Max. "At least--I wanted to know how Mr.
+Horne is now."
+
+"He won't be so well to-night, I expect," answered the nurse, tartly.
+"There's been a great noise and disturbance outside, and he's heard
+something of it, and it's made him restless and curious. He is asking
+questions about it all the time, and he won't be satisfied. He keeps
+asking for the other nurse, who is out taking her walk, as I tell him."
+
+At this point Dudley's voice was heard from the bed. "Who's that at the
+door? Who is it?"
+
+Max, after a moment's hesitation, during which the nurse assumed an air
+of washing her hands of the whole matter, answered:
+
+"Me, old chap--Max. How are you?"
+
+Dudley sprang up in bed. The nurse folded her arms and frowned.
+
+"Come in, oh, come in, just one moment! I'll be quiet, nurse, quite
+quiet. But I must see him--I must see somebody."
+
+Max threw an imploring glance at the nurse, who refused to look at him.
+Then he went in.
+
+"Only a minute--I won't stay a minute."
+
+The nurse shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"It's against the doctor's orders. I wash my hands of the consequences,"
+said she.
+
+And, with her head held very high, she left the room.
+
+Max stood irresolute. By the look of excitement on Dudley's face, he
+judged that anything must be better for him than the eager suspense from
+which he was evidently suffering. This news of the death of the odious
+inhabitant of the house by the wharf must surely bring relief to him. As
+soon as they were alone together, Dudley burst out eagerly:
+
+"That noise! It's no use deceiving me; I know what it was. They were
+after him. Tell me--has he got away? Has my father got away?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+BACK TO LOVE AND LIFE.
+
+
+Max fell into a chair. He stared at Dudley for a few moments before he
+could speak. Dudley's father! The man supposed to have died years and
+years ago in an asylum abroad, was the person who had passed as "Mrs.
+Higgs!" Even before he had had time to learn any of the details of the
+strange story, the outlines of it were at once apparent to the mind of
+Max.
+
+Here was, then, the explanation of the mysterious bond between Dudley
+and Mrs. Higgs; here was the meaning of his visits to Limehouse.
+
+Dudley repeated his question before Max had recovered from the shock of
+his surprise.
+
+"Yes," said he at last, "he has got away."
+
+But Dudley detected some reserve in his manner, or perhaps his own
+suspicions were aroused. He looked searchingly at Max, and asked
+abruptly:
+
+"Is he dead?"
+
+Max looked at him askance.
+
+"Yes," he said at last.
+
+Dudley lay back in his pillows.
+
+"Thank God!"
+
+And Max knew by the look of intense relief on his friend's face that he
+had done right in telling him the truth.
+
+But, indeed, Max could not guess how intense the relief was from the
+burden of the secret which Dudley had had to bear for so long; and
+undoubtedly the discovery that it was a secret no longer, that the
+necessity for concealment was now over, helped his recovery materially.
+
+Max told him, as briefly as possible, the details of the occurrence; but
+he neither asked nor invited any more questions.
+
+It was not until some time afterward, when Dudley had left the
+sick-room, that the whole of the story became known to the family. But,
+in the meantime, the inquest on the body brought many facts to light.
+
+Mrs. Edward Jacobs, the widow of the man who had been found drowned in
+the Thames off Limehouse some weeks before, had been, so it was
+discovered, the person to give information to the police against Dudley,
+as the suspected murderer of her husband. She had traced to him the
+weekly postal orders, which she looked upon as blood-money, and she had
+then hung about his chambers, and on one occasion followed him to
+Limehouse, without, however, penetrating farther than the entrance of
+the wharf.
+
+Upon the information given by her a warrant was issued against Dudley;
+but in searching his chambers a number of letters were found, all
+addressed to Dudley, which threw a new and lurid light upon the affair.
+The letters were written by the father to the son, and contained the
+whole story of his return to England a few months before; of his anxiety
+to see his son; his morbid fear of being recognized and shut up as a
+lunatic, and his equally morbid hankering after information concerning
+Edward Jacobs, the man who had ruined him.
+
+All these letters, which were directed in a feigned handwriting, seemed
+sane and sensible enough, although they showed signs of eccentricity of
+character.
+
+The next batch were written after the disappearance of Edward Jacobs,
+and in them the signs of morbid eccentricity were more apparent. The
+writer owned to having "put Jacobs out of the way," upbraided Dudley for
+interfering on behalf of such a wretch, and accused him of ingratitude
+in refusing to leave England with his father, who had done mankind in
+general and him in particular a service in killing a monster. The writer
+went on to accuse Dudley of siding with his father's enemies, of wishing
+to have him shut up, and told him that he should never succeed.
+
+Some of these letters were directed to The Beeches, and some to Dudley's
+chambers, showing an intimate knowledge of his whereabouts.
+
+The latest letters were wilder, more bitter, showing how insanity which
+had broken out into violence before was increasing in intensity, and how
+the feelings of regard which he had seemed to entertain for his son had
+given place to strong resentment against him.
+
+After the reading of these letters, it was plain that the crime of
+murder which Mrs. Jacobs had laid to Dudley's charge had been really the
+work of his father; and Mrs. Jacobs herself, on being made acquainted
+with these facts, agreed with this conclusion.
+
+There remained only the question of Dudley's complicity in the crime to
+be considered, and that was a matter which could be left until the sick
+man's recovery.
+
+It was on the first day of Dudley's appearance in the family circle that
+the subject was broached, clumsily enough, by Mr. Wedmore, who was dying
+to know a great deal more than anybody had been willing to tell him.
+
+Dudley had come into the drawing-room, which had been well warmed for
+the occasion with a roaring fire, and it was here that they found him
+after luncheon, with the professional nurse beside him.
+
+The girls greeted him rather shyly, especially Doreen, but Mrs. Wedmore
+was motherly and gentle. Mr. Wedmore attacked him at once.
+
+"I can't understand, Dudley, why you kept it all so dark. Couldn't you
+see for yourself that it was better for your father to be under
+restraint, as well as safer for other people?"
+
+Mrs. Wedmore tried to interpose and to change the conversation to
+another subject, but Dudley said:
+
+"I would rather explain now, once and for all. I shall be going away
+to-morrow, and there are several things which I should like to make
+clear first." He paused, and Mrs. Wedmore, her daughters and the nurse
+took the opportunity to leave the room. "Now, Mr. Wedmore, tell me what
+you want to know."
+
+"Well, you told us nothing about your father's being alive and back in
+England, for one thing."
+
+"It was by his wish that I kept it a secret. He persisted that he was
+sane; he seemed to be sane. But he believed that if it were known that
+he was in England he would be shut up."
+
+"But the passing himself off as an old woman, this living in a sort of
+underground way, didn't that look like madness?"
+
+"I took it for eccentricity and nothing more, until--until he sent for
+me one day, and brought me suddenly into a room--a little dark, bare
+room--where there was a man lying on the ground asleep, as I thought. My
+father told me to bring him into the next room, and--when I stooped to
+touch him"--Dudley shuddered at the ghastly recollection--"my hands were
+covered with blood."
+
+"Good gracious! He had murdered him?"
+
+"Yes. And from that time he seemed a different man. I saw that he was
+mad. I tried to persuade him to give himself up, to let himself be put
+under restraint. I laid traps for him, trying to take him to an asylum.
+But he was too cunning for me, and all I got by it was to rouse in him a
+bitter feeling of hatred of myself."
+
+"Why didn't you give information--to the police, if necessary?"
+
+"How could I? My own father! I believed he would be hanged if he was
+caught. I believe so still. The last time I saw him he seemed sane,
+except for a feeling of irritation against me and against Carrie, who,
+it seems, is my half-sister. But he attacked me suddenly, knocked me on
+the head, and tried to drown me. There, now you know as much as I do.
+Can you wonder now that I was obliged to cut myself off from my friends,
+with such a burden as that on my mind?"
+
+Mr. Wedmore was silent for a time.
+
+"Poor lad!" he said at last. "Poor lad! I think you might have found
+some better way out of it than holding your tongue and shutting yourself
+up from all your friends; but, on the other hand, it was a jolly
+difficult position. Jolly difficult! And so you never even told Max?"
+
+"No, though I more than once felt inclined to. But it was such a ghastly
+business altogether that I thought I'd better hold my tongue, especially
+as--I was afraid--it might filter through him to--to somebody
+else--somebody who couldn't be told a beastly secret like that."
+
+Mr. Wedmore nodded.
+
+"And this girl--this Carrie?" said he.
+
+Dudley's face lighted up.
+
+"That's my one comfort in all this," said he, "that it has led to my
+finding out the girl and doing something for her. I never heard of her
+before. But my father told me she was my half-sister, and they say there
+is something in our faces which confirms the story. Anyhow, she's a
+grand girl, and I'm going to look after her. She's gone away--"
+
+"Gone away!" repeated Mr. Wedmore, disconcerted.
+
+There had been a lull in the quarrel between him and his son for the
+last few days, during which Carrie had avoided Max and Max had avoided
+his father.
+
+"Yes," said Dudley. "She would go, and she thought it best to go without
+any fuss, leaving me to say good-bye for her. She's all right. I'm going
+to look after her; and she's going into training as a hospital nurse."
+
+"Oh, well, I'm sure I hope she'll get on," said Mr. Wedmore, rather
+vaguely.
+
+He had been getting used, during the last few days, to the thought of
+the pretty, blue-eyed girl as a daughter-in-law, and he found himself
+now rather hoping than fearing that Max would stick to his choice.
+
+"Well," said he at last, "I must send the ladies to have a look at you
+now, I suppose. I wouldn't let them talk my head off on the first day,
+if I were you."
+
+Dudley sprang to his feet. He seemed restless and excited.
+
+"I won't talk much. I won't let them talk much," said he, in an unsteady
+voice. "But may I see--may I speak to Doreen?"
+
+Mr. Wedmore nodded good-humoredly.
+
+"Well, you may speak to her, if she'll let you," said he, cheerfully.
+"But, really, she's a thorny young person. She's treated young Lindsay,
+the curate, very cruelly, and I'm sure he's a much better looking fellow
+than you. However, you can try your luck."
+
+Dudley did not wait for any more encouragement. No sooner had Mr.
+Wedmore left the room than the convalescent followed. He found Doreen in
+the hall, putting a handful of letters on the table ready for the post.
+She started when she turned and saw him, and, leaning back with her
+hands upon the table, she asked him what he meant by leaving the nice,
+warm, ox-roasting fire they had built up expressly for him upstairs.
+
+"I hear you've been treating the curate very badly," said he. "I've come
+to ask for an explanation."
+
+Doreen looked down at the tip of her shoe, and, after a pause, said
+demurely:
+
+"Well, I suppose if you don't know the reason, nobody does."
+
+"Why, was it anything connected with me, then?"
+
+"So I have been informed," answered Doreen, more primly than ever.
+
+And then he waited for her to look up; and when she did, he kissed her.
+And they didn't exchange a word upon the subject of the long
+misunderstanding, but just strolled into the dining-room and saw
+pictures in the fire together.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was no trial and no scandal; there were rumors, and that was all.
+Max remained true to his fancy for Carrie, and gave proof of his
+sincerity by settling down to work in a merchant's office, after the
+manner so dear to his father's heart. And in return, Mr. Wedmore
+consented to Carrie's being invited down to The Beeches in the spring,
+to be present at Doreen's wedding.
+
+And when Carrie came, several details concerning the life led by her and
+the supposed Mrs. Higgs in the house by the docks came to light, and the
+last remains of the mystery were cleared away.
+
+She told how her father, passing himself off as Mrs. Higgs, an old
+servant in the Horne family, of whom Carrie had heard in the lifetime of
+Miss Aldridge, had found her out, had touched her heart by a kindness
+evidently genuine, and had prevailed upon her to go and make her home in
+the deserted house, which, Mrs. Higgs said, had been intended for her by
+her late master.
+
+In the empty house they found that an entrance had been made into the
+adjoining warehouse, which had been used by a gang of thieves as a
+hiding-place for stolen goods. In the little front shop these ingenious
+persons had fashioned an ingenious hiding-place by hollowing out a
+tunnel to the river. Into this tunnel the water flowed at high tide; but
+when the tide was low an entrance could be effected from the river, by
+which the thieves could pass in and out, and in which they could safely
+deposit, in a chest in the slimy earth, property too valuable to be left
+above ground.
+
+Carrie explained how Mrs. Higgs fraternized with the thieves, before she
+herself guessed who they were, and how she had got used to them before
+she learned their character, though not before she had grown suspicious
+about them. How she had seen Dudley with Mrs. Higgs, without knowing who
+he was, and how she had set him down as a suspicious character from the
+furtive manner of his visits. How she herself posted the two letters,
+the one to Edward Jacobs and the other to Dudley, which brought them to
+the place on the same day. How she herself was sent out of the way on
+that occasion, and returned in time to witness, through the hole in the
+floor above, the stooping over the body by Dudley, and his drawing back
+covered with blood, which she took for the actual murder. How Mrs. Higgs
+and Dudley had then left the house together, while she was too sick with
+fright to move. How she had remained outside the house until she saw
+Max; and how, when he was gone, and Mrs. Higgs had come back, she found
+that the manner of the supposed old woman had changed toward her and
+grown unbearably cruel and harsh. How she had been left for days and
+nights by herself, until she resolved to bear it no longer. And how,
+when Mrs. Higgs had sent her to Dudley's chambers with the message about
+Dick Barker, she had told her never to come back again.
+
+Carrie added that she herself had always been treated with kindness, not
+only by the gang, of whom, indeed, they saw little, but by such of the
+men and boys on the barges which came to the wharf as knew her, and
+"winked" at her unauthorized tenancy of the deserted house.
+
+In broad daylight, in the company of half a dozen policemen, Max and
+Dudley revisited the house together. They found the holes in the wall
+through which "Mrs. Higgs" took stock of Max on the occasion of his
+first visit; they tested the ingenious device by means of which the
+middle boards in the front shop could be made to fall and deposit
+anything laid upon them in the tunnel beneath. They found the hole in
+which Mrs. Higgs had stepped, and the pole which had been used to
+underpin the middle boards. This hole extended under the floor of the
+kitchen, so that by creeping under the flooring from the one room to the
+other the pole could be withdrawn or replaced without the knowledge of a
+person in the front room.
+
+This final discovery explained to Max the manner in which the body of
+Jacobs had been made to disappear while he himself was in the room with
+it.
+
+The gang, of which the illustrious Dick Barker had formed one, had
+wisely disappeared, never to return.
+
+But one day, when Carrie, in her nurse's dress, was walking along Oxford
+Street, in the company of Max, to whom, with Mr. Wedmore's permission,
+she was now engaged, she felt a hand in her pocket, and turning quickly,
+found that she was having her purse stolen, "for auld lang syne," by
+Dick Barker.
+
+Max recognized in the well-dressed young man, with the low type of face,
+the man whom he had once supposed to be his rival.
+
+As Dick promptly disappeared, Carrie and Max looked at each other, and
+the girl burst into tears.
+
+"Oh, Max, if it hadn't been for you--" whispered she, as she dried her
+eyes quickly and hurried on with him.
+
+"And, oh, Carrie, if it hadn't been for you--" whispered Max back, as he
+took her into the shop of the Hungarian Bread Company, and made her have
+a cup of tea.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHARF BY THE DOCKS***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 16092-8.txt or 16092-8.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/0/9/16092
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/old/16092-8.zip b/old/16092-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a4f6c1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/16092-8.zip
diff --git a/old/16092-h.zip b/old/16092-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52b5059
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/16092-h.zip
diff --git a/old/16092-h/16092-h.htm b/old/16092-h/16092-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4b5849d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/16092-h/16092-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,9079 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Wharf by the Docks, by Florence Warden</title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+/*<![CDATA[  XML blockout */
+<!--
+    p {  margin-top: .75em;
+         text-align: justify;
+         margin-bottom: .75em;
+         }
+    h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {
+         text-align: center; /* all headings centered */
+         clear: both;
+         }
+    hr { width: 33%;
+	 margin-top: 2em;
+	 margin-bottom: 2em;
+         margin-left: auto;
+         margin-right: auto;
+         clear: both;
+       }
+
+    table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}
+
+    body{margin-left: 10%;
+         margin-right: 10%;
+        }
+
+    .linenum  {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */
+    .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .pagenum  {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} /* page numbers */
+    .sidenote {width: 20%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em;
+               padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em; margin-left: 1em;
+               float: right; clear: right; margin-top: 1em;
+               font-size: smaller; background: #eeeeee; border: dashed 1px;}
+
+    .bb       {border-bottom: solid 2px;}
+    .bl       {border-left: solid 2px;}
+    .bt       {border-top: solid 2px;}
+    .br       {border-right: solid 2px;}
+    .bbox     {border: solid 2px;}
+
+    .center   {text-align: center;}
+    .smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
+    .u        {text-decoration: underline;}
+
+    .caption  {font-weight: bold;}
+
+    .figcenter   {margin: auto; text-align: center;}
+
+    .figleft     {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top:
+                 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;}
+
+    .figright    {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;
+                 margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;}
+
+    .footnotes        {border: dashed 1px;}
+    .footnote         {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;}
+    .footnote .label  {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;}
+    .fnanchor         {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;}
+
+    .poem             {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;}
+    .poem br          {display: none;}
+    .poem .stanza     {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;}
+    .poem span.i0     {display: block; margin-left: 0em;}
+    .poem span.i2     {display: block; margin-left: 2em;}
+    .poem span.i4     {display: block; margin-left: 4em;}
+    hr.full { width: 100%; }
+    pre      {font-size: 8pt;}
+    // -->
+    /* XML end  ]]>*/
+    </style>
+</head>
+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Wharf by the Docks, by Florence Warden</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Wharf by the Docks</p>
+<p>       A Novel</p>
+<p>Author: Florence Warden</p>
+<p>Release Date: June 19, 2005  [eBook #16092]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHARF BY THE DOCKS***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Mary Meehan,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (https://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>THE WHARF BY THE DOCKS</h1>
+
+<h3>A NOVEL</h3>
+
+<h2>By FLORENCE WARDEN</h2>
+
+<h3><i>Author of "The Mystery of the Inn by the Shore," etc.</i></h3>
+
+<h3>1896</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<p>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.--SOMETHING AMISS.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.--MAX MAKES A DISCOVERY.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.--DUDLEY EXPLAINS.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.--A PARAGRAPH IN "THE STANDARD."</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.--ONE MAN'S LOSS is ANOTHER MAN'S GAIN.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.--THE LITTLE STONE PASSAGE.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.--A QUESTIONABLE GUIDE.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.--FOREWARNED, BUT NOT FOREARMED.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.--THE MAN WHO HESITATES.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.--GRANNY.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.--A TRAP.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.--ESCAPE.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.--THE SEQUEL TO A TRAGEDY.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.--IS IT BLACKMAIL?</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.--MR. WEDMORE'S SECOND FREAK.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.--A MESSAGE FROM THE WHARF.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.--A SORCERESS.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII.--THE SWORD FALLS.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX.--A STRANGE PAIR.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX.--THE PREY OF THE RIVER.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI.--A DUBIOUS REFUGE.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII.--TWO WOMEN.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII.--THE BLUE-EYED NURSE.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV.--MAX MAKES A STAND AND A DISCOVERY.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV.--THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI.--BACK TO LOVE AND LIFE.</a><br />
+</p>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<h3>SOMETHING AMISS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Everybody knows Canterbury, with its Old-World charms and its
+ostentatious air of being content to be rather behind the times, of
+looking down upon the hurrying Americans who dash through its cathedral
+and take snap-shots at its slums, and at all those busy moderns who
+cannot afford to take life at its own jog-trot pace.</p>
+
+<p>But everybody does not know the charming old halls and comfortable,
+old-fashioned mansions which are dotted about the neighboring country,
+either nestling in secluded nooks of the Kentish valleys or holding a
+stately stand on the wooded hills.</p>
+
+<p>Of this latter category was The Beeches, a pretty house of warm, red
+brick, with a dignified Jacobean front, which stood upon the highest
+ground of a prettily wooded park, and commanded one of those soft,
+undulating, sleepy landscapes which are so characteristically English,
+and of which grazing sheep and ruminating cows form so important a
+feature. A little tame, perhaps, but very pleasant, very homely, very
+sweet to look upon by the tired eyes that have seen enough of the
+active, bustling world.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. George Wedmore, of the firm of Wedmore, Parkinson and Bishop,
+merchants of the city of London, had bought back the place, which had
+formerly belonged to his family, from the Jews into whose hands it had
+fallen, and had settled there to spend in retirement the latter end of
+his life, surrounded by a family who were not too well pleased to
+exchange busy Bayswater for what they were flippant enough to call a
+wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>Dinner was over; and Mr. Wedmore, in a snug easy-chair by the
+dining-room fire, was waiting for Doctor Haselden, who often looked in
+for a smoke and a game of chess with the owner of The Beeches.</p>
+
+<p>A lean, fidgety man, with thin hair and grayish whiskers, Mr. Wedmore
+looked less at home in the velveteen suit and gaiters which he persisted
+in wearing even in the evening, less like the country gentleman it was
+his ambition to be, than like the care-laden city merchant he at heart
+still was.</p>
+
+<p>On the other side of the table sat his better half, in whom it was easy
+to see he must have found all the charm of contrast to his own
+personality. A cheery, buxom woman, still handsome, full of life and
+fun, she had held for the whole of her married life a sway over her lord
+and master all the greater that neither of them was conscious of the
+fact. A most devoted and submissive wife, a most indulgent and
+affectionate mother, Mrs. Wedmore occupied the not unenviable position
+of being half slave, half idol in her own household.</p>
+
+<p>The clock struck eight, and the bell rang.</p>
+
+<p>"There he is! There's the doctor!" cried Mrs. Wedmore, with a beaming
+nod. Her husband sat up in his chair, and the troubled frown which he
+had worn all the evening grew a little deeper.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like you, my dear, to leave us together this evening," said
+he.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wedmore jumped up at once, gathering her balls of wool and big
+knitting-needles together with one quick sweep of the arm.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, dear," said she, with another nod, giving him an anxious
+look.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wedmore perceived the look and smiled. He stretched out his hand to
+lay it gently on his wife's arm as she passed him.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing about me. Nothing for you to be alarmed about," said he.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wedmore hesitated a moment. She had her suspicions, and she would
+dearly have liked to know more. But she was the best trained of wives;
+and after a moment's pause, seeing that she was to hear nothing further,
+she said, good-humoredly: "All right, dear," and left the room, just in
+time to shake hands with Doctor Haselden as she went out.</p>
+
+<p>Now, while the host found it impossible to shake off the signs of his
+old calling, the doctor was a man who had never been able to assume
+them. From head to foot there was no trace of the doctor in his
+appearance; he looked all over what at heart he was&mdash;the burly,
+good-humored, home-loving, land-loving country gentleman, who looked
+upon Great Datton, where his home was, as the pivot of the world.</p>
+
+<p>However he was dressed, he always looked shabby, and he could never have
+been mistaken for anything but an English gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>He shook hands with Mr. Wedmore, with a smile. These poor Londoners,
+trying to acclimatize themselves, amused him greatly. He looked upon
+them much as the Londoner looks upon the Polish Jew immigrants&mdash;with
+pity, a little jealousy, and no little scorn.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Carlo?" asked he.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Carlo was a nuisance, so I've sent him to the stable," said Mr.
+Wedmore, with the slightly colder manner which he instantly assumed if
+any grievance of his, however small, was touched upon.</p>
+
+<p>Carlo was a young retriever, which Mr. Wedmore, in the stern belief that
+it was the proper thing in a country house, had encouraged about the
+house until his habits of getting between everybody's legs and helping
+himself to the contents of everybody's plate had so roused the ire of
+the rest of the household that Mr. Wedmore had had to give way to the
+universal prejudice against him.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor shook his head. Lack of capacity for managing a dog was just
+what one might have expected from these new-comers.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wedmore turned his chair to face that of the doctor, and spoke in
+the sharp, incisive tones of a man who has serious business on hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been hoping you would drop in every night for the last fortnight,"
+said he, "and as you didn't come, I was at last obliged to send for you.
+I have a very important matter to consult you about. You've brought your
+pipe?" The doctor produced it from his pocket. "Well, fill it, and
+listen. It's about young Horne&mdash;Dudley Horne&mdash;that I want to speak to
+you, to consult you, in fact."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor nodded as he filled his pipe.</p>
+
+<p>"The young barrister I've met here, who's engaged to your elder
+daughter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she was all but engaged to him," admitted Mr. Wedmore, in a
+grudging tone. "But I'm going to put a stop to it, and I'll tell you
+why." Here he got up, as if unable to keep still in the state of
+excitement into which he was falling, and stood with his hands behind
+him and his back to the fire. "I have a strong suspicion that the young
+man's not quite right here." And lowering his voice, Mr. Wedmore touched
+his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"Good gracious! You surprise me!" cried the doctor. "He always seemed to
+me such a clever young fellow. Indeed, you said so to me yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"So he is. Very clever," said Mr. Wedmore, shortly. "I don't suppose
+there are many young chaps of his age&mdash;for he's barely thirty&mdash;at the
+Bar whose prospects are as good as his. But, for all that, I have a
+strong suspicion that he's got a tile loose, and that's why I wanted to
+speak to you. Now his father was in a lunatic asylum no less than three
+times, and was in one when he died."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor looked grave.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a bad history, certainly. Do you know how the father's malady
+started?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes. It was the effect of a wound in the head received when he was
+a young man out in America, in the war with Mexico in '46."</p>
+
+<p>"That isn't the sort of mania that is likely to come down from father to
+son," said the doctor, "if his brain was perfectly sound before, and the
+recurrent mania the result of an accident."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, so I've understood. And the matter has never troubled me at all
+until lately, when I have begun to detect certain morbid tendencies in
+Dudley, and a general change which makes me hesitate to trust him with
+the happiness of my daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you give me instances?" asked the doctor, although he began to feel
+sure that whatever opinion he might express on the matter, Mr. Wedmore
+would pay little attention to any but his own.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, for you to understand the case, I must tell you a little more
+about the lad's father. He and I were very old friends&mdash;chums from
+boyhood, in fact. When he came back from America&mdash;where he went from a
+lad's love of adventure&mdash;he made a good marriage from a monetary point
+of view; married a wharf on the Thames, in fact, somewhere Limehouse
+way, and settled down as a wharfinger. He was a steady fellow, and did
+very well, until one fine morning he was found trying to cut his throat,
+and had to be locked up. Well, he was soon out again that time, and
+things went on straight enough for eight or nine years, by which time he
+had done very well&mdash;made a lot of money by speculation&mdash;and was thinking
+of retiring from business altogether. Then, perhaps it was the extra
+pressure of his increased business, but, at any rate, he broke out
+again, tried to murder his wife that time, and did, in fact, injure her
+so much that she died shortly afterward. Of course, he had to be shut up
+again; and a man named Edward Jacobs, a shrewd Jew, who was his
+confidential clerk, carried on the business in his absence. Now, both
+Horne and his wife had had the fullest confidence in this Jacobs, but he
+turned out all wrong. As soon as he learned, at the end of about twelve
+months, that Horne was coming out again, he decamped with everything he
+could lay his hands on; and from the position of affairs you may guess
+that he made a very good haul. Well, poor Horne found himself in a maze
+of difficulties; in fact, his clerk's fraud ruined him. Everything that
+could be sold or mortgaged had to go to the settlement, and when his
+affairs had been finally put straight, there was only a little bit left,
+that had been so settled upon his wife that no one could touch it. He
+made a good fight of it for a little while, with the help of a few old
+friends, but, in the end, he broke down again for the third time. But he
+escaped out of the asylum and went abroad, without seeing his friends or
+his child, and a few months afterward the announcement of his death in
+an American asylum was sent by a correspondent out there. Happily there
+were no difficulties about securing the mother's money for the son, and
+it was enough to educate the boy and to give him a start; but, of
+course, he had to begin the world as a poor man instead of a rich one.
+Perhaps that was all the better for him&mdash;or so I thought until lately."</p>
+
+<p>"And what are these signs of a morbid tendency that you spoke of?" asked
+the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, in the first place, after being almost extravagant in his
+devotion to my daughter, Doreen, he now neglects her outrageously&mdash;comes
+down very seldom, writes short letters or none. Now, my daughter is not
+the sort of girl that a sane man would neglect," added Doctor Wedmore,
+proudly.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not," assented the doctor, inwardly thinking that it was much
+less surprising than it would have been in the case of one of his own
+girls.</p>
+
+<p>"In the second place, he is always harping upon the subject of Jacobs
+and his peculations&mdash;an old subject, which he might well let rest. And,
+in the third place, he has become moody, morose and absent-minded; and
+my son, Max, who often visits him at his chambers in Lincoln's Inn, has
+noticed the change even more than I, who have fewer opportunities of
+seeing him."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor was puffing stolidly at his pipe and looking at the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"It is very difficult to form an opinion upon report only," said he.
+"Frankly, I can see nothing in what you have told me about the young man
+which could not be explained in other and likelier ways. He may have got
+entangled, for instance, with some woman in London."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wedmore took fire at this suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>"In that case, the sooner Doreen forgets all about him the better."</p>
+
+<p>"Mind, I'm only suggesting!" put in the doctor, hastily. "There may be a
+dozen more reasons&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not wait to find them out," said Mr. Wedmore, decisively. "He
+and Max are coming down together this evening. My wife would have them
+to help in organizing some affair they're getting up for Christmas. I'll
+send him to the right-about without any more nonsense."</p>
+
+<p>"But surely that is hardly&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hardly what?" snapped out Mr. Wedmore, as he poked the fire viciously.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, hardly fair to either of the young people. Put a few questions to
+him yourself, or better still, let your wife do it. It may be only a
+storm in a teacup, after all. Remember, he is the son of your old
+friend. And you wouldn't like to have it on your conscience that you had
+treated him harshly."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor's advice was sane and sound enough, but Mr. Wedmore was not
+in the mood to listen to it. That notion of an entanglement with another
+woman rankled in his proud mind, and made him still less inclined to be
+patient and forbearing.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall give Doreen warning of what I am going to do at once," said he,
+"before Horne turns up."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor shrugged his shoulders. He was obstinate himself.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wedmore crossed the long room to the door, and opened it sharply.</p>
+
+<p>The hall was full of people and of great bales of goods, which were
+piled upon the center-table and heaped up all around it.</p>
+
+<p>"Doreen!" he called, sharply.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the crowd there rushed a girl&mdash;such a girl! One of those radiant
+creatures who explain the cult of womanhood; who make it difficult even
+for sober-minded, middle-aged men and matrons to realize that this is
+nothing but flesh and blood like themselves; one of those beautiful
+creatures who claim worship as a right and who repay it with kindness
+and brightness and sweetness and laughter.</p>
+
+<p>No house was ever dull that held Doreen Wedmore.</p>
+
+<p>She was a tall girl, brown-haired, brown-eyed, made to laugh and to live
+in the sunshine. Nobody could resist her, and nobody ever tried to.</p>
+
+<p>She sprang across the hall to her father and whirled him back into the
+dining-room, and put her back against it.</p>
+
+<p>"Dudley's come!" said she. "He's in the hall&mdash;among the blankets!"</p>
+
+<p>"Blankets!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." She was crossing the room by this time to the doctor, whom she
+had quickly perceived, and was holding out her hand to him. "You must
+know, doctor, that we are up to our eyes in blankets just now, and in
+bundles of red flannel, and in soup and coals. Papa has been reading up
+Christmas in the country in the olden time, and he finds that to be
+correct you must deluge the neighborhood with those articles. They are
+not at all what the people want, as far as I can make out. But that
+doesn't matter. It pleases papa to demoralize the neighborhood; so we're
+doing it. And mamma helps him. She dates from the prehistoric period
+when a wife <i>really</i> swore to obey her husband; so she does it through
+thick and thin. Of course, she knows better all the time. She could
+always set papa right if she chose. Whatever happens, papa must be
+obeyed. So when he wants to run his dear old head into a noose, she
+dutifully holds it open for him, when all the time she knows how
+uncomfortable he'll be till he gets out."</p>
+
+<p>"You're a saucy puss, Miss!" cried her father, trying to frown, but
+betraying his delight in his daughter's merry tongue by the twinkle in
+his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"And that's the right sort of woman for a wife," said the old doctor,
+enthusiastically. "I must say I think it's a bad sign when young girls
+think they can improve upon their own mothers."</p>
+
+<p>"She doesn't mean half she says," said her father, indulgently.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, she does," retorted Doreen. "And she wants to know, please,
+what it is you have to say to Dudley."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor rose from his chair, and Mr. Wedmore frowned.</p>
+
+<p>"And it's no use putting me off by telling me not to ask questions. I'm
+not mamma, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"I intend to ask him&mdash;something about you."</p>
+
+<p>It was the girl's turn to frown now.</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't, papa," said she, in a lower voice. "I know you're going
+to worry him, and to put your hands behind your back and ask him
+conundrums, and to make all sorts of mischief, under the impression that
+you are putting things right. And if you only just wouldn't, everything
+would soon be as right as possible. While if you persist&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Wedmore interrupted her, not harshly, as he would have done
+anybody else, but with decision.</p>
+
+<p>"You must trust me to know best, my dear. It is better for you both that
+we should come to some understanding. Haselden, you'll excuse me for
+half an hour, won't you? And you, Doreen," and he turned again to his
+daughter, "stay with the doctor here, and try to talk sense till I come
+back again."</p>
+
+<p>And Mr. Wedmore went quickly out of the room, without giving the girl a
+chance of saying anything more.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<h3>MAX MAKES A DISCOVERY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Doreen's bright face lost a little of its color and much of its gayety
+as her father disappeared. The doctor felt sorry for her.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come; cheer up, my dear," he said. "If he loves you honestly, and
+I don't know how he can fail to do so, a few words with your father will
+put matters all right. There is nothing to look so sad about, I think."</p>
+
+<p>But Doreen gave him one earnest, questioning look, and then her eyelids
+fell again.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know," she said, in a low voice. "Papa doesn't understand
+Dudley; but I think I do. He is very sensitive and rather reserved about
+himself. If papa interferes now, he will offend him, and Dudley may very
+likely go off at once, and perhaps never come near me again. He is
+proud&mdash;very proud."</p>
+
+<p>"But if he could behave like that," replied the doctor, quickly, "if he
+could throw over such a nice girl as you for no reason worth speaking
+of, I should call him a nasty-tempered fellow, whom you ought to be glad
+to be rid of."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but you would be wrong," retorted Doreen, with a little flush in
+her face. "It is quite true that he has neglected me a little lately,
+written short letters, and not been down to see me so often. But I am
+sure there was some better reason for his conduct than papa thinks. And
+if I feel so sure, and if I am ready to trust him, why shouldn't papa
+be?"</p>
+
+<p>The doctor smiled at her ingenuousness.</p>
+
+<p>"Your father is right in claiming that he ought to be made acquainted
+with the young man's reason for conduct which looks quite unwarrantable
+on the face of it," said he.</p>
+
+<p>But Doreen gave a little sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think that a man has a right to turn inquisitor over another
+man, just because the second man is ready to marry the first man's
+daughter," said she. "And I'm sure papa wouldn't have stood it when
+<i>he</i> was young."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"He ought to put up with any amount of questioning rather than lose the
+girl of his choice," said he decisively. "And if he has the stuff of a
+man in him he will do so."</p>
+
+<p>"But he is unhappy. I know it," said Doreen.</p>
+
+<p>"Unhappy!" cried the doctor, indignantly. "And what's he got to be
+unhappy about, I should like to know? He ought to be thanking Heaven on
+his knees all day long for getting such a nice girl to promise to marry
+him. That's the attitude a young man used to take when I was young."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you go down on your knees all day long when Mrs. Haselden promised
+to marry you?" asked Doreen, recovering her sauciness at the notion.
+"And why should he do it till he knows what sort of a wife I am going to
+make? And why should he go down on his knees more than I on mine? When
+there are more women in the world than men, too!"</p>
+
+<p>The doctor shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, there is no arguing with you saucy girls," said he. "But I know
+that I, for my part, don't know of a man in the whole world who is
+worthy to marry one of my daughters."</p>
+
+<p>As the doctor finished speaking, the door was opened quickly, and Mr.
+Wedmore came in, looking white and worried.</p>
+
+<p>Doreen ran to him with an anxious face.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you done, papa, what have you done? Did you see him? What did
+you say? What did you say?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wedmore put his arm around his daughter, and kissed her tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't trouble your head about him any more, my dear child," said he in
+a husky voice. "He isn't worth it. He isn't worthy of you."</p>
+
+<p>Doreen drew away from her father, looking into his face with searching
+eyes and with an expression full of fear.</p>
+
+<p>"Papa, what do you mean? You have sent him away?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wedmore answered in a loud and angry voice; but it was clear enough
+that the anger was not directed against his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not send him away. He took himself off. I had hardly begun to
+speak to him&mdash;and I began quite quietly, mind&mdash;when he made the excuse
+of a letter which he found waiting for him, to go back to town. Without
+any ceremony, he rushed out of the study into the hall, and snatched up
+his hat and coat to go."</p>
+
+<p>"And is he gone?" asked Doreen, in a low voice, as she staggered back a
+step.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I suppose so. And a good riddance, too. There was no letter at
+all for him, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, there was a letter!" faltered Doreen.</p>
+
+<p>She gave a glance round her; seemed to remember suddenly the presence of
+a third person, for she blushed deeply on meeting the doctor's eyes;
+then, without another word, she sprang across the room to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going?" cried her father, as he followed her into the
+hall.</p>
+
+<p>But she did not answer. The hall-door was closing with a loud clang.</p>
+
+<p>Doreen was not the girl to lose her lover for want of a little energy.
+She was fonder of Dudley than people imagined. There is always an
+inclination in the general mind to consider that a person of lively
+temperament is incapable of a deep feeling. And Mr. Wedmore had only
+shown a common tendency in believing that his beautiful and brilliant
+daughter would easily give up the lover whom he considered unworthy of
+her. But he was wrong. Much too high-spirited and too happy in her
+temperament and surroundings to brood over her lover's late negligence,
+she was perhaps too vain to believe that she had lost her hold upon his
+heart. At any rate, she liked him too well to give him up in this
+off-hand fashion without making an effort to discover the reason of his
+present mysterious conduct.</p>
+
+<p>That letter which he had used as an excuse for his sudden departure had
+arrived at The Beeches by the afternoon post. Doreen had seen it with
+her own eyes; had noted with some natural curiosity that the direction
+was ill-spelled, ill-written; that the chirography was that of an almost
+illiterate female correspondent; and that the post-mark showed that it
+came from the East End of London. Rather a strange letter for the smart
+young barrister to receive, perhaps. And the thought of it made Doreen
+pause when she had got outside the door on the broad drive between the
+lawns.</p>
+
+<p>Only for the moment. The next she was flying across the rougher grass
+outside the garden among the oaks and the beeches of the park. She saw
+no one in front of her, and for a few seconds her heart beat very fast.
+She thought she had missed him.</p>
+
+<p>There was no lodge at the park entrance; only a modest wooden gate in
+the middle of the fence. Doreen was hesitating whether to go through or
+to go back, when she saw the figure of Dudley Horne coming toward the
+gate from the stables.</p>
+
+<p>So she waited.</p>
+
+<p>As he came nearer, she, hidden from his sight by the trunk of an old
+oak-tree, grew uneasy and shy. Dark though it was, dimly as she could
+see him, Doreen felt convinced, from the rapid, steady pace at which he
+walked, that he was intent upon some set purpose, that he was not driven
+by pique at her father's words.</p>
+
+<p>He came quite close to her, so that she saw his face. A
+dark-complexioned, strong face it was, clean-shaven, not handsome at
+all. But, on the other hand, it was just such a face as women admire;
+full of character, of ambition, of virility. Doreen had been debating
+with herself whether she dared speak to him; but the moment she got a
+full look at his face, her courage died away.</p>
+
+<p>It was plain to her that, whatever might be the subject of the thoughts
+which were agitating his mind, she had no share in them.</p>
+
+<p>So she let him pass out, and then crept back, downcast, shocked,
+ashamed, up the slope to the house.</p>
+
+<p>She got in by the billiard-room, at the window of which she knocked.
+Max, her brother, who was playing a game with Queenie, his younger
+sister, let her in, and cried out at sight of her white face:</p>
+
+<p>"Hello! Doreen, what's up? Had a row with Dudley? Or what?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have had no 'row' with any one," answered the girl, very quietly.
+"But&mdash;you must all know all about it presently, so you may as well hear
+it at once&mdash;Dudley has gone away."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>Max stopped in the act of trying for a carom, and stared at his sister.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, he only came when I did, ten minutes ago!"</p>
+
+<p>"He's gone, I tell you!" repeated Doreen, stamping her foot. "And&mdash;and
+listen, Max, I'm frightened about him! He's got something on his mind.
+When he went away, I saw him; I was standing by the gate; he looked
+so&mdash;so <i>dreadful</i> that I didn't dare to speak to him. <i>I!</i>
+Think of that!"</p>
+
+<p>"Had papa been speaking to him?" put in the shrewd younger sister, who
+was chalking her cue at the other end of the room.</p>
+
+<p>The younger sister always sees most of the game.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye&mdash;es, but&mdash;I don't know&mdash;I hardly think it was that," answered Doreen
+quickly. "At any rate, Max, I want you to do this for me; I want you to
+go up to town to-morrow and see him. I shan't rest until I know
+he's&mdash;he's all right&mdash;after what I saw of his face and the look on it.
+Now, you will do this, won't you, won't you? Without saying anything to
+anybody, mind. Queenie, you can hold your tongue, too. Now, Max, there's
+a dear, you'll do it, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>Max told her that she was "off her head," that he could do no good, and
+so on. But he ended in giving way to the will of his handsome sister,
+whom he adored.</p>
+
+<p>Max Wedmore was a good-looking fellow of five-and-twenty, with a
+reputation as a ne'er-do-weel, which, perhaps, he hardly deserved. His
+father had a great idea of bringing the young man up to some useful
+calling to keep him out of mischief. Not very terrible mischief, for the
+most part: only the result of too much leisure and too much money in
+inexperienced hands. The upshot of this difference of opinion between
+father and son was that while Mr. Wedmore was always finding mercantile
+situations for his son, Max was always taking care to be thrown out of
+them after a few weeks, and taking a rest which was by no means well
+earned.</p>
+
+<p>This errand of his sister's was by no means unwelcome to him, since it
+took him back to town, where he could amuse himself better than he could
+in the country.</p>
+
+<p>So, on the following morning, he found some sort of excuse to take him
+up, and started on his journey with the blessings of Doreen, and with
+very little opposition from his father, who was subdued and thankful to
+have got rid of Dudley with so little trouble.</p>
+
+<p>It was soon after three when Max arrived at Dudley Horne's chambers in
+Lincoln's Inn. Of course, Dudley was out; so Max scribbled a note for
+his friend and left it on the table while he went to the Law Courts to
+look for him. Not finding him anywhere about, Max filled up the day in
+his own fashion, and returned to Dudley's room at about seven o'clock,
+when he supposed that his friend would either return to dinner or look
+in on his way to dine elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>He waited an hour, then went away and filled up his time at a
+music-hall, and returned once more at a quarter to eleven. Dudley, so he
+was told by the old woman who gave him the information, had not, as far
+as she knew, been in his rooms since the morning.</p>
+
+<p>Max, who was a great friend of Dudley's, and could take any liberty he
+pleased in his precincts, lit the gas and the sitting-room fire, and
+installed himself in an arm-chair with a book. He could not read,
+however, for he was oppressed by some of Doreen's own fears. He was well
+acquainted with all his friend's ways, and he knew that for him to be
+away both from his chambers and from the neighborhood of the Courts for
+a whole day was most unusual with that particularly steady, plodding
+young man. He began to worry himself with the remembrance that Dudley
+had not been himself of late, that he had been moody, restless and
+unsettled without apparent cause.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, Max worked himself into such a state of anxiety about his
+friend that when he at last heard the key turned in the lock of the
+outer door, he jumped up excitedly and made a rush for the door.</p>
+
+<p>Before he reached it, however, he heard footsteps in the adjoining
+bedroom, the heavy tread of a man stumbling about in the dark, the
+overthrowing of some of the furniture.</p>
+
+<p>Surely that could not be Dudley!</p>
+
+<p>Max stood still at the door, listening. He thought it might be a thief
+who had got hold of the key of the chambers.</p>
+
+<p>As he stood still, close by the wall, the door which led from the one
+room to the other was thrown open from the bedroom, almost touching him
+as it fell back; and there staggered into the sitting-room, into the
+light thrown by the gas and the fire, a figure which Max could scarcely
+recognize as Dudley Horne. His face was the grayish white of the dead;
+his eyes were glassy; his lips were parted; while the grime of a London
+fog had left its black marks round his mouth and eyes, giving him an
+appearance altogether diabolical. He was shaking like a leaf as he
+stumbled against a chair and suddenly wheeled round to the light.</p>
+
+<p>Then, unbuttoning his overcoat quickly, he looked down at his clothes
+underneath. He passed his hand over them and held it in the light, with
+a shudder.</p>
+
+<p>Max uttered a sharp cry.</p>
+
+<p>The stain on Dudley's hand, the wet patches which glistened on his dark
+clothes, were stains of blood.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<h3>DUDLEY EXPLAINS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>As the cry of horror escaped the lips of Max, Dudley wheeled quickly
+round and met his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment the two men stood staring at each other without uttering a
+word. It seemed to Max that his friend did not recognize him; that he
+looked like a hunted man brought to bay by his pursuer, with the furtive
+expression in his eyes of a creature trying to devise some means of
+escape.</p>
+
+<p>It was the most shocking experience that Max had ever known, and the
+blood seemed to freeze in his veins as he stood by the table watching
+his friend, trying to conjure back a smile to his own face and look of
+welcome into his own eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He found his voice at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Horne," cried he, and he was angry with himself as he noted that
+his voice was hoarse and tremulous, and that he could not manage to
+bring out his natural tones, "what have you been doing with yourself?
+I&mdash;I've been backward and forward here all day long, and now I've been
+waiting for you ever so long!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause. Dudley was still staring at him, but there was
+gradually coming over his face a change which showed recognition,
+followed by annoyance. He drew himself up, and, after a pause, asked,
+stiffly:</p>
+
+<p>"What did you want with me?"</p>
+
+<p>He spoke more naturally than Max had managed to do, and as the latter
+replied, he took out his pocket-handkerchief very calmly and began to
+wipe the stain off his right hand.</p>
+
+<p>Max shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, is it such a very unusual thing for me to drop in upon you and to
+want to see you?" he asked, with another attempt at his ordinary manner,
+which failed almost as completely as the first had done.</p>
+
+<p>There was another short pause. Dudley, without looking again at his
+friend, examined his hand, saw that it was now clean, and replaced the
+soiled handkerchief in his pocket. He seemed by this time to be
+thoroughly at his ease, but Max was not deceived.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not," said Dudley, quickly. "I only meant
+that&mdash;considering"&mdash;he paused, and seemed to be trying to recollect
+something&mdash;"considering what took place down at Datton yesterday and how
+anxious your father seemed to be rid of me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But what has my father got to do with me, as far as you are concerned,
+Dudley, eh?" said Max.</p>
+
+<p>There had come upon him suddenly such a strong impression that his
+friend was in some awful difficulty, some scrape so terrible as to make
+him lonely beyond the reach of help, that Max, who was a good-hearted
+fellow and a stanch friend, spoke with something which might almost be
+called tenderness:</p>
+
+<p>"We've always been chums, now, haven't we? And a row between you and
+Doreen, or between you and my father, wouldn't make any difference to
+me. I&mdash;I suppose you don't mean to give me the cold shoulder for the
+future, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Dudley had turned his back upon him, and was standing on the hearth-rug,
+looking down at the fire, in an attitude which betrayed to his friend
+the uneasiness from which he was suffering. It was an attitude of
+constraint, as different as possible from any in which Max had ever seen
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Another pause. Dudley seemed unable on this occasion to give a simple
+answer to a simple question without taking thought first. At last he
+laughed awkwardly and half turned toward Max.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course not," said he, but without heartiness. "Of course not.
+Though it will be rather awkward, mind, for us to see much of each other
+just at first, after my having got kicked out like that, won't it?"</p>
+
+<p>The tone in which Max answered betrayed considerable surprise and
+perplexity.</p>
+
+<p>"Kicked out!" he exclaimed. "My father said he hardly got a word out
+before you took yourself off in a huff."</p>
+
+<p>Dudley turned round quickly and faced him this time, with a sullen look
+of defiance on his dark face.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, the wise man doesn't wait to be kicked out," said he. "He removes
+himself upon the slightest hint that such a proceeding on his part would
+be well received."</p>
+
+<p>"You were a little too quick on this occasion," replied Max, dryly, "for
+my father has got himself into hot water, and mother had a fit of
+crying, while Doreen&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Something made Max hesitate to tell his friend how Doreen had taken his
+desertion. Max himself was ready to stand by his friend, whatever
+difficulties the latter might be in. But Doreen, his lovely sister, must
+have a lover without reproach.</p>
+
+<p>At the mention of the girl's name there came a slight change over
+Dudley's face&mdash;a change which struck the sensitive Max and touched him
+deeply. Dudley took a step in the direction of his bedroom, and pulled
+out his watch. As he did so a railroad ticket jerked out of his pocket
+with the watch and fell to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Max saw it fall, but before he could pick it up or draw attention to it
+his ideas were diverted by Dudley's next words:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you '11 excuse me, old chap. I've got to see a friend off by the
+midnight train to Liverpool."</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke Dudley turned, with his hand on the door, to cast a glance
+at Max. He seemed to be asking himself what he should tell the other.
+And then he took a step toward his friend and began an explanation,
+which, as his shrewd eyes told him, Max required.</p>
+
+<p>"The fact is that I got into the way of a beastly accident at Charing
+Cross just now. Woman run over&mdash;badly hurt. Got myself covered with
+blood. Ugh!"</p>
+
+<p>Max was convinced that the shudder was genuine, although he had
+doubts&mdash;of which he was ashamed&mdash;about the tale itself.</p>
+
+<p>And how did that explain the proposed journey?</p>
+
+<p>Dudley went on:</p>
+
+<p>"I've only just got time to change my clothes and make myself decent.
+See you in a day or two. Sorry I can't stay and have a pipe with you and
+one of our 'hard-times' suppers."</p>
+
+<p>He was on the point of disappearing into the inner room, when Max
+stopped him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but you can," said he. "I have something particular to say to you,
+and I can wait till you come back, if it's two o'clock, and I can bring
+in the supper myself."</p>
+
+<p>Dudley frowned impatiently, and again he cast at Max the horrible,
+furtive look which had been his first greeting.</p>
+
+<p>"That's impossible," said he, quickly. "I may have to go on to Liverpool
+myself. Good-night."</p>
+
+<p>And he shut himself into the bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>Max felt cold all over. After a few minutes' hesitation, he went out of
+the chambers, down the stairs and out of the house.</p>
+
+<p>At the door a cab was waiting. The driver spoke to him the moment he
+stepped out on the pavement. Evidently he took him for Dudley, his late
+fare.</p>
+
+<p>"The lady's got out an' gone off, sir. I hollered after her, but she
+wouldn't wait. Oh, beg pardon, sir," and the man touched his hat,
+perceiving his mistake; "I took you for the gentleman I brought here
+with the lady."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he'll be down in a minute or two," answered Max.</p>
+
+<p>And then he thought he would wait and see what new developments the
+disappearance of the lady would lead to. He was getting sick with alarm
+about his friend. These instances of the blood-stained clothes, the
+possible journey to Liverpool, and the flight of the mysterious lady,
+were so suspicious, taken in conjunction with each other, that Max found
+it impossible to rest until he knew more. He walked a little way along
+the pavement, and then returned slowly in the middle of the road. He had
+done this for the third time when Dudley dashed out of the house with
+rapid steps, and had reached the step of the hansom before he discovered
+that the vehicle was empty.</p>
+
+<p>An exclamation of dismay escaped his lips, and to the cabman's statement
+of the lady's disappearance he replied by asking sharply in which
+direction she had gone. On receiving the information he wanted, he gave
+the man his fare, and walked rapidly away in the direction the cabman
+had indicated.</p>
+
+<p>Max followed.</p>
+
+<p>Every moment increased his belief that some appalling circumstance had
+occurred by which Dudley's mind had for the time lost its balance. Every
+word, look and movement on the part of his friend betrayed the fact. Now
+he was evidently setting off in feverish haste in pursuit of this woman
+whom he had left in the cab; and Max, who believed that his friend was
+on the brink of an attack of the insanity which old Mr. Wedmore feared,
+resolved to dog his footsteps, and not to let his friend go out of his
+sight until the latter got safely back to his chambers.</p>
+
+<p>Dudley went at a great pace into Holborn, and then he stopped. The
+traffic had dwindled down to an occasional hansom and to a thin line of
+foot-passengers on the pavements. He looked to right, to left, and then
+he turned suddenly and came face to face with Max.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello!" cried he. "Where are you going to? Where are you putting up?"</p>
+
+<p>"At the Arundel," answered Max, taken aback, and stammering a little.</p>
+
+<p>Dudley had recovered his usual tones.</p>
+
+<p>"Come to my club," said he. "We can get some supper there and have that
+pipe."</p>
+
+<p>"But how about Liverpool and the friend you had to see off?" asked Max.</p>
+
+<p>Dudley hesitated ever so slightly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he's given me the slip," he answered, in a tone which sounded
+careless enough. "Gone off without waiting for me. So my conscience is
+free on his score."</p>
+
+<p>Max said nothing for a moment. Then he thought himself justified in
+setting a trap for his friend.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is he?" asked he. "Anybody I know?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," replied Dudley. "A man I met in the country, who showed me a good
+deal of kindness. From Yorkshire. Man named Browning. Very good fellow,
+but erratic. Said he'd wait for me in the cab, and disappeared before I
+could come down. Had an idea I should make him lose his train, I
+suppose. Well, never mind him. Come along."</p>
+
+<p>Max went with him in silence. Dudley had not only got back his usual
+spirits, but seemed to be in a mood of loquacity and liveliness unusual
+with him. When they got to the club, he ordered oysters and a bottle of
+champagne, and drank much more freely than was his custom.</p>
+
+<p>It was Max, the ne'er-do-weel, the extravagant one, who drank little and
+did the listening. Dudley had cast off altogether the gravity and
+taciturnity which sometimes got him looked upon as a bit of a prig, and
+chatted and told his friend stories, with a tone and manner of
+irresponsible gayety which became him ill.</p>
+
+<p>And Max, who was usually the talker, listened as badly as the other told
+his stories. For all the time he was weighed down with the fear, so
+strong that it seemed to amount to absolute knowledge, of some horrible
+danger hanging over his friend.</p>
+
+<p>Abruptly, before he made the expected comment on the last of Dudley's
+stories, Max rose from his chair and said he must go home.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll see you as far as your diggings first," said he. "It's not much
+out of way, you know."</p>
+
+<p>At these words Dudley's high spirits suddenly left him, and the furtive
+look came again into his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said he, "oh, very well. And on the way I can tell you the whole
+story of the accident that I saw at Charing Cross, this evening, just
+before I met you."</p>
+
+<p>So they went out together, and Dudley, as he had suggested, gave his
+friend a long and extremely circumstantial account of the way in which
+the wheel went over the woman, and of the difficulty he and the
+policeman had experienced in getting her from between the wheels of the
+van by which she had been crushed.</p>
+
+<p>Max heard him in silence, but did not believe a word. Whatever had
+reduced Dudley to the plight in which he had returned to his chambers,
+Max was convinced that it differed in some important details from the
+version of the affair which he chose to give.</p>
+
+<p>"We won't talk any more about it," he went on, without seeming to remark
+his friend's silence. "It's a thing I want to forget. It has quite upset
+me for a time; you could see that yourself when you met me. I&mdash;I don't
+know quite what to do to get the thing out of my mind. I think I shall
+run down to Datton with you, and see what that will do. What do you
+think?"</p>
+
+<p>Now, although he had drunk more wine than usual, Dudley knew perfectly
+well what he was saying, and Max stared at him in astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"What?" he exclaimed. "After what you told me? About my father?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, yes. But I can explain everything. I can, and I will,"
+returned Dudley, quickly. "I have not been myself lately. I have had
+certain business worries. But they are all settled now, and I feel more
+like myself than I have done for weeks."</p>
+
+<p>Max stopped short and stared at his friend by the light of a gas-lamp.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you don't look it," said he, shortly.</p>
+
+<p>Dudley laughed loudly, but rather uneasily.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think I could give an explanation which would satisfy your
+father, if I wished?" he asked, with a sudden relapse into gravity.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm hanged if I know," retorted Max, energetically. "You haven't given
+any explanation which would satisfy <i>me</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Dudley stared into his face for a few seconds inquiringly, and then
+quietly hooked his arm and led him along the Strand.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't want to be satisfied, old chap," said he, in a low voice.
+"You know me."</p>
+
+<p>Again Max was deeply touched. This was a sudden and unexpected peep
+under the surface of deception into the real heart of his old chum. He
+replied only by a slight twitching of the arm Dudley had taken.</p>
+
+<p>They walked on at a quicker pace, and ran up the stairs to the door of
+Dudley's rooms in silence.</p>
+
+<p>Dudley went first into the sitting-room and turned up the gas. It did
+not escape Max that he shot a hurried glance around the room, taking in
+every corner, as he entered. Talking all the time about the cold and the
+fog, Dudley went into the adjoining room, and Max saw him pull aside the
+bed-curtains and look behind them.</p>
+
+<p>Then Max, not wishing to play the spy on his friend, turned his back;
+and as he did so he caught sight of the railway ticket which had fallen
+to the floor from Dudley's pocket before they went out.</p>
+
+<p>Max picked it up, and noted that it was the return half of a first-class
+return ticket from Fenchurch Street to Limehouse, and that it was dated
+that very day.</p>
+
+<p>He had scarcely noted this, mechanically rather than with any set
+purpose, when he was startled to find Dudley at his elbow.</p>
+
+<p>Max turned round quickly, but Dudley's eyes were fixed upon the railway
+ticket.</p>
+
+<p>"You dropped this when you&mdash;" began Max, handing it to his friend.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until then, when Dudley took the ticket from him and tossed
+it into the fireplace with a careless nod, that it flashed into the mind
+of Max that the incident had some significance.</p>
+
+<p>What on earth had Dudley been doing at Limehouse? His parents had had
+property there, certainly, many years ago. But not a square foot of the
+grimy, slimy, auriferous Thames-side land, not a brick or a beam of the
+warehouses and sheds which had been theirs in the old days, had
+descended to Dudley. Owing to the fraudulent action of Edward Jacobs,
+all had had to go.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>A PARAGRAPH IN "THE STANDARD."</h3>
+
+
+<p>Max did not stay long with his friend, but made the excuse that he was
+half asleep, after a few minutes' rather desultory conversation, to go
+back to his hotel.</p>
+
+<p>It was with the greatest reluctance that he left his friend alone; but
+Dudley had given him intimations, in every look and tone and movement,
+that he wished to be by himself; and this fact increased the heaviness
+of heart with which Max, full of forebodings on his friend's account,
+had gone reluctantly down the creaking stairs.</p>
+
+<p>Again and again Max asked himself, during his short walk from Lincoln's
+Inn to Arundel Street, why he had not had the courage to put a question
+or two straightforwardly to Dudley. As a matter of fact, however, the
+reason was simple enough. The relative positions of the two men had been
+suddenly reversed, and neither of them, as yet, felt easy under the new
+conditions.</p>
+
+<p>Dudley, the hard-working student, the rising barrister, the abstemious,
+thoughtful, rather silent man to whom Max had looked up with respect and
+affection, had suddenly sunk, during the last few hours, by some
+unaccountable and mysterious means, to far below Max's own modest level.
+It was he, the careless fellow whom Dudley had formerly admonished, who
+had that evening been the sober, the temperate, the taciturn one; it was
+he who had watched the other, been solicitous for him, trembled for him.</p>
+
+<p>Max could not understand. He lay awake worrying himself about his
+friend, feeling Dudley's fall more acutely than he would have felt his
+own, and did not fall asleep until it was nearly daylight.</p>
+
+<p>In these circumstances he overslept himself, and it was eleven o'clock
+before he found himself in the hotel coffee-room, waiting for his
+breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>He was in the act of pouring out his coffee, when his name, uttered
+behind him in a familiar voice, made him start. The next moment Dudley
+Horne stood by his side, and holding out his hand with a smile, seated
+himself on the chair beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I&mdash;I overslept myself this morning," stammered Max.</p>
+
+<p>He was in a state of absolute bewilderment. Not only had the new Dudley
+of the previous night disappeared, with his alternate depression and
+feverish high spirits, his furtive glances, his hoarse and altered
+voice, but the old Dudley, who had returned, seemed happier and livelier
+than usual.</p>
+
+<p>"Town and its wicked ways don't agree with you, my boy, nor do they with
+me. If I were in your shoes, I shouldn't tread the streets of Babylon
+more than once a twelvemonth."</p>
+
+<p>"You think that now," returned Max, "because you see more than enough of
+town."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm not going to see much more of it at present," retorted
+Dudley. "This afternoon I'm off again down to Datton, and I came to ask
+whether you were coming down with me."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you had had a row, at least a misunderstanding of some sort,
+with&mdash;with my father?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, so I had," replied Dudley, serenely, as he took a newspaper
+out of his pocket and folded it for reading. "But I've written to him
+already this morning, explaining things, and telling him that I propose
+to come down to The Beeches this evening. He'll get it before I turn up,
+I should think, for I posted it at six o'clock this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what were you doing at six o'clock in the morning?" said Max, in a
+tone of bewilderment, as before. "Didn't you go to bed at all last
+night?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," answered Dudley, calmly. "I had some worrying things to think
+about, and so I took the night to do it in."</p>
+
+<p>A slight frown passed over his face as he spoke, but it disappeared
+quickly, leaving him as placid as before.</p>
+
+<p>"About one of the things I can consult you, Max. You know something
+about it, I suppose. Do you think I have any chance with Doreen?"</p>
+
+<p>Max stared at him again.</p>
+
+<p>"You must be blind if you haven't seen that you have," he said, at last,
+in a sort of muffled voice, grudgingly. He moved uneasily in his seat,
+and added, in a hurried manner: "But, I say, you know, Dudley, after
+last night, I&mdash;I want to ask you something myself. I'm Doreen's brother,
+though I'm not much of a brother for such a nice girl as she is.
+And&mdash;and&mdash;what on earth did you think of going to Liverpool for <i>with a
+woman</i>? I've a right to ask that now, haven't I?"</p>
+
+<p>Max blurted out these words in a dogged tone, not deterred from
+finishing his sentence by the fact that Dudley's face had grown white
+and hard, and that over his whole attitude there had come a rapid
+change.</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause when the younger man had finished. Dudley kept his
+eyes down, and traced a pattern on the table-cloth with a fork, while
+Max looked at him furtively. At last Dudley looked up quickly and asked,
+in a tone which admitted of no prevarication in the answer he demanded:</p>
+
+<p>"You have been playing the spy upon me, I see. Tell me just how much you
+saw."</p>
+
+<p>It was such a straightforward way of coming to the point that Max, taken
+aback, but rather thankful that the ground was to be cleared a little,
+answered at once without reserve:</p>
+
+<p>"I did play the spy. It was enough to make me. I saw the hansom waiting
+outside your door last night; the cabman mistook me for you, and told me
+the lady had walked away. I couldn't help putting that together with
+what you had told me about seeing a friend off to Liverpool, and,
+perhaps, going there yourself. Now, who could have helped it?"</p>
+
+<p>Dudley did not at once answer. He just glanced inquiringly at the face
+of Max while he went on tracing the pattern on the cloth.</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't see the lady," he said at last, not in a questioning tone,
+but with conviction.</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if you had seen her you would have been satisfied that it was not
+her charms which were leading me astray," said he, with a faint smile.
+"Are you satisfied now, or do you still consider," he went on with a
+slight tone of mockery in his voice, "that my character requires further
+investigation before you can accept me for a brother-in-law?"</p>
+
+<p>Max moved uneasily again.</p>
+
+<p>"What rot, Horne!" said he, impatiently. "You know very well I've always
+wanted you to marry Doreen. I've said so, lots of times. I still say it
+was natural I should want to understand your queer goings-on last night.
+And now&mdash;and now&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And now that you don't understand them any better than before, you are
+ready to take it for granted it's all right?" broke in Dudley, with the
+same scoffing tone as before.</p>
+
+<p>Max grew very red, began to speak, glanced at Dudley, and got up.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I suppose that's about the size of it," said he, stiffly.</p>
+
+<p>"And are you going down with me to-night? I can catch the seven o'clock
+train."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I suppose so. I'll meet you at Charing Cross."</p>
+
+<p>Max's enthusiasm on his friend's behalf had been much damped by his
+behavior, and he gave him a nod, turned on his heel and left him without
+another word. He gave up trying to understand the mystery which hung
+about Dudley, and left it to Doreen and to his father to unravel.</p>
+
+<p>The two young men did not meet again, therefore, until seven that
+evening, when they took their seats in the same smoking-carriage. Max
+felt quite glad that the presence of a couple of strangers prevented any
+talk of a confidential sort between himself and Dudley, who on his side
+seemed perfectly contented to puff at his pipe in silence.</p>
+
+<p>Dudley's letter had evidently been received, and well received, for at
+the station the two friends found the dog-cart waiting to take them the
+mile and a half which lay between the station and The Beeches.</p>
+
+<p>At the house itself, too, the front door flew open at their approach,
+and Mr. Wedmore himself stood in the hall to welcome them.</p>
+
+<p>Queenie was there. Mr. Wedmore was there. But there was never a glimpse
+of Doreen.</p>
+
+<p>"I got your letter, my dear boy," began Mr. Wedmore, holding out his
+hand with so much heartiness that it was plain he was delighted to be
+able to forgive his old friend's son, "and I am very glad, indeed, that
+you have found your way back to us so soon. I am heartily glad to hear
+that the worries which have been making you depressed lately are
+over&mdash;heartily glad. And so, I am sure," added he, with a significant
+smile, "Doreen will be."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir," said Dudley. "You are very kind, very indulgent. I am
+not ungrateful, I assure you."</p>
+
+<p>Max, behind them, was listening with attentive ears. He did not feel so
+sure as his father seemed to be that all was now well with Dudley.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Doreen?" he asked his younger sister.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know, I'm sure. She's taken herself off somewhere. Probably
+somebody else will find her quicker than you will."</p>
+
+<p>The younger sister was right. The younger sister always is on these
+occasions.</p>
+
+<p>Within five minutes of his arrival, Dudley found his way into the
+breakfast room, where Doreen, a pug dog and a raven were sitting
+together on the floor, surrounded by a frightful litter of paper and
+shavings and string, wooden boxes, hampers, and odds and ends of cotton
+wool.</p>
+
+<p>She just looked up when Dudley came in, gave him a glance and a little
+cool nod, and then, as he attempted to advance, uttered a shrill little
+scream.</p>
+
+<p>"One step farther, and my wax cupids will be ruined!"</p>
+
+<p>"Wax cupids!" repeated Dudley, feebly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, for my Christmas tree. It's to be the greatest success ever known
+in these parts, or the greatest failure. Nothing between. That's what I
+must always have&mdash;something sensational&mdash;something to make people howl
+at me, or to make them want to light bonfires in my honor. That's
+characteristic, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>And Doreen, who was dressed in a black skirt, with a scarlet velvet
+bodice which did justice to her brilliant complexion and soft, dark
+hair, paused in the act of turning out a number of glittering glass
+balls into her lap.</p>
+
+<p>"Very," said Dudley, as he made his way carefully to the nearest chair
+and sat down to look at her.</p>
+
+<p>He was up to his knees in brown-paper parcels, over which barricade he
+stretched out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Doreen affected not to see it. She began to tie bits of fancy string
+into the little rings in the glass balls, cutting off the ends with a
+pair of scissors.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you going to shake hands with me?" asked Dudley, impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>Doreen answered without looking tip.</p>
+
+<p>"No. Not yet."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am offended."</p>
+
+<p>"What have I done now?"</p>
+
+<p>Doreen threw up her head.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you <i>not</i> done? We have all of us&mdash;I among the
+others&mdash;had a good deal to put up with from you, lately, in the matter
+of what I will call general neglect. And you put a climax to it the day
+before yesterday by rushing out of the house without a word of good-bye
+to anybody."</p>
+
+<p>"There was a reason for it," interrupted Dudley, quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so. But I'm not going to take the reason on trust, Mr.
+Horne."</p>
+
+<p>"Not if you're satisfied that you will meet with no more neglect in the
+future? That my conduct shall be in every respect what you&mdash;and the
+others&mdash;can desire?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not even then," replied Doreen decisively.</p>
+
+<p>"But if your father is satisfied?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then go and talk to my father."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause and their eyes met. Dudley, who had acknowledged to
+himself the patience with which Doreen had put up with his recent
+neglect, was astonished by the resolution which he saw in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it you want to know?" he asked, in a condescending and
+indulgent tone.</p>
+
+<p>"A great deal more than you will tell me," answered Doreen, promptly.</p>
+
+<p>Whereat there was another pause. Dudley took up one of the brown-paper
+parcels and turned it over in his hands. Perhaps it was to hide the fact
+that an irrepressible tremor was running through his limbs.</p>
+
+<p>If he had looked at her at that moment he would have seen in her eyes a
+touching look of sympathy and distress. The girl knew that something had
+been amiss with him&mdash;that something was amiss still. She cared for him.
+She wanted his confidence, or at least so much of it as would allow her
+to pour out upon him the tender sympathy with which her innocent heart
+was overflowing. And he would have none of it. He wanted to treat her
+like a beautiful doll, to be left in its cotton wool when his spirits
+were too low for playthings, and to be taken out and admired when things
+went better with him.</p>
+
+<p>This was what Doreen mutinously thought and what her lips were on the
+point of uttering, when the door was opened by Mr. Wedmore, who came
+into the room with a copy of the <i>Evening Standard</i> in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Horne, did you see this?" said he, as he folded the paper
+and handed it to Dudley. "Here's an odd thing. Of course it may be only
+a coincidence. But doesn't it seem to refer to the rascal who ruined
+your prospects&mdash;Edward Jacobs?"</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>A middle-aged Jewish woman, who found some difficulty in making
+herself understood, from an impediment in her speech, applied to
+Mr. &mdash;&mdash;, of &mdash;&mdash; Street Police Court, for advice in the following
+circumstances: She and her husband had returned to England in
+reduced circumstances, after a long residence abroad, and her
+husband was in search of employment. He had received a letter from
+Limehouse, offering him employment and giving him an appointment
+for yesterday afternoon, which he started to keep. He had not
+returned; she had been to Limehouse police station to make
+inquiries, but could learn nothing of her husband. She seemed to be
+under the impression that he had met with foul play, and made a
+rambling statement to the effect that he had 'enemies.' It was only
+after much persuasion, and the assurance that the press could not
+help her without the knowledge, that she gave her name as Jacobs,
+and her husband's first name as Edward. She described him as of the
+middle height, thin, with gray hair and a short gray beard. The
+magistrate said he had no doubt the press would do what they could
+to help her, and the woman withdrew.</p></div>
+
+<p>Dudley Horne read this account, and gave the paper back to Mr. Wedmore.</p>
+
+<p>He tried to speak as he did so, but, though his mouth opened, the voice
+refused to come.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<h3>ONE MAN'S LOSS is ANOTHER MAN'S GAIN.</h3>
+
+
+<p>"Confound the Christmas tree!" grumbled Mr. Wedmore, as he stumbled over
+a parcel of fluffy rabbits, whose heads screwed off to permit the
+insertion of sweets.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, papa, you'll be saying 'Confound Christmas' next!"</p>
+
+<p>And Doreen, with one watchful eye on Dudley all the time, made a lane
+through her boxes and her hampers to admit the passage of her father to
+a chair.</p>
+
+<p>By this time Dudley had recovered himself a little, and was able to
+answer the question Mr. Wedmore now put to him.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of that, Horne?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think, sir, that it must be more than a coincidence; that Mrs. Jacobs
+must be the wife of the man who was my father's manager."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I think so, too. I know Jacobs's wife had an impediment in her
+speech. The odd part of the business is that he should have disappeared
+at Limehouse, the very place where one would have thought he would have
+an objection to turning up at all, connected as it was with his old
+peculations. I suppose he thought they were forgotten by this time."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so."</p>
+
+<p>Dudley still looked very white. He took up the paper again, as if to
+re-read the paragraph. But Doreen, from her post of vantage on the
+floor, saw that he held it before him with eyes fixed. Mr. Wedmore,
+after a little hesitation, and after vainly trying to get another look
+at the face of the younger man, went on again:</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you would be struck by this; the subject turning up again in
+this odd way, just when you've been interesting yourself so much in the
+old story!"</p>
+
+<p>Down went the paper, and Dudley looked into the face of Mr. Wedmore.</p>
+
+<p>"Interesting myself in it! Have I? How do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you've asked a good many questions about this Jacobs, and
+wondered what had become of him. I fancy you have the answer in that
+paragraph."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause, and Dudley seemed to recollect something. Then he
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I think I have. The man has fallen upon bad times, evidently.
+I&mdash;I&mdash;I'm sorry for his wife."</p>
+
+<p>"And the man himself&mdash;haven't you forgiven him yet?"</p>
+
+<p>Dudley started, and glanced quickly round, as if the simple words had
+been an accusation.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgiven him? Oh, yes, long ago. At least&mdash;" He paused a moment, and
+then added, inquiringly: "What had I to forgive?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, to tell the truth, Horne, that's just what I have often asked
+myself, when you have insisted upon raking up all the details of poor
+Jacobs's misdeeds! Why, your poor father, who was ruined by his
+dishonesty, never showed half the animosity you do. I could have
+understood it if you had suffered by his frauds. But have you? You have
+been well educated; you have started well in life. And on the whole, no
+man who has arrived at your age can honestly say that it would have been
+better for him to start life with a fortune at his back, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>Dudley got up from his chair. He seemed agitated and uneasy, and soon
+took advantage of Mr. Wedmore's suggestion, somewhat dryly made, that he
+was tired after his journey and would like to go to bed.</p>
+
+<p>When he had left the room, Mr. Wedmore turned angrily to his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Doreen, I will have no more of this nonsense. Dudley is beginning
+all the old tricks over again&mdash;absence of mind, indifference to you&mdash;did
+he even look at you as he said good night?&mdash;and morbid interest in this
+old, forgotten business of Jacobs and his misdoings. I won't have any
+more of it, and I shall tell him plainly that we don't care to have him
+down here until he can bring a livelier face and manner with him!"</p>
+
+<p>Doreen had risen from her humble seat on the floor and had crawled on
+her knees to the side of his chair, where she slid a coaxing, caressing
+hand under his arm and put her pretty head gently down on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"No, you won't, papa dear. You won't do anything of the kind," she
+whispered in his ear very softly, very humbly. "You would not do
+anything to give pain to your old friend's son if you could help it, and
+you would not do anything to hurt your own child, your little Doreen,
+for a hundred thousand pounds, now would you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I would, if it was for her good," replied Mr. Wedmore, in a very
+loud and determined voice, which was supposed to have the effect of
+frightening her into submission. "And it's all rubbish to think to get
+around me by calling yourself 'little Doreen,' when you're a great, big,
+overgrown lamp-post of a girl, who can take her own part against the
+whole county."</p>
+
+<p>Doreen laughed, but still clung persistently to the arm which he
+pretended to try to release from her clutches.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't know about the county, but I think I can persuade my old
+father into doing what I want," she purred into his ear with gentle
+conviction. "You see, papa, it isn't as if Dudley and I were engaged.
+We&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what else have you been but engaged ever since last Christmas?"
+said her father, irritably. "Everybody has looked upon it as an
+engagement, and Dudley was devoted enough until a couple of months ago;
+but now something has gone wrong with the lad, I'm certain, and it would
+be much better for you both to make an end of this."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, there's nothing to make an end of," pleaded Doreen. "Just 'let
+things slide,' as Max says, and let Dudley come down or stay away as he
+likes, and the matter will come quite right one way or the other, and
+you will find there was really nothing for you to trouble your dear old
+head about, after all."</p>
+
+<p>There was really some excellence in the girl's suggestion; and her
+father, after much grumbling, gave a half consent to it. He was forced
+to admit to himself that there was some grounds for Dudley's agitation
+on reading the paragraph concerning the disappearance of Edward Jacobs,
+since he had been interesting himself of late in that person's history.
+But it was the degree of the young man's agitation which had seemed
+morbid. Mr. Wedmore found it difficult to understand why a mere
+suggestion of the man's disappearance&mdash;if it were indeed <i>the</i>
+man&mdash;should affect Dudley so deeply. And the idea of incipient insanity
+in young Horne grew stronger than ever in Mr. Wedmore's mind.</p>
+
+<p>Now, Doreen was by no means so sanguine as she pretended to be. She was
+one of those high-spirited, lively girls who find it easy to hide from
+others any troubles which may be gnawing at their heart. Such a nature
+has an elasticity which enables it to throw off its cares for a time,
+when in the society of others, only to brood over them in hours of
+loneliness.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody in the house knew&mdash;what, however, shrewd Queenie half guessed
+that Doreen had many an anxious hour, many a secret fit of crying, on
+account of the change in Dudley's manner toward her. The brilliant,
+proud-hearted girl was more deeply attached to him than anybody
+suspected. If any remark was made by outsiders as to the comparative
+rarity of the young barrister's visits during the past two months, it
+was always accompanied by the comment that Miss Wedmore would not be
+long in consoling herself.</p>
+
+<p>And everybody knew that the curate, the Rev. Lisle Lindsay, was
+hungering to step into Dudley's shoes.</p>
+
+<p>He was not quite to be despised as a rival, this "snowy-banded,
+dilettant, delicate-handed priest." In the first place, he was a really
+nice, honorable young fellow, with no much worse faults than a
+pedantically correct pronunciation of the unaccented vowels; in the
+second place, he was considerably taller than the race of curates
+usually runs; and in the third place, he had a handsome allowance from
+his mother, and "expectations" on a very grand scale indeed. Miss
+Wedmore, if she were to decide in his favor, might well aspire to be the
+wife of a bishop some day. And what could woman wish for more?</p>
+
+<p>He was no laggard in love either. On the very morning after the arrival
+of Max and Dudley, Mr. Lindsay called soon after breakfast to make
+inquiries about the amount of holly and evergreens which would be
+available for the decoration of the church, and was shown into the
+morning-room, where most of the great work of preparation for Christmas
+was taking place.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wedmore and all the young people were there, Max and Dudley having
+been pressed into the service of filling cardboard drums with sweets for
+what Max called "the everlasting tree." The tree itself stood in a
+corner of the room, a colossal but lop-sided plant with a lamentable
+tendency to straggle about the lower branches, and an inclination to run
+to weedy and unnecessary length about the top.</p>
+
+<p>Max was a hopeless failure as an assistant. He was always possessed with
+a passionate desire to do something different from what he was asked to
+do; and when they gave way and indulged his fancy, the fancy
+disappeared, and he found that he wanted to do something else.</p>
+
+<p>"It's always the way with a man!" was Queenie's scornful comment on her
+brother's failing.</p>
+
+<p>Queenie herself looked upon the whole business of the tree as a piece of
+useless frivolity unworthy the time and attention of grown-up people.
+And she went about the share in it which she had been persuaded to
+undertake with a stolid and supercilious manner which went far to spoil
+the enjoyment of the rest.</p>
+
+<p>Dudley entered, into the affair with some zest, but it was noticeable
+that he devoted himself to Queenie, and exchanged very few remarks with
+Doreen. There was a certain barrier of constraint springing up between
+him and Doreen which had risen to an uncomfortable height by the time
+the curate entered.</p>
+
+<p>Doreen, whose cheeks were much flushed and whose eyes were unusually
+bright, was extremely gracious. She offered to take Mr. Lindsay into the
+grounds to interview the gardener, so that they might come to an
+understanding about the evergreens to be used. She glanced at Dudley as
+she made this proposal. He glanced back at her; and in his black eyes
+she fancied for a moment that she saw a mute protest, a plea.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment she hesitated. Standing still in the middle of the room,
+not far from where he was busy helping Queenie to tie up a particularly
+limp and fragile box of chocolates, she seemed to wait for a single
+word, or even for another look, to turn her from her purpose.</p>
+
+<p>But Dudley turned away, and either did not see or did not choose to
+notice the pause. Then the tears sprang to the girl's eyes, and she ran
+quickly to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Mr. Lindsay," said she, "we must make haste. At this stage of
+things, every minute has to be weighed out like gold, I assure you."</p>
+
+<p>She went quickly out into the large hall, and the curate followed with
+alacrity. Max and his mother were engaged in a wrangle over some soup
+and coal tickets which somebody had mislaid, and in the search for which
+the whole room, with its parcels and bundles, had to be overturned.</p>
+
+<p>Queenie, who was at work at the end of the room, near the window,
+uttered a short laugh. Dudley, who was standing a little way off, drew
+nearer, and asked what she was laughing at.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that misguided youth who has just gone out!"</p>
+
+<p>"Misguided?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Queenie, shortly. "If he hadn't been misguided, he would
+have devoted his attention to me, not to Doreen. By all the laws of
+society, curates' wives should be plain. They should also be simple in
+their dress, and devoted to good works. Doreen says so herself. Why,
+then, didn't he see that I was the wife for him and not the beauty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think she will have him, then?" asked Dudley, very stiffly,
+after a short pause. "She seems to like him. There was no need, surely,
+for her to have been in such a hurry to take him into the grounds, if
+she had felt no particular pleasure in his society."</p>
+
+<p>Queenie looked up rather slyly out of her little light eyes. She was
+distressed on account of her sister's trouble about this apparently
+vacillating lover, and irritated herself by his strange conduct. But at
+the bottom of her heart she believed in him and in his affection for
+Doreen, just as her sister herself did, and she would have given the
+world to make things right between two people whom she chose to believe
+intended by nature for each other.</p>
+
+<p>"I think there are other people in the world whose society Doreen likes
+better," she said at last, below her breath.</p>
+
+<p>The wrangle at the other end of the room was still going on, and nobody
+heard her but Dudley. He flushed slightly and looked as if he
+understood. But he instantly turned the talk to another subject.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you have liked that sleek curate yourself, really?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sleek? What do you mean by sleek? You wouldn't have a minister of the
+church go about with long hair and a velveteen coat and a pipe in his
+mouth, would you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not for worlds, I assure you. He is a most beautiful creature, and I
+admire him very much, though he is perhaps hardly the sort of man I
+should have expected both you girls to rave about. And as for you, I
+thought you were too good to rave about anybody! You are unlike yourself
+this morning, and more like Doreen."</p>
+
+<p>Queenie laughed again that satirical little laugh which made a man
+wonder what her thoughts exactly were.</p>
+
+<p>"You say that because you don't know anything about me. I don't talk
+when Doreen is talking, because then nobody would listen to me. I could
+talk, too, if anybody ever talked to me."</p>
+
+<p>"But one sees so little of you," pleaded Dudley. "You are generally out
+district-visiting, or busy for Mrs. Wedmore, so that one hasn't a chance
+of knowing you well. And one has got an idea that you are too good to
+waste your time in idle conversation with a mere man!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" cried Queenie contemptuously. "There's nothing good about my
+district-visiting. I like it, Doreen goes about telling people it is
+good of me. But that's only because she wouldn't care about it herself.
+I like fussing about and thinking I am making myself useful. It's like
+mamma's knitting, which gets her the reputation of being very
+industrious, while all the time she enjoys it very much."</p>
+
+<p>"But you yourself said you were 'devoted to good works,' I quote your
+very words."</p>
+
+<p>"That was only in fun. It's what Doreen says of me. You must have heard
+her. She is much better than I am&mdash;really much, more unselfish&mdash;much
+more amiable. Only because she's always bright and full of fun, she
+doesn't get the credit of any of her good qualities. People think she's
+only indulging her own inclination when she keeps us all amused and
+happy all day long. But they don't know that she can suffer just as much
+as anybody else, and that it costs her an effort to be lively for our
+sakes when she feels miserable."</p>
+
+<p>Queenie spoke with a little feeling in her usually hard, dry voice.
+Dudley was silent for a long time when she had finished speaking. At
+last they looked up at the same moment and met each other's eyes. And
+the reserved, harassed man felt his heart go out to the girl, with her
+quiet shrewdness and undemonstrative affection for her brilliant sister.</p>
+
+<p>"Your quiet eyes see a great deal more than one would think, Queenie,"
+he said at last. "I suppose they have seen that there is
+something&mdash;something wrong&mdash;with&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He spoke very slowly, and finally he stopped without finishing the
+sentence.</p>
+
+<p>Queenie gravely took it up for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Something wrong with you? Of course I have. Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know why I am telling you this. I didn't mean to tell any one.
+But&mdash;but&mdash;well, I've begun; I may as well finish. You're not a person
+who would talk about anybody else's secrets more than about your own."</p>
+
+<p>"A secret? Are you going to tell me a secret?"</p>
+
+<p>Dudley smiled very faintly, and then his expression suddenly changed.
+Something like a spasm of fear and of pain shot quickly across his face,
+frightening her a little. Then he shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said he. "I hardly think you will consider it a secret, after what
+you have just told me. I am only going to tell you this: I have had a
+great trouble, a great affliction, hanging over me for some time now.
+Sometimes I have thought it was going to clear away and leave me as I
+was before. Sometimes I have felt myself quite free from it, and able to
+go on in the old way. But with this consciousness, this knowledge
+hanging over me always, I have behaved in all sorts of strange ways,
+have hurt the feelings of my friends, have not been myself at all. You
+know that, Queenie."</p>
+
+<p>Queenie slowly bowed her head. Mrs. Wedmore and Max, still occupied in
+their search for the missing soup tickets, had now extended their
+operations to the hall, and left the room in possession of the other
+two. Dudley went on with his confession.</p>
+
+<p>"And now something has happened which has cut me off from my old self,
+as it were. I don't know how else to express what I mean. I came down
+last night with the intention of speaking to&mdash;to Doreen for the last
+time, of trying to explain myself, if not to&mdash;to justify myself to her.
+You know what I mean, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>Again Queenie bowed her head. Her father's suspicions as to Dudley's
+perfect sanity had, of course, reached her ears, and she felt so much
+pity for the poor fellow whose confession she was then hearing that she
+dared not even raise her eyes to his face again. He went on, hurrying
+his words, as if anxious to get his confession over:</p>
+
+<p>"But I thought it all over last night, and I decided to say nothing to
+her, after all. I don't think I could, without making a fool of myself.
+For you know&mdash;you know my feelings about her; everybody knows. I had
+hoped&mdash;Oh, well, you know what I hoped&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause. Dudley was afraid of breaking down.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Dudley, is it really all over, then, between you? Oh, it is
+dreadful! For, you know, she cares, too!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not as I do. I hope and think that is impossible," said Dudley,
+hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>There was another pause, a longer one. Then Queenie gave utterance to a
+little sob. Dudley, who was sitting on the table at which she was at
+work, got upon his feet with an impatient movement. His dark face looked
+hard and angry. As he paced once or twice up and down the small space
+available in the disordered room, the inward fight which was going on
+between his passion and his sense of right convulsed his face, and
+Queenie shuddered as, glancing at him, she fancied she could see in the
+glare of his black eyes the haunting madness at which he seemed so
+plainly to have hinted.</p>
+
+<p>She rose in her turn.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Dudley&mdash;" she began.</p>
+
+<p>And then, unable to express what she felt, what she thought, any better
+than he had done, she turned abruptly away and sat down again.</p>
+
+<p>There was silence for a few moments, and then she heard the door close.
+Looking round, she saw that he had left the room.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE LITTLE STONE PASSAGE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Queenie kept Dudley's half-confessed secret to herself for the whole of
+that day. She was hoping against hope that he would change his mind
+again and speak to Doreen himself. Since there must be a definite and
+final breach, she thought it would be better for the principals
+themselves to come to an understanding, without the intervention of
+outsiders. She would have told him so, but she got no further
+opportunity of speaking to him alone.</p>
+
+<p>The day passed uncomfortably for everybody, although the only person who
+gave vent to his feelings by open ill-temper was Mr. Wedmore, who was
+waiting for the promised explanation which Dudley never attempted to
+give. And before dinner-time that evening the young barrister returned
+to town.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wedmore, who had been out shooting with Doctor Haselden, was
+furious, on returning home, to learn of Dudley's departure.</p>
+
+<p>"He has left a note for you, papa, in the study," said Doreen, who was,
+perhaps, a little paler than usual, but who gave no other outward sign
+of her feelings.</p>
+
+<p>Her father went into the study, after a glance at his daughter, and read
+the letter. It was not a very long one. Following the lines of his
+guarded confession to Queenie, Dudley expressed the sorrow he felt at
+having to give up the hopes he had had of being something more than the
+mere old friend he had been for so many years. He had thought it better,
+at the last, to say this on paper instead of by word of mouth, and he
+ended by expressing the deep gratitude he should always feel for the
+kindness shown to him by Mr. Wedmore and all his family during the
+happiest period of his life.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wedmore read this letter with little astonishment. It was, in fact,
+what he had been prepared to hear. He read it to his wife, who cried a
+great deal, but acquiesced in her husband's desire that Dudley should
+drop not only out of the ranks of their intimate friends, but even, as
+much as possible, out of their conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us do our best," said he, "to make Doreen forget him."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wedmore showed the letter also to Doctor Haselden, who, perhaps,
+from pure love of contradiction, persisted in maintaining that the
+letter confessed nothing, and that the cause of the young man's
+withdrawal was, in all probability, quite different from what Mr.
+Wedmore supposed. The two gentlemen had quite a wrangle over the matter,
+at the end of which each was settled more firmly in his own opinion than
+before.</p>
+
+<p>When they went upstairs for the night, Doreen came to Queenie's room and
+demanded to know what her younger sister and Dudley had been talking
+about so earnestly in the breakfast-room that morning.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by talking earnestly?" said Queenie, in the calm, dry
+manner which would have made any one but her sister think she was really
+surprised.</p>
+
+<p>"Max told me," said Doreen, "and I mean to stay here until I know."</p>
+
+<p>It needed very little reflection to tell Queenie that it was better for
+her sister to hear the truth at once. So she told her.</p>
+
+<p>Doreen listened very quietly, and then got up and wished her sister good
+night.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Queenie, "you take it very quietly. What do you think about
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you&mdash;when I know myself," answered Doreen, briefly, as she
+left the room. The first result of the talks, however, was a
+conversation, not with Queenie, but with her brother, Max. Doreen ran
+after him next morning as he was on his way to the stables and made him
+take a walk through the park with her instead of going for a ride.</p>
+
+<p>"Max," she said, coaxingly, when they had gone out of sight of the
+house, "you have been my confidant about this unhappy affair of
+Dudley's&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But her brother interrupted her, and tried to draw away the arm she had
+taken.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Doreen," said he earnestly, "you'd better not think any more
+about him&mdash;much better not. I do really think the poor fellow's right in
+what he hinted to my father, and that he's going off his head; or,
+rather, I <i>know</i> enough to be sure that he's not always perfectly
+sane. Surely you must see that, in the circumstances, the less you think
+about him the better."</p>
+
+<p>"There I disagree with you altogether," said Doreen, firmly. "Max, papa
+and mamma can't understand; they've forgotten how they felt when they
+were first fond of each other. Queenie's not old enough, and she's too
+good besides. Now, you do know, you do understand what it is to be head
+over ears in love."</p>
+
+<p>"Good heavens, Doreen, don't talk like that! You mustn't, you know!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk nonsense," interrupted his sister, sharply. "I tell you I
+love Dudley, and ever so much more since I've found out he is in great
+trouble; as any decent woman would do. Now I don't feel nearly so sure
+as everybody else as to what his trouble is, but I want you to find out,
+and to help me if you can."</p>
+
+<p>"What, play detective&mdash;spy? Not me. It's ridiculous, unheard of. I've
+done it once on your account, and I never felt such a sneak in my life.
+I won't do it again, even for you, and that's flat."</p>
+
+<p>And Max thrust his hands deep into his pockets.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you?" said Doreen, with a quiet smile. "Then I must, and I will."</p>
+
+<p>Her brother started and stared at her.</p>
+
+<p>"You! <i>You!</i> What nonsense!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's not nonsense, as you will find when you hear me get permission to
+go up to town to stay with Aunt Betty."</p>
+
+<p>Max grew sincerely alarmed.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Doreen, be reasonable," said he. "You can do no good to
+Dudley, believe me. He has got into some dreadful mess or other; but
+it's nothing that you or I or any earthly creature can help him out of.
+I confess I didn't tell you all I found out when I went up to town. I
+couldn't. I can't now. But if you will persist, and if nothing else will
+keep you quietly here, I&mdash;well, I promise to go up again. And I'll
+warrant if I do I shall learn something which will convince even
+<i>you</i> that you must give up every thought of him."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you promise," said Doreen, solemnly, "to tell me all you find
+out?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," replied Max, promptly, "I won't promise that. I can't. But I think
+you can trust me to tell you as much as you ought to know."</p>
+
+<p>With this promise Doreen was obliged to be content. And when, at
+luncheon time, it was discovered that certain things were wanted from
+town, and Max offered to go up for them, Doreen and her brother
+exchanged a look from which she gathered that he would not forget her
+errand.</p>
+
+<p>Max had plenty of time, while he was being jolted from Datton to Cannon
+Street, to decide on the best means of carrying out his promise. He
+decided that a visit to Limehouse, to the neighborhood where the
+property of the late Mr. Horne had been situated, would be better than
+another visit to Dudley.</p>
+
+<p>Plumtree Wharf was, he knew, the name of the most important part of the
+property which had belonged to Dudley's father. Putting together the two
+facts of the discovery of a ticket for Limehouse in Dudley's possession,
+and of the disappearance of Edward Jacobs after a visit to that locality
+on the same day, Max saw that there was something to be gleaned in that
+neighborhood, if he should have the luck to light upon it.</p>
+
+<p>It was late in the afternoon, and already dark, before he got out of the
+train at Limehouse station, and began the exploration of the unsavory
+district which fringes the docks.</p>
+
+<p>Through street after street of dingy, squalid houses he passed; some
+broken up by dirty little shops, some presenting the dull uniformity of
+row after row of mean, stunted brick buildings, the broken windows of
+many of which were mended with brown paper, or else not mended at all.
+Here and there a grimy public house, each with its group of loafers
+about the doors, made, with the lights in its windows, a spot of
+comparative brightness.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the streets were narrow and tortuous, roughly paved, and both
+difficult and dangerous to traverse by the unaccustomed foot passenger,
+who found himself now slipping on a piece of orange peel, the pale color
+of which was disguised by mud, now risking the soundness of his ankles
+among the uneven and slimy stones of the road.</p>
+
+<p>Max had to ask his way more than once before he reached the Plumtree
+Wharf, the entrance to which was through a door in a high wooden fence.
+Rather to his surprise, he found the door unfastened and unguarded. And
+when he had got through he looked round and asked himself what on earth
+he had expected to find there.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing going on at this late hour, and Max was able to take
+stock of the place and of the outlook generally. Piles of timber to the
+right of him, the dead wall at the side of a warehouse on the left, gave
+him but a narrow space in which to pursue his investigations. And these
+only amounted to the discovery that the troubled waters of the Thames
+looked very dark and very cold from this spot; that the opposite bank,
+with little specks of light, offered a gloomy and depressing prospect,
+and that the lapping of the water among the black barges which were
+moored at his feet in a dense mass was the dreariest sound he had ever
+heard. He turned away with a shudder, and walked quickly up the narrow
+lane left by the timber, calling himself a fool for his journey.</p>
+
+<p>And just as he was reaching the narrow street by which he had come he
+was startled to find a girl's face peering down at him from the top of a
+pile of timber.</p>
+
+<p>Max stopped, with an exclamation. In an instant the girl withdrew the
+head, which was all he had seen of her, and he heard her crawling back
+quickly over the timber, out of his sight.</p>
+
+<p>Although he had seen her for a moment only, Max had been chilled to the
+bone by the expression of the girl's face. Ghastly white it had looked
+in the feeble light of a solitary gas lamp some distance away, and
+wearing an expression of fear and horror such as he had never seen on
+any countenance before. He felt that he must find out where she had
+gone, his first belief being that she was a lunatic. Else why should she
+have disappeared in that stealthy manner, with the look of fear stamped
+upon her face? There was nothing in the look or manner of Max himself to
+alarm her; and if she had been in need of help, why had she not called
+to him?</p>
+
+<p>He got a footing upon the timber and looked over it. But he could see
+nothing more of the girl. Beyond the stacks were some low-roofed
+outbuildings and the back of a shut-up warehouse. Reluctantly he got
+down, and passed into the narrow street. Not willing to leave at once a
+neighborhood which he had come so far to investigate, he turned, after
+going some dozen yards down the street, into a narrow passage on his
+left hand which led back to the river.</p>
+
+<p>The width between the high walls and the warehouses on either side was
+only some five feet. It was flagged with stone, very dark. About ten
+yards from the entrance there was a small warehouse, on the left hand,
+on which hung an old board, announcing that the building was "To Let."
+And next door to this was a dingy shop, with grimy and broken windows,
+the door of which was boarded up. This shop, also, was "To Be Let," and
+the board in this case had been up so long that the announcement had to
+be divined rather than read.</p>
+
+<p>Rather struck by the dilapidated appearance of these two buildings in a
+place where he supposed land must be valuable, Max paused for an
+instant. And as he did so, he became aware that there was some one by
+his side.</p>
+
+<p>Looking down quickly, he saw the young girl of whom he had caught a
+glimpse a few minutes before.</p>
+
+<p>He started.</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at him, and, still with the same look of stereotyped
+horror on her thin, white face, whispered, in a hoarse voice, as she
+pointed to the boarded-up shop-door with a shaking forefinger:</p>
+
+<p>"You daren't go in there, do you? There's a dead man in there!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<h3>A QUESTIONABLE GUIDE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Max started violently at the girl's voice.</p>
+
+<p>"A dead man? In there? How do you know?"</p>
+
+<p>In a hoarse voice the girl answered:</p>
+
+<p>"How do I know? The best way possible. <i>I saw it done!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>A moan from the girl made him stop and look around at her. Emboldened by
+this, she came close to him again and whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"You're a man; you ought to have more pluck than I've got. It's two days
+since it happened&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Two days!" muttered Max, remembering that it was two days ago that he
+had surprised Dudley with his blood-stained hands.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you go in with me?" she asked again, more eagerly, more
+tremulously than before. "I can show you the road&mdash;round at the back.
+You will have a little climbing to do, but you won't mind that."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>The girl shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;of his own accord. He was murdered."</p>
+
+<p>Max grew hot, and cold. He heartily wished he had never come.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't do that," said the girl, "because he&mdash;the man who did it&mdash;was
+kind to us&mdash;kind to Granny and me. If I tell the police, they will go
+after him, and perhaps find him, and&mdash;and hang him. Oh, no," and she
+shook her head again with decision, "I could not do that."</p>
+
+<p>Max was silent for a few moments, looking at her for the first few
+seconds with pity and then with suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you tell all this to me, then&mdash;a stranger&mdash;if you're so afraid
+of the police finding out anything about it?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl did not answer for a moment. She seemed puzzled to answer the
+question. At last she said:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>And, crouching under the wall of a ruinous outhouse, in an attitude
+expressive of the dejection of utter abandonment, was the white-faced
+girl.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here," said he, "I'll go in, if you like. Have you got a light?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," said he, "find me a candle, if you can."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>And then Max noted a strange circumstance&mdash;the two small windows were
+boarded up on the inside.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Max shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you waiting for&mdash;listening for?" asked Max sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>Her tone was sharp and querulous. Max looked at her in bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>"Empty house!" he repeated. "What were you doing in it, then?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," she said, at last, rather
+sulkily. "I was living here. Is that enough?"</p>
+
+<p>It was not. And her visitor's looks told her so.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"But hardly fair to the landlord," suggested Max.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" ejaculated Max, with new interest.</p>
+
+<p>The girl looked at him inquiringly.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you know about him?" she asked, with eagerness.</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard of him," said Max.</p>
+
+<p>But the astute young Londoner was not to be put off so easily.</p>
+
+<p>"You know something of the whole family, perhaps? Did you know the old
+gentleman himself?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know&mdash;his son?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" She assumed the attitude of an inquisitor immediately. "Perhaps it
+was he who sent you here to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>She looked long and scrutinizingly in his face, suspicious in her turn.
+"Then what made you come?"</p>
+
+<p>Max paused a moment, and then evaded her question very neatly.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>The girl drew back a little.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, so I did. And I am very much obliged to you. I&mdash;I wanted to ask
+you to go into that room, the front room, and to fetch some things of
+mine&mdash;things I have left there. I daren't go in by myself."</p>
+
+<p>Max hesitated. Beside his old suspicions, a new one had just started
+into his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you," he asked, suddenly, "know of some letters which were written
+to Mr. Dudley Horne?"</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what if I do? Mind, I don't say that I do. But what if I do?"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke he lifted the latch and tried to open the door. But although
+the latch went up, the door remained shut.</p>
+
+<p>Max pulled and shook it, and finally put his knee against the side-post
+and gave the handle of the latch a terrific tug.</p>
+
+<p>It broke in his hand, but the door remained closed.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't get out!" thundered he, threateningly, with another thump at
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>The girl answered in the low voice she always used; by contrast with his
+menacing tones it seemed lower than ever:</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mean you to&mdash;yet. I guessed you'd want to go pretty soon, so I
+locked the door."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>FOREWARNED, BUT NOT FOREARMED.</h3>
+
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>In the effort to avoid this, Max, checking himself, staggered and
+slipped, falling on the brick floor, pail and all.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am sorry! So sorry!"</p>
+
+<p>Again the oddly expressive face had changed completely. Her scarlet
+lips&mdash;those vividly red lips which go with an opaque white skin&mdash;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:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you hurt? Oh, I know your wrist is hurt!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I've strained my wrist a little, I think. Nothing to matter," said he.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you let me out?" he asked at last, sharply, with an effort.</p>
+
+<p>The girl looked at him with yet a new expression on her mobile face&mdash;an
+expression of desperation.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl looked at him curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Just now you only thought of getting away."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>She took a key from her pocket, unlocked the outer door and set it ajar.</p>
+
+<p>"Will that do for you?" asked she.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's all right."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep close!" whispered she.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right&mdash;it's all right," whispered she, reassuringly. "He isn't
+in here. But he's there."</p>
+
+<p>And she pointed to the door with the red curtain.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Even as this consciousness seized upon him, he heard a moan, a sliding
+sound, a thud, and the light went suddenly out.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here," she said faintly, "I couldn't help it. You know&mdash;I
+think&mdash;I'm almost&mdash;starving."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;alone&mdash;with the rats&mdash;and&mdash;<i>that</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>And again she pointed to the curtained door.</p>
+
+<p>Max felt his teeth chattering as he tried to reassure her.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, won't you trust me? I'll only be a minute. I want to get you some
+brandy."</p>
+
+<p>"Brandy? No. I dare not."</p>
+
+<p>And she shook her head. But Max persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated, came back a step and leaned over the table, looking at
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He had reached the door, when by a weak gesture she called him back
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"If&mdash;if you should meet anybody&mdash;I'm expecting Granny all the time&mdash;I'm
+sure she wouldn't leave me altogether like this&mdash;you will come back all
+the same, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, I shan't mind Granny," replied Max, confidently.</p>
+
+<p>"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>I'm afraid of her myself!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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
+<i>me</i>. She's very particular. At least&mdash;I mean&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't be long."</p>
+
+<p>And Max, puzzled himself by the feelings he had toward this strange
+little white-bodied being, went through the outhouse into the open air.</p>
+
+<p>Outside, he found himself staggering, he didn't know why&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know her address?" asked Max.</p>
+
+<p>The landlord smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"But she's a very respectable woman, the Mrs. Higgs I mean," said Max,
+tentatively.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Surely, he thought, the girl has not summoned enough courage to go into
+the room by herself?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>It was a pair of eyes watching him as he moved.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MAN WHO HESITATES.</h3>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The discovery made him feel sick.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>A little flash, as of pleased surprise, passed over her white face. Then
+she said, under her breath:</p>
+
+<p>"So you have come back. I didn't think you would. I&mdash;I am sorry you
+did."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Even now, upon her entrance, the first sight of her face had made his
+heart leap up.</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause when she finished speaking. Max, who was usually
+fluent enough with her sex, hesitated, stammered and at last said:</p>
+
+<p>"You are sorry I came back? Yet you seemed anxious enough to make me
+promise to come back!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I know," she replied, rapidly, "I know I was. But&mdash;Granny has come
+back. She came in while you were gone."</p>
+
+<p>Max glanced at the wall, where he had fancied he saw the pair of
+watching eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said he, "that explains what I saw, perhaps. Where is your
+grandmother?"</p>
+
+<p>"She has gone upstairs to her room under the roof."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl stared at him in silence as he pointed to the wall, and as he
+ran his hand over its surface.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw a pair of eyes watching me just now," he went on, "from the
+middle of this wall. I could swear to it!"</p>
+
+<p>The girl looked incredulous, and passed her hand over the wall in her
+turn. Then she shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;longer than this."</p>
+
+<p>He still looked doubtful, and she added, sharply:</p>
+
+<p>"You can see for yourself if you like."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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"&mdash;she came a little nearer to Max, so that she could
+whisper very close to his ear&mdash;"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&mdash;and&mdash;when she's angry I'm afraid of her."</p>
+
+<p>Max felt a pang of compassion for the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;with old ladies&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let Granny see it!" she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"All right. But I want you to taste it; it will do you good."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head astutely.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;"while you have the chance."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Max stood watching her, divided between prudence, which urged him to go,
+and inclination, which prompted him to stay.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't gone then?" said she.</p>
+
+<p>"No!"</p>
+
+<p>She came forward, taking the lid off the kettle as she walked.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't be advised?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I did thank you," said she, not attempting to withdrew her hand, but
+standing, grave and with downcast eyes, between him and the door.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;no, I mean
+those Johnnies of the Middle Ages&mdash;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&mdash;awfully' and cut him dead forever
+afterward."</p>
+
+<p>"You think the knight expected payment, just as you do, for his
+services?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think so. A very small payment, but one which he would appreciate
+highly."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Max opened the door and slowly stepped into the outhouse. At the moment
+of glancing back&mdash;an inevitable thing&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought they cut the water off from empty houses; that is, houses
+supposed to be empty."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"So they do. But&mdash;the people who know how to live without paying rent
+know a few other things, too."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The fact reminded him of that which the intoxication caused by a pretty
+face had made him forget&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes; of course; I'd forgotten that," assented Max, limply.</p>
+
+<p>And then he fell into silence, and the girl stood quietly by the tap,
+which ran slowly, till the kettle was full.</p>
+
+<p>And then it began to run over.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He came boldly up to her.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>He was evidently in no hurry to carry anything away, though he went on
+with the glove-buttoning with much energy.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I should be delighted," said Max.</p>
+
+<p>Off came the gloves; and as the girl tripped quickly into the adjoining
+room, he followed with alacrity.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>Another glance at the girl, and the fascinated, bewildered Max resolved
+to risk everything for a little more of her society.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+<h3>GRANNY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>It was a paper of biscuits which he had brought from the public-house.
+He had forgotten them till that moment.</p>
+
+<p>"I brought these for you&mdash;" he began.</p>
+
+<p>And then, before he could add more, he was shocked by the avidity with
+which she almost snatched them from his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I'd forgotten!" stammered he.</p>
+
+<p>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!</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't look at me," she said, half laughing, half ashamed. "I suppose
+you've never been without food for two days!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>The biscuits were disappearing rapidly. Presently she turned and let him
+see her face again.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really feel so grateful for the little I have done?" he asked
+suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>The girl drew a long breath.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't dare to tell you <i>how</i> grateful."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;you and this
+place don't <i>fit</i>."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"And very likely it will astonish you still more to hear that in coming
+to this place I made a change for the better."</p>
+
+<p>Max was too much surprised to make any comment.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>She paused.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, surely," began Max, "your own grandmother&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"That seems probable, certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"What does she call you?" asked he, after a silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Carrie&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where was that?" asked Max.</p>
+
+<p>The girl hung her head, and answered in a lower voice, as if her reply
+were a distasteful, discreditable admission:</p>
+
+<p>"I was bookkeeper at a hotel&mdash;a wretched place, where I was miserable,
+very miserable."</p>
+
+<p>Max was more puzzled than ever.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;except&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," said Max, "<i>now</i> I understand! And didn't she ever let you know
+who placed you with her?"</p>
+
+<p>"She said it was my grandmother," answered Carrie, doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"This grandmother? The one you call Granny?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"And how did you get to the hotel?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Where was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"But why didn't you get a better one? Anything would have been better,
+surely, than coming here, to live like this!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Carrie looked dubious.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;a class I don't belong to."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't it be better than&mdash;this?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but you're well educated&mdash;and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He was going to say "pretty," but her look stopped him.</p>
+
+<p>It was almost a look of reproach.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Max had sprung up from his chair, full of curiosity to see the old lady
+of whom Carrie seemed to be somewhat in awe.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>ensemble</i> which suggested a
+harmless, tedious old lady who could "nag" when she was not pleased.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is he?" she asked at last, when she had begun to sip her cup of
+tea.</p>
+
+<p>She did not even condescend to look at Max as she made the inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>"A gentleman, Granny&mdash;the gentleman I told you of, who came in with me
+because I was afraid to come in by myself."</p>
+
+<p>"But what's he doing here now? You're not by yourself now."</p>
+
+<p>Max himself could hardly help laughing at this question and comment.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I ought to explain to you my appearance here," said he,
+modestly.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, then; you can go as soon as you like."</p>
+
+<p>"Granny!" protested the girl in a whisper; "don't be rude to him,
+Granny. He's been very kind."</p>
+
+<p>"Kind! I dare say!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Then a door was slammed, and there was silence.</p>
+
+<p>As Max scrambled to his feet his hand, touched something clammy and
+cold.</p>
+
+<p>It was a hand&mdash;a dead hand.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+<h3>A TRAP.</h3>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>On turning the next angle in the wall he came to the shop door&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He continued his investigations.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Then he paused and listened at the inner door.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly he put his back to the door and prepared to stand on the
+defensive against the expected attack of an invisible assailant.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>And then, again, there was dead silence, dead stillness.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>And as he looked, his eyes grew round, and his breath came fast.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>There was no other creature in it, dead or alive, but himself.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+<h3>ESCAPE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>An exclamation, impossible to repress, burst from the lips of Max.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"You know all about that, I expect," said he, shortly.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you know now," said Max, shortly, "and perhaps you'll be kind
+enough to let me out."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you holloa out when you found yourself inside?"</p>
+
+<p>"It wouldn't have been of much use," retorted Max. "I thumped on the
+door and made noise enough to wake the city."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Where were you then?" To himself he added: "You old fool!"</p>
+
+<p>"Eh?" said Mrs. Higgs.</p>
+
+<p>Max repeated the question.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, first I was downstairs, and then I came up here."</p>
+
+<p>At last Max saw in the old woman's lackluster eyes a spark of malice.</p>
+
+<p>"You're coming to open the door now?" asked he.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," said she.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Surely, slow as her steps might be, she could have got down by this
+time.</p>
+
+<p>He grew restless, uneasy. The old suspicions&mdash;which her appearance and
+the artful simplicity of her manner had allayed&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the sound of the splashing of water
+close to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>And at the same moment a voice whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"Sh-sh!"</p>
+
+<p>Very gradually the door was opened a little farther. A hand caught the
+sleeve of his coat. It was quite dark outside the door&mdash;as dark as in
+the front room.</p>
+
+<p>"Sh-sh!" was whispered again in his ear, as he felt himself drawn
+through the narrow aperture.</p>
+
+<p>He made no attempt to resist, for he knew, he felt, that the hand was
+Carrie's, and that this was rescue.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't make a sound. Come slowly, very quietly, very carefully. You're
+all right."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"It's me&mdash;Carrie," said the girl.</p>
+
+<p>And opening the outer door, she drove Max out with a gentle push, and
+closed it between herself and him.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God!" was his first muttered exclamation, as he felt the welcome
+rush of cold night air and felt himself free again.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The visitor wore a light overcoat, and had a certain look of being well
+off, or, at least, well dressed.</p>
+
+<p>And, suspicion getting the upper hand again, the thought darted through
+the mind of Max that it was strange to find so many persons&mdash;this was
+the third of whom he had knowledge&mdash;hovering about the shut-up house,
+when Carrie had represented herself to have been alone for two whole
+days.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>After waiting for a few moments, the man repeated this signal, more
+loudly than before.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"You, Dick? Come in."</p>
+
+<p>And the young man, without answering, availed himself of the invitation;
+and the door was shut.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>As he had expected, Carrie herself, after an interval of only a few
+seconds, opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>On recognizing him, Carrie started, but uttered no sound, no word.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to speak to you," said Max, in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice broke; her anxiety was visible. Max was touched, more
+interested than ever.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, oh, no. I must go in. And you must go. Are you a <i>fool</i>,"
+and she stamped her foot with sudden impatience, "to be so persistent?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," said she. "Set the police on us by all means. Oh, do&mdash;do!
+But&mdash;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!"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the girl's words connecting Dudley with a murder committed
+within those walls.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Carrie interrupted him, breaking in upon him abruptly:</p>
+
+<p>"What things?"</p>
+
+<p>"Murders, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The murder was done by your friend, not by us."</p>
+
+<p>"'Us?' Surely you don't identify yourself with these people?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do. They are my friends&mdash;the only friends I have."</p>
+
+<p>"But they are thieves, blackmailers!" said Max, saying not what he knew
+but what he guessed.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"But you forget you said just now you had got me out of a nice mess."</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I meant that you were frightened."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;I can't&mdash;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&mdash;that you only live like this because you can't
+help it, or because you think you can't help it&mdash;and I'll forgive you."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>When she at last spoke, it was in a reckless, willful tone.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"What!"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;stitch&mdash;stitching&mdash;dust&mdash;dust&mdash;dusting,
+as I used to have to do with Miss Aldridge, as I should have to do if I
+went away from here."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"What other things?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you could&mdash;you could teach in a school or in a family."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And Dick!" burst out Max, spitefully. "You would have to give up the
+society of Dick."</p>
+
+<p>It was possible, even in the darkness, to perceive that this remark
+startled Carrie. She said, in astonishment which she could not hide:</p>
+
+<p>"And what do you know about Dick?"</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>Carrie laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid you got your information from the wrong quarter," said she,
+quietly. "Not from Dick himself, that's certain."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I suppose he is."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you&mdash;of course I've no right to ask&mdash;but are you fond of him?"</p>
+
+<p>Carrie shook her head with indifference.</p>
+
+<p>"I like him in my way," said she. "Not in his way. There's a great
+difference."</p>
+
+<p>"And do you like any man&mdash;in his way?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl replied with a significant gesture of disgust, which had in it
+nothing of coquetry, nothing of affectation.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said she, shortly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you answer like that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why? Oh, well, if you knew all that I've seen, you wouldn't wonder, you
+wouldn't want to ask."</p>
+
+<p>"You won't always feel like that. You won't, when you have got away from
+this hole, and are living among decent people."</p>
+
+<p>"The 'decent people' are those who leave me alone," said Carrie,
+shortly, "as they do here."</p>
+
+<p>"As who do here? Who are the people who live in that shut-up house,
+besides you and your Granny, as you call her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;mustn't tell you. They don't belong to any county families. Is that
+enough?"</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm the same girl," replied Carrie, shortly, "whom you threatened with
+the police."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, is that fair? Did I threaten <i>you</i> with the police?"</p>
+
+<p>"You threatened <i>us</i>. It's the same thing. Well, it doesn't matter.
+They won't find out anything more than we choose!"</p>
+
+<p>She said this defiantly, ostentatiously throwing in her lot with the
+dubious characters from whom Max would fain have dissociated her.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you forget," he asked, suddenly, "that these precious friends of
+yours left you, forgot you, for two whole days&mdash;left you to the company
+of a dead man, to a chance stranger? Is that what you call
+kindness&mdash;friendship&mdash;affection?"</p>
+
+<p>She made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later a voice was heard calling softly: "Carrie?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I must go," said she. "Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>"Carrie!" repeated the voice, calling again, impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Carrie called out:</p>
+
+<p>"All right; I'm coming!" And then she turned to Max. "You are to forget
+this place, and me," said she, in a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>The next moment Max found himself alone.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SEQUEL TO A TRAGEDY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the log, sir," replied the lad, sobered by the sudden appearance
+of the young master, who seemed in no hilarious mood.</p>
+
+<p>"The log! What log?"</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>It was "Poaching Wilson" who pulled the bell, after some difficulty in
+finding the handle, owing to the liberality with which he had "treated
+himself" as a preparation for the journey.</p>
+
+<p>Max, alarmed at the invasion, had made his way round to the
+billiard-room door at the back, bolted it on the inside, and hastened to
+give directions to the servants to lock all the other doors, and to
+secure the ground-floor windows.</p>
+
+<p>Then he rushed into the hall, just as his father had come out from the
+dining-room, serviette in hand, to learn the cause of the noise outside.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Max! Is it you back again? And have you brought down half the
+population of London with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, they didn't come with me. They are guests of yours, I
+understand. And they expect to be treated to unlimited beer, so I gather
+from their remarks. They've brought some firewood, I believe."</p>
+
+<p>At this moment the clanging of the front-door bell resounded through the
+house for the second time. The frightened butler, who was a young man
+and rather nervous, stood by the door, not daring to open it. The ladies
+of the household had by this time come out of the dining-room; Mrs.
+Wedmore looked flush and frightened; the girls were tittering. Smothered
+explosions of laughter came from time to time to the ears of the master
+of the house, from the closed door which led to the servants' hall.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall&mdash;shall I see who it is, sir?" asked the butler, who could hear
+the epithets applied to him on the other side of the door.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no!" cried Doreen. "Not on any account! Tell them to put the thing
+down and go away."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause, during which the bell rang again, and there was a
+violent lunge at the door.</p>
+
+<p>"They won't&mdash;they won't go away, Miss, without they get something
+first," said the butler, who was as white as a sheet.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell them," began Mr. Wedmore, in a loud tone of easy confidence, "to
+take it round to the back door, and&mdash;and to send a&mdash;deputation to me in
+the morning; when&mdash;er&mdash;they shall be properly rewarded for their
+trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"They ought to reward us for <i>our</i> trouble, papa, don't you think?"
+suggested Doreen.</p>
+
+<p>"There! They've begun to reward themselves," said Queenie, as a stone
+came through one of the windows.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wedmore was furious. He saw the mistake he had made, but he would
+not own it. Putting strong constraint upon himself, he assumed a gay
+geniality of manner which his looks belied, and boldly advanced to the
+door. But Mrs. Wedmore flung her arms round her husband in a capacious
+embrace, dragging him backward with an energy there was no use
+resisting.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, no, George! I won't have you expose yourself to those horrid
+roughs! Don't open the door, Bartram! Put up the bolt!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense! Nonsense, my dear!" retorted Mr. Wedmore, who was, perhaps,
+not so unwilling to be saved from the howling mob as he wished to
+appear. "It's only good-humored fun&mdash;of a rough sort, perhaps, but quite
+harmless. It's some mischievous boy who threw the stone. But, of course,
+they must go round to the back."</p>
+
+<p>"Cook won't dare to open the door to 'em, sir," said the butler.</p>
+
+<p>The situation was becoming serious. There was no denying that the house
+was besieged. Mrs. Wedmore began to feel like a ch&acirc;telaine of the
+Cavalier party, with the Roundhead army at the doors clamoring for her
+husband's blood. The cries of the villagers were becoming more derisive.</p>
+
+<p>As a happy thought, Mrs. Wedmore suggested haranguing the mob from an
+upper window. This course seemed rather ignominious, but prudence
+decided in its favor.</p>
+
+<p>There was a rush upstairs, and Mr. Wedmore, followed by all the ladies,
+flung himself into the bathroom and threw up the window.</p>
+
+<p>It was not at all the sort of thing that merry squire of the olden times
+might have been expected to do. In fact, as Doreen remarked, there were
+no bathrooms in the olden time to harangue a mob from. But Mr. Wedmore's
+medieval ardor being damped, he submitted to circumstances with
+fortitude.</p>
+
+<p>"Yah! There 'e is at last!" "'Ow are you, old un?" "Don't put your nose
+out too fur this cold night!"</p>
+
+<p>These and similar ribald remarks greeted Mr. Wedmore as he appeared at
+the window, telling him only too plainly that the merry days of old were
+gone, never to be restored, and that the feudal feeling which bound (or
+is supposed to have bound) rich and poor, gentle and simple, in one
+great tie of brotherhood had disappeared forever.</p>
+
+<p>Doreen and Queenie were secretly enjoying the fun, though they had the
+sense to be very quiet; but Mrs. Wedmore was in an agony of sympathy
+with her husband, and of fear for the results of his enterprise. He
+began a speech of thanks, but the noise below was too great for him to
+be heard. Indeed, it was his own servants who did the most toward
+drowning his voice by their well-meant endeavors to shout down the
+interrupting cries.</p>
+
+<p>"They're most of them tipsy, I think," whispered Doreen to her mother,
+who said, "Sh-sh!" in shocked remonstrance, but secretly agreed with her
+daughter's verdict.</p>
+
+<p>"Throw them some coppers, papa," suggested the sage and practical
+Queenie.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wedmore turned out his pockets, taking care to disperse his largesse
+as widely as possible. The girls helped him, hunting high and low for
+coins, among which, urged by the crowd in no subdued voice to "come down
+handsome," sixpences and shillings presently made their welcome
+appearance.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the hollies!" whispered Doreen to her sister.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank goodness, the look of the garden to-morrow morning will be an
+object-lesson to papa!"</p>
+
+<p>For the invaders, well aware of the value of such wares at Christmas
+time, filled out the pauses by slashing at the berry-bearing trees with
+their pocket-knives, secure in the safety of numbers.</p>
+
+<p>By the time the shower of money ceased the crowd had begun to thin;
+those members of it who had been lucky enough to secure silver coins had
+made off in the direction of the nearest public-house, and those who had
+cut down the holly had taken themselves off with their booty.</p>
+
+<p>There remained in front of the door, when this clearance had been
+effected, the Yule log itself, the laborers who had drawn it along and a
+group of manageable size.</p>
+
+<p>Max, who had been watching the proceedings from the study, after turning
+out the light, judged that the moment had come for negotiations to
+commence. So he told the butler to throw open the front door, and he
+himself invited the unwelcome guests to enter. He had taken the
+precaution to have all portable articles removed from the hall and all
+the doors locked except that which led to the servants' hall and the
+staircases.</p>
+
+<p>In they came, a little subdued, and with their first disastrous energy
+sufficiently exhausted for them to be able to listen and to do as they
+were told.</p>
+
+<p>The oaken center-table had been pushed on one side, and there was a
+clear space, wide, carpetless, from the front door to the big stone
+fireplace opposite.</p>
+
+<p>"This way with the log! Now, boys, pull with a will!" cried Max, not
+insensible to the novelty and picturesqueness of the situation, as a
+motley crowd, some in smock-frocks, some in corduroy and some in gaiters
+and great-coats, pressed into the great hall dragging the log after them
+with many a "Whoop!" and shout and cry.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. and Mrs. Wedmore and the two girls hurried downstairs on hearing the
+door open, and stood by the fireplace, with a little glow of
+satisfaction and pleasure at the turn affairs had taken.</p>
+
+<p>It <i>was</i> a log! Or, rather, it was more than a log; for it was half
+a tree. Slowly the huge thing came in, scraping the nicely polished
+floor, rolling a little from side to side, and threatening all those
+within a yard of it. And then, when its appearance had spread
+consternation through the household, the inevitable question came: What
+was to be done with it?</p>
+
+<p>The fire-basket had been taken out of the hearth on purpose for its
+reception, but it was evident that, even after this careful preparation,
+to think of burning it whole was out of the question. There was nothing
+for it but to send for a saw and to reduce the log then and there to a
+manageable size.</p>
+
+<p>This was done, amid considerable noise and excitement, drinking of the
+health of the family by villagers who had been drinking too much
+already, and much scraping of the polished floor by muddy, hob-nailed
+boots.</p>
+
+<p>Finally the deputation was got rid of, and the interrupted dinner was
+allowed to proceed, much to the comfort of Max, who had eaten nothing
+since breakfast, and much to the dismay of Mrs. Wedmore, who was then
+able to ascertain the extent of the damage done by the invaders.</p>
+
+<p>It was lucky for Max that he had arrived at such an opportune moment.
+His father had been grumbling at the number of visits he had made to
+town lately, and the young man would have found him in no very good
+humor if he had not discovered to his hand the opportunity of making
+himself conspicuously useful.</p>
+
+<p>It is scarcely necessary to say that Max did not tell anyone about the
+adventures he had met with. He knew that he should have to go through
+the ordeal of an interview with his sister, Doreen, who would want to
+know a great deal more than he was willing to tell her; but he was
+tired, and he made up his mind that he would not be interrogated that
+evening. So he gave her no opportunity for the confidential talk she was
+dying to have with him, but spent the remainder of the evening in
+dutiful attendance upon his mother.</p>
+
+<p>The following day was Christmas Eve. Max came down late to breakfast,
+and he had scarcely entered the morning-room when his father handed him
+the <i>Standard</i>, pointing to a certain paragraph without any comment
+but a glance at the girls, as a hint to his son not to make any remark
+which would recall Dudley and his affairs to their minds.</p>
+
+<p>The paragraph was as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>SHOCKING DISCOVERY!</p>
+
+<p>The body of a man was found floating in the river close to
+Limehouse Pier late yesterday evening. Medical evidence points to
+death by violence, and the police are making inquiries. It is
+thought that the description of the body, which is that of a man of
+a Jewish type of countenance, rather under than over the middle
+height, aged between fifty and fifty-five, gray hair and short,
+gray beard, tallies with that given a few days ago by a woman who
+applied at the &mdash;&mdash; Street Police Court, alleging that her husband
+had disappeared in the above neighborhood. The police are extremely
+reticent, but at the present they have no clue to the authors of
+the outrage. The body awaits identification at the mortuary, and an
+inquest will be held to-day.</p></div>
+
+<p>"I wonder whether Dudley will see that?" said Mr. Wedmore, in a low
+voice, as soon as his daughters were engaged in talk together. "It looks
+like the sequel to the other paragraph which upset him so the other
+evening, doesn't it? I shall watch the papers for the result of the
+inquest. It seems to me pretty certain that it was Edward Jacobs.
+Curious affair, isn't it, that he should be murdered in a slum, after
+making a fortune at other people's expense? Retribution&mdash;just
+retribution! Curious, isn't it!"</p>
+
+<p>To Max it was so much more than merely "curious," knowing what he did,
+that he felt sick with horror. Surely this body, found floating near
+Limehouse Pier, was the one he had touched in the dark!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>IS IT BLACKMAIL?</h3>
+
+
+<p>Mr. Wedmore repeated his comment: "Curious, isn't it?" before Max could
+reply. At last he nodded, and handed back the paper to his father. Then
+he turned his chair toward the fire, and stared at the blazing coals. He
+had lost his appetite; he felt cold, miserable.</p>
+
+<p>His father could not help noticing that something was wrong with him;
+and, after watching him furtively for a few minutes, he said, with an
+abruptness which made Max start:</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see anything of Dudley when you were in town?"</p>
+
+<p>Max changed color, and glanced apprehensively at his father, as if
+fearing some suspicion in the unexpected question.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir," he answered, after a moment's hesitation. "I called at his
+chambers; but they told me he had gone away for the holidays and had
+left no address. All letters were to be kept for him till his return."</p>
+
+<p>Both question and answer had been uttered very softly, but Max saw, by
+the look on Doreen's face, as she glanced over from the other side of
+the table, that she guessed what they were talking about, if she had not
+heard their words.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you going to have any breakfast, Max?" asked she, as she came
+round to him. "We've kept everything about for you, and we want the
+table."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you can have it," said he, jumping up, quickly, and making for
+the door. "I don't want any breakfast this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense. You will not be allowed to leave the room until you have had
+some," retorted his sister, as she sprang at him and attempted to pinion
+his arms. "We allow no ill-temper on Christmas Eve, especially as we've
+got a surprise for you&mdash;a beautiful, real surprise. Guess who is coming
+this morning to stay till New Year!"</p>
+
+<p>Queenie had come up by this time, and the two girls between them brought
+their brother back to the table, where the younger sister began to pour
+out his coffee.</p>
+
+<p>But Max refused to show the slightest interest in the coming guest, and
+would not attempt to guess who it was. So they had to tell him.</p>
+
+<p>"It was all on your account that we asked her," said Doreen, hurt by his
+indifference. "You took such a fancy to her, and she to you, apparently,
+at the Hutchinsons' dance, that we thought you'd be delighted.
+<i>Now</i>, don't you know who it is?"</p>
+
+<p>To their great disappointment, both girls saw that he didn't. Mr.
+Wedmore, from the other end of the room, was observing this little
+incident with considerable annoyance. The young lady in question, Miss
+Mildred Appleby, was very pretty, and would be well dowered, and Mr.
+Wedmore had entered heartily into the plan of inviting her to spend
+Christmas with them, in the hope that Max would propose, be accepted,
+and that he would then make up his mind to settle.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it's Mildred Appleby," said Doreen, impatiently, when her
+brother's blank look had given her the wrong answer. "Surely, you don't
+mean to say you've forgotten all about her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, I remember her," answered Max, indifferently. "Tall girl with a
+fashion-plate face, waltzes pretty well and can't talk. Yes, I remember
+her, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that all you have to say about her?" cried Doreen, betraying her
+disappointment. "Why, a month ago she was the nicest and the jolliest
+and the everythingest girl you had ever met."</p>
+
+<p>"He's seen somebody else since then," remarked the observant Queenie, in
+her dry, little voice. "When he was in town yesterday, perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>Max looked at his sister with a curious expression. Was she right? Had
+he, in that adventurous thirty-six hours in London, seen somebody who
+took the color out of all the other girls he had ever met? He asked
+himself this question when Queenie's shrewd eyes met his, and he
+remembered the strange sensation he had felt at the touch of Carrie's
+hand, at the sound of her voice.</p>
+
+<p>Before he could answer his sister, Mr. Wedmore spoke impatiently:</p>
+
+<p>"Rubbish!" cried he, testily. "Every young man thinks it the proper
+thing to talk like that, as if no girl was good enough for him. Miss
+Appleby is a charming girl, and she will find plenty of admirers without
+waiting for Max's valuable adoration."</p>
+
+<p>He had much better not have spoken, blundering old papa that he was. And
+both daughters thought so, as they saw Max raise his eyebrows and gather
+in all the details of the little plot in one sweeping glance at the
+faces around him. He drank his coffee, but he could not eat. Doreen sat
+watching him, ready to spring upon him at the first possible moment, and
+to carry him off for the <i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i> he was so anxious to put off.</p>
+
+<p>What should he tell his sister of that adventure of his in the slums of
+the East End? Would she be satisfied if he told a white lie, if he said
+he had found out nothing?</p>
+
+<p>Max felt that Doreen would not be satisfied if he got himself out of the
+difficulty like that. In the first place, she would not believe him. He
+saw that her quick eyes had been watching him since his return, and he
+felt that he had been unable to hide the fact that something of greater
+significance had occurred during that brief stay in town. What then
+should he tell her? Perfect frankness, perfect confidence was out of the
+question. To look back now, in the handsome, spacious house of his
+parents, from the snug depths of an easy-chair, on the time he had
+passed on and about the wharf by the docks, was so strange that Max
+could hardly believe in his own experiences.</p>
+
+<p>Who would believe the story of his adventures, if he himself could
+scarcely do so? Would Doreen, would anybody give credence to the story
+of the dead body that he touched, but never saw, the eyes that looked at
+him from an unbroken wall, the girl who lured him into the shut-up
+house, and then let him out again with an air of secrecy and mystery?</p>
+
+<p>The transition had been so abrupt from the gloomy wharf, with its
+suspicious surroundings and the heavy, fog-laden air of the riverside,
+back to the warmth and light and brightness of home, that already his
+adventures had receded into a sort of dreamland, and he began to ask
+himself whether Carrie, with her fair hair and moving blue eyes, her
+vibrating voice and changeful expression, were not a creature of his
+imagination only.</p>
+
+<p>He was still under the influence of the feelings roused by this dreamy
+remembrance, when he snatched the opportunity afforded by Doreen's being
+called away by Mrs. Wedmore, to go out into the grounds, on his way to
+the stables. A ride through the lanes in the frosty air would, he
+thought, be the best preparation for the trying ordeal of that
+inevitable talk with Doreen, whose wistful eyes haunted him as she
+waited for a chance of speaking to him alone.</p>
+
+<p>In the garden a scene of desolation met his eye.</p>
+
+<p>The lawns were torn up and trodden down; the gravel path from the
+stables looked like a freshly plowed field; every tree and every bush
+bore the marks of the marauder.</p>
+
+<p>The head gardener was in a condition of unapproachable ferocity, and it
+was generally understood that he had given notice to leave. The
+under-gardeners kept out of the way, but could be heard at intervals
+checking outbursts of derisive laughter behind the shrubberies. The
+story of the Yule log and its adventures was the best joke the country
+had had for a long time, and it was bound to lose nothing as it passed
+from mouth to mouth. And poor Mr. Wedmore began to dread the ordeal of
+congratulations he would have to go through when he next went to church.</p>
+
+<p>Max felt sorry for his father. As he entered the stable-yard, which was
+a wide expanse of flagged ground at the back of the house, round which
+were many outbuildings, he came upon a group of snickering servants, all
+enjoying the story of the master's freak.</p>
+
+<p>The group broke up guiltily on the appearance of Max, the laundry-maids
+taking flight in one direction, while the stablemen became suddenly busy
+with yard-broom and leather.</p>
+
+<p>Max put a question or two to the groom who saddled his horse for him.</p>
+
+<p>"There was no great harm done last night, was there, except in the
+garden? You have not heard of anything being stolen, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no, sir. But it brought a lot of people up as had no business
+here. There was a person come up as we couldn't get rid of, asking
+questions about the family, sir; and about Mr. Horne, too, sir. She
+wouldn't believe as he wasn't here, an' she frightened some of the
+women, I believe, sir. They didn't know where she'd got to, an' nobody
+saw her go out of the place, so they've got an idea she's hiding about.
+A fortune-telling tramp, most likely, sir," added the man, who wished he
+had held his tongue about the intruder when he saw how strongly the
+young master was affected by this story.</p>
+
+<p>The fact was that Max instantly connected this apparition of a woman
+"who asked questions about Mr. Horne" with the ugly story told him at
+the house by the wharf, and he was glad that Dudley was not spending
+Christmas at The Beeches.</p>
+
+<p>He was oppressed during the whole of his ride by this suggestion that
+the questionable characters of the wharfside were pursuing Dudley; it
+gave color to Carrie's statement that it was Dudley who killed the man
+whom Max believed to have been Edward Jacobs; and it looked as if the
+object of the woman's visit was to levy blackmail.</p>
+
+<p>Or was it&mdash;could it be that the woman was Carrie, and that her object
+was to warn Dudley? To associate Carrie herself with the levying of
+blackmail was not possible to the susceptible Max in the present state
+of his feelings toward her.</p>
+
+<p>And, just as he was meditating upon this mystery, all unprepared for a
+meeting with his sister, Doreen waylaid him. He was entering the house
+by the back way, muddy from his ride, when she sprang upon him from an
+ambush on the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been waiting all the morning to catch you alone," said she, as she
+ran out from behind the tall clock and seized his arm. "You've been
+trying to avoid me. Don't deny it. I say you have. As if it was any use!
+No, you shall not go upstairs and take off your boots first. You will
+just come into the study, mud and all, and tell me&mdash;tell me what you
+<i>know</i>, not what you have been making up, mind! I'm going to have
+the truth."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you can't," returned her brother, shortly, as he allowed himself
+to be dragged across the hall, which looked cheerless enough without a
+fire, and with the great, clumsy, hideous, maimed old Yule log filling
+up the fireplace and reminding everybody of all that it had cost.</p>
+
+<p>Doreen pushed him into the study and shut the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Why can't I know the truth?" asked she, eying him steadily. "Do you
+mean that you have found out Dudley doesn't care for me."</p>
+
+<p>Max glanced at his sister's face, and then looked away. He had not known
+till that moment, when he caught the tender look of anxiety in her big
+brown eyes, how strong her love of Dudley was. An impulse of anger
+against the man seized him, and he frowned.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, surely you know already that he doesn't care for you, in the way
+he ought to care, or he would never have neglected you, never have given
+you up!" said he, ferociously.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not so sure about that. At any rate I want to know what you found
+out. Don't think I'm not strong enough to bear it, whatever it is!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, I'll tell you. He <i>is</i> off his head. He has got mixed
+up in some way with a set of people no sane man would trust himself with
+for half an hour, and&mdash;and&mdash;and&mdash;well, they say&mdash;the people say he's done
+something that would hang him. There! Is that enough for you?"</p>
+
+<p>He felt that he was a brute to tell her, but he could see no other way
+out of the difficulty in which her own persistency had placed him. She
+stared at him for a few seconds with blanched cheeks, clasping her
+hands. Then she said in a whisper:</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean&mdash;murder?"</p>
+
+<p>Her brother's silence gave her the answer.</p>
+
+<p>There was a long pause. Then she spoke in a changed voice, under her
+breath:</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Dudley!"</p>
+
+<p>Max was astonished to see her take the announcement so quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now you see that it is impossible to do anything for him, don't
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, I do not!" retorted Doreen, with spirit. "We don't know the
+story yet. We don't know whether there is any truth in it at all; or, if
+there is, what the difficulties were that he was in. Look, Max. You must
+remember how worried he has been lately. I have heard him make excuses
+for people who did rash things, and I have always agreed with him. You
+see, I knew how good-hearted he was, and I know that he would never have
+done anything mean or underhand or unworthy."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you call murder, manslaughter&mdash;whatever it is&mdash;unworthy?" asked
+Max, irritably.</p>
+
+<p>"Not without knowing something about it," answered she. "And I think
+there's generally more to be said for the man who commits murder than
+for any other criminal. And&mdash;and"&mdash;her voice gave way and began to shake
+with tears&mdash;"I don't care what he's done, I'm sorry for him. I&mdash;I want
+to help him, or&mdash;or, at least, I want to see him to tell him so!"</p>
+
+<p>Max was alarmed. Knowing the spirit and courage of his brilliant sister,
+he was afraid lest she should conceive the idea of starting off herself
+on some mad enterprise; so he said hastily:</p>
+
+<p>"He's away now, you know. He's gone without leaving any address. Perhaps
+I was wrong, after all. Perhaps when he comes back he will be himself
+again, and&mdash;and everything will be cleared up. We can only wait and
+see."</p>
+
+<p>But this lame attempt at comfort met with no warm response from his
+sister. She looked at him with a poor little attempt at a contemptuous
+smile, and then, afraid of breaking down altogether, sprang up from the
+arm-chair in which she had been sitting and left him to himself.</p>
+
+<p>Max did not recover his usual spirits at luncheon, where everybody else
+was full of mirthful anticipation of the household dance, another idea
+of Mr. Wedmore's, which was to be a feature of the evening. And after
+that meal, instead of offering to drive to the station to meet Miss
+Appleby, as everybody had expected, Max took himself off, nobody knew
+where, and did not return home until dusk.</p>
+
+<p>Coming through a little side gate in the park, he got into the great
+yard behind the house, where the stables stood on one side and a huge
+barn, which was only used as a storage place for lumber, on the other.
+And it occurred to him that if the woman of whom the groom told him were
+still hanging about the premises, as the servants seemed to think, this
+was the very place she might be expected to choose as a hiding-place.</p>
+
+<p>So he pushed open the great, creaking door of the barn and went in. It
+was very dark in there, and the air was cold and damp. A musty smell
+from old sacks, rotting wood and mildewed straw came to his nostrils, as
+he made his way carefully over the boards with which the middle part of
+the barn had, for some forgotten purpose or other, been floored.</p>
+
+<p>Little chinks of light from above showed great beams, some with ropes
+hanging from them, and stacks of huge lumber of fantastic shapes to
+right and left.</p>
+
+<p>Max stood still in the middle of the floor and listened for a sound. But
+he heard nothing. Suddenly he thought of the signal by the use of which
+he had summoned Carrie to the door of the house by the wharf.</p>
+
+<p>Getting close to one of the piles of lumber, he gave two taps on the
+panel of a broken wooden chest, waited a couple of seconds, and then
+gave two taps more.</p>
+
+<p>There was a shuffling noise along the boards on the other side of the
+stack, followed by the striking of a match.</p>
+
+<p>Max was around the obstacle in a moment. Holding a piece of candle in
+her bony hand was Mrs. Higgs.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello!" said he.</p>
+
+<p>She said nothing. But the candle shook in her hand, and by the glassy
+look of dull yet fierce surprise in her colorless eyes Max saw that this
+woman, who had connived at his imprisonment in the room with the dead
+man, had never expected to see him again&mdash;alive.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+<h3>MR. WEDMORE'S SECOND FREAK.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Even if Max had not had such an ugly experience of the ways of Mrs.
+Higgs, even if this meeting with her in the barn had been his first, his
+sensations would hardly have been agreeable ones. There was something
+uncanny about the old woman, something which her quiet, shuffling
+movements and her apparent lack of interest in what went on around her
+only served to accentuate. Even now, while suffering the shock of a
+great surprise, Max could feel rather than see the effect which the
+unexpected meeting had upon her.</p>
+
+<p>For she uttered no cry, no word; her eyes scarcely opened wider than
+before. Her jaw dropped a little, and then began to move rapidly up and
+down; that was all. And yet, as Max looked at her&mdash;at this helpless,
+infirm old creature with the palsied hands and the lackluster eyes&mdash;he
+shivered.</p>
+
+<p>"You vile old hag!" thought he to himself. And then his thoughts flew to
+Carrie, and he asked himself what the attraction could be which bound
+her to this wicked old woman.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Higgs, after staring at him in dead silence for what seemed a long
+time, asked, as composedly as if their meeting had been the most natural
+thing in the world:</p>
+
+<p>"Where's your friend, young man?"</p>
+
+<p>"W&mdash;what friend?" stammered Max.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you don't know, I suppose!" retorted Mrs. Higgs, derisively. "No
+more than you know what you wanted to come spying about Plumtree Wharf
+for, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Max made no answer. There came a vixenish gleam into the old woman's
+faded eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you come for, eh?" pursued she, sharply. "Who sent you? Not
+he, I know! When he's got anything to do at the wharf he comes himself."</p>
+
+<p>And Mrs. Higgs gave an ugly, mirthless chuckle.</p>
+
+<p>As Max stared at the withered, lined face, which was growing each moment
+more repulsive in his eyes, a feeling of horror and of intense pity for
+Dudley seized him. To be pursued, as his friend evidently was pursued,
+by this vicious old hag, was a fate hideous enough to expiate every
+crime in the Decalogue.</p>
+
+<p>A little rapid reflection made him decide that a bold course of defiance
+was the best to be taken. Whatever Dudley might have done, and whatever
+terrors Mrs. Higgs might hold over his head, it was very certain, after
+all, that the evidence of such a creature, living in such an underground
+fashion, could never be a serious danger to a man in his position.
+Dudley himself seemed rather to have lost sight of this fact, certainly;
+but it could not be less than a fact for all that.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Horne is not likely to trouble you or the rest of the thieves at
+the wharf again," said Max, with decision. "He's gone abroad for a
+holiday. And if you don't take yourself off at once, or if you turn up
+here again, or if you attempt to annoy us or Mr. Horne, in any way
+whatever, you'll find the police at your heels before you know where you
+are."</p>
+
+<p>Then into her dull eyes there came a look of malignity which made Max
+doubt whether he had done well to be so bold.</p>
+
+<p>"Thieves, eh? Tell your friend we're thieves, and see what he says to
+that! Police, eh? Tell your friend <i>that</i>, tell your friend
+<i>that</i>, and see whether he'll thank you for your interference!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Horne is away, as I told you."</p>
+
+<p>"Away, is he? But he won't be away long. Oh, no; he'll come back&mdash;he'll
+come back. Or if he doesn't," added Mrs. Higgs, with complacency, "I'll
+fetch him."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you've got to leave this place at once," said Max, with decision.
+"We don't allow strangers in the barn, and if you don't go quietly at
+once, I must send somebody to turn you out."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Higgs kept her eyes fixed upon him with her usual blank stare while
+he said this in a very loud and decided tone. When he had finished she
+suddenly blew out the light with so much unnecessary force that Max felt
+something like a gust of wind upon his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Turn me out!" and she laughed harshly. "Turn me out! Send for the
+police to do it, if you like."</p>
+
+<p>Max went out of the barn, listening to her cackling laugh, and not
+feeling comfortable until he had found his way into the open air. He at
+once gave orders to the stablemen and gardeners to search the barn and
+to turn out the strangers they might find there.</p>
+
+<p>But though they hunted in every corner, they found no one, and Max was
+only too glad to come to the conclusion that Mrs. Higgs had taken his
+advice, and got away with as little delay as possible.</p>
+
+<p>This incident, however, following so closely on the heels of his
+experiences at the wharf, took away all the zest with which Max should
+have entered into the programme which, by Mr. Wedmore's special wish,
+had been prepared for that evening; and while Doreen and Queenie and
+Mildred Appleby and two young nephews of Mr. Wedmore's chattered and
+laughed, and made dinner a very lively affair, Max was quiet and what
+his cousins called "grumpy," and threatened to be a wet blanket on the
+evening's entertainment.</p>
+
+<p>"Going to have all the servants in to dance Sir Roger!" cried he, in
+dismay, when Doreen told him the news. "Good heavens! Hasn't he had a
+lesson in yesterday's tomfoolery and what came of it? How do the
+servants like the idea?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course they hate it," answered Doreen, "and mamma has been all day
+trying to coax the cook to indulge him, and not to walk off and leave us
+to cook the Christmas dinner. And, of course, this assurance that the
+notion was distasteful to everybody had made papa more obstinate than
+ever. Oh, we shall have a merry time."</p>
+
+<p>Now, down in the depths of his heart Mr. Wedmore had begun to feel some
+misgivings about his plans for keeping Christmas in the good old
+fashion. But the first failure, the colossal mistake of the Yule Log,
+had made him obstinate instead of yielding, and he had set his teeth and
+made up his mind that they should all be merry in the way he chose, or
+they should not be merry at all.</p>
+
+<p>The fact was that this prosaic middle-aged gentleman, who had passed the
+greater part of his life immersed in day-books and ledgers and the
+details of a busy city man's life, found time hang heavy on his hands in
+these prosperous days of his retirement, and in this condition he had
+had his mind inflamed by pictures of the life that was led in The
+Beeches by his forerunners, easy-going, hard-riding, hard-drinking
+country gentlemen, with whom, if the truth were known, he had nothing in
+common.</p>
+
+<p>Fired by the desire to live the life they led, to enjoy it in the
+pleasant old fashion, it had seemed to him an especially happy custom to
+give a dance at which masters and servants should join hands and make
+merry together. He had never assisted at one of these balls, and he
+refused to listen to his wife's suggestion that it should take place in
+the servants' hall, that the servants should be allowed to invite their
+own friends, and that the family should limit itself to one brief dance
+with their dependants and then leave them to enjoy themselves in their
+own way.</p>
+
+<p>No, it was his will that the dance should be held in the hall of the
+house, and that the pictures of the Illustrated Christmas Numbers should
+be realized to the utmost.</p>
+
+<p>Dinner, therefore, was scrambled over in a hurry, and the family with
+their guests went upstairs to the drawing-room or out to the
+billiard-room, while preparations were made for the great event of the
+evening, the lighting of the Yule Log and Sir Roger de Coverley.</p>
+
+<p>Then the first mishap occurred in the inopportune arrival of the Rev.
+Lisle Lindsay, whose rather sedate and solemn appearance cast a slight
+gloom upon everybody's spirits, which deepened when Queenie whispered to
+Mildred that he looked upon dancing as a frivolous and worldly amusement
+scarcely to be tolerated and never to be encouraged.</p>
+
+<p>He soon made an opportunity of devoting himself to Doreen, who was
+playing the lightest of light music at the piano in the corner of the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>It had been a fancy of Mr. Wedmore's, who had his own way in everything
+with his wife, to have this drawing-room, which was large and square and
+lighted by five windows, three at the front and two at the side,
+furnished entirely with old things of the style of eighty years back,
+with Empire chairs, sofas and cabinets, as little renovated as possible.
+The effect was quaint and not unpleasing; a little cold, perhaps, but
+picturesque and graceful.</p>
+
+<p>The grand piano had a case specially made for it, painted a dull
+sage-green and finished in a manner to give it a look of the less
+massive harpsichord.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this instrument that Doreen sat, making a very pretty picture
+in her white silk, square-necked frock, with bands of beaver fur on the
+bodice and sleeves and an edging of the same fur round the bottom of the
+skirt.</p>
+
+<p>"My purpose in coming here to-night, Miss Wedmore," said Mr. Lindsay,
+when he had delivered an unimportant message from the vicar's wife about
+the church decorations, "was really to bring you my good wishes for this
+blessed season. I am afraid I shall have no opportunity of speaking to
+you to-morrow, though, of course, I shall see you in the church."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, we shall all be at church," said Doreen, quickly.</p>
+
+<p>She noted something rather unusual in the curate's manner&mdash;a nervous
+excitement which presaged danger; and she dashed into an air from "The
+Shop-Girl" with an energy which was meant to have the effect of checking
+his solemn ardor.</p>
+
+<p>But the curate had the stuff of a man in him, and did not mean to be put
+off. This opportunity was really a good one, for the talk in the room,
+which his arrival had checked for an instant, was now going on merrily.
+Mrs. Wedmore did her best to keep up the conversation. Nothing would
+have pleased her better than to see Doreen transfer her tender feeling
+for the discredited Dudley to such a suitable and irreproachable person
+as Lisle Lindsay. She kept a hopeful eye on the pair at the piano while
+she went on talking to her husband's old friend, Mrs. Hutchinson, who
+was staying with them for Christmas.</p>
+
+<p>"And at the same time," went on Mr. Lindsay, as he moved his chair a
+little nearer, so that, under cover of the music, he could speak without
+being overheard, "to speak to you on a subject which is&mdash;is&mdash;in fact,
+very near my heart."</p>
+
+<p>This was worse than Doreen had expected. She glanced round at him with
+rather a frightened expression. "Oh, don't let us talk about
+anything&mdash;anything serious now," said she. "Just when we shall be going
+downstairs to&mdash;to dance&mdash;in a few minutes."</p>
+
+<p>It was a very inconsequent objection to make, and Mr. Lindsay simply
+ignored it.</p>
+
+<p>"It is, in fact, about myself that I wish to speak, Miss Wedmore," he
+pursued relentlessly. "You cannot have failed to notice what a&mdash;what a
+deep interest I take in all that concerns you. And latterly I have
+flattered myself that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But people should never flatter themselves about anything!" cried
+Doreen, desperately, as she suddenly laid her hands in her lap and
+turned from the piano to face the worst. "Now I'll give you an example.
+I flattered myself a little while ago that a man cared a great deal
+about me&mdash;a man I cared a great deal for myself. And all the while he
+didn't; or, at least, I am afraid he didn't. And yet, you know, I can't
+help hoping that perhaps I didn't only flatter myself, after all; that
+perhaps he will come back some day and tell me I was right."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lindsay heard her in silence, with his mild eyes fixed on the
+carpet. But when she had finished he looked up again, and she was
+shocked to find that the gentle obstinacy which had been in his face
+before was there still.</p>
+
+<p>"I am, indeed, sorry for your disappointment," he said sweetly. "Or
+rather I should be if it were such a one that you could not hope
+to&mdash;to&mdash;in fact, to get over it. But&mdash;but these are trials which may be,
+perhaps, only sent to show that you, even you, happily placed as you are
+and gifted of the Almighty, are human, after all, and not beyond
+suffering. And&mdash;and it may give you an opportunity of seeing that there
+are others who can appreciate you better, and who would only be too glad
+to&mdash;to&mdash;to&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"To step into his shoes!" finished Doreen for him, with a sigh. "I know
+what you were going to say, and if you won't be stopped, I suppose I
+must hear you out. But, oh, dear, I do wish you wouldn't!"</p>
+
+<p>He was not to be put off like that. In fact, he was not to be put off by
+any available means. He sighed a little, and persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad you have guessed what I was going to say, Miss Wedmore,
+though I should not have put it quite in that way. And why should you
+not want to hear it? I should have thought that even you must be not
+quite indifferent to any man's honest feelings of esteem and admiration
+toward you!"</p>
+
+<p>Doreen was looking at him helplessly, with wide-open eyes. Did he really
+think any girl was ever moved by this sort of address, deliberately
+uttered, with the words well chosen, well considered? As different as
+possible from the abrupt, staccato method used by Dudley in the dear old
+days!</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm not indifferent at all!" said she, quickly. "I'm never
+indifferent to anything or anybody. But I'm sorry, very sorry that&mdash;that
+you should feel&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped short, looked at him for a moment curiously, and asked with
+great abruptness:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Do</i> you feel anything in the matter? <i>Really</i> feel, I mean?
+I don't think you do; I don't think you can. You couldn't speak so
+<i>nicely</i>, if you did."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with gentle reproach. His was not a very tempestuous
+feeling, perhaps, but it was genuine, honest, sincere. He thought her
+the most splendid specimen of handsome, healthy well-brought-up
+womanhood he had ever met, and he thought also that the beneficent
+influence of the Church, exercised through the unworthy medium of
+himself, would mold her into a creature as near perfection as was
+humanly possible.</p>
+
+<p>Her way of receiving his advances was perplexing. He was not easily
+disconcerted, but he did not answer her immediately. Then he said
+softly:</p>
+
+<p>"How could I speak in any way but what you call 'nicely' to <i>you</i>? To
+the lady whom I am asking to be my wife?"</p>
+
+<p>Doreen looked startled.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't, please! You don't know what a mistake you're making. I'm not
+at all the sort of wife for you, really! Indeed, I couldn't recommend
+myself as a wife to anybody, but especially to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;especially to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm not good enough."</p>
+
+<p>"That sounds rather flattering. And yet, somehow, I don't fancy you mean
+it to be so."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no, I don't," said Doreen, frankly; "for I mean by 'good' a lot
+of qualities that I don't think highly of myself, such as getting up in
+the middle of the night to go to early service, and being civil to
+people I hate, and&mdash;and a lot of things like that. Don't you know that
+I'm eminently deficient in all the Christian virtues?"</p>
+
+<p>This was a question the curate had never asked himself; but it came upon
+him at this moment with disconcerting force that she was right. Luckily
+for his self-esteem, it did not occur to him at the same time that it
+was this very lack of the conventional virtues, a certain freshness and
+originality born of her defiant neglect of them, which formed the
+stronger part of her attractiveness in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>After a short pause he answered, with his usual deliberation:</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, I am quite sure that you do yourself injustice."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I'm equally sure that I don't. I not only leave undone the
+things which you would say I ought to do, and do the things which I
+ought not to do, but I'm rather proud of it."</p>
+
+<p>Still, Mr. Lindsay would not accept the repulse. He persisted in making
+excuses for her and in believing them.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you fulfill your most important duty; you are the happiness and
+the brightness of the house. Your father's face softens whenever you
+come near him. Now, as that is your chief duty, and you fulfill it so
+well, I am quite sure that if you entered another state of life where
+your duties would be different, you would accommodate yourself, you
+would fulfill your new duties as well as you did the old."</p>
+
+<p>Doreen rewarded him for this speech with a humorous look, in which there
+was something of gratitude, but more of rebellion.</p>
+
+<p>"Accommodate myself? No, I couldn't. I think, do you know, that if I
+were ever foolish enough to marry&mdash;and it would be foolishness in a
+spoiled creature like me&mdash;I should want a husband who could accommodate
+himself to me. Now, you couldn't. Clergymen never accommodate themselves
+to anything or anybody."</p>
+
+<p>The Reverend Lisle Lindsay did at last look rather disconcerted.
+Mischievous Doreen saw her triumph and made the most of it.</p>
+
+<p>"So that settles the matter, doesn't it? I can't accommodate myself; you
+can't either. What could possibly come of a union like that?"</p>
+
+<p>"The greatest happiness this world is capable of affording, and the hope
+of a happiness more abiding hereafter," said he; "all the happiness that
+a true woman can bring to the man she loves."</p>
+
+<p>Doreen threw up her head quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! that's just it," cried she. "'To the man she loves!' But you are
+not the man I love, Mr. Lindsay. I suppose it's one of the things I
+ought not to do&mdash;one of the unconventional and so unchristian things&mdash;to
+own that I love a man who doesn't love me. But I do. Now, you know who
+it is, and everybody knows; but, for all that, you mustn't tell; you
+must keep it as a secret that Doreen Wedmore&mdash;proud, stuck-up Doreen&mdash;is
+breaking her heart for the sake of a man who&mdash;who&mdash;" Her voice broke and
+she paused for a moment to recover herself; then she said, in a lighter
+tone: "Ah, well, we mustn't be hard upon him, either, for we don't
+know&mdash;it's so difficult to know."</p>
+
+<p>She sprang up from her seat; and the curate rose too. By her tactful
+mention of her own unlucky love she had softened the blow of her
+rejection of him. She had been rather too kind indeed, considering the
+tenacity of the person she had to deal with; for the curate considered
+his case by no means so hopeless as it was; and instead of taking
+himself off forlornly, as she would have wished, he stayed on until the
+young men swarmed up from the billiard-room and bore the whole party
+down to the hall.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wedmore, in great glee at having carried his point in the face of
+the family resistance, led Mrs. Hutchinson down stairs, and then handed
+her over to Max, while he himself threw open the door leading to the
+servants' quarters, and invited the group of neat maids and stalwart
+young men from the garden and stable to enter.</p>
+
+<p>But here there was a hitch in the arrangements. The cook, in a bad
+temper, smarting with disapproval of the whole business, had refused to
+join the others, and, as nothing could be done without her, Mr. Wedmore
+had to penetrate into the servants' hall, where he found her sitting in
+state, and, luckily, dressed for the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>Never in his life had Mr. Wedmore exerted himself so much to please any
+woman as he now did to soften the outraged feelings of the cook, who was
+a stout, red-faced woman, whose days of comeliness and charm were long
+since gone by. He at last succeeded in inducing her to accompany him to
+the hall, where he arrived in triumph, with a flushed face and nervous
+manner, after an interval which had been put to great advantage by the
+younger gentlemen of the party, who were all anxious to dance with the
+prettiest housemaid.</p>
+
+<p>Their eagerness had the effect of annoying the rest of the maids, and
+effectually spoiling whatever enjoyment they might have got out of the
+dance in the circumstances, while it by no means pleased the ladies of
+the family and their friends, who stood a little apart and whispered to
+each other that this sort of thing was bound to be a failure, and why
+couldn't papa, dear old, stupid papa, leave <i>them</i> out of the affair,
+and let the boys have a romp in the servants' hall without their
+assistance?</p>
+
+<p>The pause had made the ladies so frigid and the men-servants so shy, the
+pretty housemaid so merry and the plain ones so solemn, that disaster
+threatened the gathering, when Mr. Wedmore and the cook made their
+opportune appearance.</p>
+
+<p>Max, his cousins and young Hutchinson gave three cheers, in the midst of
+which demonstration the Rev. Lisle Lindsay endeavored to make his escape
+by the front door.</p>
+
+<p>Unhappily, Mr. Wedmore, elated by his victory over the cook, espied him,
+and straightway forbade him to leave the house until after "Sir Roger."
+In vain the curate protested; pleaded the privileges and exemptions of
+his sacred calling.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wedmore was obdurate; and, to the disgust of everybody, including
+himself, the Rev. Lisle Lindsay found himself told off to dance with the
+pretty housemaid, being the only man in the room who was not anxious for
+the honor.</p>
+
+<p>This mishap cast a gloom over the proceedings. The rest of the gentlemen
+found it hard to extract a word from the other maids, who all considered
+themselves slighted. And Mr. Wedmore had great difficulty in persuading
+the men-servants to come forward and take their places by the partners
+he chose for them. To get them to choose for themselves was out of the
+question, after one young gardener had availed himself of the invitation
+by darting across the floor and asking Miss Queenie, in a hoarse voice
+and with many blushes, if she would dance with him.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, this piece of daring made a sensation so great that to get
+another man follow the bold example was impossible.</p>
+
+<p>In the end, Mrs. Wedmore found a partner in the coachman, who was a
+portly and solemn person, with no talents in the way of dancing or of
+conversation. Doreen danced with the butler, who, between nervousness
+and gloom, found it impossible to conceal his opinion that master was
+making a fool of himself; and the rest of the company being quite as ill
+matched, "Sir Roger" was performed with little grace and less
+liveliness, while the Yule Log, after emitting a great deal of smoke,
+sputtered out into blackness, to everybody's relief.</p>
+
+<p>The end of it was, however, a little better than the beginning. As the
+dancers warmed to their work, their latent enthusiasm for the exercise
+was awakened; and "Sir Roger" was kept up until the fingers of the
+organist, who had been engaged to play for them on a piano placed in a
+corner of one of the passages, ached with the cold and with the hard
+work.</p>
+
+<p>When the dance was over and the party had broken up, Doreen, who had
+done her best to keep up the spirits of the rest, broke down. Max met
+her on her way to her room, and saw that the tears were very near her
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter now?" said he, crossly. "You seemed all right
+downstairs. I thought you and Lindsay seemed to be getting on very well
+together."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you? Well, you were wrong," said she, briefly, as she shut herself
+into the room.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>A MESSAGE FROM THE WHARF.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Christmas was over, and The Beeches had subsided into its normal state
+of prosperous tranquility. Max had had a fresh situation discovered for
+him, and he was now wasting his time on a stool in a merchant's office,
+as he had wasted it in other offices many times before. His father's
+chronic state of exasperation with his laziness was growing acute, and
+he had informed Max that unless he chose to stick to his work this time
+he would have to be shipped off to the Cape. No entreaties on the part
+of Mrs. Wedmore or the girls were of any avail against this fixed
+resolution on Mr. Wedmore's part, or against the inflexible laziness of
+Max himself. He detested office work, and he confessed that if he was
+not to be allowed to lead the country life he loved, he would prefer
+enlistment in the Cape Mounted Police to drudgery in a dark corner of a
+city office.</p>
+
+<p>It was on a foggy evening in January that Max, for the first time in
+three weeks (an unprecedented interval), knocked at the door of Dudley
+Horne's chambers.</p>
+
+<p>There was a long delay, and Max, after a second knock, was going to
+withdraw, in the belief that Dudley was not in, after all, when he heard
+slow steps within, and paused.</p>
+
+<p>The door was opened a very little way, and Dudley looked out.</p>
+
+<p>Max stared at him for a moment without speaking. For over his friend
+there had passed some great change. Dudley had never been florid of
+complexion, but now he looked ghastly. His face had always been grave
+and strong rather than cheerful, but now the expression of his
+countenance was forbidding.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at Max, glanced down the stairs, and nodded without a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello!" said he, with the letter of familiarity, but without its
+spirit. "Haven't seen anything of you for a century. Up in town again,
+eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Can't I come in?" said Max.</p>
+
+<p>Dudley had come outside instead of inviting his friend in. At these
+words, however, he turned abruptly, and himself led the way into the
+little ante-chamber.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, oh, yes, come in, of course. Come in."</p>
+
+<p>Max accepted the cool invitation in silence, shut the door behind him,
+and followed his friend into the sitting-room, where the table was laid
+for a solitary dinner.</p>
+
+<p>But it was the writing-table which caught the eye of Max and riveted his
+attention. For a photograph lay there, a woman's photograph, and as it
+was just in front of the chair Dudley had been using, as if he had been
+occupied in looking at it, it was not unnatural that the brother of
+Doreen should be curious to know whose picture it was.</p>
+
+<p>So Max got around the table quickly by the opposite way to that which
+Dudley took, and threw himself into a chair by the writing-table in such
+a position that he could see what was on it. And he saw two things: One
+was that the photograph was that of Doreen; the other that a postal
+order for one pound, which lay beside the photograph, and upon which the
+ink was not yet dry, was made out to "Mrs. Edward Jacobs."</p>
+
+<p>Max felt himself blushing as Dudley snatched up the postal orders&mdash;there
+were two of them&mdash;and slip them into an envelope. Then the eyes of the
+two men met. And Dudley knew what Max had seen.</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to hesitate a moment, then glanced at Max again, sat down to
+the writing-table, and took up a pen. As he directed the letter, he said
+quietly:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know whom I'm sending this money to?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I did catch sight of the name," stammered Max, unable to hide the
+fact that the question was an embarrassing one to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," went on Dudley, as he showed him the directed letter, "it is to
+the widow of the poor devil who was found in the Thames the other
+day&mdash;man who was once in my late father's employment&mdash;Edward Jacobs."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I've heard," stammered Max again.</p>
+
+<p>The incident of Dudley sending money to the woman would have seemed to
+him trivial and even natural enough, if it had not been for the curious
+look of hard defiance which Dudley gave him out of his black eyes. It
+was like a challenge; it set his friend wondering again, asking himself
+again all those tormenting questions about Edward Jacobs's death which
+he had allowed to slip into a back place in his thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>As he looked down at the end of the white table-cloth which touched the
+floor a loud laugh from Dudley startled him and made him look up. And
+when he did so the conviction that his friend was mad, or, at least,
+subject to attacks of insanity, flashed into his mind more strongly than
+ever. Dudley was leaning back, tilting his chair till it touched the
+dinner table, distending his jaws in a hard, mocking laugh as unlike
+mirth as possible.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, so I've heard&mdash;so I've heard!" repeated he, mockingly. "And,
+of course, that's all you've heard, isn't it? And you've never taken the
+trouble to make any personal inquiries in the matter? Or thought of
+taking a journey, say, as far as Plumtree Wharf to make any private
+investigations?"</p>
+
+<p>Max was startled. He saw clearly enough that which he would fain have
+denied&mdash;that Dudley was in communication with the people at the wharf,
+from whom he must have obtained this information. For a moment he was
+silent. It was not until Dudley's harsh laughter had died away, and he,
+rather surprised to see how quietly Max took his accusation, had wheeled
+round in his chair to look at his friend, that Max said:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I did go to the wharf. And I'll tell you why. Doreen is breaking
+her heart about you, and she would have me find out what was wrong with
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Then there was silence.</p>
+
+<p>"God bless her!" said Dudley at last, in a hoarse whisper.</p>
+
+<p>Another silence.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you tell her?" whispered Dudley.</p>
+
+<p>"What could I tell her? I said you were mad."</p>
+
+<p>"And what did you&mdash;<i>think</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I hardly know myself."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right! That's the proper attitude!" cried Dudley.</p>
+
+<p>And then he laughed again uproariously.</p>
+
+<p>And in the midst of his laughter there was a knock at the door.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment neither man moved. Then Dudley got up slowly and walked out
+of the room, closing the door behind him. Max heard him open the outer
+door, and then he heard a voice he knew&mdash;a young girl's voice&mdash;say:</p>
+
+<p>"This is Mr. Dudley Horne's place, and you are Mr. Dudley Horne?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Then let me come in. I've come from&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The voice dropped, and Max did not catch the rest.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop! I'll speak to you here," said Dudley, trying to keep her in the
+little ante-room.</p>
+
+<p>But the girl came straight in. It was Carrie.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>A SORCERESS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Max was standing on the other side of the lamp, and Carrie did not see
+him. She announced her errand at once in a straightforward and
+matter-of-fact manner.</p>
+
+<p>"Dick Barker's been nabbed for stealing a watch. You've got to get him
+off."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean? I've got to get him off?" cried Dudley, indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>Carrie laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the message I was told to give you; that's all."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, take this message back: that I refuse to have anything to do with
+your pickpocket."</p>
+
+<p>Carrie turned to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"All right. I'm to say that to Mrs. Higgs?"</p>
+
+<p>"Stop!" thundered Dudley.</p>
+
+<p>Carrie paused, with her hand on the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Did Mrs. Higgs send you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Then wait a minute."</p>
+
+<p>All the indignation, all the defiance, had gone from his tone. He looked
+anxious, haggard.</p>
+
+<p>Carrie sat down like an automaton in the chair nearest to the door.</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence of some minutes' duration when Carrie announced
+herself as a messenger from Mrs. Higgs.</p>
+
+<p>Dudley, who had either forgotten the presence of Max or was past caring
+how much his friend learned, since he already knew so much, walked up
+and down between the fireplace and the bookcase on the opposite wall,
+evidently debating what he should do. Carrie never once raised her eyes
+from the carpet, but sat like a statue beside the door, apparently as
+indifferent as possible as to the message she should take back.</p>
+
+<p>Max had risen from his seat and was standing where he could get a full
+view of her over the lamp on the dinner-table between them. Perhaps it
+was the yellow paper shade around the light which made the young girl's
+face look so ghastly, or the rusty black clothes she wore. A plain
+skirt, the same that she had worn when he saw her first, a black stuff
+cape of home-made pattern, and a big black straw hat which had evidently
+done duty throughout the summer; all were neatly brushed and clean, but
+well-worn and lusterless, and they heightened the appearance of deadly
+pallor which, struck Max so much.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes he could not see; her scarlet lips were tightly closed, and her
+face seemed to him to wear an air of dogged determination which helped
+him to understand how it was that she had escaped the perils of her
+unprotected girlhood. Certainly it would have taken a good deal of
+courage, impudence or alcoholic excitement to make a man address to this
+statuesque and cold-faced creature a flippant word.</p>
+
+<p>She did not see Max, who kept so quiet that it was easy for her to
+overlook the presence of a third person in the room. He watched her
+intently, taking even more interest in her under these new conditions
+than he had done before. Would she retain her cold look and manner when
+he made his presence known to her, as he intended presently to do? The
+question was full of interest to him.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Dudley stopped short in his walk, right in front of Carrie,
+who seemed, however, unconscious of or indifferent to the fact.</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you?" he asked, abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>Carrie looked up and surveyed him as if from a great distance.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," she answered, rather quaintly, but evidently unconscious
+of the oddity of her own answer. There was a moment's pause, and then
+she asked, briskly:</p>
+
+<p>"However, that doesn't matter to you, does it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, yes, it does. You come here as a messenger. Now, I want to know
+your credentials."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what you mean. I live with Mrs. Higgs. She makes me call
+her 'Granny.'"</p>
+
+<p>Dudley at once became strongly interested.</p>
+
+<p>"Live with her, do you, and call her Granny? I've never seen you when I
+have visited Mrs. Higgs."</p>
+
+<p>"I've seen you, though. I've seen&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped.</p>
+
+<p>Dudley's hand, the one Max could see from where he stood, moved
+convulsively. After another short pause, Carrie raised her head, and
+their eyes met. Each evidently saw something oddly interesting in the
+face of the other.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have to make some inquiries about you," said he at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well. You can go and make them."</p>
+
+<p>Her tone was matter-of-fact, but neither impudent nor defiant. She did
+not seem to care.</p>
+
+<p>"This Dick Barker, who has been nabbed, as you elegantly express it, is
+some sweetheart of yours, I suppose? And you have persuaded Mrs. Higgs
+to send me this absurd message, asking me to appear for him?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. He's nothing to me. Mrs. Higgs wants him got off, because if he's
+convicted he'll tell all he knows, or at least enough to set the police
+on."</p>
+
+<p>"And what is that to me?"</p>
+
+<p>Another pause, during which she looked down. Then Carrie raised her eyes
+again, and looked at him steadily.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well, you know best."</p>
+
+<p>Dudley turned away, muttering something under his breath. But the next
+moment he faced her again.</p>
+
+<p>"And you are waiting to take my answer back?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Higgs said there would be no answer."</p>
+
+<p>"Then what are you waiting for?"</p>
+
+<p>"To see whether there is one or not."</p>
+
+<p>"And you're going straight back with it to your granny, whatever it is?"
+asked Dudley, with the same sharp tone of cross-examination.</p>
+
+<p>"No. I am not going back to her. But I shall give the message to some
+one who is."</p>
+
+<p>There was another pause, longer than any of the previous ones. Then
+Dudley said, shortly:</p>
+
+<p>"You need not wait here any longer. I am going to see her myself."</p>
+
+<p>Carrie had got upon her feet in the automatic manner she had maintained
+throughout the interview.</p>
+
+<p>"Going to the wharf, are you?" she said, with the first sign of human
+interest she had shown. "Oh, very well."</p>
+
+<p>There was something noticeable in her tone, something which made Max
+suspicious and anxious on his friend's account. He came round the table
+with rapid steps, touched Dudley's shoulder, and said, in a low voice:</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go with you!"</p>
+
+<p>At the sound of his voice Carrie started violently, and looked up at
+Max, staring with eyes full of wonder and something very like delight.
+The rigidity with which she had held herself, the automatic manner, the
+hard, off-hand tone, all disappeared at once; and it was a new, a
+transformed Carrie, the fascinating, wayward, irresistible girl he had
+remembered, who gave him a smile and a nod, as she said, in a voice full
+of the old charm he remembered:</p>
+
+<p>"You! Is it you?" Then, breathlessly, with a change to anxiety in her
+voice: "And are you going, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I'm going with my friend," said Max, as he came forward and held
+out a hand, into which she put hers very shyly; "from what I remember of
+my visit to your place, I think two visitors are better than one."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know whether granny will think so," said Carrie, still in the
+same altered voice.</p>
+
+<p>She was shy, modest, charming. All her femininity had returned, and both
+the young men felt the influence of the change.</p>
+
+<p>Dudley, who had instinctively stepped back to make way for his friend,
+was watching them both with surprise and uneasiness.</p>
+
+<p>"We must risk Mrs. Higgs's displeasure," said Max, dryly, "unless,
+indeed, Dudley," and he turned to his friend, "you will give up this
+expedition altogether, as I strongly advise."</p>
+
+<p>But Dudley had made up his mind. He did not want Max to go with him, but
+he was resolved to go to the wharf. And his friend's heart failed within
+him at the news.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think it would be advisable to get a policeman to accompany
+you?" he hazarded in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>But Dudley started violently at the suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>"Policeman!" repeated he in a louder tone than Max had used. "Good
+heavens, no!"</p>
+
+<p>Max, looking round, saw that Carrie had overheard; but she betrayed no
+emotion at the suggestion, even if she felt any.</p>
+
+<p>Dudley pulled out his watch.</p>
+
+<p>"I have an appointment for this evening," said he; "I must get out of
+it. Max, if you persist in going with me to the wharf, you're a fool.
+When your friends are doing well, you should stick to them; when they
+have got into a mess, you should have appointments elsewhere." Although
+he spoke cynically, there was underneath his scoffing tone a strain of
+tenderness. He turned quickly to the girl at this point, as if afraid of
+betraying more feeling than he had intended to do. "You've delivered
+your message," said he, sharply, "now you can go."</p>
+
+<p>But Carrie lingered. Looking shyly at Max, she said in a low voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Have you made up your mind that you will go with him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Max.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," nodded Carrie. "Then I'll go, too."</p>
+
+<p>Dudley looked down at the girl with an impatient frown on his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Supposing we don't want you?" said he, dryly.</p>
+
+<p>"You will," she answered briefly, without even looking at him.</p>
+
+<p>Dudley considered for a moment, and then said shortly:</p>
+
+<p>"All right. We may as well keep an eye on you."</p>
+
+<p>Carrie laughed, and then remained silent. As for Max, he was struck with
+an odd likeness between the girl's dry, short manner of speaking to
+Dudley and Dudley's manner of speaking to her.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment there was an interruption in the shape of the waiter from
+a neighboring restaurant, who came in with the dinner Dudley had ordered
+for himself.</p>
+
+<p>"I shan't want it now," said Dudley, as the man put down the covered
+dishes on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, surely you're not in such a hurry that you haven't time to dine?"
+said Max.</p>
+
+<p>Dudley made an impatient gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"I can get a biscuit somewhere, if I want it. I can't eat just now."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me eat your dinner for you, then," said Max. "I've had none. And if
+I'm to go rambling all over the town to look after you, I shall want
+something to keep me going."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," said Dudley. "I'm to come back here for you, then?"</p>
+
+<p>And he took up his overcoat. Max began to help him on with it.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in here a moment," said Dudley, in the same dry, abrupt manner as
+before; "I want to speak to you."</p>
+
+<p>Max followed him into the ante-room, and Dudley shut the sitting-room
+door.</p>
+
+<p>"That girl," said he, with, a frown&mdash;"where did you pick her up? At the
+wharf?"</p>
+
+<p>"I met her there. She was walking about outside, afraid to go in. The
+old woman had left her there alone, with a&mdash;a&mdash;dead body in the place."</p>
+
+<p>At these words a change came over Dudley's face.</p>
+
+<p>"You had better have left her alone," said he, sharply. "I wonder you
+hadn't more sense than to take up with a girl like that."</p>
+
+<p>Max fired up indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Like what? There's nothing wrong with the girl&mdash;nothing whatever.
+Surely her behavior to-night showed you that."</p>
+
+<p>"Her behavior!" said Dudley, mockingly. "Do you mean her behavior to me,
+or to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Both. It was that of a modest, straightforward girl."</p>
+
+<p>"Very straightforward&mdash;to me. Very modest to you. But I would not waste
+too much time over her virtues if I were you."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to waste any," replied Max, shortly. "I don't see how we
+can shake her off, since she has offered to go back to the wharf with
+us. But I shall only be alone with her for the few minutes you leave us
+here. Or, better still, I'll go with you, and wait while you see your
+friend."</p>
+
+<p>"What friend?"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you said you had an appointment with some one, and were going
+to put him off."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes. Well, let us go to him now."</p>
+
+<p>And Dudley softly opened the outer door.</p>
+
+<p>Max perceived that what he proposed was to give Carrie the slip. He drew
+back a step.</p>
+
+<p>"We can't go without telling her, at least <i>I</i> can't. The girl's
+quite right. It would be safer for her to go with us. For it's an awful
+place, not fit to trust oneself in."</p>
+
+<p>"And you think it would be the safer for the presence with us of one of
+the gang?"</p>
+
+<p>"She is not one of the gang!" cried Max, involuntarily raising his
+voice. "I'd stake my life on there being no harm in her!"</p>
+
+<p>The door of the sitting-room was opened behind them, and Carrie came
+out.</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't help hearing what you said," she said, quietly. "But you
+needn't quarrel about me. One of you says there's no harm in me; the
+other says there is. I dare say you're both right. If you don't want me
+to go to the wharf with you, Mr. Horne, why, I won't go, of course. Good
+evening."</p>
+
+<p>She wanted to go out, but Dudley stood in the way, preventing her.</p>
+
+<p>"You're quite wrong, I assure you," said he, quickly. "There has been a
+little discussion about it, certainly; but I think you and my friend are
+quite right, and it would be much better if you would go with us&mdash;much
+better. Pray don't be annoyed at anything I've said. Remember, I have
+never seen you before, while my friend, who knows you better, naturally
+appreciates you more."</p>
+
+<p>Carrie maintained an attitude of cold stolidity while Dudley spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I to go with you now, then?" she asked, coldly, when he had finished
+speaking.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no, I think not. It will only take me ten minutes to go down into
+the Strand and put off the fellow I was going to the theatre with. I'll
+come back here, and we'll all go on together."</p>
+
+<p>Carrie looked at him steadfastly while he spoke, and he returned her
+gaze. For a few moments there was silence, and then it was broken by an
+exclamation from Max. He was staring first at one and then at the other
+with a face full of perplexity.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know," cried he at last, "that when you both look like that, and
+I turn from one to the other, it is as if I were looking all the time
+<i>at the same face</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>Both Dudley and Carrie looked startled as they withdrew their eyes from
+each other's face. Then each sought the eyes of the other again as if it
+were furtively. Dudley seemed, of the two, the more impressed by his
+friend's words. He laughed with some constraint.</p>
+
+<p>"Fanciful, very fanciful," said he, mockingly. "What likeness can there
+be between a girl with a white face, fair hair and blue eyes," and he
+gave a glance at Carrie which had in it something of fear, "and a man of
+my type?"</p>
+
+<p>Max looked at him, and then said slowly:</p>
+
+<p>"It's not in the features, I know; it's not in the coloring; but it is
+there, for all that."</p>
+
+<p>"The young lady will not feel flattered," said Dudley, ironically. "I
+will leave you to make your peace with her, and when I come back, in ten
+minutes, I expect to find you both ready to start."</p>
+
+<p>He had his hand on the door, when some thought seemed to strike him, and
+he hesitated and turned to put his hand on the shoulder of Max. Then he
+swung the young man round in such a way that his own back was turned to
+Carrie. Looking steadily and with a certain look of affectionate regard
+into his friend's face, he formed with his lips and eyes a final warning
+against the girl. Then, with a nod, he went out, closing the door behind
+him.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SWORD FALLS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>When Max turned, he found that Carrie had retreated within the door of
+the sitting-room. He followed her into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>Carrie looked at the table with a strange smile.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to know," said she.</p>
+
+<p>His face showed that he had not forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>"Those biscuits!" said he. "I remember. Does your granny treat you
+better now?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"No. Worse," she said at last, in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean that she&mdash;<i>starves</i> you?"</p>
+
+<p>To his dismay, he saw the tears welling up in the girl's blue eyes,
+which looked preternaturally large in her wasted face.</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty nearly," said she.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>It was indeed a fairy-tale banquet, this dinner of steak and chip
+potatoes, followed by <i>m&eacute;ringues &agrave; la cr&ecirc;me</i>, and finishing up with
+bread and butter and cheese and celery.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we sit by the fire?" asked he suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>And he jumped up from the table, and turned Dudley's biggest and coziest
+arm-chair round toward the warmth and the glow.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>Carrie's eyes met his; perhaps she guessed what was passing in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"It's beautiful to be warm!" cried she, softly, as she held out her
+hands to the blaze which Max had made.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"You said," began he, abruptly, "that you were not going back to the
+wharf. Where were you going, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," said Carrie, after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>Her face had clouded again. Her manner had changed a little also; it had
+become colder, more reserved.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that&mdash;really? Or do you only mean that you don't mean to
+tell me, that I have no business to ask?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean just what I said&mdash;that I didn't know."</p>
+
+<p>"You are going to leave Mrs. Higgs and her friends, then?" asked Max, in
+a tone between doubt and hope.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>She made this answer rather by a motion of the head than by her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I am very glad to hear it&mdash;very glad."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you? I'm not. Oh, it is dreadful, dreadful to lose one's home, any
+sort of home."</p>
+
+<p>"But could you call that a home? A hole like that? Among people like
+this Mrs. Higgs and this Dick!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, poor Dick! If they had all been like him it would not have
+mattered."</p>
+
+<p>"What! A pickpocket!" cried Max in disgust.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Carrie spoke sharply. She had grown warm in defense of her felonious
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>Max thought a little before he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"But you're not this man's wife or his daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no. But he wanted to marry me; and if he hadn't been caught
+yesterday, perhaps I should have let him."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't look so disgusted. He would have been kind to me."</p>
+
+<p>"And <i>do</i> you think you couldn't find a better husband than a&mdash;than
+a pickpocket?"</p>
+
+<p>"He would have been honest if I'd married him," said Carrie, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"He <i>says</i> 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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>And Max saw in her face, as she looked solemnly at the fire, that
+dogged, steady resolution of the blue-eyed races.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said he crossly, "then I'm very glad he's been caught."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Max looked worried and thoughtful at this threat.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't believe," said he, stoutly, "that my friend had anything to do
+with&mdash;with what happened at the place. It's monstrous!&mdash;impossible!"</p>
+
+<p>Carrie said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"Who would believe this pack of thieves against a man like Dudley
+Horne?"</p>
+
+<p>Carrie laughed cynically.</p>
+
+<p>"Then why is he afraid?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He got up from his chair and began to walk about the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Why are you leaving Mrs. Higgs?" asked he at last, suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>Max was not without hope that the answer might give him a clue to
+something more.</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't bear it any longer. She has been different lately. She has
+left me alone for days together, and besides&mdash;besides&mdash;she has been
+changed, unkind, since Christmas."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Carrie leaned forward and looked at him earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>"But what should he want to shelter Mrs. Higgs for, if <i>she</i> had
+done it?"</p>
+
+<p>And to this Max could find no answer.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>Max sprang up.</p>
+
+<p>"Steals away! By himself!" faltered he.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Max felt the blood surging to his head. The girl was right, of course.
+He leaned against the bookcase, breathing heavily.</p>
+
+<p>"You knew! You guessed! Why didn't you&mdash;why didn't you tell me?"</p>
+
+<p>Carrie stood up, as much excited as he was. Her blue eyes flashed, her
+lips trembled as she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"What do I care&mdash;for him?" she said under her breath. "A man must take
+the risk of the things he does, mustn't he? But you&mdash;you had done
+nothing; and&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>you</i> would not."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;pretty, sweet-faced Carrie&mdash;was acting in concert with the gang,
+detaining him so that Dudley might be an easier prey to her accomplices?</p>
+
+<p>As this suspicion crossed his mind, he, knowing his own weakness,
+resolved to act without the hesitation which would be fatal to his
+purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Seizing her by the arm, he drew her almost roughly out of the way, and,
+opening the door, went out into the ante-room.</p>
+
+<p>But before he could open the outer door, Carrie had overtaken him and
+seized him by the arm in her turn.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"That if you were to go into that house again, you wouldn't leave it
+alive!"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if you go, you will take me," said Carrie, almost fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>"Come along, then."</p>
+
+<p>He had his hand on the door, when he noticed that she had left her cape
+in the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Fetch your cloak," said he, shortly.</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me your honor that you won't go without me."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. I'll wait for you."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen!" said she, in a very low whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's only some one going up the stairs," said he, in a reassuring
+tone.</p>
+
+<p>Carrie shook her head emphatically.</p>
+
+<p>"Coming, not going," said she. "And it's a policeman's tread. Don't you
+know that?"</p>
+
+<p>Max grew rather cold.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nonsense!" said he, quickly. "What should&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Max opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>A man in plain clothes stood outside, and at the head of the stairs
+behind him was a policeman in uniform.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Dudley Horne?" said the man.</p>
+
+<p>"These are his rooms, but Mr. Horne is not here."</p>
+
+<p>"You are a friend of his, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. My name is Wedmore."</p>
+
+<p>If the man had had a momentary doubt about him, it was by this time
+dispelled. He stepped inside the door.</p>
+
+<p>"I must have a look round, if you please, sir." Max held his ground. "I
+have a warrant for Mr. Horne's arrest."</p>
+
+<p>Max staggered back. And the man passed him and went in.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>A STRANGE PAIR.</h3>
+
+
+<p>As Carrie, with her feminine acuteness, had guessed, Dudley Horne had
+never had any intention of returning to his chambers for her and Max.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>His footsteps echoed in the silent street until he reached the wooden
+door which was the entrance by night to Plumtree Wharf.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She uttered a little mocking laugh when she saw who her visitor was and
+let him in without any other comment.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The apartment was so small and so bare that it was not difficult to take
+stock of its contents, and Mrs. Higgs laughed ironically.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>Dudley cast at the old woman a look which was more eloquent than he knew
+of hatred and disgust.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said he, shortly. "I was looking to see whether any of your
+precious pals were about."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know why I have come here to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"To show me a little gratitude at last, perhaps," suggested Mrs. Higgs,
+sharply. "To do your duty&mdash;yes, it's no more than your duty, you know,
+to do what I tell you&mdash;and to help yourself in helping me. That's true,
+isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Dudley stared at her in silence for a few moments before he answered:</p>
+
+<p>"Duty is an odd word to use&mdash;a very odd word. But we won't waste time
+discussing that. You sent a message to me by a girl this evening?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Higgs nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"You want me to defend one of the rascals who make this place their
+hole, their den?"</p>
+
+<p>Again Mrs. Higgs signified assent.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean? Whom do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Edward Jacobs's widow, of course. She had an idea where to look,
+you see."</p>
+
+<p>Dudley could not hide the fact that he was much disturbed by this
+intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>To his amazement, Mrs. Higgs suddenly interrupted him, bringing her fist
+down upon the table with a sounding thump.</p>
+
+<p>"You fool!" screamed she. "You&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>"But I sent it anonymously," said Dudley.</p>
+
+<p>"That doesn't matter. Money? Postal-orders, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they can be traced. Oh, you fool, you wooden-headed fool!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause. Mrs. Higgs appeared to have exhausted herself in
+vituperation, while Dudley considered this new aspect of the affair in
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said he at last, "if she does trace me, who will be the
+sufferer, do you suppose&mdash;you or I?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>She said this with unctuous satisfaction, and Dudley gave her a glance
+of horror.</p>
+
+<p>"And what particular pleasure will it give you, even supposing such an
+outcome possible, to see me hanged?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>Dudley looked searchingly into the wrinkled face.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Higgs never blinked. Staring steadily up into his face, with a
+malignity more pronounced than ever, she asked, in a mocking tone:</p>
+
+<p>"Why? Why?"</p>
+
+<p>Dudley was silent.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Higgs laughed, and shook her head with a look of unspeakable
+cunning.</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't answer," said she, dryly, "for I know the reason. You won't
+leave England because of a girl."</p>
+
+<p>Dudley did not start, but the quiver which passed over his features
+betrayed him.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;Doreen Wedmore&mdash;and it's on her account that you won't
+leave England, and throw in your lot with me, like a man!"</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Higgs cut in with decision:</p>
+
+<p>"No, that you won't. I'll answer for it!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Who was the girl you sent this evening, the girl who brought your
+message?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"And her other name?"</p>
+
+<p>His tone betrayed his suspicions. Mrs. Higgs shrugged her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"What does that matter to you? She is your half-sister, but I don't
+suppose you wish to claim relationship?"</p>
+
+<p>"Does she know&mdash;anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"How?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've given her notice to quit. I don't expect her back again."</p>
+
+<p>"And aren't you afraid that she may give information?"</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>Dudley moved restlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Higgs frowned.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said he&mdash;his voice sounded hollow, cold&mdash;"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."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Higgs got slowly to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Dudley's hand dropped to his side.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Higgs interrupted him fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"What did you do with&mdash;<i>him</i>? Did anybody help you&mdash;any of your
+friends here? Or did you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Come and see&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said she, sharply, "not that way. This!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Tst&mdash;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&mdash;come, be a
+man! See, this is how I got rid of him."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Dudley stooped, and looking through the small opening available, saw
+that there was a space hollowed out underneath.</p>
+
+<p>"And you put him there&mdash;under the boards?" said Dudley, in a low voice.
+"But it was in the water that the body was found&mdash;in the river outside."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Presently she looked up. Her face was in shadow, but he could see that
+she was panting, as if with some great exertion.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Instinctively Dudley obeyed, stepping back into the little patch of
+light thrown by the candle.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE PREY OF THE RIVER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>"Help! Help!" shouted Dudley. "Do you want to drown me?"</p>
+
+<p>Great as the shock was of finding himself flung suddenly into what he
+supposed was a flooded cellar, Dudley did not at first believe that the
+old woman had any worse intention than that of playing him an ugly and
+malicious trick.</p>
+
+<p>But as he uttered this question he looked up, and saw her face half a
+dozen feet above him, wearing an expression of fiendish malignity which
+froze his blood.</p>
+
+<p>She was holding the candle so that she might see his face, and as he
+kept himself afloat in the small space available&mdash;for he had no room to
+strike out, and no foothold on the slimy earthen sides&mdash;he began to
+understand that she was in grim, deadly earnest, and that the place
+where the dead body of Edward Jacobs had been concealed was to be his
+own grave.</p>
+
+<p>Then he did not cry out. He saw that he would only be wasting his
+breath; that there was no mercy in the hard-light eyes, in the lines of
+the wicked, wrinkled mouth.</p>
+
+<p>He made a struggle to climb up one side of the pit in which he found
+himself; but the soft earth, slimy with damp, slipped and gave way under
+him. He tore out a hole with his fingers, then another, and another
+above that. And all the while she watched him without a word, apparently
+without a movement.</p>
+
+<p>But just as he came to a point in his ascent from which he might hope to
+make a spring for the top, she raised her thick stick and dealt him a
+blow on the head which sent him, with a splash and a gurgling cry, back
+into the water.</p>
+
+<p>He saw strange lights dancing before his eyes. He heard weird noises
+thundering in his ears, and above them all a chuckling laugh, like the
+merriment of a demon, as the boards of the displaced flooring were drawn
+slowly up by a cord from above until they closed over his head, shutting
+him down.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>When the police made their descent upon Dudley's chambers, Max, after
+giving his name and address, was allowed to go away without hindrance.</p>
+
+<p>He wanted Carrie to go with him, but as she persistently held down her
+head and refused to look at him, he came to the conclusion that she had
+her own reasons for wishing him to go away without her.</p>
+
+<p>So he went slowly down into the Strand, wondering whether he dared to go
+to the wharf to try to warn Dudley, or whether he would be drawing down
+danger upon his friend's head by doing so. For although he could not
+ascertain that he was himself shadowed, he thought that it might very
+possibly be the case.</p>
+
+<p>He had reached the corner of Arundel Street, when he found that Carrie
+was beside him. She was panting, out of breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello!" said he.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been such a round!" said she. "Just to see whether they were
+following me. But they weren't. I guessed you'd come this way, and I
+went down by the embankment and up to try to meet you. Are they after
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think so. Dare we&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Wharf? Yes, I think we may. By the way, I'll show you."</p>
+
+<p>She took him across Waterloo Bridge, where they took a cab and traversed
+southward to a point at which she directed the driver to stop.</p>
+
+<p>On the way, Max, from his corner of the hansom, watched the girl
+furtively. For a long time there was absolute silence between them. Then
+he came close to her suddenly, and peered into her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Carrie," said he, "I want you to marry me."</p>
+
+<p>Now Max had been some time making up his mind to put this
+proposition&mdash;some minutes, that is to say. He had been turning the
+matter over in his brain, and had imagined the blushing, trembling
+astonishment with which the lonely girl would receive his most
+unexpected proposal.</p>
+
+<p>But the astonishment was on his side, not on hers; for Carrie only
+turned her head a little, scarcely looking at him and staring out again
+in front of her immediately, remarked in the coolest manner in the
+world:</p>
+
+<p>"Marry you! Oh, yes, certainly. Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>Max was taken aback, and Carrie, at last stealing a glance at him,
+perceived this. She gave a pretty little kindly laugh, which made him
+expect that she would say something more tender, more encouraging.</p>
+
+<p>But she didn't.</p>
+
+<p>Turning her head away again, she went on quietly laughing to herself,
+until Max, not unnaturally irritated by this acceptance of his offer,
+threw himself back in his corner and tried to laugh also.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a very good joke, isn't it&mdash;an offer of marriage?" said he at
+last, in an offended tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Very," assented Carrie at once. "About the best I ever heard."</p>
+
+<p>And she went on laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"And I suppose," went on Max, unable to hide his annoyance, "that if I
+were to tell you it was not a joke at all, but that I spoke in downright
+earnest, you would laugh still more?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I think I should."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, laugh away, then. I was in earnest. I meant what I said. I was
+idiot enough to suppose you might find marrying me a better alternative
+than wandering about without any home. Extraordinary, wasn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," answered Carrie, subduing her mirth a little and speaking in
+that deep-toned voice she unconsciously used when she was moved&mdash;the
+voice which Max found in itself so moving&mdash;"I should say it was
+extraordinary, if I didn't know you."</p>
+
+<p>"If you didn't know me for an idiot, I suppose you mean," said Max,
+coldly, with much irritation.</p>
+
+<p>"Not quite that," replied she, in the same tone as before. "I meant if I
+hadn't known you to be one of those good-natured people who speak before
+they think."</p>
+
+<p>Max sat up angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"I have not spoken without thinking," said he, quickly. "I have done
+nothing but think of you ever since I first saw you; and my asking you
+to marry me is the outcome of my thinking."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if I were you, I should think to better purpose than that."</p>
+
+<p>Her tone was rather puzzling to Max. There was mockery in it; but there
+was something more. He came to the conclusion, after a moment's
+consideration of it, and of the little that he could see of her face,
+that she felt more than she chose to show. So he put his arm around her
+and caught one of her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Carrie," said he in a whisper. "I understand you. I know how
+you feel. I know you think it's neither decent nor wise to ask a girl to
+be your wife when you've only seen her twice. But just consider the
+circumstances. If I don't get you to say what I want you to say now, I
+shall lose sight of you to-night and never see you again. Now, I
+couldn't bear that&mdash;I couldn't, Carrie. I never saw a girl like you; I
+never met one who made me feel as you make me feel. And you like me,
+too. You wouldn't have troubled yourself about my going to the wharf if
+you hadn't cared. It's no use denying that you like me."</p>
+
+<p>Carrie turned upon him with energy.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't deny it, if you care to hear that," said she, quickly. "I
+do like you. How could I help it? I liked you the moment I first saw
+you; I shouldn't have spoken to you if I hadn't; I should have been
+afraid. But what difference does that make? Do you think I'm a fool? Do
+you think I don't know that this feeling you have&mdash;and I believe in it,
+mind&mdash;is just because I'm a new sensation to you, who are a spoiled
+child&mdash;nothing more nor less. Oh, don't let's talk about it; it's
+silly."</p>
+
+<p>She had wrenched herself impatiently away from him, and now sat upright,
+frowning and looking straight in front of her as before.</p>
+
+<p>Max, not finally rebuffed, but rather puzzled what to make of this form
+of repulse, was silent for a few moments.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if you won't let me talk about that," he said at last, "will you
+promise to let me know where you are going to, so that I shan't have to
+lose sight of you? Come, you like me well enough to agree to that, don't
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>Carrie hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"I told you," she said at last, in a low voice, "that I didn't know
+myself where I was going. Have you forgotten that?"</p>
+
+<p>"But it wasn't true. You said it to put me off. You must know!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I shan't tell you. There!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because it would be the beginning of what I don't want and won't have.
+Because you'd come and see me, and I shouldn't have the heart to say you
+mustn't come; and in the end, if you persisted, I shouldn't have the
+heart to stop you from making a fool of yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"How, making a fool of myself?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, by marrying me. Now don't pretend you don't know it's true.
+Marrying me would be just ruin&mdash;ruin! Oh, I know! What would your family
+say, and be right in saying? That you'd been got hold of by a girl
+nobody knew anything about, without any parents or friends, and who came
+from nobody knew where."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but when they knew you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"They'd think less of me than they did before."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense! When they saw how beautiful you are and well educated and
+refined, they wouldn't believe you came from such a place as Limehouse."</p>
+
+<p>Carrie smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"I seem refined to you, because you didn't expect much where you found
+me. Put me beside your sisters and their friends, and I should be shy
+and awkward enough. No, I will not listen, and I want you to tell the
+driver to stop here."</p>
+
+<p>Whether this was the point she had proposed to reach or whether she
+wanted to cut short the subject, Max could not tell. But as the hansom
+stopped she sprang out and led the way hurriedly in the direction of the
+river. She knew her way about on this side of the river as well as on
+the other, for she went straight to the water's edge, got into a boat
+which was moored there with a dozen others, and, with a nod to a man
+with a pipe in his mouth who was loafing near the spot, she directed Max
+to jump in, and seized one oar while he took the other.</p>
+
+<p>"If we go from this side," she said, "we can make sure we're not
+followed, at all events."</p>
+
+<p>In the darkness they began to row across the river, where the traffic
+had practically ceased for the night.</p>
+
+<p>Threading their way between the barges, the great steam traders, with
+their ugly square hulks standing high out of the water, and the lesser
+craft that clustered about the larger like a swarm of bees round the
+hive, they came out upon the gray stream, slowly leaving behind one dim
+shore, with its gloomy wharves and warehouses, and nearing the other.
+The London lights looked dim and blurred through the mist.</p>
+
+<p>As they drew near the wharf, Carrie jerked her head in the direction of
+the little ugly cluster of buildings which Max remembered so well.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a passage under there," she said in a whisper, leaning forward
+on her oar, "through which they let the dead body of the man&mdash;you
+know&mdash;out into the river. It's just near here."</p>
+
+<p>Max shuddered, and at the same moment there burst from the girl's lips a
+hoarse cry.</p>
+
+<p>Max turned sharply, and saw that she was staring down into the water.</p>
+
+<p>"Look! Look there!" whispered she, gasping, trembling.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" cried he.</p>
+
+<p>But even as he asked, he knew that the dark object he saw floating in
+the water was the body of a man.</p>
+
+<p>By a dexterous movement of her oar, Carrie had brought the boat
+alongside the black mass, and then, with the boat-hook, which she used
+with an evidently practiced hand, she drew the body close.</p>
+
+<p>Max, sick with horror, leaned over just as Carrie's exertion's brought
+the face of the man to view.</p>
+
+<p>"He's dead!" cried he, hoarsely. "It's another murder by those vile
+wretches in there!"</p>
+
+<p>An exclamation burst from the girl's lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at him! Look at his face! Who is he?" whispered she, with
+trembling lips.</p>
+
+<p>Max looked, putting his hand under the head and lifting it out of the
+water.</p>
+
+<p>Then, with a great shout, he tore at the body, clutching it, trying to
+drag it into the boat.</p>
+
+<p>"Great Heaven! It's Dudley!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI.</h2>
+
+<h3>A DUBIOUS REFUGE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The night was clammy and cold. The fog was growing thicker, blacker. And
+the water of the Thames, as Max plunged his hand into it, struggling to
+raise the body of his friend, was ice-cold to the touch.</p>
+
+<p>Carrie had seized her oar again, and was bringing the boat's head
+rapidly round, right under the stern of a barge which was moored close
+to Plumtree Wharf.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold him; don't let him go!" cried she imperiously. "But don't try to
+drag him into the boat until I get her alongside. You can't do it
+without help. And if you could you'd pull the boat over."</p>
+
+<p>The caution was necessary. Max had lost his head, and was making frantic
+efforts to raise the body of his friend over the boat's side.</p>
+
+<p>"But he may be alive still! And if there's a chance&mdash;oh, if there's the
+least chance&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"There'll be none if you don't do as I tell you!" cried Carrie, tartly.</p>
+
+<p>By this time a lad on board the barge was looking over the side at them,
+not seeing much, however, in the gloom. Carrie whistled twice.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello!" replied he, evidently recognizing a signal he was used to.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that Bob?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Lower a rope, and hold on like a man, Bob. We've got a man here drowned
+or half-drowned; and we want to get him on the wharf in a twinkling."</p>
+
+<p>"Right you are."</p>
+
+<p>The next moment the lad had lowered a rope over the side of the barge,
+and Carrie directed Max to pass it round the body of his friend. Then,
+she giving the orders as before, Bob from the barge above and Max from
+the boat below raised the body out of the water. Carrie had brought the
+little boat close to the barge, and held it in place with the boat-hook
+until the difficult task was safely accomplished, and the body of Dudley
+Horne laid upon the deck of the barge.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," said she to Max, "get up and help Bob to carry him ashore."</p>
+
+<p>Max, who was speechless with grief and as helpless as a child in these
+new and strange circumstances, obeyed her docilely, and climbed to the
+deck of the barge.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Bob," went on Carrie, as she seized the second oar and prepared to
+row away, "carry him into the kitchen&mdash;you know your way&mdash;as fast as you
+can. And lay him down before the fire, if there is a fire; if not, make
+one. Sharp's the word, mind!"</p>
+
+<p>"All right, missus."</p>
+
+<p>Max looked down. Already she had disappeared in the gloom, and only the
+muffled sound of the oars as they dripped on the water told him that she
+had not yet gone far away.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he felt a rough pull at his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, mister!" cried Bob, briskly. "She said, 'Sharp is the word.'
+And when she says a thing she means it, you bet your life."</p>
+
+<p>Max pulled himself together and turned quickly, ashamed of his own lack
+of vigor in the face of Carrie's intelligence and energy. Bob and he
+raised the body of Dudley and carried it across the plank to the wharf,
+where Bob, who knew his way about there, led the way to the door which
+Max remembered so well.</p>
+
+<p>It was open, and they passed through the outhouse, meeting no one, to
+the kitchen, which was also deserted. There they laid Dudley on the
+hearth, as Carrie had directed, and Bob proceeded to rake up the fire,
+which had died down to a few embers.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Max had taken off some of Dudley's clothes, and began to apply
+friction with his hands to the inanimate body. He had scarcely begun,
+when Carrie came in with an armful of dry towels and a couple of
+pillows.</p>
+
+<p>"He is dead, quite dead!" cried Max, hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>Carrie never even looked at him. Placing herself at once on her knees
+behind Dudley's head, she curtly directed Max to raise the upper part of
+his body, and slipped the two pillows, one on the top of the other,
+under the shoulders of the unconscious man.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," said she, "go on with your rubbing&mdash;rub with all your might; and
+you, Bob, bring in a couple of big stone-bottles you'll find in the
+wash-house, fill them with hot water from the boiler, wrap them up in
+something, and put one to his feet and the other to the side that's away
+from the fire."</p>
+
+<p>While she spoke she was working hard in the endeavor to restore
+respiration, alternately drawing Dudley's arms up above his head and
+laying them against his sides, with firm and steady movements.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time all their efforts seemed to be useless. Max, indeed, had
+little or no hope from the first. He still worked on, however,
+perseveringly, but with despair in his heart, until he heard a sharp
+sound, like a deep sigh, from Carrie's lips.</p>
+
+<p>She had detected a movement, the slightest in the world, but still a
+movement, in the senseless body. With straining eyes she now watched,
+that her own movements might coincide with the natural ones which Dudley
+had begun to make, and that real breathing might gradually take the
+place of the artificial.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me do it. Let me help you," cried Max, who saw the strained look of
+utter fatigue which Carrie wore in spite of her excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; I dare not. I must go on!" cried the girl, without lifting her
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>And presently another cry escaped her lips, a cry of joy.</p>
+
+<p>"He is alive!"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God!"</p>
+
+<p>The tears sprang to the eyes of Max. It was more than he had hoped.</p>
+
+<p>"A doctor! Shall I fetch a doctor?" said he.</p>
+
+<p>Carrie shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"A doctor could do no more than we've done," said she. "He'll be all
+right now&mdash;well enough to be got away, at all events. And the wound on
+his head isn't much, I think."</p>
+
+<p>"Wound on his head!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. It saved his life, most likely. Prevented his getting so much
+water into his lungs. Stunned him, you see."</p>
+
+<p>Something like a sigh from the patient stopped her and directed the
+attention of them all to him. Bob, who had been standing in the
+background, almost as much excited as the others, came a few steps
+nearer. There was a moment of intense, eager expectancy, and then Dudley
+half opened his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Max uttered a deep sob and glanced at Carrie. She was deadly pale, and
+the tears were standing in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You've saved him!" said Max, hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>The sound of his voice seemed to rouse Dudley, who looked at him with a
+vacant stare, and then let his eyelids drop again.</p>
+
+<p>"So glad, old chap&mdash;so glad to&mdash;to see you yourself again!" whispered
+Max, huskily.</p>
+
+<p>But Dudley was not himself. He looked up again, then tried to smile, and
+at last turned his head abruptly and seemed to be listening.</p>
+
+<p>Carrie beckoned to Max and spoke low in his ear.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better take him away from here as quickly as you can, for half a
+dozen reasons."</p>
+
+<p>Max nodded, but looked doubtful.</p>
+
+<p>"He's ill," said he. "How shall I get him away? And where shall I take
+him to?"</p>
+
+<p>"Down to your father's house" answered she at once.</p>
+
+<p>Max looked rather startled.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;you know&mdash;the police!" muttered he, almost inaudibly. "Won't that
+be the very first place they'd come to&mdash;my home?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind that. You must risk it. He's going to be ill, I think, and
+he can't be left here. Surely you know that."</p>
+
+<p>She gave a glance round which made Max shiver.</p>
+
+<p>"And how am I to get him all that way to-night? The last train has gone
+hours ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Take him by road, then. We'll get a carriage&mdash;a conveyance of some sort
+or other&mdash;at once. I'll send Bob."</p>
+
+<p>She turned to the lad and gave him some directions, in obedience to
+which he disappeared. Then she turned fiercely to Max.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you see," said she, "that if he wakes up and finds himself here,
+after what's happened, it'll about settle him?"</p>
+
+<p>The words sent a shudder through Max.</p>
+
+<p>"After what's happened!" repeated he, with stammering tongue. "What was
+it? Who did it?"</p>
+
+<p>But, instead of answering, Carrie threw herself down beside Dudley, who
+was now rapidly recovering strength, although he hardly seemed to
+understand where he was or by whom he was being tended.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you feel all right now?" she asked, cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with dull eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," said he. "But I&mdash;I don't remember what&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Take a drink of this," interrupted Carrie, quickly, as she put to his
+lips a flask of brandy which Bob had fetched. "You've got to take a long
+drive, and you want something to warm you first."</p>
+
+<p>"A drive! A long drive!"</p>
+
+<p>Dudley repeated the words as if he hardly understood their meaning. But
+he was not satisfied, and as he sipped the brandy he looked at her
+curiously. His next words, however, were a criticism on the restorative.</p>
+
+<p>"What vile stuff!"</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind. It's better than nothing. Try a little more."</p>
+
+<p>But instead of obeying, he looked her steadily in the face.</p>
+
+<p>"Where did I see you? I remember your face!" said he. "And who was that
+I heard talking just now?"</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, without any warning, he disengaged one hand from the hot
+towels in which he was swathed and sat up. A hoarse cry broke from his
+lips as full recognition of the place in which he found himself forced
+itself upon him. With a wild light of terror in his eyes, he looked
+searchingly round him.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he? Where is he?" cried he, in a thick whisper.</p>
+
+<p>Carrie's face grew dark.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is your friend," she cried cheerily, "here is Mr. Wedmore. He's
+going with you; he's not going to leave you; be sure of that."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, old chap, I'm going with you," said Max, hurrying forward and
+trying to shut out the view of the room with his person as he knelt down
+by his friend.</p>
+
+<p>Dudley frowned impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>"You, Max!" said he. "What are you doing here?"</p>
+
+<p>But he asked the question without interest, evidently absorbed in
+another subject.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to take you down to The Beeches," answered Max, promptly.</p>
+
+<p>To his infinite satisfaction, this reply had the effect of distracting
+Dudley's thoughts. Into his pallid face there came a tinge of color, as
+he looked intently into his friend's eyes, and repeated:</p>
+
+<p>"The Beeches! You don't mean that!"</p>
+
+<p>"I do; the carriage will be here in a minute or two. And in the meantime
+we must think upon getting you dressed."</p>
+
+<p>This question of clothing promised to be a difficult one, as Dudley's
+own things were saturated with water. Carrie sprang to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll see about that," said she, briskly, as she disappeared from the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>Max, alarmed at being left alone with Dudley, in whose eyes he could see
+the dawn of struggling recollection, babbled on about Christmas, his
+mother, his sisters, anything he could think of till Carrie came back
+again, with her arms full of men's clothes&mdash;a motley assortment.</p>
+
+<p>Max looked at them doubtfully. They were all new&mdash;suspiciously new.</p>
+
+<p>Carrie laughed, with a little blush.</p>
+
+<p>"Better not ask any questions about them," said she. "Take your choice,
+and be quick."</p>
+
+<p>With his lips Max formed the word: "Stolen?" but Carrie declined to
+answer. As there was no help for it, Max dressed his friend in such of
+the clothes as were a passable fit for him, while Carrie went out to
+watch for the expected carriage. When she returned to the kitchen,
+Dudley was ready for the journey. He was lying back in a chair, looking
+very white and haggard and exhausted, casting about him glances full of
+expectancy and terror, and starting at every sound.</p>
+
+<p>But he asked no more questions, and he made no mention of Mrs. Higgs.</p>
+
+<p>Bob had fulfilled his errand well. Outside the wharf they found a
+comfortable landau, with two good horses, hired from the nearest
+livery-stable.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII.</h2>
+
+<h3>TWO WOMEN.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Bob grinned with satisfaction when Max, expressing his gratification,
+dropped into his hand a half-sovereign.</p>
+
+<p>"Thought you'd be pleased, sir," said he, as he helped to get Dudley
+into the carriage. "I said it was for a toff, a reg'lar tip-topper; and
+so it was, s' help me!"</p>
+
+<p>Dudley, who was very lame, and who had to be more than half carried,
+looked out of the window.</p>
+
+<p>Max was still outside, trying to get hold of Carrie, who was on the
+other side of the carriage.</p>
+
+<p>"You're coming, Max?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, oh, yes, rather."</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;you?"</p>
+
+<p>Dudley turned to Carrie, who drew back quickly and shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"I? No."</p>
+
+<p>Max ran round at the back of the carriage and caught her by the arm as
+she was slinking quietly away.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going? Not back in there? You must come with us."</p>
+
+<p>"I!&mdash;come with you? To your father's house? Catch me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, part of the way, at any rate," urged Max, astutely. "I dare not
+go all that way with him alone. See, he wants you to go. You shall get
+out just when you please."</p>
+
+<p>Carrie hesitated. Although she saw through the kindly ruse which would
+protect her against her will, she saw, also, that Dudley was indeed in
+no fit state to take the long journey which was before him, and at
+length she allowed herself to be persuaded to accompany them on at least
+the first part of the journey.</p>
+
+<p>And so, in the fog and the gloom of a January night, they began their
+strange drive.</p>
+
+<p>The road they took was by way of Greenwich and Dartford to Chatham,
+where there would be no difficulty in getting fresh horses for the rest
+of the journey.</p>
+
+<p>Dudley, who had been made as comfortable as possible by a sort of bed
+which was made up for him in the roomy carriage, seemed, after a short
+period of restlessness and excitability, to sink into sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Max was rejoicing in this, but Carrie looked anxious.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't natural, healthy sleep, I'm afraid," said she, in a low voice.
+"It's more like stupor. It wasn't the water that did it, it was a blow
+on the head. You saw the mark. I'm afraid it's concussion of the brain."</p>
+
+<p>"Ought he to travel, then?" asked Max, anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>Carrie, who was sitting beside Dudley, and opposite to Max, hesitated a
+little before answering:</p>
+
+<p>"What else could we do? We couldn't leave him there at the wharf, could
+we? And where else could we have taken him? Not back to his chambers,
+certainly!"</p>
+
+<p>There was silence. The carriage jogged on in the darkness through
+London's ugly outskirts, and the two watchers listened solicitously to
+the heavy breathing of their patient. It was a comfort to Max, a great
+one indeed, to have Carrie for a companion on this doleful journey. But
+she was not the same girl, now that she had duties to attend to, that
+she had been over that <i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i> dinner, or even during the
+journey in the hansom. He himself felt that he now counted for nothing
+with her, that he was merely the individual who happened to occupy the
+opposite seat; that her interest, her attentions, were absorbed by the
+unconscious man by her side.</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you become a hospital nurse?" asked Max, suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>He heard rather than saw that she started.</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what I thought of doing," she answered, after a little
+pause. "I'm just old enough to enter one of the Children's Hospitals as
+a probationer. They take them at twenty."</p>
+
+<p>"I see. Then you couldn't have tried before."</p>
+
+<p>"No; they're very strict about age."</p>
+
+<p>"I should think you were cut out for the work, if only you are strong
+enough," said Max, with warmth. "You seem to do just the right thing in
+just the right way."</p>
+
+<p>"I've had plenty of experience," said Carrie, shortly, breaking in upon
+rhapsodies which threatened to become tender. "I did a lot of visiting
+among poor people who had no one to nurse them when I lived with Miss
+Aldridge. Down in these parts, the East End, you get practice enough
+like that, I can tell you!"</p>
+
+<p>"But the treatment of a drowning man&mdash;that requires special knowledge,
+surely!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but down by the river is just the place to get it. He's the fifth
+person I've seen taken out for dead in the time I've lived there. Three
+out of the five were dead. The other two, a boy and a woman, were
+brought around."</p>
+
+<p>There was silence again.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Max whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know&mdash;can you guess&mdash;how he got into the water?"</p>
+
+<p>Carrie shivered.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait&mdash;wait till he can tell us himself," said she, hurriedly. "It's no
+use guessing. Perhaps it was an accident, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't think so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sh&mdash;sh!" said Carrie.</p>
+
+<p>But Max persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"You know as well as I do that that villainous old Mrs. Higgs is at the
+bottom of the affair."</p>
+
+<p>Carrie bent over Dudley, to assure herself that, if not asleep, he was
+at least unconscious of what was passing. Then she turned to Max.</p>
+
+<p>"You are wrong," said she then, quickly. "Mrs. Higgs was an agent only,
+in the hands of some one else. If I tell you what I believe, you will
+only laugh at me."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that she was a harmless, good-hearted, kind woman until&mdash;until
+Mr. Horne came to see her; that she was always good to me till then. And
+that, after that awful day when the man was killed&mdash;murdered by Mr.
+Horne&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It's not true! It can't be true!" burst out Max.</p>
+
+<p>But Carrie went on, as if he had not spoken:</p>
+
+<p>"After that day she changed; she was irritable, unkind, neglectful&mdash;not
+like the same woman. She left me alone sometimes; she gave me no food at
+others; she hid herself away from me; she was angry at the least thing.
+And then&mdash;then," went on the girl, in a frightful whisper, "I found out
+something."</p>
+
+<p>"What was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"That some one used to get into the place at night&mdash;I don't know how;
+some one she was afraid of&mdash;a man."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" said Max, excited by her tone.</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard him&mdash;seen him twice," went on Carrie, in the lowest of
+whispers. "And I believe&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes; go on!"</p>
+
+<p>"That it was Mr. Dudley Horne."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, rubbish!"</p>
+
+<p>Carrie was silent. Max went on, indignantly:</p>
+
+<p>"How could you take such a silly idea into your head? What reason should
+Mr. Horne have for creeping about a hole like that at night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what reason should he have for coming to it at any time? Yet you
+know he came in the daytime."</p>
+
+<p>It was the turn of Max to remain silent. There was a long pause, and
+then Carrie went on:</p>
+
+<p>"I used to sleep in a little attic over the outhouse, just a corner of
+the roof it was. And twice at night I have heard a noise underneath, and
+looked through the cracks in the boards and seen a man down there, with
+a light. And each time, when the light was put out and the noise had
+stopped, I have gone downstairs and found the doors bolted still on the
+inside."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, the place seems to be honeycombed with ways in and ways out. The
+strange man either went out by some way even you knew nothing about, or
+else Mrs. Higgs let him out."</p>
+
+<p>"No, she didn't. I should have heard or seen her."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but what reason can you have for supposing that this man was Mr.
+Dudley Horne?"</p>
+
+<p>"Once I saw his face," answered Carrie.</p>
+
+<p>"And you think it was the face of this man here beside you?"</p>
+
+<p>Max struck a light and held it over the face of the unconscious Dudley.
+Carrie looked at him steadily.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," she said at last, "it did look like him, that's all I can say."</p>
+
+<p>Max frowned uneasily. But after a few moments a new thought struck him,
+and he turned to her sharply. The match he had struck had burned itself
+out, and they were again in darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"If Mrs. Higgs was only a tool in his hands, as you suggest, for some
+mysterious purposes which nobody can understand or guess at, how do you
+account for her trying to drown him?"</p>
+
+<p>"They must have quarreled," said Carrie, quickly. Then, instantly
+perceiving that she had made an admission, she added: "That is,
+supposing she had anything to do with it."</p>
+
+<p>"Amiable old lady!" exclaimed Max.</p>
+
+<p>The mystery of the whole affair hung over both him and Carrie like a
+pall; and the long night-drive seemed never-ending in the death-like
+silence. Max tried from time to time to break it, but Carrie grew more
+reserved as the hours went by, until her curt answers ceased altogether.</p>
+
+<p>Then, when dawn came, the dull dawn of a foggy morning, and the carriage
+drew up at the hotel in Chatham where they were to change horses, Max
+discovered that she was asleep.</p>
+
+<p>Dudley opened his eyes when the carriage stopped, but shut them again
+without a word to Max, who asked him how he felt.</p>
+
+<p>Max, when the people of the hotel had been roused, succeeded in
+borrowing a rug, which he wrapped gently round Carrie, without waking
+her. And presently the carriage jogged on again on its journey, and the
+morning sun began to pierce the mist as the bare Kentish hop-fields and
+orchards were reached.</p>
+
+<p>Max leaned forward and looked at Carrie's sweet face with infinite
+tenderness. Now in her sleep she looked like a child, with her lips
+slightly parted and her eyelashes sweeping her thin, white cheeks. The
+alert look of the Londoner, which gave an expression of premature
+shrewdness to her waking face, had disappeared under the relaxing
+influence of slumber. She looked pitifully helpless, sad and weak, as
+her tired, worn-out little body leaned back in the corner of the
+carriage.</p>
+
+<p>Max looked at her with yearning in his eyes. This young ne'er-do-weel,
+as his father called him, had enjoyed the privilege of his type in being
+a great favorite with women. As usual in such cases, he had repaid their
+kindness with ingratitude, and had had numerous flirtations without ever
+experiencing a feeling either deep or lasting.</p>
+
+<p>Now, for the first time, in this beautiful waif of the big city he had
+found a mixture of warmth and coldness, of straightforward simplicity
+and boldness, which opened his eyes as to there being in her sex an
+attraction he had previously denied. He felt as he looked at her that he
+wanted her; that he could not go away and forget her in the presence of
+the next pretty face he happened to see.</p>
+
+<p>This shabbily dressed girl, with the shiny seams in her black frock and
+the rusty hat, inspired him with respect, with something like reverence.</p>
+
+<p>In his way he had been in love many, many times. Now for the first time
+he worshiped a woman.</p>
+
+<p>When the carriage stopped at the park gate of The Beeches, Max sprang
+out, and without waiting to answer the hurried questions of Carrie, who
+had awakened with a start, he ran across the grass and up the slope to
+the house.</p>
+
+<p>It was nine o'clock, and, when the door was opened by Bartram, Max came
+face to face with Doreen, who was entering the hall on her way to the
+breakfast-room.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Max, is it you? What a strange time to arrive! And where have you
+been? You look as if you'd been up all night!" cried she, and she ran
+forward to kiss him, and swinging him round to the light, examined him,
+with an expression of amazement and horror.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been up all night," said he, briefly. "I've driven all the way
+from London&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What!"</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;and I've brought some one with me&mdash;some one who is ill, who is in
+trouble. Some one&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A cry broke from her lips. She had grown quite white, and her hands had
+dropped to her sides.</p>
+
+<p>She understood.</p>
+
+<p>"Dudley!" she whispered. "Where is he? Why haven't you brought him in?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is at the gate. Where is my father? I must speak to him first, or to
+mother."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wedmore herself, having been informed by Bartram of the arrival of
+her son, now came out of the breakfast-room to meet him. In a few words
+he informed her of the circumstances, adding, as he was bound to do,
+that there was a possibility that the police might come to make
+inquiries, if not to arrest Dudley. But Doreen, who insisted on hearing
+everything, overruled the faint objection which Mrs. Wedmore made, and
+determined to have him brought in before her father could learn anything
+about it.</p>
+
+<p>Max, therefore, went down to bring the carriage up to the door, and
+Dudley, having been roused into a half-conscious condition, was assisted
+into the house and up to one of the spare bedrooms&mdash;Max on one side and
+Bartram on the other.</p>
+
+<p>By this time Mr. Wedmore had, of course, become aware of what was going
+on; but it was now too late to interfere, even if he had wished to do
+so. When Dudley had been taken upstairs, Doreen met her brother as he
+came down.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is the girl with the sweet face inside the carriage?"</p>
+
+<p>Max stammered a little, and then said, by a happy inspiration:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's the nurse. You see&mdash;he was so ill&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Doreen looked at him keenly, but did not wait for anymore explanations.</p>
+
+<p>"Why doesn't she come in, then? Of course she must come in."</p>
+
+<p>And she ran out to the door of the carriage, with Max not far behind.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you coming in? They've taken your patient upstairs," she said
+gently, as poor Carrie, who looked more dead than alive, sat up in the
+carriage and tried to put her hat and her cape straight.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I shan't be wanted now, shall I?" asked Carrie, with a timid voice
+and manner which contrasted strongly with her calm, easy assurance while
+she was at work.</p>
+
+<p>Max threw a glance of gratitude at his sister, as he quickly opened the
+door of the carriage and more than half dragged Carrie out.</p>
+
+<p>As the girl stepped, blinking, into the broad sunlight, Doreen stared at
+her intently, and then glanced inquiringly at her brother, who, however,
+did not see her questioning look. He led Carrie into the house and
+straight up the stairs toward the room where they had put Dudley.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't make me stay," pleaded she, in a low voice. "They will know I'm
+not a regular nurse, and&mdash;and I shall be uncomfortable, miserable. You
+can do without me now."</p>
+
+<p>She was trying to shrink away. Max stopped in the middle of the stairs,
+and answered her gravely, earnestly:</p>
+
+<p>"I only ask you to stay until we can get a regular nurse down. He is too
+ill to do without a trained attendant; you know that. Will you promise
+to wait while we send for one?"</p>
+
+<p>Carrie could scarcely refuse.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I will stay till then, if I am really wanted," assented she.</p>
+
+<p>"Ask my sister. Here she comes," said Max.</p>
+
+<p>Doreen was on the stairs behind them.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it really necessary&mdash;do you want me to stay while a nurse is sent
+for?" asked Carrie, diffidently.</p>
+
+<p>Doreen looked up straight in her face.</p>
+
+<p>"What more natural than that you should stay with him?" returned she,
+promptly; "since you are his sister."</p>
+
+<p>Max and Carrie both started. The likeness between Dudley and Carrie,
+which Max had taken time to discover, had struck Doreen at once. Carrie
+would have denied the allegation, but Max caught her arm and stopped
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite true," said he quietly. "This is the way, Miss Horne, to your
+brother's room."</p>
+
+<p>Doreen was quick enough to see that there was some little mystery about
+the relationship which she had divined, and she went rapidly past her
+brother without asking any questions.</p>
+
+<p>It was about two hours after Dudley's arrival that Carrie, now installed
+in the sick-room, came to the door and asked for Max. Her face was rigid
+with a great terror. She seemed at first unable to utter the words which
+were on her tongue. At last she said, in a voice which sounded hard and
+unlike her own:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't send for a nurse. I must stay with him. He is delirious, and I
+have just learned&mdash;from him&mdash;from his ravings, a secret&mdash;a terrible
+secret&mdash;one that must not be known!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE BLUE-EYED NURSE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>It was at the door of Dudley's sick-room that Carrie informed Max that
+she had learned a secret from the lips of the sick man, and Max, by a
+natural impulse of curiosity, nay, more, a deep interest, pushed the
+door gently open.</p>
+
+<p>Dudley's voice could be heard muttering below his breath words which Max
+could not catch.</p>
+
+<p>But Carrie pulled the young man sharply back by the arm into the
+corridor, and shut the door behind her. Her face was full of
+determination.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said she, "not even you."</p>
+
+<p>Max drew himself up, offended.</p>
+
+<p>"I should think you might trust me," he said, stiffly. "The doctor will
+have to hear when he comes. And the secret, whatever it is, will be
+safer with me than with old Haselden."</p>
+
+<p>Carrie smiled a little, and shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"The doctor," said she, "wouldn't be able to make head or tail of what
+he says. Now, you would."</p>
+
+<p>"And if I did, what of that? Don't I know everything, or almost
+everything, already? Didn't I bring him down here, to my father's house,
+after I knew that there was a warrant out against him? What better proof
+do you want that the secret would be safe with me?"</p>
+
+<p>But Carrie would not give way. Without entering into an argument, she
+stood before him with a set look of obstinacy in her mouth and eyes,
+slowly shaking her head once or twice as he went on with his
+persuasions.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think I should make a wrong use of the secret?" asked Max,
+impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think it would turn me against him?"</p>
+
+<p>But at this question she hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," said she, at last.</p>
+
+<p>"It is something that has given you pain?" Max went on, noting the
+traces of tears on her face and the misery in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, oh, yes."</p>
+
+<p>The answer was given in a very low voice, with such a heart-felt sob
+that Max was touched to the quick. He came quite close to her, and,
+bending down, so that his mustache almost brushed the soft fair hair on
+her forehead, he whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so sorry. Poor Carrie! I won't worry you, then; I won't ask any
+more questions, if only&mdash;if only you'll let me tell you how awfully
+sorry I am."</p>
+
+<p>He ventured to put his hand upon her shoulder, as he bent down to look
+into her face.</p>
+
+<p>And, as luck would have it, Mr. Wedmore at that very moment bounced out
+of one of the rooms which opened on the corridor, and caught sight of
+this pretty little picture before it broke up.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, Max withdrew his hand and lifted up his head so swiftly that
+he flattered himself he had been too quick for his father, who walked
+along the corridor toward the drawing-room as if he had seen nothing.</p>
+
+<p>But Max was mistaken. Mr. Wedmore, already greatly irritated by his
+son's repeated failures to settle down, found in this little incident a
+pretext for a fresh outburst of wrath.</p>
+
+<p>Unluckily for poor Carrie, Mrs. Wedmore was in a state of irritation, in
+which she was even readier than usual to agree with her husband. The
+arrival of Dudley, with a terrible charge hanging over his head, in such
+circumstances as to stir up Doreen's feelings for him to the utmost, was
+bad enough. But for him to descend upon them in the company of a young
+woman of whom she had never heard, and in whose alleged relationship to
+Dudley she entirely disbelieved, had reduced the poor lady to a state
+which Queenie succinctly described as "one of mamma's worst."</p>
+
+<p>As soon as Mr. Wedmore entered the drawing-room, where his wife and
+daughters were discussing some invitations to dinner which were to have
+been sent out, but about which there was now a doubt, he abruptly
+ordered the two girls to leave the room. They obeyed very quietly, but
+Doreen threw at her mother one imploring glance, and gently pulling her
+father's hair, told him that he was not to be a hard, heartless man.</p>
+
+<p>When the door was shut, however, Mr. Wedmore addressed his wife in no
+very gentle tones.</p>
+
+<p>"Ellen," said he, curtly, "you must get rid of that baggage they call
+the nurse. She's no more a nurse than you are!"</p>
+
+<p>"And she's no more his sister than I am, either!" chimed in Mrs.
+Wedmore, who had risen from her chair in great excitement.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wedmore stared at his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"Sister!" cried he, in a voice of thunder. "Whose sister? Dudley Horne
+never had a sister!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know that, but that's the story they have made up for us; and the
+girls&mdash;our girls&mdash;are ready to believe it, and I don't want them to know
+it isn't true."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, whatever she is, and whoever she is, I want her to be outside the
+house before lunch time," said Mr. Wedmore. "I've just caught Max with
+his arm around her, and I haven't the slightest doubt that it was he who
+made up the story. Any tale's good enough for the old people! Look at
+her face&mdash;look at her dress! She is some hussy who ought never to have
+been allowed inside the house!"</p>
+
+<p>"It was Doreen who brought her in. And, to do her justice, George, I
+believe the girl didn't want to come," said Mrs. Wedmore. "And it's
+about Doreen I wanted to talk to you, George. This coming of Dudley has
+upset all the good we did by never mentioning him to her. To-day she's
+as much excited, as anxious and as miserable as if they were still
+engaged. And&mdash;and&mdash;oh! if the police come here to the house and take him
+awa-a-ay,"&mdash;and here the poor lady became almost too hysterical to
+articulate&mdash;"it will break the child's heart, George; it will indeed.
+And, oh! do you think it possible he really did&mdash;really did&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Did what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you know! It's to dreadful to say. Why do you make me say it? They
+say something about his having gone out of his mind, and&mdash;and&mdash;killed
+somebody. It isn't true, George, is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, I'm sure. Who told you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Max first, and then I learned the rest from the guesses of the girls.
+Oh, it is dreadful&mdash;shocking! And to think of his having been planted
+down upon us like this, just when I was beginning to hope that Doreen
+was getting kinder to Mr. Lindsay."</p>
+
+<p>"It's all the doing of that idiot Max!" said Mr. Wedmore, angrily. "I'll
+send him out to the Cape, and make an end of it. He shall go next
+month."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I didn't want that," pleaded Mrs. Wedmore, with a sudden change to
+tenderness and self-reproach. "Don't do anything in a hurry, George,
+anything you will be sorry for afterward."</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry for! The only thing I'm sorry for is that I didn't send him
+before, and saved all this."</p>
+
+<p>"And as for the girl, no doubt it's her fault, and Dudley's, a great
+deal more than Max's," went on the mother of Max, with the usual
+feminine excuse for the darling scapegrace. "When she's gone he will
+forget all about her, as he always does."</p>
+
+<p>This speech was an unlucky one.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's just what I complain of, that he always forgets," said he,
+turning sharply upon his wife. "If he would stick to anything or to
+anybody for so much as a week, or a day, or an hour, I shouldn't mind so
+much. But he isn't man enough for that. As soon as this girl's out of
+the house, he'll be looking about for another one."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure it wasn't his fault that she came here at all," persisted Mrs.
+Wedmore, who never opposed her husband except in the interest of her
+son. "And I'm sure you can't blame him for doing what he could for his
+friend, even if he does put us to a little inconvenience. After all,
+Dudley's been like a son to you for a great many years&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what I complain of&mdash;that he's so like a son," interrupted
+her husband. "That is to say, he has brought upon us no end of worry and
+bother, and a bill for five guineas for this pleasant little drive down
+from London."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, how could we refuse to take him in?"</p>
+
+<p>"How did he get into the mess?"</p>
+
+<p>"What mess?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I want to know, too&mdash;what mess? I am told he fell into the
+water, striking his head against the side of a bridge, or of a church,
+or it doesn't matter what, as he fell. They haven't thought it worth
+while to make up a good story. But whether he was drunk, or whether he
+was escaping from the police, or what he was doing, nobody seems to
+know. If I'd been consulted, if I hadn't been treated as a cipher in the
+matter, he should have driven straight back to London again with the
+girl, and with Max himself."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wedmore thought it better to say nothing to this, but to let her
+husband simmer down. These ferocious utterances came from the lips only,
+as she very well knew, and might safely be disregarded.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately his attention was diverted at this point by the arrival of
+the doctor, who had been out on his rounds when they first sent for him.</p>
+
+<p>Rather relieved to have a fresh person to pour out his complaints to,
+Mr. Wedmore hastened to give his old friend a somewhat confused account
+of the patient's arrival and condition, in which "cheap, ready-made
+clothes," "a bill for five guineas," "a baggage of a girl" and "the
+police" were the prominent items.</p>
+
+<p>But as for any details concerning the patient's state of health and the
+reasons for his needing medical care, Doctor Haselden could learn
+nothing at all until he had prevailed upon Mr. Wedmore to let him see
+Dudley instead of listening to abuse of him.</p>
+
+<p>Doctor Haselden was a long time in the sick-room, and when he came out
+he looked grave. Mr. Wedmore, who met him outside the door, was annoyed.</p>
+
+<p>"It's nothing, I suppose, that a few days' quiet won't set right?" he
+asked quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, I'm sure," answered the doctor. "It's more serious than I
+thought by what you said&mdash;a great deal more serious. I don't know, I'm
+sure, whether we shall get him round at all."</p>
+
+<p>A little cry startled both men and made them look round. In a recess of
+the corridor above they could distinguish the figure of a woman, and Mr.
+Wedmore's heart smote him, for it was Doreen.</p>
+
+<p>"Go away, child! Go away!" said he, half petulantly, but yet with some
+remorse in his tone. "The girl's crazy about him," he added, with
+irritation, when his daughter had silently obeyed.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor child! Poor child!" said Doctor Haselden, sympathetically. "She's
+the real old-fashioned sort, with a warm heart under all her little
+airs. I hope he'll get round, if only for her sake. But&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"She couldn't marry him in any case," said Mr. Wedmore, shortly. "I
+thought I told you that affair was broken off&mdash;definitely broken
+off&mdash;weeks ago. And now&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He stopped and intimated by a gesture of the hand that the break was
+more definite than ever.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor was curious, but he tried not to show it.</p>
+
+<p>"I should wire up to town for another nurse, I think," said he. "This
+little girl can't do it all."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wedmore pricked up his ears.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I must wire for two&mdash;for two nurses," said he, decidedly. "We're
+going to send this girl off. She's not a nurse at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but she does very well," objected the doctor, promptly, "and you
+will be doing very unwisely if you send her away. It seems she
+understands all the circumstances of the case, and that counts for
+something in treating a patient who has evidently something on his mind.
+She seems to be able to soothe him, and in a case of concussion&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But she's trying to get hold of my fool of a son Max!" protested Mr.
+Wedmore.</p>
+
+<p>"But it isn't a question of your son Max, but of young Horne," said
+Doctor Haselden, with decision. "As for Max, he can take care of
+himself; and, at any rate, he's got all his family about to take care of
+him. You keep the girl. She's got a head on her shoulders. Most uncommon
+thing, that&mdash;in a girl with such eyes!"</p>
+
+<p>And the doctor, with a humorous nod to his angry friend, went
+downstairs.</p>
+
+<p>After this warning of the real danger in which Dudley lay, it was, of
+course, impossible for Mr. Wedmore to send poor Carrie away, at any rate
+until the arrival of some one who could take her place. And as there was
+clearly some sense in the doctor's suggestion that her knowledge of the
+case was valuable, Mr. Wedmore ended by sending up for one trained nurse
+to relieve her, instead of for two, as he had proposed.</p>
+
+<p>And, after all, there seemed to be less danger in the direction of Max
+than he had supposed; for Carrie never once left the sick-room until the
+professional nurse arrived at ten o'clock that night. And as Mrs.
+Wedmore was then in waiting to mount guard over Carrie, and to carry her
+off to her supper and then to her bedroom, the first day's danger to the
+susceptible son and heir seemed to have been got through rather well.</p>
+
+<p>On the following morning, however, the well-watched Carrie escaped from
+the supervision of her jailers, and boldly made a direct attack upon Max
+under the family's nose.</p>
+
+<p>Carrie was looking out of one of the back windows of the house to get a
+breath of fresh air, before taking her turn of duty in the sick-room,
+when she saw Max talking to one of the grooms outside the stables. He
+saw her, and his face flushed. Mrs. Wedmore, who was standing on guard a
+few paces from Carrie, noted the fact with maternal anxiety. She rather
+liked the girl, whose modest manners were as attractive as her pretty
+face; but with the fear of "entanglements" before her eyes, she tried to
+check her own inclination. Carrie turned to her abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"The nurse won't mind waiting a few minutes for me," said she, quickly.
+"I must speak a few words to Mr. Max."</p>
+
+<p>And before Mrs. Wedmore could get breath after this audacious statement,
+Carrie was down the stairs and half away across the yard, where Max
+hastened to meet her.</p>
+
+<p>"I have something to say to you," she began at once with a grave face.
+"Do you know that&mdash;<i>they've come</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who? Who have come?"</p>
+
+<p>"The police."</p>
+
+<p>Max started.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense! What makes you think so? I've seen no one."</p>
+
+<p>"I have, though. I've been expecting them, for one thing, and it's made
+me sharp, I suppose. But I've seen in the park, among the trees, this
+morning before anybody was up almost, a man walking about, taking his
+bearings and looking about him."</p>
+
+<p>"One of the gardeners," said Max. "There are several."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, it wasn't a gardener. Can't you trust my London eyes? And
+listen: Presently another one came up, and they talked together. Then
+one went one way and the other another, not like gardeners or
+workingmen, but like men on the lookout."</p>
+
+<p>"What should they be on the lookout for?" asked Max. "If they want
+Dudley, why don't they come up to the house? I don't doubt that by this
+time they know where he is."</p>
+
+<p>Carrie said nothing; but there was in her eyes, as she glanced
+searchingly round her, a peculiar look of wistful dread which puzzled
+Max and made him wonder what fear it was that was in her mind.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>MAX MAKES A STAND AND A DISCOVERY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>There was a pause, and then Carrie, without answering him, turned to go
+back into the house. But Max followed and caught her by the arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Carrie," said he, "they're making a slave of you, without a word of
+thanks. You look worn out."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm not," said she, briskly. "I've only taken my turns; I should
+look all right if it hadn't been for that long, tiring journey
+yesterday. I haven't quite got over that yet."</p>
+
+<p>She was trying to free her hand, which Max was holding in his.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll never be strong enough for a hospital nurse, Carrie!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, but I shall!" retorted she. And as she spoke, the pink color,
+the absence of which made her usually look so delicate, came into her
+cheeks. "And you must remember that I shall be better fed, better
+clothed then. I am not really weak at all."</p>
+
+<p>"I repeat&mdash;you will never be strong enough for a nurse. Better take my
+advice and marry me, Carrie!"</p>
+
+<p>But at that, a sudden impulse of hot anger gave the girl the necessary
+strength to snatch her hand away from him. She faced him fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>"What! To be looked at always as your father, your mother, look at me
+now? As if I were a thief who must be watched, lest she should steal
+something? They needn't be afraid either, if only they knew! And before
+I go I'll tell them. Yes, I'll tell them what a mistake they make in
+thinking I want to take their son, their precious son, away from them!
+That for their son!"</p>
+
+<p>And Carrie, very ungratefully, to be sure, held her right hand close to
+the face of Max and snapped her fingers scornfully. She had seen Mrs.
+Wedmore's eyes over the half blind of one of the windows, and the minx
+thought this little scene would be a wholesome lesson.</p>
+
+<p>But Max, following the direction of Carrie's eyes, had also seen the
+watching face, and a manful spirit of defiance on the one hand, of
+passion on the other, moved him to show both Carrie and his mother how
+things were going with him.</p>
+
+<p>Seizing the girl round the waist when her little spurt of defiance was
+scarcely over, he held her head with his disengaged hand and pressed
+upon her eyes, her cheeks and her lips a dozen hot kisses.</p>
+
+<p>"There!" said he, when at last he let her go, and she, staggering,
+blushing, ran toward the shelter of the house. "That's what you get for
+being ungrateful, you little cat. And it's nothing to what you'll get
+from my mother, who's sure to say it's all your fault. And so&mdash;" roared
+he up the stairs after her, as she reached the top, "so it is, of
+course!"</p>
+
+<p>But Carrie found a refuge inside the sick-room, where Dudley, who had
+passed a better night than they had even hoped, was now lying with
+closed eyes, quiet and apparently calm.</p>
+
+<p>It was upon Max himself, for a wonder, that the vials of the family
+wrath were poured. Mrs. Wedmore, happening to meet her husband while the
+last grievance against the girl was fresh, and before she had had the
+time to meditate on the result of a premature disclosure, made known to
+him the outrage of which she had been a witness, taking care to dwell
+upon the audacity of the girl in pursuing and provoking Max.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wedmore listened in silence, and then said, curtly:</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he now? Send him to me."</p>
+
+<p>Max, bent upon making himself as conspicuous and, therefore, as
+offensive as possible, was whistling in the hall at the moment. And
+there was a defiant note in his very whistling which worked his father
+up to boiling point. Mr. Wedmore sprang off his chair and dashed open
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Max, you fool, come here!" was his unpromising summons.</p>
+
+<p>Max came at once, rather red in the face and bright of eyes. Mrs.
+Wedmore, standing, frightened and anxious, in the background, thought
+she had never seen her darling boy look so handsome, so manly. He came
+in very quietly, without swaggering, without defiance, as if he had not
+noticed the offensive epithet.</p>
+
+<p>His father, who was by this time on the post of vantage, the hearth-rug,
+with his hands behind him and his back to the fire, pointed imperiously
+to a chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Max sat down very deliberately on a chair other than the one his father
+had chosen for him, and looked down on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"So you are at your old tricks, your old habits!" began Mr. Wedmore.</p>
+
+<p>Max looked up. Then he sat up.</p>
+
+<p>"What old tricks and habits do you mean, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Running after every girl you see, and in defiance of all decency, under
+your mother's very nose."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wedmore would have interposed here, but her husband waved his hand
+imperially, and she remained silent. Max leaned back in his chair and
+met his father's eyes steadily.</p>
+
+<p>"You have made a mistake, sir, and my mother has made a mistake, too. It
+is quite true she may have seen me kissing Miss&mdash;Miss&mdash;Carrie, in fact.
+But I hope to have the right to kiss her. I want to marry her."</p>
+
+<p>"To marry this&mdash;this&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"This beautiful young girl, whom nobody has a word to say against,"
+interrupted Max, in a louder voice. "Come, sir, you can't say I'm at my
+old tricks <i>now</i>. I've never wanted to marry any girl before."</p>
+
+<p>For the moment Mr. Wedmore was stupefied. This was worse, far worse than
+he had expected. Mrs. Wedmore, also, was rather shocked. But the
+sensation, was tempered, in her case, with admiration of her boy's
+spirit in daring to make this avowal.</p>
+
+<p>"Mind, I only say I <i>want</i> to marry her. Because, so far, she has
+refused to have anything to say to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Not refused to marry you!" broke in Mrs. Wedmore, unable to remain
+quiet under such provocation as this.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, refused to marry me, mother. I have asked her&mdash;begged her."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's only artfulness, to make you more persistent," cried Mrs.
+Wedmore, indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Or perhaps," suggested Mr. Wedmore, in his driest tones, "the girl is
+shrewd enough to know that I should cut off a son who was guilty of such
+a piece of idiocy and leave him to his own resources."</p>
+
+<p>Max said nothing for a moment; then he remarked, quietly:</p>
+
+<p>"You have been threatening to do that already, sir, before there was any
+question of my marrying."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wedmore was frightened by the tone Max was using. He was so much
+quieter than usual, so much more decided in his tone, that she began to
+think there was less chance than usual of his coming to an agreement
+with his father.</p>
+
+<p>"You know, Max," she said, coming over to his chair and putting an
+affectionate hand on his head, "that your father has only spoken to you
+as he has done because he wanted to rouse up your spirit and make you
+ashamed of being lazy."</p>
+
+<p>Max rose from his chair and turned to her with flashing eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, when there is a chance of my rousing myself at last, when I am
+ready and anxious to prove it, and to set to work, and to settle down,
+he is angrier with me than ever. Mother, you know I'm right, and you
+know it isn't fair."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wedmore looked with something like terror into her son's handsome,
+excited face.</p>
+
+<p>"But, my dear boy, don't you see that this would be ruin, to tie
+yourself to a girl like that? Why, she told me herself that she didn't
+belong to anywhere or anybody."</p>
+
+<p>"And is that any reason why she should never belong to anywhere or to
+anybody? If there was anything wrong about the girl herself, I would
+listen to you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Listen to us! You'll have to listen!" interrupted his father.</p>
+
+<p>Max glanced at him, and went on:</p>
+
+<p>"But there is not."</p>
+
+<p>"And how do you know that? How long have you known her?"</p>
+
+<p>Max was taken aback. It had not occurred to him to think how short his
+acquaintance with Carrie had been.</p>
+
+<p>"Long enough to find out all about her," he answered, soberly; "and to
+make up my mind that I'll have her for my wife."</p>
+
+<p>"Then that settles it," broke in Mr. Wedmore, whose ill-humor had not
+been decreased by the fact that Max evidently considered it more
+important to conciliate his mother than to try to convince him. "You
+will go to the Cape next month; and if you choose to take this baggage
+with you, you can do so. It won't much matter to us what sort of a wife
+you introduce to your neighbors out there."</p>
+
+<p>But Max strode across the room and stood face to face with his father,
+eye to eye.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir," he said, in a dogged tone of voice, thrusting his hands deep
+into his pockets and looking at him steadily. "I shall not go to the
+Cape. You have a right to turn me out of your house if you please. In
+fact, it's quite time I went, I know. It's time I did settle down. It's
+time I did try to do something for myself. And I'm going to. I'm going
+to try to earn my own living and to make enough to keep a wife&mdash;the wife
+I want. And I shall do it somehow. But I'm not going to be packed off to
+Africa, as if my marrying this girl were a thing to be ashamed of. I'm
+going to stay in England. I sha'n't come near you. You needn't be afraid
+of that. I shall be too proud of my wife to bring her among people who
+would look down upon her. And perhaps you'd better not inquire where I
+live or what I'm doing, for we sha'n't be able to live in a fashionable
+neighborhood, nor to be too particular about what we turn our hands to."</p>
+
+<p>While Max made this speech very slowly, very deliberately, his father
+listened to him with ever-increasing anger and disgust, and his mother,
+not daring to come too close while he was right under the paternal eye,
+hung over the table in the background, with yearning, tremulous love in
+her eyes, and with her lips parted, ready to utter the tender words of a
+pleading peacemaker.</p>
+
+<p>But the tone Mr. Wedmore chose to take was that of utter contempt,
+complete irresponsibility. When his son had finished speaking he waited
+as if to hear whether there was any more to come, and then abruptly
+turned his back upon him and began to poke the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said he, with an affectation of extreme calmness. "Since
+you have made up your mind, the sooner you begin to carry out your plans
+the better. I'm very glad to see that you have a mind to make up."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir," said Max.</p>
+
+<p>And he was turning to leave the room, when his mother sprang forward and
+stopped him.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no! Don't go like that! My boy! George! Don't say good-bye yet.
+Take a little time. Let him try a little trouble of his own for a
+change. He has made up his mind, he says. I'm sure he's old enough.
+Leave him alone."</p>
+
+<p>Max put his arm round his mother, gave her a warm kiss, disengaged
+himself, and left the room.</p>
+
+<p>The poor woman was almost hysterical.</p>
+
+<p>"He means it, George! He means it this time!" she moaned.</p>
+
+<p>And her husband, though he laughed at her, and though he said to himself
+that he did not care, was inclined to agree with her.</p>
+
+<p>Max went straight up to his own room, and began to do his packing with
+much outward cheerfulness. Indeed he felt no depression over the dashing
+step he was taking, although he felt sore over the parting with home and
+his mother and sisters.</p>
+
+<p>He was debating within himself whether he should try to see Carrie
+before he went, or whether he should only leave a note to be given to
+her after he was gone, when he heard the voice of his sister Doreen
+calling him. He threw open the door and shouted back.</p>
+
+<p>She was in the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"Max," cried she, in a hissing whisper, "I want to speak to you. Make
+haste!"</p>
+
+<p>He ran downstairs and found her standing with two of the maids, both of
+whom looked rather frightened.</p>
+
+<p>"Max," said Doreen, "there's an old woman hanging about the place&mdash;" Max
+started. He guessed what was coming. "The same old woman that came at
+Christmas time. She jumped up in the well-house at Anne, and sent her
+into hysterics. And now they've lost sight of her, just as they did last
+time, and we want you to help to ferret her out and send her away."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," said Max. "We'll pack her off."</p>
+
+<p>He was at the bottom of the staircase by this time, and was starting on
+his way to the yard, when a little scream from one of the two maids, as
+she glanced up the stairs, made him look around. Carrie had come down so
+lightly and so swiftly that she was upon the group before they had heard
+a sound. She beckoned to Max, who came back at once.</p>
+
+<p>Carrie was shaking like a leaf; her eyes were wide with alarm, with
+terror. Max went up a few stairs, to be out of hearing of the others, as
+she seemed to wish. Then she whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"You know who it is. I saw her. Leave her alone. I implore you to leave
+her alone! She'll do no harm. Let her rest. Let the poor creature rest.
+If&mdash;if the police&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>At that moment there was a shout from the yard outside. Carrie sprang
+like a hare up the stairs to the window, and looked out with straining
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon was one of those dull misty winter days, with a leaden sky
+and an east wind.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll see that she isn't hurt!" called out Max, as he bounded down the
+stairs and ran into the yard behind the house.</p>
+
+<p>Here he found a motley group&mdash;the stablemen, the laundry-maids and the
+gardeners&mdash;all hunting in the many corners and crannies of the
+outbuildings for the old woman who had alarmed Anne.</p>
+
+<p>Max spoke sharply to the men.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, what are you about?" said he. "Hunting a poor old woman as if she
+were a wild animal? Go back to your work. She'll never dare to show her
+face while you are all about!"</p>
+
+<p>"She's left the well-house, sir, and, we think, she's got into the big
+barn," explained one of the lads, with the feeling that Mr. Max himself
+would want to join in the chase when he knew that the game was to hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, leave her there," answered Max, promptly. "She'll come out when
+you've all gone, and I'll send her about her business."</p>
+
+<p>Max saw, as he spoke, that there was a man standing at a little distance
+just outside the stable-gate, whom he did not recognize. Before he could
+ask who he was, however, the man had disappeared from view. He
+remembered what Carrie had said about the presence of a policeman, and
+he thought the time was come to take the bull by the horns.</p>
+
+<p>So he walked rapidly in the direction of the gate, and addressed the man
+whom he found there.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you a policeman?" he asked, abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," answered the man, touching his hat.</p>
+
+<p>"What is your business here?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm on the lookout for some one I have a warrant for. Charge of murder,
+sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Man or woman?"</p>
+
+<p>"Man, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you tell me his name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Horne, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Max thought a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Why are you pottering about here, instead of going straight up to the
+house?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, I'm obeying orders."</p>
+
+<p>"Come with me," said Max suddenly. "There's an old hag hiding in the
+barn now, who knows more about this business than Mr. Horne."</p>
+
+<p>Behind the young gentleman's back the detective smiled, but he professed
+to be ready to follow him.</p>
+
+<p>"There's only one way out of this barn," explained Max, as he approached
+the door, beside which a groom was standing. "By this door, which is
+never locked. There is a window, but it's too high up for anybody to get
+out by."</p>
+
+<p>Telling the groom to guard the door, Max went into the barn, followed by
+the detective. There was still light enough for them to find their way
+about among the lumber.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's the window, sir?" asked the detective.</p>
+
+<p>Max pointed to a speck of light high in the south wall of the barn.</p>
+
+<p>"She couldn't get out there," said he, "even if she could climb up to
+it. Unless she could swarm a rope."</p>
+
+<p>And he touched one of the ropes which dangled from a huge beam.</p>
+
+<p>The detective, however, walked rapidly past him, and stopped short,
+pointing to something which was lying on the floor under the window.</p>
+
+<p>It was the body of a man, lying in a heap.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Max helped the detective raise the man from the ground. He was quite
+dead, and from the position in which they had found him, both men
+concluded that he had been in the act of climbing up to the high window,
+when the rope by which he was holding broke under his weight. It was
+evident that he had fallen upon an old millstone which was among the
+lumber on the floor beneath, and that the shock of the fall had broken
+his neck.</p>
+
+<p>They had found out all this before Max could form any opinion as to the
+identity of the dead man. He was short of stature, and apparently
+between fifty and sixty years of age, slightly built, but muscular. The
+body was dressed in the clothes of a respectable mechanic.</p>
+
+<p>There was very little light in the barn by this time, and Max directed
+the groom, who had been standing outside, and who had entered, attracted
+by Max's shout of discovery, to bring a lantern.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose we'd better send for a doctor," said Max, "though the man's
+as dead as a doornail. In the meantime, just give a look around and see
+whether the woman is anywhere about."</p>
+
+<p>The detective appeared to follow the suggestion, for he at once
+proceeded to a further inspection of the building by the aid of one of
+the two lanterns which the groom had by this time brought. And presently
+he came back to Max with a bundle in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Max, by the light of the lantern which the groom was holding for him,
+was looking at the face of the dead man, whom he guessed to be one of
+Mrs. Higgs's accomplices, perhaps the mysterious person whose influence
+over the old woman, according to Carrie, was so bad.</p>
+
+<p>While he was staring intently at the dead face, he heard a stifled cry,
+and looking up, saw that Carrie had stolen into the barn behind the
+groom, and had her eyes fixed upon the body.</p>
+
+<p>Max sprang up.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know him? Is it the man who used to get into the place by
+night?" asked he, eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>Carrie, without answering, looked from the dead man to the detective,
+and from him to the bundle he was carrying.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" exclaimed she.</p>
+
+<p>Max looked in his turn. The detective was displaying, one by one, a
+woman's skirt, bodice, bonnet, shawl and a cap with a "front" of woman's
+hair sewn inside it.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you can guess, sir, what's become of the woman now?" said the
+officer, grimly.</p>
+
+<p>Max started violently, shocked by a surprise which, both for the
+detective and for Carrie, had been discounted some time ago.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Higgs" was a man.</p>
+
+<p>Even with this knowledge to help him, Max, as he stared again at the
+dead face, found it difficult to recognize in the still features those
+which in life had inspired him with feelings of repulsion.</p>
+
+<p>Just a quiet, inoffensive, respectable-looking man not coarse or low in
+type; this would have been his comment upon the dead man, if he had
+known nothing about him. Max shuddered as he withdrew his gaze; and, as
+he did so, he met the eyes of Carrie.</p>
+
+<p>He beckoned to her to come away with him, and she followed him as far as
+the door, toward which some members of the household, to whom the news
+had penetrated, were now hastening.</p>
+
+<p>"Carrie!" cried he, as he looked searchingly in her face, "you knew
+this? How long have you known it?"</p>
+
+<p>She could scarcely answer. She was shaking from head to foot, and was
+evidently suffering from a great shock.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I knew it, but only since I came here. It was part of what Mr.
+Dudley Horne let out in his raving."</p>
+
+<p>"Only part of it?" cried Max.</p>
+
+<p>But Carrie would confess nothing more. And, as Mr. Wedmore came across
+the yard at this moment, followed by Dr. Haselden, Carrie ran back into
+the house as Max met his father.</p>
+
+<p>"What's all this about a dead man found in the barn?" asked Mr. Wedmore,
+with all the arrogance of the country gentleman, who thinks that no one
+has a right to die on his premises without his permission.</p>
+
+<p>Max held his father back for a moment until the doctor had passed on. In
+the excitement of this occurrence, Mr. Wedmore was glad to have an
+opportunity of appearing to forget that there was any quarrel between
+them. On second thoughts, he inclined to think that he had perhaps, on
+this occasion, been a little too hard on his son, and he was anxious for
+some loop-hole by which he could creep out of the consequences of his
+own sternness. This, however, could hardly have been guessed by his
+manner, which was at least as arrogant as ever.</p>
+
+<p>"It's somebody who was mixed up in the death of Edward Jacobs, sir, I
+think," said Max, in a low voice. "A man who has been living down at the
+East End of London disguised as a woman, and who was, I believe, at the
+bottom of all the mischief."</p>
+
+<p>"Man disguised as a woman?" cried Mr. Wedmore, incredulously. "What an
+improbable story! And what should he do down here in my barn?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think he must have come down to see Dudley, sir. We believe that it
+was he who tried to drown Dudley, after he had succeeded in drowning
+Edward Jacobs."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wedmore frowned in perplexity.</p>
+
+<p>"Trying to drown Dudley! What on earth should he do that for? What had
+Dudley to do with him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, we don't quite know. But Dudley was acquainted with this
+man, undoubtedly, though we don't know whether he knew him to be a man,
+or only as Mrs. Higgs, which was the name the man went by."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see the man," said Mr. Wedmore.</p>
+
+<p>And, pushing past his son, he entered the barn.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor made way for him.</p>
+
+<p>"He is quite dead. He must have been killed instantly," said Doctor
+Haselden, as his friend came up.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wedmore took the lantern from the man who held it, and looked at the
+dead face. As he did so, his first expression of curiosity gave place to
+one of perplexity, followed by a stare of intense amazement and horror.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it? Do you know him?" asked Doctor Haselden, while Max, who had
+followed his father in, watched with intense interest and surprise.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wedmore did not seem to hear. He continued to look at the dead face
+for some moments with an appearance of utter absorption, and then,
+suddenly staggering back, he made for the open air without a word of
+explanation.</p>
+
+<p>Max stared at the doctor, and then followed his father out. But Mr.
+Wedmore was already half way to the house, where he shut himself into
+the study, and locking the door, refused to be disturbed.</p>
+
+<p>Max was more bewildered than ever by this new turn of affairs. With a
+dogged determination not to be kept any longer out of a secret of which
+everybody but himself seemed to know something, he went straight up to
+the sick-room in search of Carrie. His knock, however, was answered by
+the professional nurse, who opened the door and asked him what he
+wanted.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it doesn't matter," said Max. "At least&mdash;I wanted to know how Mr.
+Horne is now."</p>
+
+<p>"He won't be so well to-night, I expect," answered the nurse, tartly.
+"There's been a great noise and disturbance outside, and he's heard
+something of it, and it's made him restless and curious. He is asking
+questions about it all the time, and he won't be satisfied. He keeps
+asking for the other nurse, who is out taking her walk, as I tell him."</p>
+
+<p>At this point Dudley's voice was heard from the bed. "Who's that at the
+door? Who is it?"</p>
+
+<p>Max, after a moment's hesitation, during which the nurse assumed an air
+of washing her hands of the whole matter, answered:</p>
+
+<p>"Me, old chap&mdash;Max. How are you?"</p>
+
+<p>Dudley sprang up in bed. The nurse folded her arms and frowned.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in, oh, come in, just one moment! I'll be quiet, nurse, quite
+quiet. But I must see him&mdash;I must see somebody."</p>
+
+<p>Max threw an imploring glance at the nurse, who refused to look at him.
+Then he went in.</p>
+
+<p>"Only a minute&mdash;I won't stay a minute."</p>
+
+<p>The nurse shrugged her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"It's against the doctor's orders. I wash my hands of the consequences,"
+said she.</p>
+
+<p>And, with her head held very high, she left the room.</p>
+
+<p>Max stood irresolute. By the look of excitement on Dudley's face, he
+judged that anything must be better for him than the eager suspense from
+which he was evidently suffering. This news of the death of the odious
+inhabitant of the house by the wharf must surely bring relief to him. As
+soon as they were alone together, Dudley burst out eagerly:</p>
+
+<p>"That noise! It's no use deceiving me; I know what it was. They were
+after him. Tell me&mdash;has he got away? Has my father got away?"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>BACK TO LOVE AND LIFE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Max fell into a chair. He stared at Dudley for a few moments before he
+could speak. Dudley's father! The man supposed to have died years and
+years ago in an asylum abroad, was the person who had passed as "Mrs.
+Higgs!" Even before he had had time to learn any of the details of the
+strange story, the outlines of it were at once apparent to the mind of
+Max.</p>
+
+<p>Here was, then, the explanation of the mysterious bond between Dudley
+and Mrs. Higgs; here was the meaning of his visits to Limehouse.</p>
+
+<p>Dudley repeated his question before Max had recovered from the shock of
+his surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said he at last, "he has got away."</p>
+
+<p>But Dudley detected some reserve in his manner, or perhaps his own
+suspicions were aroused. He looked searchingly at Max, and asked
+abruptly:</p>
+
+<p>"Is he dead?"</p>
+
+<p>Max looked at him askance.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>Dudley lay back in his pillows.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God!"</p>
+
+<p>And Max knew by the look of intense relief on his friend's face that he
+had done right in telling him the truth.</p>
+
+<p>But, indeed, Max could not guess how intense the relief was from the
+burden of the secret which Dudley had had to bear for so long; and
+undoubtedly the discovery that it was a secret no longer, that the
+necessity for concealment was now over, helped his recovery materially.</p>
+
+<p>Max told him, as briefly as possible, the details of the occurrence; but
+he neither asked nor invited any more questions.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until some time afterward, when Dudley had left the
+sick-room, that the whole of the story became known to the family. But,
+in the meantime, the inquest on the body brought many facts to light.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Edward Jacobs, the widow of the man who had been found drowned in
+the Thames off Limehouse some weeks before, had been, so it was
+discovered, the person to give information to the police against Dudley,
+as the suspected murderer of her husband. She had traced to him the
+weekly postal orders, which she looked upon as blood-money, and she had
+then hung about his chambers, and on one occasion followed him to
+Limehouse, without, however, penetrating farther than the entrance of
+the wharf.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the information given by her a warrant was issued against Dudley;
+but in searching his chambers a number of letters were found, all
+addressed to Dudley, which threw a new and lurid light upon the affair.
+The letters were written by the father to the son, and contained the
+whole story of his return to England a few months before; of his anxiety
+to see his son; his morbid fear of being recognized and shut up as a
+lunatic, and his equally morbid hankering after information concerning
+Edward Jacobs, the man who had ruined him.</p>
+
+<p>All these letters, which were directed in a feigned handwriting, seemed
+sane and sensible enough, although they showed signs of eccentricity of
+character.</p>
+
+<p>The next batch were written after the disappearance of Edward Jacobs,
+and in them the signs of morbid eccentricity were more apparent. The
+writer owned to having "put Jacobs out of the way," upbraided Dudley for
+interfering on behalf of such a wretch, and accused him of ingratitude
+in refusing to leave England with his father, who had done mankind in
+general and him in particular a service in killing a monster. The writer
+went on to accuse Dudley of siding with his father's enemies, of wishing
+to have him shut up, and told him that he should never succeed.</p>
+
+<p>Some of these letters were directed to The Beeches, and some to Dudley's
+chambers, showing an intimate knowledge of his whereabouts.</p>
+
+<p>The latest letters were wilder, more bitter, showing how insanity which
+had broken out into violence before was increasing in intensity, and how
+the feelings of regard which he had seemed to entertain for his son had
+given place to strong resentment against him.</p>
+
+<p>After the reading of these letters, it was plain that the crime of
+murder which Mrs. Jacobs had laid to Dudley's charge had been really the
+work of his father; and Mrs. Jacobs herself, on being made acquainted
+with these facts, agreed with this conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>There remained only the question of Dudley's complicity in the crime to
+be considered, and that was a matter which could be left until the sick
+man's recovery.</p>
+
+<p>It was on the first day of Dudley's appearance in the family circle that
+the subject was broached, clumsily enough, by Mr. Wedmore, who was dying
+to know a great deal more than anybody had been willing to tell him.</p>
+
+<p>Dudley had come into the drawing-room, which had been well warmed for
+the occasion with a roaring fire, and it was here that they found him
+after luncheon, with the professional nurse beside him.</p>
+
+<p>The girls greeted him rather shyly, especially Doreen, but Mrs. Wedmore
+was motherly and gentle. Mr. Wedmore attacked him at once.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't understand, Dudley, why you kept it all so dark. Couldn't you
+see for yourself that it was better for your father to be under
+restraint, as well as safer for other people?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wedmore tried to interpose and to change the conversation to
+another subject, but Dudley said:</p>
+
+<p>"I would rather explain now, once and for all. I shall be going away
+to-morrow, and there are several things which I should like to make
+clear first." He paused, and Mrs. Wedmore, her daughters and the nurse
+took the opportunity to leave the room. "Now, Mr. Wedmore, tell me what
+you want to know."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you told us nothing about your father's being alive and back in
+England, for one thing."</p>
+
+<p>"It was by his wish that I kept it a secret. He persisted that he was
+sane; he seemed to be sane. But he believed that if it were known that
+he was in England he would be shut up."</p>
+
+<p>"But the passing himself off as an old woman, this living in a sort of
+underground way, didn't that look like madness?"</p>
+
+<p>"I took it for eccentricity and nothing more, until&mdash;until he sent for
+me one day, and brought me suddenly into a room&mdash;a little dark, bare
+room&mdash;where there was a man lying on the ground asleep, as I thought. My
+father told me to bring him into the next room, and&mdash;when I stooped to
+touch him"&mdash;Dudley shuddered at the ghastly recollection&mdash;"my hands were
+covered with blood."</p>
+
+<p>"Good gracious! He had murdered him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And from that time he seemed a different man. I saw that he was
+mad. I tried to persuade him to give himself up, to let himself be put
+under restraint. I laid traps for him, trying to take him to an asylum.
+But he was too cunning for me, and all I got by it was to rouse in him a
+bitter feeling of hatred of myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you give information&mdash;to the police, if necessary?"</p>
+
+<p>"How could I? My own father! I believed he would be hanged if he was
+caught. I believe so still. The last time I saw him he seemed sane,
+except for a feeling of irritation against me and against Carrie, who,
+it seems, is my half-sister. But he attacked me suddenly, knocked me on
+the head, and tried to drown me. There, now you know as much as I do.
+Can you wonder now that I was obliged to cut myself off from my friends,
+with such a burden as that on my mind?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wedmore was silent for a time.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor lad!" he said at last. "Poor lad! I think you might have found
+some better way out of it than holding your tongue and shutting yourself
+up from all your friends; but, on the other hand, it was a jolly
+difficult position. Jolly difficult! And so you never even told Max?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, though I more than once felt inclined to. But it was such a ghastly
+business altogether that I thought I'd better hold my tongue, especially
+as&mdash;I was afraid&mdash;it might filter through him to&mdash;to somebody
+else&mdash;somebody who couldn't be told a beastly secret like that."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wedmore nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"And this girl&mdash;this Carrie?" said he.</p>
+
+<p>Dudley's face lighted up.</p>
+
+<p>"That's my one comfort in all this," said he, "that it has led to my
+finding out the girl and doing something for her. I never heard of her
+before. But my father told me she was my half-sister, and they say there
+is something in our faces which confirms the story. Anyhow, she's a
+grand girl, and I'm going to look after her. She's gone away&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Gone away!" repeated Mr. Wedmore, disconcerted.</p>
+
+<p>There had been a lull in the quarrel between him and his son for the
+last few days, during which Carrie had avoided Max and Max had avoided
+his father.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Dudley. "She would go, and she thought it best to go without
+any fuss, leaving me to say good-bye for her. She's all right. I'm going
+to look after her; and she's going into training as a hospital nurse."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well, I'm sure I hope she'll get on," said Mr. Wedmore, rather
+vaguely.</p>
+
+<p>He had been getting used, during the last few days, to the thought of
+the pretty, blue-eyed girl as a daughter-in-law, and he found himself
+now rather hoping than fearing that Max would stick to his choice.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said he at last, "I must send the ladies to have a look at you
+now, I suppose. I wouldn't let them talk my head off on the first day,
+if I were you."</p>
+
+<p>Dudley sprang to his feet. He seemed restless and excited.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't talk much. I won't let them talk much," said he, in an unsteady
+voice. "But may I see&mdash;may I speak to Doreen?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wedmore nodded good-humoredly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you may speak to her, if she'll let you," said he, cheerfully.
+"But, really, she's a thorny young person. She's treated young Lindsay,
+the curate, very cruelly, and I'm sure he's a much better looking fellow
+than you. However, you can try your luck."</p>
+
+<p>Dudley did not wait for any more encouragement. No sooner had Mr.
+Wedmore left the room than the convalescent followed. He found Doreen in
+the hall, putting a handful of letters on the table ready for the post.
+She started when she turned and saw him, and, leaning back with her
+hands upon the table, she asked him what he meant by leaving the nice,
+warm, ox-roasting fire they had built up expressly for him upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>"I hear you've been treating the curate very badly," said he. "I've come
+to ask for an explanation."</p>
+
+<p>Doreen looked down at the tip of her shoe, and, after a pause, said
+demurely:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I suppose if you don't know the reason, nobody does."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, was it anything connected with me, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"So I have been informed," answered Doreen, more primly than ever.</p>
+
+<p>And then he waited for her to look up; and when she did, he kissed her.
+And they didn't exchange a word upon the subject of the long
+misunderstanding, but just strolled into the dining-room and saw
+pictures in the fire together.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>There was no trial and no scandal; there were rumors, and that was all.
+Max remained true to his fancy for Carrie, and gave proof of his
+sincerity by settling down to work in a merchant's office, after the
+manner so dear to his father's heart. And in return, Mr. Wedmore
+consented to Carrie's being invited down to The Beeches in the spring,
+to be present at Doreen's wedding.</p>
+
+<p>And when Carrie came, several details concerning the life led by her and
+the supposed Mrs. Higgs in the house by the docks came to light, and the
+last remains of the mystery were cleared away.</p>
+
+<p>She told how her father, passing himself off as Mrs. Higgs, an old
+servant in the Horne family, of whom Carrie had heard in the lifetime of
+Miss Aldridge, had found her out, had touched her heart by a kindness
+evidently genuine, and had prevailed upon her to go and make her home in
+the deserted house, which, Mrs. Higgs said, had been intended for her by
+her late master.</p>
+
+<p>In the empty house they found that an entrance had been made into the
+adjoining warehouse, which had been used by a gang of thieves as a
+hiding-place for stolen goods. In the little front shop these ingenious
+persons had fashioned an ingenious hiding-place by hollowing out a
+tunnel to the river. Into this tunnel the water flowed at high tide; but
+when the tide was low an entrance could be effected from the river, by
+which the thieves could pass in and out, and in which they could safely
+deposit, in a chest in the slimy earth, property too valuable to be left
+above ground.</p>
+
+<p>Carrie explained how Mrs. Higgs fraternized with the thieves, before she
+herself guessed who they were, and how she had got used to them before
+she learned their character, though not before she had grown suspicious
+about them. How she had seen Dudley with Mrs. Higgs, without knowing who
+he was, and how she had set him down as a suspicious character from the
+furtive manner of his visits. How she herself posted the two letters,
+the one to Edward Jacobs and the other to Dudley, which brought them to
+the place on the same day. How she herself was sent out of the way on
+that occasion, and returned in time to witness, through the hole in the
+floor above, the stooping over the body by Dudley, and his drawing back
+covered with blood, which she took for the actual murder. How Mrs. Higgs
+and Dudley had then left the house together, while she was too sick with
+fright to move. How she had remained outside the house until she saw
+Max; and how, when he was gone, and Mrs. Higgs had come back, she found
+that the manner of the supposed old woman had changed toward her and
+grown unbearably cruel and harsh. How she had been left for days and
+nights by herself, until she resolved to bear it no longer. And how,
+when Mrs. Higgs had sent her to Dudley's chambers with the message about
+Dick Barker, she had told her never to come back again.</p>
+
+<p>Carrie added that she herself had always been treated with kindness, not
+only by the gang, of whom, indeed, they saw little, but by such of the
+men and boys on the barges which came to the wharf as knew her, and
+"winked" at her unauthorized tenancy of the deserted house.</p>
+
+<p>In broad daylight, in the company of half a dozen policemen, Max and
+Dudley revisited the house together. They found the holes in the wall
+through which "Mrs. Higgs" took stock of Max on the occasion of his
+first visit; they tested the ingenious device by means of which the
+middle boards in the front shop could be made to fall and deposit
+anything laid upon them in the tunnel beneath. They found the hole in
+which Mrs. Higgs had stepped, and the pole which had been used to
+underpin the middle boards. This hole extended under the floor of the
+kitchen, so that by creeping under the flooring from the one room to the
+other the pole could be withdrawn or replaced without the knowledge of a
+person in the front room.</p>
+
+<p>This final discovery explained to Max the manner in which the body of
+Jacobs had been made to disappear while he himself was in the room with
+it.</p>
+
+<p>The gang, of which the illustrious Dick Barker had formed one, had
+wisely disappeared, never to return.</p>
+
+<p>But one day, when Carrie, in her nurse's dress, was walking along Oxford
+Street, in the company of Max, to whom, with Mr. Wedmore's permission,
+she was now engaged, she felt a hand in her pocket, and turning quickly,
+found that she was having her purse stolen, "for auld lang syne," by
+Dick Barker.</p>
+
+<p>Max recognized in the well-dressed young man, with the low type of face,
+the man whom he had once supposed to be his rival.</p>
+
+<p>As Dick promptly disappeared, Carrie and Max looked at each other, and
+the girl burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Max, if it hadn't been for you&mdash;" whispered she, as she dried her
+eyes quickly and hurried on with him.</p>
+
+<p>"And, oh, Carrie, if it hadn't been for you&mdash;" whispered Max back, as he
+took her into the shop of the Hungarian Bread Company, and made her have
+a cup of tea.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHARF BY THE DOCKS***</p>
+<p>******* This file should be named 16092-h.txt or 16092-h.zip *******</p>
+<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br />
+<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/0/9/16092">https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/0/9/16092</a></p>
+<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.</p>
+
+<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.</p>
+
+
+
+<pre>
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+<a href="https://gutenberg.org/license">https://gutenberg.org/license)</a>.
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS,' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's
+eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII,
+compressed (zipped), HTML and others.
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over
+the old filename and etext number.  The replaced older file is renamed.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving
+new filenames and etext numbers.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">https://www.gutenberg.org</a>
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000,
+are filed in directories based on their release date.  If you want to
+download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular
+search system you may utilize the following addresses and just
+download by the etext year.
+
+<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/">https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/</a>
+
+    (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99,
+     98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90)
+
+EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are
+filed in a different way.  The year of a release date is no longer part
+of the directory path.  The path is based on the etext number (which is
+identical to the filename).  The path to the file is made up of single
+digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename.  For
+example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at:
+
+https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/2/3/10234
+
+or filename 24689 would be found at:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/6/8/24689
+
+An alternative method of locating eBooks:
+<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL">https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL</a>
+
+*** END: FULL LICENSE ***
+</pre>
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/old/16092.txt b/old/16092.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..659732e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/16092.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8950 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Wharf by the Docks, by Florence Warden
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Wharf by the Docks
+       A Novel
+
+
+Author: Florence Warden
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 19, 2005  [eBook #16092]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHARF BY THE DOCKS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Mary Meehan, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE WHARF BY THE DOCKS
+
+A Novel
+
+by
+
+FLORENCE WARDEN
+
+Author of "The Mystery of the Inn by the Shore," etc.
+
+1896
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+SOMETHING AMISS.
+
+
+Everybody knows Canterbury, with its Old-World charms and its
+ostentatious air of being content to be rather behind the times, of
+looking down upon the hurrying Americans who dash through its cathedral
+and take snap-shots at its slums, and at all those busy moderns who
+cannot afford to take life at its own jog-trot pace.
+
+But everybody does not know the charming old halls and comfortable,
+old-fashioned mansions which are dotted about the neighboring country,
+either nestling in secluded nooks of the Kentish valleys or holding a
+stately stand on the wooded hills.
+
+Of this latter category was The Beeches, a pretty house of warm, red
+brick, with a dignified Jacobean front, which stood upon the highest
+ground of a prettily wooded park, and commanded one of those soft,
+undulating, sleepy landscapes which are so characteristically English,
+and of which grazing sheep and ruminating cows form so important a
+feature. A little tame, perhaps, but very pleasant, very homely, very
+sweet to look upon by the tired eyes that have seen enough of the
+active, bustling world.
+
+Mr. George Wedmore, of the firm of Wedmore, Parkinson and Bishop,
+merchants of the city of London, had bought back the place, which had
+formerly belonged to his family, from the Jews into whose hands it had
+fallen, and had settled there to spend in retirement the latter end of
+his life, surrounded by a family who were not too well pleased to
+exchange busy Bayswater for what they were flippant enough to call a
+wilderness.
+
+Dinner was over; and Mr. Wedmore, in a snug easy-chair by the
+dining-room fire, was waiting for Doctor Haselden, who often looked in
+for a smoke and a game of chess with the owner of The Beeches.
+
+A lean, fidgety man, with thin hair and grayish whiskers, Mr. Wedmore
+looked less at home in the velveteen suit and gaiters which he persisted
+in wearing even in the evening, less like the country gentleman it was
+his ambition to be, than like the care-laden city merchant he at heart
+still was.
+
+On the other side of the table sat his better half, in whom it was easy
+to see he must have found all the charm of contrast to his own
+personality. A cheery, buxom woman, still handsome, full of life and
+fun, she had held for the whole of her married life a sway over her lord
+and master all the greater that neither of them was conscious of the
+fact. A most devoted and submissive wife, a most indulgent and
+affectionate mother, Mrs. Wedmore occupied the not unenviable position
+of being half slave, half idol in her own household.
+
+The clock struck eight, and the bell rang.
+
+"There he is! There's the doctor!" cried Mrs. Wedmore, with a beaming
+nod. Her husband sat up in his chair, and the troubled frown which he
+had worn all the evening grew a little deeper.
+
+"I should like you, my dear, to leave us together this evening," said
+he.
+
+Mrs. Wedmore jumped up at once, gathering her balls of wool and big
+knitting-needles together with one quick sweep of the arm.
+
+"All right, dear," said she, with another nod, giving him an anxious
+look.
+
+Mr. Wedmore perceived the look and smiled. He stretched out his hand to
+lay it gently on his wife's arm as she passed him.
+
+"Nothing about me. Nothing for you to be alarmed about," said he.
+
+Mrs. Wedmore hesitated a moment. She had her suspicions, and she would
+dearly have liked to know more. But she was the best trained of wives;
+and after a moment's pause, seeing that she was to hear nothing further,
+she said, good-humoredly: "All right, dear," and left the room, just in
+time to shake hands with Doctor Haselden as she went out.
+
+Now, while the host found it impossible to shake off the signs of his
+old calling, the doctor was a man who had never been able to assume
+them. From head to foot there was no trace of the doctor in his
+appearance; he looked all over what at heart he was--the burly,
+good-humored, home-loving, land-loving country gentleman, who looked
+upon Great Datton, where his home was, as the pivot of the world.
+
+However he was dressed, he always looked shabby, and he could never have
+been mistaken for anything but an English gentleman.
+
+He shook hands with Mr. Wedmore, with a smile. These poor Londoners,
+trying to acclimatize themselves, amused him greatly. He looked upon
+them much as the Londoner looks upon the Polish Jew immigrants--with
+pity, a little jealousy, and no little scorn.
+
+"Where's Carlo?" asked he.
+
+"Oh, Carlo was a nuisance, so I've sent him to the stable," said Mr.
+Wedmore, with the slightly colder manner which he instantly assumed if
+any grievance of his, however small, was touched upon.
+
+Carlo was a young retriever, which Mr. Wedmore, in the stern belief that
+it was the proper thing in a country house, had encouraged about the
+house until his habits of getting between everybody's legs and helping
+himself to the contents of everybody's plate had so roused the ire of
+the rest of the household that Mr. Wedmore had had to give way to the
+universal prejudice against him.
+
+The doctor shook his head. Lack of capacity for managing a dog was just
+what one might have expected from these new-comers.
+
+Mr. Wedmore turned his chair to face that of the doctor, and spoke in
+the sharp, incisive tones of a man who has serious business on hand.
+
+"I've been hoping you would drop in every night for the last fortnight,"
+said he, "and as you didn't come, I was at last obliged to send for you.
+I have a very important matter to consult you about. You've brought your
+pipe?" The doctor produced it from his pocket. "Well, fill it, and
+listen. It's about young Horne--Dudley Horne--that I want to speak to
+you, to consult you, in fact."
+
+The doctor nodded as he filled his pipe.
+
+"The young barrister I've met here, who's engaged to your elder
+daughter?"
+
+"Well, she was all but engaged to him," admitted Mr. Wedmore, in a
+grudging tone. "But I'm going to put a stop to it, and I'll tell you
+why." Here he got up, as if unable to keep still in the state of
+excitement into which he was falling, and stood with his hands behind
+him and his back to the fire. "I have a strong suspicion that the young
+man's not quite right here." And lowering his voice, Mr. Wedmore touched
+his forehead.
+
+"Good gracious! You surprise me!" cried the doctor. "He always seemed to
+me such a clever young fellow. Indeed, you said so to me yourself."
+
+"So he is. Very clever," said Mr. Wedmore, shortly. "I don't suppose
+there are many young chaps of his age--for he's barely thirty--at the
+Bar whose prospects are as good as his. But, for all that, I have a
+strong suspicion that he's got a tile loose, and that's why I wanted to
+speak to you. Now his father was in a lunatic asylum no less than three
+times, and was in one when he died."
+
+The doctor looked grave.
+
+"That's a bad history, certainly. Do you know how the father's malady
+started?"
+
+"Why, yes. It was the effect of a wound in the head received when he was
+a young man out in America, in the war with Mexico in '46."
+
+"That isn't the sort of mania that is likely to come down from father to
+son," said the doctor, "if his brain was perfectly sound before, and the
+recurrent mania the result of an accident."
+
+"Well, so I've understood. And the matter has never troubled me at all
+until lately, when I have begun to detect certain morbid tendencies in
+Dudley, and a general change which makes me hesitate to trust him with
+the happiness of my daughter."
+
+"Can you give me instances?" asked the doctor, although he began to feel
+sure that whatever opinion he might express on the matter, Mr. Wedmore
+would pay little attention to any but his own.
+
+"Well, for you to understand the case, I must tell you a little more
+about the lad's father. He and I were very old friends--chums from
+boyhood, in fact. When he came back from America--where he went from a
+lad's love of adventure--he made a good marriage from a monetary point
+of view; married a wharf on the Thames, in fact, somewhere Limehouse
+way, and settled down as a wharfinger. He was a steady fellow, and did
+very well, until one fine morning he was found trying to cut his throat,
+and had to be locked up. Well, he was soon out again that time, and
+things went on straight enough for eight or nine years, by which time he
+had done very well--made a lot of money by speculation--and was thinking
+of retiring from business altogether. Then, perhaps it was the extra
+pressure of his increased business, but, at any rate, he broke out
+again, tried to murder his wife that time, and did, in fact, injure her
+so much that she died shortly afterward. Of course, he had to be shut up
+again; and a man named Edward Jacobs, a shrewd Jew, who was his
+confidential clerk, carried on the business in his absence. Now, both
+Horne and his wife had had the fullest confidence in this Jacobs, but he
+turned out all wrong. As soon as he learned, at the end of about twelve
+months, that Horne was coming out again, he decamped with everything he
+could lay his hands on; and from the position of affairs you may guess
+that he made a very good haul. Well, poor Horne found himself in a maze
+of difficulties; in fact, his clerk's fraud ruined him. Everything that
+could be sold or mortgaged had to go to the settlement, and when his
+affairs had been finally put straight, there was only a little bit left,
+that had been so settled upon his wife that no one could touch it. He
+made a good fight of it for a little while, with the help of a few old
+friends, but, in the end, he broke down again for the third time. But he
+escaped out of the asylum and went abroad, without seeing his friends or
+his child, and a few months afterward the announcement of his death in
+an American asylum was sent by a correspondent out there. Happily there
+were no difficulties about securing the mother's money for the son, and
+it was enough to educate the boy and to give him a start; but, of
+course, he had to begin the world as a poor man instead of a rich one.
+Perhaps that was all the better for him--or so I thought until lately."
+
+"And what are these signs of a morbid tendency that you spoke of?" asked
+the doctor.
+
+"Well, in the first place, after being almost extravagant in his
+devotion to my daughter, Doreen, he now neglects her outrageously--comes
+down very seldom, writes short letters or none. Now, my daughter is not
+the sort of girl that a sane man would neglect," added Doctor Wedmore,
+proudly.
+
+"Certainly not," assented the doctor, inwardly thinking that it was much
+less surprising than it would have been in the case of one of his own
+girls.
+
+"In the second place, he is always harping upon the subject of Jacobs
+and his peculations--an old subject, which he might well let rest. And,
+in the third place, he has become moody, morose and absent-minded; and
+my son, Max, who often visits him at his chambers in Lincoln's Inn, has
+noticed the change even more than I, who have fewer opportunities of
+seeing him."
+
+The doctor was puffing stolidly at his pipe and looking at the fire.
+
+"It is very difficult to form an opinion upon report only," said he.
+"Frankly, I can see nothing in what you have told me about the young man
+which could not be explained in other and likelier ways. He may have got
+entangled, for instance, with some woman in London."
+
+Mr. Wedmore took fire at this suggestion.
+
+"In that case, the sooner Doreen forgets all about him the better."
+
+"Mind, I'm only suggesting!" put in the doctor, hastily. "There may be a
+dozen more reasons--"
+
+"I shall not wait to find them out," said Mr. Wedmore, decisively. "He
+and Max are coming down together this evening. My wife would have them
+to help in organizing some affair they're getting up for Christmas. I'll
+send him to the right-about without any more nonsense."
+
+"But surely that is hardly--"
+
+"Hardly what?" snapped out Mr. Wedmore, as he poked the fire viciously.
+
+"Well, hardly fair to either of the young people. Put a few questions to
+him yourself, or better still, let your wife do it. It may be only a
+storm in a teacup, after all. Remember, he is the son of your old
+friend. And you wouldn't like to have it on your conscience that you had
+treated him harshly."
+
+The doctor's advice was sane and sound enough, but Mr. Wedmore was not
+in the mood to listen to it. That notion of an entanglement with another
+woman rankled in his proud mind, and made him still less inclined to be
+patient and forbearing.
+
+"I shall give Doreen warning of what I am going to do at once," said he,
+"before Horne turns up."
+
+The doctor shrugged his shoulders. He was obstinate himself.
+
+Mr. Wedmore crossed the long room to the door, and opened it sharply.
+
+The hall was full of people and of great bales of goods, which were
+piled upon the center-table and heaped up all around it.
+
+"Doreen!" he called, sharply.
+
+Out of the crowd there rushed a girl--such a girl! One of those radiant
+creatures who explain the cult of womanhood; who make it difficult even
+for sober-minded, middle-aged men and matrons to realize that this is
+nothing but flesh and blood like themselves; one of those beautiful
+creatures who claim worship as a right and who repay it with kindness
+and brightness and sweetness and laughter.
+
+No house was ever dull that held Doreen Wedmore.
+
+She was a tall girl, brown-haired, brown-eyed, made to laugh and to live
+in the sunshine. Nobody could resist her, and nobody ever tried to.
+
+She sprang across the hall to her father and whirled him back into the
+dining-room, and put her back against it.
+
+"Dudley's come!" said she. "He's in the hall--among the blankets!"
+
+"Blankets!"
+
+"Yes." She was crossing the room by this time to the doctor, whom she
+had quickly perceived, and was holding out her hand to him. "You must
+know, doctor, that we are up to our eyes in blankets just now, and in
+bundles of red flannel, and in soup and coals. Papa has been reading up
+Christmas in the country in the olden time, and he finds that to be
+correct you must deluge the neighborhood with those articles. They are
+not at all what the people want, as far as I can make out. But that
+doesn't matter. It pleases papa to demoralize the neighborhood; so we're
+doing it. And mamma helps him. She dates from the prehistoric period
+when a wife _really_ swore to obey her husband; so she does it through
+thick and thin. Of course, she knows better all the time. She could
+always set papa right if she chose. Whatever happens, papa must be
+obeyed. So when he wants to run his dear old head into a noose, she
+dutifully holds it open for him, when all the time she knows how
+uncomfortable he'll be till he gets out."
+
+"You're a saucy puss, Miss!" cried her father, trying to frown, but
+betraying his delight in his daughter's merry tongue by the twinkle in
+his eyes.
+
+"And that's the right sort of woman for a wife," said the old doctor,
+enthusiastically. "I must say I think it's a bad sign when young girls
+think they can improve upon their own mothers."
+
+"She doesn't mean half she says," said her father, indulgently.
+
+"Oh, yes, she does," retorted Doreen. "And she wants to know, please,
+what it is you have to say to Dudley."
+
+The doctor rose from his chair, and Mr. Wedmore frowned.
+
+"And it's no use putting me off by telling me not to ask questions. I'm
+not mamma, you know."
+
+"I intend to ask him--something about you."
+
+It was the girl's turn to frown now.
+
+"Please don't, papa," said she, in a lower voice. "I know you're going
+to worry him, and to put your hands behind your back and ask him
+conundrums, and to make all sorts of mischief, under the impression that
+you are putting things right. And if you only just wouldn't, everything
+would soon be as right as possible. While if you persist--"
+
+But Mr. Wedmore interrupted her, not harshly, as he would have done
+anybody else, but with decision.
+
+"You must trust me to know best, my dear. It is better for you both that
+we should come to some understanding. Haselden, you'll excuse me for
+half an hour, won't you? And you, Doreen," and he turned again to his
+daughter, "stay with the doctor here, and try to talk sense till I come
+back again."
+
+And Mr. Wedmore went quickly out of the room, without giving the girl a
+chance of saying anything more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+MAX MAKES A DISCOVERY.
+
+
+Doreen's bright face lost a little of its color and much of its gayety
+as her father disappeared. The doctor felt sorry for her.
+
+"Come, come; cheer up, my dear," he said. "If he loves you honestly, and
+I don't know how he can fail to do so, a few words with your father will
+put matters all right. There is nothing to look so sad about, I think."
+
+But Doreen gave him one earnest, questioning look, and then her eyelids
+fell again.
+
+"You don't know," she said, in a low voice. "Papa doesn't understand
+Dudley; but I think I do. He is very sensitive and rather reserved about
+himself. If papa interferes now, he will offend him, and Dudley may very
+likely go off at once, and perhaps never come near me again. He is
+proud--very proud."
+
+"But if he could behave like that," replied the doctor, quickly, "if he
+could throw over such a nice girl as you for no reason worth speaking
+of, I should call him a nasty-tempered fellow, whom you ought to be glad
+to be rid of."
+
+"Ah, but you would be wrong," retorted Doreen, with a little flush in
+her face. "It is quite true that he has neglected me a little lately,
+written short letters, and not been down to see me so often. But I am
+sure there was some better reason for his conduct than papa thinks. And
+if I feel so sure, and if I am ready to trust him, why shouldn't papa
+be?"
+
+The doctor smiled at her ingenuousness.
+
+"Your father is right in claiming that he ought to be made acquainted
+with the young man's reason for conduct which looks quite unwarrantable
+on the face of it," said he.
+
+But Doreen gave a little sigh.
+
+"I don't think that a man has a right to turn inquisitor over another
+man, just because the second man is ready to marry the first man's
+daughter," said she. "And I'm sure papa wouldn't have stood it when
+_he_ was young."
+
+The doctor laughed.
+
+"He ought to put up with any amount of questioning rather than lose the
+girl of his choice," said he decisively. "And if he has the stuff of a
+man in him he will do so."
+
+"But he is unhappy. I know it," said Doreen.
+
+"Unhappy!" cried the doctor, indignantly. "And what's he got to be
+unhappy about, I should like to know? He ought to be thanking Heaven on
+his knees all day long for getting such a nice girl to promise to marry
+him. That's the attitude a young man used to take when I was young."
+
+"Did you go down on your knees all day long when Mrs. Haselden promised
+to marry you?" asked Doreen, recovering her sauciness at the notion.
+"And why should he do it till he knows what sort of a wife I am going to
+make? And why should he go down on his knees more than I on mine? When
+there are more women in the world than men, too!"
+
+The doctor shook his head.
+
+"Ah, there is no arguing with you saucy girls," said he. "But I know
+that I, for my part, don't know of a man in the whole world who is
+worthy to marry one of my daughters."
+
+As the doctor finished speaking, the door was opened quickly, and Mr.
+Wedmore came in, looking white and worried.
+
+Doreen ran to him with an anxious face.
+
+"What have you done, papa, what have you done? Did you see him? What did
+you say? What did you say?"
+
+Mr. Wedmore put his arm around his daughter, and kissed her tenderly.
+
+"Don't trouble your head about him any more, my dear child," said he in
+a husky voice. "He isn't worth it. He isn't worthy of you."
+
+Doreen drew away from her father, looking into his face with searching
+eyes and with an expression full of fear.
+
+"Papa, what do you mean? You have sent him away?"
+
+Mr. Wedmore answered in a loud and angry voice; but it was clear enough
+that the anger was not directed against his daughter.
+
+"I did not send him away. He took himself off. I had hardly begun to
+speak to him--and I began quite quietly, mind--when he made the excuse
+of a letter which he found waiting for him, to go back to town. Without
+any ceremony, he rushed out of the study into the hall, and snatched up
+his hat and coat to go."
+
+"And is he gone?" asked Doreen, in a low voice, as she staggered back a
+step.
+
+"Oh, yes, I suppose so. And a good riddance, too. There was no letter at
+all for him, I suppose."
+
+"Yes, there was a letter!" faltered Doreen.
+
+She gave a glance round her; seemed to remember suddenly the presence of
+a third person, for she blushed deeply on meeting the doctor's eyes;
+then, without another word, she sprang across the room to the door.
+
+"Where are you going?" cried her father, as he followed her into the
+hall.
+
+But she did not answer. The hall-door was closing with a loud clang.
+
+Doreen was not the girl to lose her lover for want of a little energy.
+She was fonder of Dudley than people imagined. There is always an
+inclination in the general mind to consider that a person of lively
+temperament is incapable of a deep feeling. And Mr. Wedmore had only
+shown a common tendency in believing that his beautiful and brilliant
+daughter would easily give up the lover whom he considered unworthy of
+her. But he was wrong. Much too high-spirited and too happy in her
+temperament and surroundings to brood over her lover's late negligence,
+she was perhaps too vain to believe that she had lost her hold upon his
+heart. At any rate, she liked him too well to give him up in this
+off-hand fashion without making an effort to discover the reason of his
+present mysterious conduct.
+
+That letter which he had used as an excuse for his sudden departure had
+arrived at The Beeches by the afternoon post. Doreen had seen it with
+her own eyes; had noted with some natural curiosity that the direction
+was ill-spelled, ill-written; that the chirography was that of an almost
+illiterate female correspondent; and that the post-mark showed that it
+came from the East End of London. Rather a strange letter for the smart
+young barrister to receive, perhaps. And the thought of it made Doreen
+pause when she had got outside the door on the broad drive between the
+lawns.
+
+Only for the moment. The next she was flying across the rougher grass
+outside the garden among the oaks and the beeches of the park. She saw
+no one in front of her, and for a few seconds her heart beat very fast.
+She thought she had missed him.
+
+There was no lodge at the park entrance; only a modest wooden gate in
+the middle of the fence. Doreen was hesitating whether to go through or
+to go back, when she saw the figure of Dudley Horne coming toward the
+gate from the stables.
+
+So she waited.
+
+As he came nearer, she, hidden from his sight by the trunk of an old
+oak-tree, grew uneasy and shy. Dark though it was, dimly as she could
+see him, Doreen felt convinced, from the rapid, steady pace at which he
+walked, that he was intent upon some set purpose, that he was not driven
+by pique at her father's words.
+
+He came quite close to her, so that she saw his face. A
+dark-complexioned, strong face it was, clean-shaven, not handsome at
+all. But, on the other hand, it was just such a face as women admire;
+full of character, of ambition, of virility. Doreen had been debating
+with herself whether she dared speak to him; but the moment she got a
+full look at his face, her courage died away.
+
+It was plain to her that, whatever might be the subject of the thoughts
+which were agitating his mind, she had no share in them.
+
+So she let him pass out, and then crept back, downcast, shocked,
+ashamed, up the slope to the house.
+
+She got in by the billiard-room, at the window of which she knocked.
+Max, her brother, who was playing a game with Queenie, his younger
+sister, let her in, and cried out at sight of her white face:
+
+"Hello! Doreen, what's up? Had a row with Dudley? Or what?"
+
+"I have had no 'row' with any one," answered the girl, very quietly.
+"But--you must all know all about it presently, so you may as well hear
+it at once--Dudley has gone away."
+
+"What?"
+
+Max stopped in the act of trying for a carom, and stared at his sister.
+
+"Why, he only came when I did, ten minutes ago!"
+
+"He's gone, I tell you!" repeated Doreen, stamping her foot. "And--and
+listen, Max, I'm frightened about him! He's got something on his mind.
+When he went away, I saw him; I was standing by the gate; he looked
+so--so _dreadful_ that I didn't dare to speak to him. _I!_ Think of
+that!"
+
+"Had papa been speaking to him?" put in the shrewd younger sister, who
+was chalking her cue at the other end of the room.
+
+The younger sister always sees most of the game.
+
+"Ye--es, but--I don't know--I hardly think it was that," answered Doreen
+quickly. "At any rate, Max, I want you to do this for me; I want you to
+go up to town to-morrow and see him. I shan't rest until I know
+he's--he's all right--after what I saw of his face and the look on it.
+Now, you will do this, won't you, won't you? Without saying anything to
+anybody, mind. Queenie, you can hold your tongue, too. Now, Max, there's
+a dear, you'll do it, won't you?"
+
+Max told her that she was "off her head," that he could do no good, and
+so on. But he ended in giving way to the will of his handsome sister,
+whom he adored.
+
+Max Wedmore was a good-looking fellow of five-and-twenty, with a
+reputation as a ne'er-do-weel, which, perhaps, he hardly deserved. His
+father had a great idea of bringing the young man up to some useful
+calling to keep him out of mischief. Not very terrible mischief, for the
+most part: only the result of too much leisure and too much money in
+inexperienced hands. The upshot of this difference of opinion between
+father and son was that while Mr. Wedmore was always finding mercantile
+situations for his son, Max was always taking care to be thrown out of
+them after a few weeks, and taking a rest which was by no means well
+earned.
+
+This errand of his sister's was by no means unwelcome to him, since it
+took him back to town, where he could amuse himself better than he could
+in the country.
+
+So, on the following morning, he found some sort of excuse to take him
+up, and started on his journey with the blessings of Doreen, and with
+very little opposition from his father, who was subdued and thankful to
+have got rid of Dudley with so little trouble.
+
+It was soon after three when Max arrived at Dudley Horne's chambers in
+Lincoln's Inn. Of course, Dudley was out; so Max scribbled a note for
+his friend and left it on the table while he went to the Law Courts to
+look for him. Not finding him anywhere about, Max filled up the day in
+his own fashion, and returned to Dudley's room at about seven o'clock,
+when he supposed that his friend would either return to dinner or look
+in on his way to dine elsewhere.
+
+He waited an hour, then went away and filled up his time at a
+music-hall, and returned once more at a quarter to eleven. Dudley, so he
+was told by the old woman who gave him the information, had not, as far
+as she knew, been in his rooms since the morning.
+
+Max, who was a great friend of Dudley's, and could take any liberty he
+pleased in his precincts, lit the gas and the sitting-room fire, and
+installed himself in an arm-chair with a book. He could not read,
+however, for he was oppressed by some of Doreen's own fears. He was well
+acquainted with all his friend's ways, and he knew that for him to be
+away both from his chambers and from the neighborhood of the Courts for
+a whole day was most unusual with that particularly steady, plodding
+young man. He began to worry himself with the remembrance that Dudley
+had not been himself of late, that he had been moody, restless and
+unsettled without apparent cause.
+
+Finally, Max worked himself into such a state of anxiety about his
+friend that when he at last heard the key turned in the lock of the
+outer door, he jumped up excitedly and made a rush for the door.
+
+Before he reached it, however, he heard footsteps in the adjoining
+bedroom, the heavy tread of a man stumbling about in the dark, the
+overthrowing of some of the furniture.
+
+Surely that could not be Dudley!
+
+Max stood still at the door, listening. He thought it might be a thief
+who had got hold of the key of the chambers.
+
+As he stood still, close by the wall, the door which led from the one
+room to the other was thrown open from the bedroom, almost touching him
+as it fell back; and there staggered into the sitting-room, into the
+light thrown by the gas and the fire, a figure which Max could scarcely
+recognize as Dudley Horne. His face was the grayish white of the dead;
+his eyes were glassy; his lips were parted; while the grime of a London
+fog had left its black marks round his mouth and eyes, giving him an
+appearance altogether diabolical. He was shaking like a leaf as he
+stumbled against a chair and suddenly wheeled round to the light.
+
+Then, unbuttoning his overcoat quickly, he looked down at his clothes
+underneath. He passed his hand over them and held it in the light, with
+a shudder.
+
+Max uttered a sharp cry.
+
+The stain on Dudley's hand, the wet patches which glistened on his dark
+clothes, were stains of blood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+DUDLEY EXPLAINS.
+
+
+As the cry of horror escaped the lips of Max, Dudley wheeled quickly
+round and met his eyes.
+
+For a moment the two men stood staring at each other without uttering a
+word. It seemed to Max that his friend did not recognize him; that he
+looked like a hunted man brought to bay by his pursuer, with the furtive
+expression in his eyes of a creature trying to devise some means of
+escape.
+
+It was the most shocking experience that Max had ever known, and the
+blood seemed to freeze in his veins as he stood by the table watching
+his friend, trying to conjure back a smile to his own face and look of
+welcome into his own eyes.
+
+He found his voice at last.
+
+"Why, Horne," cried he, and he was angry with himself as he noted that
+his voice was hoarse and tremulous, and that he could not manage to
+bring out his natural tones, "what have you been doing with yourself?
+I--I've been backward and forward here all day long, and now I've been
+waiting for you ever so long!"
+
+There was a pause. Dudley was still staring at him, but there was
+gradually coming over his face a change which showed recognition,
+followed by annoyance. He drew himself up, and, after a pause, asked,
+stiffly:
+
+"What did you want with me?"
+
+He spoke more naturally than Max had managed to do, and as the latter
+replied, he took out his pocket-handkerchief very calmly and began to
+wipe the stain off his right hand.
+
+Max shuddered.
+
+"Why, is it such a very unusual thing for me to drop in upon you and to
+want to see you?" he asked, with another attempt at his ordinary manner,
+which failed almost as completely as the first had done.
+
+There was another short pause. Dudley, without looking again at his
+friend, examined his hand, saw that it was now clean, and replaced the
+soiled handkerchief in his pocket. He seemed by this time to be
+thoroughly at his ease, but Max was not deceived.
+
+"Of course not," said Dudley, quickly. "I only meant
+that--considering"--he paused, and seemed to be trying to recollect
+something--"considering what took place down at Datton yesterday and how
+anxious your father seemed to be rid of me--"
+
+"But what has my father got to do with me, as far as you are concerned,
+Dudley, eh?" said Max.
+
+There had come upon him suddenly such a strong impression that his
+friend was in some awful difficulty, some scrape so terrible as to make
+him lonely beyond the reach of help, that Max, who was a good-hearted
+fellow and a stanch friend, spoke with something which might almost be
+called tenderness:
+
+"We've always been chums, now, haven't we? And a row between you and
+Doreen, or between you and my father, wouldn't make any difference to
+me. I--I suppose you don't mean to give me the cold shoulder for the
+future, eh?"
+
+Dudley had turned his back upon him, and was standing on the hearth-rug,
+looking down at the fire, in an attitude which betrayed to his friend
+the uneasiness from which he was suffering. It was an attitude of
+constraint, as different as possible from any in which Max had ever seen
+him.
+
+Another pause. Dudley seemed unable on this occasion to give a simple
+answer to a simple question without taking thought first. At last he
+laughed awkwardly and half turned toward Max.
+
+"Why, of course not," said he, but without heartiness. "Of course not.
+Though it will be rather awkward, mind, for us to see much of each other
+just at first, after my having got kicked out like that, won't it?"
+
+The tone in which Max answered betrayed considerable surprise and
+perplexity.
+
+"Kicked out!" he exclaimed. "My father said he hardly got a word out
+before you took yourself off in a huff."
+
+Dudley turned round quickly and faced him this time, with a sullen look
+of defiance on his dark face.
+
+"Well, the wise man doesn't wait to be kicked out," said he. "He removes
+himself upon the slightest hint that such a proceeding on his part would
+be well received."
+
+"You were a little too quick on this occasion," replied Max, dryly, "for
+my father has got himself into hot water, and mother had a fit of
+crying, while Doreen--"
+
+Something made Max hesitate to tell his friend how Doreen had taken his
+desertion. Max himself was ready to stand by his friend, whatever
+difficulties the latter might be in. But Doreen, his lovely sister, must
+have a lover without reproach.
+
+At the mention of the girl's name there came a slight change over
+Dudley's face--a change which struck the sensitive Max and touched him
+deeply. Dudley took a step in the direction of his bedroom, and pulled
+out his watch. As he did so a railroad ticket jerked out of his pocket
+with the watch and fell to the ground.
+
+Max saw it fall, but before he could pick it up or draw attention to it
+his ideas were diverted by Dudley's next words:
+
+"Well, you '11 excuse me, old chap. I've got to see a friend off by the
+midnight train to Liverpool."
+
+As he spoke Dudley turned, with his hand on the door, to cast a glance
+at Max. He seemed to be asking himself what he should tell the other.
+And then he took a step toward his friend and began an explanation,
+which, as his shrewd eyes told him, Max required.
+
+"The fact is that I got into the way of a beastly accident at Charing
+Cross just now. Woman run over--badly hurt. Got myself covered with
+blood. Ugh!"
+
+Max was convinced that the shudder was genuine, although he had
+doubts--of which he was ashamed--about the tale itself.
+
+And how did that explain the proposed journey?
+
+Dudley went on:
+
+"I've only just got time to change my clothes and make myself decent.
+See you in a day or two. Sorry I can't stay and have a pipe with you and
+one of our 'hard-times' suppers."
+
+He was on the point of disappearing into the inner room, when Max
+stopped him.
+
+"Oh, but you can," said he. "I have something particular to say to you,
+and I can wait till you come back, if it's two o'clock, and I can bring
+in the supper myself."
+
+Dudley frowned impatiently, and again he cast at Max the horrible,
+furtive look which had been his first greeting.
+
+"That's impossible," said he, quickly. "I may have to go on to Liverpool
+myself. Good-night."
+
+And he shut himself into the bedroom.
+
+Max felt cold all over. After a few minutes' hesitation, he went out of
+the chambers, down the stairs and out of the house.
+
+At the door a cab was waiting. The driver spoke to him the moment he
+stepped out on the pavement. Evidently he took him for Dudley, his late
+fare.
+
+"The lady's got out an' gone off, sir. I hollered after her, but she
+wouldn't wait. Oh, beg pardon, sir," and the man touched his hat,
+perceiving his mistake; "I took you for the gentleman I brought here
+with the lady."
+
+"Oh, he'll be down in a minute or two," answered Max.
+
+And then he thought he would wait and see what new developments the
+disappearance of the lady would lead to. He was getting sick with alarm
+about his friend. These instances of the blood-stained clothes, the
+possible journey to Liverpool, and the flight of the mysterious lady,
+were so suspicious, taken in conjunction with each other, that Max found
+it impossible to rest until he knew more. He walked a little way along
+the pavement, and then returned slowly in the middle of the road. He had
+done this for the third time when Dudley dashed out of the house with
+rapid steps, and had reached the step of the hansom before he discovered
+that the vehicle was empty.
+
+An exclamation of dismay escaped his lips, and to the cabman's statement
+of the lady's disappearance he replied by asking sharply in which
+direction she had gone. On receiving the information he wanted, he gave
+the man his fare, and walked rapidly away in the direction the cabman
+had indicated.
+
+Max followed.
+
+Every moment increased his belief that some appalling circumstance had
+occurred by which Dudley's mind had for the time lost its balance. Every
+word, look and movement on the part of his friend betrayed the fact. Now
+he was evidently setting off in feverish haste in pursuit of this woman
+whom he had left in the cab; and Max, who believed that his friend was
+on the brink of an attack of the insanity which old Mr. Wedmore feared,
+resolved to dog his footsteps, and not to let his friend go out of his
+sight until the latter got safely back to his chambers.
+
+Dudley went at a great pace into Holborn, and then he stopped. The
+traffic had dwindled down to an occasional hansom and to a thin line of
+foot-passengers on the pavements. He looked to right, to left, and then
+he turned suddenly and came face to face with Max.
+
+"Hello!" cried he. "Where are you going to? Where are you putting up?"
+
+"At the Arundel," answered Max, taken aback, and stammering a little.
+
+Dudley had recovered his usual tones.
+
+"Come to my club," said he. "We can get some supper there and have that
+pipe."
+
+"But how about Liverpool and the friend you had to see off?" asked Max.
+
+Dudley hesitated ever so slightly.
+
+"Oh, he's given me the slip," he answered, in a tone which sounded
+careless enough. "Gone off without waiting for me. So my conscience is
+free on his score."
+
+Max said nothing for a moment. Then he thought himself justified in
+setting a trap for his friend.
+
+"Who is he?" asked he. "Anybody I know?"
+
+"No," replied Dudley. "A man I met in the country, who showed me a good
+deal of kindness. From Yorkshire. Man named Browning. Very good fellow,
+but erratic. Said he'd wait for me in the cab, and disappeared before I
+could come down. Had an idea I should make him lose his train, I
+suppose. Well, never mind him. Come along."
+
+Max went with him in silence. Dudley had not only got back his usual
+spirits, but seemed to be in a mood of loquacity and liveliness unusual
+with him. When they got to the club, he ordered oysters and a bottle of
+champagne, and drank much more freely than was his custom.
+
+It was Max, the ne'er-do-weel, the extravagant one, who drank little and
+did the listening. Dudley had cast off altogether the gravity and
+taciturnity which sometimes got him looked upon as a bit of a prig, and
+chatted and told his friend stories, with a tone and manner of
+irresponsible gayety which became him ill.
+
+And Max, who was usually the talker, listened as badly as the other told
+his stories. For all the time he was weighed down with the fear, so
+strong that it seemed to amount to absolute knowledge, of some horrible
+danger hanging over his friend.
+
+Abruptly, before he made the expected comment on the last of Dudley's
+stories, Max rose from his chair and said he must go home.
+
+"I'll see you as far as your diggings first," said he. "It's not much
+out of way, you know."
+
+At these words Dudley's high spirits suddenly left him, and the furtive
+look came again into his face.
+
+"Oh," said he, "oh, very well. And on the way I can tell you the whole
+story of the accident that I saw at Charing Cross, this evening, just
+before I met you."
+
+So they went out together, and Dudley, as he had suggested, gave his
+friend a long and extremely circumstantial account of the way in which
+the wheel went over the woman, and of the difficulty he and the
+policeman had experienced in getting her from between the wheels of the
+van by which she had been crushed.
+
+Max heard him in silence, but did not believe a word. Whatever had
+reduced Dudley to the plight in which he had returned to his chambers,
+Max was convinced that it differed in some important details from the
+version of the affair which he chose to give.
+
+"We won't talk any more about it," he went on, without seeming to remark
+his friend's silence. "It's a thing I want to forget. It has quite upset
+me for a time; you could see that yourself when you met me. I--I don't
+know quite what to do to get the thing out of my mind. I think I shall
+run down to Datton with you, and see what that will do. What do you
+think?"
+
+Now, although he had drunk more wine than usual, Dudley knew perfectly
+well what he was saying, and Max stared at him in astonishment.
+
+"What?" he exclaimed. "After what you told me? About my father?"
+
+"Oh, yes, yes. But I can explain everything. I can, and I will,"
+returned Dudley, quickly. "I have not been myself lately. I have had
+certain business worries. But they are all settled now, and I feel more
+like myself than I have done for weeks."
+
+Max stopped short and stared at his friend by the light of a gas-lamp.
+
+"Well, you don't look it," said he, shortly.
+
+Dudley laughed loudly, but rather uneasily.
+
+"Don't you think I could give an explanation which would satisfy your
+father, if I wished?" he asked, with a sudden relapse into gravity.
+
+"I'm hanged if I know," retorted Max, energetically. "You haven't given
+any explanation which would satisfy _me_."
+
+Dudley stared into his face for a few seconds inquiringly, and then
+quietly hooked his arm and led him along the Strand.
+
+"You don't want to be satisfied, old chap," said he, in a low voice.
+"You know me."
+
+Again Max was deeply touched. This was a sudden and unexpected peep
+under the surface of deception into the real heart of his old chum. He
+replied only by a slight twitching of the arm Dudley had taken.
+
+They walked on at a quicker pace, and ran up the stairs to the door of
+Dudley's rooms in silence.
+
+Dudley went first into the sitting-room and turned up the gas. It did
+not escape Max that he shot a hurried glance around the room, taking in
+every corner, as he entered. Talking all the time about the cold and the
+fog, Dudley went into the adjoining room, and Max saw him pull aside the
+bed-curtains and look behind them.
+
+Then Max, not wishing to play the spy on his friend, turned his back;
+and as he did so he caught sight of the railway ticket which had fallen
+to the floor from Dudley's pocket before they went out.
+
+Max picked it up, and noted that it was the return half of a first-class
+return ticket from Fenchurch Street to Limehouse, and that it was dated
+that very day.
+
+He had scarcely noted this, mechanically rather than with any set
+purpose, when he was startled to find Dudley at his elbow.
+
+Max turned round quickly, but Dudley's eyes were fixed upon the railway
+ticket.
+
+"You dropped this when you--" began Max, handing it to his friend.
+
+It was not until then, when Dudley took the ticket from him and tossed
+it into the fireplace with a careless nod, that it flashed into the mind
+of Max that the incident had some significance.
+
+What on earth had Dudley been doing at Limehouse? His parents had had
+property there, certainly, many years ago. But not a square foot of the
+grimy, slimy, auriferous Thames-side land, not a brick or a beam of the
+warehouses and sheds which had been theirs in the old days, had
+descended to Dudley. Owing to the fraudulent action of Edward Jacobs,
+all had had to go.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+A PARAGRAPH IN "THE STANDARD."
+
+
+Max did not stay long with his friend, but made the excuse that he was
+half asleep, after a few minutes' rather desultory conversation, to go
+back to his hotel.
+
+It was with the greatest reluctance that he left his friend alone; but
+Dudley had given him intimations, in every look and tone and movement,
+that he wished to be by himself; and this fact increased the heaviness
+of heart with which Max, full of forebodings on his friend's account,
+had gone reluctantly down the creaking stairs.
+
+Again and again Max asked himself, during his short walk from Lincoln's
+Inn to Arundel Street, why he had not had the courage to put a question
+or two straightforwardly to Dudley. As a matter of fact, however, the
+reason was simple enough. The relative positions of the two men had been
+suddenly reversed, and neither of them, as yet, felt easy under the new
+conditions.
+
+Dudley, the hard-working student, the rising barrister, the abstemious,
+thoughtful, rather silent man to whom Max had looked up with respect and
+affection, had suddenly sunk, during the last few hours, by some
+unaccountable and mysterious means, to far below Max's own modest level.
+It was he, the careless fellow whom Dudley had formerly admonished, who
+had that evening been the sober, the temperate, the taciturn one; it was
+he who had watched the other, been solicitous for him, trembled for him.
+
+Max could not understand. He lay awake worrying himself about his
+friend, feeling Dudley's fall more acutely than he would have felt his
+own, and did not fall asleep until it was nearly daylight.
+
+In these circumstances he overslept himself, and it was eleven o'clock
+before he found himself in the hotel coffee-room, waiting for his
+breakfast.
+
+He was in the act of pouring out his coffee, when his name, uttered
+behind him in a familiar voice, made him start. The next moment Dudley
+Horne stood by his side, and holding out his hand with a smile, seated
+himself on the chair beside him.
+
+"I--I--I overslept myself this morning," stammered Max.
+
+He was in a state of absolute bewilderment. Not only had the new Dudley
+of the previous night disappeared, with his alternate depression and
+feverish high spirits, his furtive glances, his hoarse and altered
+voice, but the old Dudley, who had returned, seemed happier and livelier
+than usual.
+
+"Town and its wicked ways don't agree with you, my boy, nor do they with
+me. If I were in your shoes, I shouldn't tread the streets of Babylon
+more than once a twelvemonth."
+
+"You think that now," returned Max, "because you see more than enough of
+town."
+
+"Well, I'm not going to see much more of it at present," retorted
+Dudley. "This afternoon I'm off again down to Datton, and I came to ask
+whether you were coming down with me."
+
+"I thought you had had a row, at least a misunderstanding of some sort,
+with--with my father?"
+
+"Why, yes, so I had," replied Dudley, serenely, as he took a newspaper
+out of his pocket and folded it for reading. "But I've written to him
+already this morning, explaining things, and telling him that I propose
+to come down to The Beeches this evening. He'll get it before I turn up,
+I should think, for I posted it at six o'clock this morning."
+
+"Why, what were you doing at six o'clock in the morning?" said Max, in a
+tone of bewilderment, as before. "Didn't you go to bed at all last
+night?"
+
+"No," answered Dudley, calmly. "I had some worrying things to think
+about, and so I took the night to do it in."
+
+A slight frown passed over his face as he spoke, but it disappeared
+quickly, leaving him as placid as before.
+
+"About one of the things I can consult you, Max. You know something
+about it, I suppose. Do you think I have any chance with Doreen?"
+
+Max stared at him again.
+
+"You must be blind if you haven't seen that you have," he said, at last,
+in a sort of muffled voice, grudgingly. He moved uneasily in his seat,
+and added, in a hurried manner: "But, I say, you know, Dudley, after
+last night, I--I want to ask you something myself. I'm Doreen's brother,
+though I'm not much of a brother for such a nice girl as she is.
+And--and--what on earth did you think of going to Liverpool for _with a
+woman_? I've a right to ask that now, haven't I?"
+
+Max blurted out these words in a dogged tone, not deterred from
+finishing his sentence by the fact that Dudley's face had grown white
+and hard, and that over his whole attitude there had come a rapid
+change.
+
+There was a pause when the younger man had finished. Dudley kept his
+eyes down, and traced a pattern on the table-cloth with a fork, while
+Max looked at him furtively. At last Dudley looked up quickly and asked,
+in a tone which admitted of no prevarication in the answer he demanded:
+
+"You have been playing the spy upon me, I see. Tell me just how much you
+saw."
+
+It was such a straightforward way of coming to the point that Max, taken
+aback, but rather thankful that the ground was to be cleared a little,
+answered at once without reserve:
+
+"I did play the spy. It was enough to make me. I saw the hansom waiting
+outside your door last night; the cabman mistook me for you, and told me
+the lady had walked away. I couldn't help putting that together with
+what you had told me about seeing a friend off to Liverpool, and,
+perhaps, going there yourself. Now, who could have helped it?"
+
+Dudley did not at once answer. He just glanced inquiringly at the face
+of Max while he went on tracing the pattern on the cloth.
+
+"You didn't see the lady," he said at last, not in a questioning tone,
+but with conviction.
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, if you had seen her you would have been satisfied that it was not
+her charms which were leading me astray," said he, with a faint smile.
+"Are you satisfied now, or do you still consider," he went on with a
+slight tone of mockery in his voice, "that my character requires further
+investigation before you can accept me for a brother-in-law?"
+
+Max moved uneasily again.
+
+"What rot, Horne!" said he, impatiently. "You know very well I've always
+wanted you to marry Doreen. I've said so, lots of times. I still say it
+was natural I should want to understand your queer goings-on last night.
+And now--and now--"
+
+"And now that you don't understand them any better than before, you are
+ready to take it for granted it's all right?" broke in Dudley, with the
+same scoffing tone as before.
+
+Max grew very red, began to speak, glanced at Dudley, and got up.
+
+"Yes, I suppose that's about the size of it," said he, stiffly.
+
+"And are you going down with me to-night? I can catch the seven o'clock
+train."
+
+"Oh, yes, I suppose so. I'll meet you at Charing Cross."
+
+Max's enthusiasm on his friend's behalf had been much damped by his
+behavior, and he gave him a nod, turned on his heel and left him without
+another word. He gave up trying to understand the mystery which hung
+about Dudley, and left it to Doreen and to his father to unravel.
+
+The two young men did not meet again, therefore, until seven that
+evening, when they took their seats in the same smoking-carriage. Max
+felt quite glad that the presence of a couple of strangers prevented any
+talk of a confidential sort between himself and Dudley, who on his side
+seemed perfectly contented to puff at his pipe in silence.
+
+Dudley's letter had evidently been received, and well received, for at
+the station the two friends found the dog-cart waiting to take them the
+mile and a half which lay between the station and The Beeches.
+
+At the house itself, too, the front door flew open at their approach,
+and Mr. Wedmore himself stood in the hall to welcome them.
+
+Queenie was there. Mr. Wedmore was there. But there was never a glimpse
+of Doreen.
+
+"I got your letter, my dear boy," began Mr. Wedmore, holding out his
+hand with so much heartiness that it was plain he was delighted to be
+able to forgive his old friend's son, "and I am very glad, indeed, that
+you have found your way back to us so soon. I am heartily glad to hear
+that the worries which have been making you depressed lately are
+over--heartily glad. And so, I am sure," added he, with a significant
+smile, "Doreen will be."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Dudley. "You are very kind, very indulgent. I am
+not ungrateful, I assure you."
+
+Max, behind them, was listening with attentive ears. He did not feel so
+sure as his father seemed to be that all was now well with Dudley.
+
+"Where's Doreen?" he asked his younger sister.
+
+"Don't know, I'm sure. She's taken herself off somewhere. Probably
+somebody else will find her quicker than you will."
+
+The younger sister was right. The younger sister always is on these
+occasions.
+
+Within five minutes of his arrival, Dudley found his way into the
+breakfast room, where Doreen, a pug dog and a raven were sitting
+together on the floor, surrounded by a frightful litter of paper and
+shavings and string, wooden boxes, hampers, and odds and ends of cotton
+wool.
+
+She just looked up when Dudley came in, gave him a glance and a little
+cool nod, and then, as he attempted to advance, uttered a shrill little
+scream.
+
+"One step farther, and my wax cupids will be ruined!"
+
+"Wax cupids!" repeated Dudley, feebly.
+
+"Yes, for my Christmas tree. It's to be the greatest success ever known
+in these parts, or the greatest failure. Nothing between. That's what I
+must always have--something sensational--something to make people howl
+at me, or to make them want to light bonfires in my honor. That's
+characteristic, isn't it?"
+
+And Doreen, who was dressed in a black skirt, with a scarlet velvet
+bodice which did justice to her brilliant complexion and soft, dark
+hair, paused in the act of turning out a number of glittering glass
+balls into her lap.
+
+"Very," said Dudley, as he made his way carefully to the nearest chair
+and sat down to look at her.
+
+He was up to his knees in brown-paper parcels, over which barricade he
+stretched out his hand.
+
+Doreen affected not to see it. She began to tie bits of fancy string
+into the little rings in the glass balls, cutting off the ends with a
+pair of scissors.
+
+"Aren't you going to shake hands with me?" asked Dudley, impatiently.
+
+Doreen answered without looking tip.
+
+"No. Not yet."
+
+"What's the matter now?"
+
+"Oh, I am offended."
+
+"What have I done now?"
+
+Doreen threw up her head.
+
+"What have you _not_ done? We have all of us--I among the
+others--had a good deal to put up with from you, lately, in the matter
+of what I will call general neglect. And you put a climax to it the day
+before yesterday by rushing out of the house without a word of good-bye
+to anybody."
+
+"There was a reason for it," interrupted Dudley, quickly.
+
+"I suppose so. But I'm not going to take the reason on trust, Mr.
+Horne."
+
+"Not if you're satisfied that you will meet with no more neglect in the
+future? That my conduct shall be in every respect what you--and the
+others--can desire?"
+
+"Not even then," replied Doreen decisively.
+
+"But if your father is satisfied?"
+
+"Then go and talk to my father."
+
+There was a pause and their eyes met. Dudley, who had acknowledged to
+himself the patience with which Doreen had put up with his recent
+neglect, was astonished by the resolution which he saw in her eyes.
+
+"What is it you want to know?" he asked, in a condescending and
+indulgent tone.
+
+"A great deal more than you will tell me," answered Doreen, promptly.
+
+Whereat there was another pause. Dudley took up one of the brown-paper
+parcels and turned it over in his hands. Perhaps it was to hide the fact
+that an irrepressible tremor was running through his limbs.
+
+If he had looked at her at that moment he would have seen in her eyes a
+touching look of sympathy and distress. The girl knew that something had
+been amiss with him--that something was amiss still. She cared for him.
+She wanted his confidence, or at least so much of it as would allow her
+to pour out upon him the tender sympathy with which her innocent heart
+was overflowing. And he would have none of it. He wanted to treat her
+like a beautiful doll, to be left in its cotton wool when his spirits
+were too low for playthings, and to be taken out and admired when things
+went better with him.
+
+This was what Doreen mutinously thought and what her lips were on the
+point of uttering, when the door was opened by Mr. Wedmore, who came
+into the room with a copy of the _Evening Standard_ in his hand.
+
+"Look here, Horne, did you see this?" said he, as he folded the paper
+and handed it to Dudley. "Here's an odd thing. Of course it may be only
+a coincidence. But doesn't it seem to refer to the rascal who ruined
+your prospects--Edward Jacobs?"
+
+"A middle-aged Jewish woman, who found some difficulty in making
+herself understood, from an impediment in her speech, applied to
+Mr. ----, of ---- Street Police Court, for advice in the following
+circumstances: She and her husband had returned to England in
+reduced circumstances, after a long residence abroad, and her
+husband was in search of employment. He had received a letter from
+Limehouse, offering him employment and giving him an appointment
+for yesterday afternoon, which he started to keep. He had not
+returned; she had been to Limehouse police station to make
+inquiries, but could learn nothing of her husband. She seemed to be
+under the impression that he had met with foul play, and made a
+rambling statement to the effect that he had 'enemies.' It was only
+after much persuasion, and the assurance that the press could not
+help her without the knowledge, that she gave her name as Jacobs,
+and her husband's first name as Edward. She described him as of the
+middle height, thin, with gray hair and a short gray beard. The
+magistrate said he had no doubt the press would do what they could
+to help her, and the woman withdrew."
+
+Dudley Horne read this account, and gave the paper back to Mr. Wedmore.
+
+He tried to speak as he did so, but, though his mouth opened, the voice
+refused to come.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ONE MAN'S LOSS is ANOTHER MAN'S GAIN.
+
+
+"Confound the Christmas tree!" grumbled Mr. Wedmore, as he stumbled over
+a parcel of fluffy rabbits, whose heads screwed off to permit the
+insertion of sweets.
+
+"Oh, papa, you'll be saying 'Confound Christmas' next!"
+
+And Doreen, with one watchful eye on Dudley all the time, made a lane
+through her boxes and her hampers to admit the passage of her father to
+a chair.
+
+By this time Dudley had recovered himself a little, and was able to
+answer the question Mr. Wedmore now put to him.
+
+"What do you think of that, Horne?"
+
+"I think, sir, that it must be more than a coincidence; that Mrs. Jacobs
+must be the wife of the man who was my father's manager."
+
+"Well, I think so, too. I know Jacobs's wife had an impediment in her
+speech. The odd part of the business is that he should have disappeared
+at Limehouse, the very place where one would have thought he would have
+an objection to turning up at all, connected as it was with his old
+peculations. I suppose he thought they were forgotten by this time."
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+Dudley still looked very white. He took up the paper again, as if to
+re-read the paragraph. But Doreen, from her post of vantage on the
+floor, saw that he held it before him with eyes fixed. Mr. Wedmore,
+after a little hesitation, and after vainly trying to get another look
+at the face of the younger man, went on again:
+
+"I thought you would be struck by this; the subject turning up again in
+this odd way, just when you've been interesting yourself so much in the
+old story!"
+
+Down went the paper, and Dudley looked into the face of Mr. Wedmore.
+
+"Interesting myself in it! Have I? How do you mean?"
+
+"Well, you've asked a good many questions about this Jacobs, and
+wondered what had become of him. I fancy you have the answer in that
+paragraph."
+
+There was a pause, and Dudley seemed to recollect something. Then he
+said:
+
+"Oh, yes, I think I have. The man has fallen upon bad times, evidently.
+I--I--I'm sorry for his wife."
+
+"And the man himself--haven't you forgiven him yet?"
+
+Dudley started, and glanced quickly round, as if the simple words had
+been an accusation.
+
+"Forgiven him? Oh, yes, long ago. At least--" He paused a moment, and
+then added, inquiringly: "What had I to forgive?"
+
+"Well, to tell the truth, Horne, that's just what I have often asked
+myself, when you have insisted upon raking up all the details of poor
+Jacobs's misdeeds! Why, your poor father, who was ruined by his
+dishonesty, never showed half the animosity you do. I could have
+understood it if you had suffered by his frauds. But have you? You have
+been well educated; you have started well in life. And on the whole, no
+man who has arrived at your age can honestly say that it would have been
+better for him to start life with a fortune at his back, eh?"
+
+"No."
+
+Dudley got up from his chair. He seemed agitated and uneasy, and soon
+took advantage of Mr. Wedmore's suggestion, somewhat dryly made, that he
+was tired after his journey and would like to go to bed.
+
+When he had left the room, Mr. Wedmore turned angrily to his daughter.
+
+"Now, Doreen, I will have no more of this nonsense. Dudley is beginning
+all the old tricks over again--absence of mind, indifference to you--did
+he even look at you as he said good night?--and morbid interest in this
+old, forgotten business of Jacobs and his misdoings. I won't have any
+more of it, and I shall tell him plainly that we don't care to have him
+down here until he can bring a livelier face and manner with him!"
+
+Doreen had risen from her humble seat on the floor and had crawled on
+her knees to the side of his chair, where she slid a coaxing, caressing
+hand under his arm and put her pretty head gently down on his shoulder.
+
+"No, you won't, papa dear. You won't do anything of the kind," she
+whispered in his ear very softly, very humbly. "You would not do
+anything to give pain to your old friend's son if you could help it, and
+you would not do anything to hurt your own child, your little Doreen,
+for a hundred thousand pounds, now would you?"
+
+"Yes, I would, if it was for her good," replied Mr. Wedmore, in a very
+loud and determined voice, which was supposed to have the effect of
+frightening her into submission. "And it's all rubbish to think to get
+around me by calling yourself 'little Doreen,' when you're a great, big,
+overgrown lamp-post of a girl, who can take her own part against the
+whole county."
+
+Doreen laughed, but still clung persistently to the arm which he
+pretended to try to release from her clutches.
+
+"Well, I don't know about the county, but I think I can persuade my old
+father into doing what I want," she purred into his ear with gentle
+conviction. "You see, papa, it isn't as if Dudley and I were engaged.
+We--"
+
+"Why, what else have you been but engaged ever since last Christmas?"
+said her father, irritably. "Everybody has looked upon it as an
+engagement, and Dudley was devoted enough until a couple of months ago;
+but now something has gone wrong with the lad, I'm certain, and it would
+be much better for you both to make an end of this."
+
+"Why, there's nothing to make an end of," pleaded Doreen. "Just 'let
+things slide,' as Max says, and let Dudley come down or stay away as he
+likes, and the matter will come quite right one way or the other, and
+you will find there was really nothing for you to trouble your dear old
+head about, after all."
+
+There was really some excellence in the girl's suggestion; and her
+father, after much grumbling, gave a half consent to it. He was forced
+to admit to himself that there was some grounds for Dudley's agitation
+on reading the paragraph concerning the disappearance of Edward Jacobs,
+since he had been interesting himself of late in that person's history.
+But it was the degree of the young man's agitation which had seemed
+morbid. Mr. Wedmore found it difficult to understand why a mere
+suggestion of the man's disappearance--if it were indeed _the_
+man--should affect Dudley so deeply. And the idea of incipient insanity
+in young Horne grew stronger than ever in Mr. Wedmore's mind.
+
+Now, Doreen was by no means so sanguine as she pretended to be. She was
+one of those high-spirited, lively girls who find it easy to hide from
+others any troubles which may be gnawing at their heart. Such a nature
+has an elasticity which enables it to throw off its cares for a time,
+when in the society of others, only to brood over them in hours of
+loneliness.
+
+Nobody in the house knew--what, however, shrewd Queenie half guessed
+that Doreen had many an anxious hour, many a secret fit of crying, on
+account of the change in Dudley's manner toward her. The brilliant,
+proud-hearted girl was more deeply attached to him than anybody
+suspected. If any remark was made by outsiders as to the comparative
+rarity of the young barrister's visits during the past two months, it
+was always accompanied by the comment that Miss Wedmore would not be
+long in consoling herself.
+
+And everybody knew that the curate, the Rev. Lisle Lindsay, was
+hungering to step into Dudley's shoes.
+
+He was not quite to be despised as a rival, this "snowy-banded,
+dilettant, delicate-handed priest." In the first place, he was a really
+nice, honorable young fellow, with no much worse faults than a
+pedantically correct pronunciation of the unaccented vowels; in the
+second place, he was considerably taller than the race of curates
+usually runs; and in the third place, he had a handsome allowance from
+his mother, and "expectations" on a very grand scale indeed. Miss
+Wedmore, if she were to decide in his favor, might well aspire to be the
+wife of a bishop some day. And what could woman wish for more?
+
+He was no laggard in love either. On the very morning after the arrival
+of Max and Dudley, Mr. Lindsay called soon after breakfast to make
+inquiries about the amount of holly and evergreens which would be
+available for the decoration of the church, and was shown into the
+morning-room, where most of the great work of preparation for Christmas
+was taking place.
+
+Mrs. Wedmore and all the young people were there, Max and Dudley having
+been pressed into the service of filling cardboard drums with sweets for
+what Max called "the everlasting tree." The tree itself stood in a
+corner of the room, a colossal but lop-sided plant with a lamentable
+tendency to straggle about the lower branches, and an inclination to run
+to weedy and unnecessary length about the top.
+
+Max was a hopeless failure as an assistant. He was always possessed with
+a passionate desire to do something different from what he was asked to
+do; and when they gave way and indulged his fancy, the fancy
+disappeared, and he found that he wanted to do something else.
+
+"It's always the way with a man!" was Queenie's scornful comment on her
+brother's failing.
+
+Queenie herself looked upon the whole business of the tree as a piece of
+useless frivolity unworthy the time and attention of grown-up people.
+And she went about the share in it which she had been persuaded to
+undertake with a stolid and supercilious manner which went far to spoil
+the enjoyment of the rest.
+
+Dudley entered, into the affair with some zest, but it was noticeable
+that he devoted himself to Queenie, and exchanged very few remarks with
+Doreen. There was a certain barrier of constraint springing up between
+him and Doreen which had risen to an uncomfortable height by the time
+the curate entered.
+
+Doreen, whose cheeks were much flushed and whose eyes were unusually
+bright, was extremely gracious. She offered to take Mr. Lindsay into the
+grounds to interview the gardener, so that they might come to an
+understanding about the evergreens to be used. She glanced at Dudley as
+she made this proposal. He glanced back at her; and in his black eyes
+she fancied for a moment that she saw a mute protest, a plea.
+
+For a moment she hesitated. Standing still in the middle of the room,
+not far from where he was busy helping Queenie to tie up a particularly
+limp and fragile box of chocolates, she seemed to wait for a single
+word, or even for another look, to turn her from her purpose.
+
+But Dudley turned away, and either did not see or did not choose to
+notice the pause. Then the tears sprang to the girl's eyes, and she ran
+quickly to the door.
+
+"Come, Mr. Lindsay," said she, "we must make haste. At this stage of
+things, every minute has to be weighed out like gold, I assure you."
+
+She went quickly out into the large hall, and the curate followed with
+alacrity. Max and his mother were engaged in a wrangle over some soup
+and coal tickets which somebody had mislaid, and in the search for which
+the whole room, with its parcels and bundles, had to be overturned.
+
+Queenie, who was at work at the end of the room, near the window,
+uttered a short laugh. Dudley, who was standing a little way off, drew
+nearer, and asked what she was laughing at.
+
+"Oh, that misguided youth who has just gone out!"
+
+"Misguided?"
+
+"Yes," said Queenie, shortly. "If he hadn't been misguided, he would
+have devoted his attention to me, not to Doreen. By all the laws of
+society, curates' wives should be plain. They should also be simple in
+their dress, and devoted to good works. Doreen says so herself. Why,
+then, didn't he see that I was the wife for him and not the beauty?"
+
+"Don't you think she will have him, then?" asked Dudley, very stiffly,
+after a short pause. "She seems to like him. There was no need, surely,
+for her to have been in such a hurry to take him into the grounds, if
+she had felt no particular pleasure in his society."
+
+Queenie looked up rather slyly out of her little light eyes. She was
+distressed on account of her sister's trouble about this apparently
+vacillating lover, and irritated herself by his strange conduct. But at
+the bottom of her heart she believed in him and in his affection for
+Doreen, just as her sister herself did, and she would have given the
+world to make things right between two people whom she chose to believe
+intended by nature for each other.
+
+"I think there are other people in the world whose society Doreen likes
+better," she said at last, below her breath.
+
+The wrangle at the other end of the room was still going on, and nobody
+heard her but Dudley. He flushed slightly and looked as if he
+understood. But he instantly turned the talk to another subject.
+
+"Would you have liked that sleek curate yourself, really?"
+
+"Sleek? What do you mean by sleek? You wouldn't have a minister of the
+church go about with long hair and a velveteen coat and a pipe in his
+mouth, would you?"
+
+"Not for worlds, I assure you. He is a most beautiful creature, and I
+admire him very much, though he is perhaps hardly the sort of man I
+should have expected both you girls to rave about. And as for you, I
+thought you were too good to rave about anybody! You are unlike yourself
+this morning, and more like Doreen."
+
+Queenie laughed again that satirical little laugh which made a man
+wonder what her thoughts exactly were.
+
+"You say that because you don't know anything about me. I don't talk
+when Doreen is talking, because then nobody would listen to me. I could
+talk, too, if anybody ever talked to me."
+
+"But one sees so little of you," pleaded Dudley. "You are generally out
+district-visiting, or busy for Mrs. Wedmore, so that one hasn't a chance
+of knowing you well. And one has got an idea that you are too good to
+waste your time in idle conversation with a mere man!"
+
+"Good!" cried Queenie contemptuously. "There's nothing good about my
+district-visiting. I like it, Doreen goes about telling people it is
+good of me. But that's only because she wouldn't care about it herself.
+I like fussing about and thinking I am making myself useful. It's like
+mamma's knitting, which gets her the reputation of being very
+industrious, while all the time she enjoys it very much."
+
+"But you yourself said you were 'devoted to good works,' I quote your
+very words."
+
+"That was only in fun. It's what Doreen says of me. You must have heard
+her. She is much better than I am--really much, more unselfish--much
+more amiable. Only because she's always bright and full of fun, she
+doesn't get the credit of any of her good qualities. People think she's
+only indulging her own inclination when she keeps us all amused and
+happy all day long. But they don't know that she can suffer just as much
+as anybody else, and that it costs her an effort to be lively for our
+sakes when she feels miserable."
+
+Queenie spoke with a little feeling in her usually hard, dry voice.
+Dudley was silent for a long time when she had finished speaking. At
+last they looked up at the same moment and met each other's eyes. And
+the reserved, harassed man felt his heart go out to the girl, with her
+quiet shrewdness and undemonstrative affection for her brilliant sister.
+
+"Your quiet eyes see a great deal more than one would think, Queenie,"
+he said at last. "I suppose they have seen that there is
+something--something wrong--with--"
+
+He spoke very slowly, and finally he stopped without finishing the
+sentence.
+
+Queenie gravely took it up for him.
+
+"Something wrong with you? Of course I have. Well?"
+
+"I don't know why I am telling you this. I didn't mean to tell any one.
+But--but--well, I've begun; I may as well finish. You're not a person
+who would talk about anybody else's secrets more than about your own."
+
+"A secret? Are you going to tell me a secret?"
+
+Dudley smiled very faintly, and then his expression suddenly changed.
+Something like a spasm of fear and of pain shot quickly across his face,
+frightening her a little. Then he shook his head.
+
+"No," said he. "I hardly think you will consider it a secret, after what
+you have just told me. I am only going to tell you this: I have had a
+great trouble, a great affliction, hanging over me for some time now.
+Sometimes I have thought it was going to clear away and leave me as I
+was before. Sometimes I have felt myself quite free from it, and able to
+go on in the old way. But with this consciousness, this knowledge
+hanging over me always, I have behaved in all sorts of strange ways,
+have hurt the feelings of my friends, have not been myself at all. You
+know that, Queenie."
+
+Queenie slowly bowed her head. Mrs. Wedmore and Max, still occupied in
+their search for the missing soup tickets, had now extended their
+operations to the hall, and left the room in possession of the other
+two. Dudley went on with his confession.
+
+"And now something has happened which has cut me off from my old self,
+as it were. I don't know how else to express what I mean. I came down
+last night with the intention of speaking to--to Doreen for the last
+time, of trying to explain myself, if not to--to justify myself to her.
+You know what I mean, don't you?"
+
+Again Queenie bowed her head. Her father's suspicions as to Dudley's
+perfect sanity had, of course, reached her ears, and she felt so much
+pity for the poor fellow whose confession she was then hearing that she
+dared not even raise her eyes to his face again. He went on, hurrying
+his words, as if anxious to get his confession over:
+
+"But I thought it all over last night, and I decided to say nothing to
+her, after all. I don't think I could, without making a fool of myself.
+For you know--you know my feelings about her; everybody knows. I had
+hoped--Oh, well, you know what I hoped--"
+
+There was a pause. Dudley was afraid of breaking down.
+
+"Oh, Dudley, is it really all over, then, between you? Oh, it is
+dreadful! For, you know, she cares, too!"
+
+"Not as I do. I hope and think that is impossible," said Dudley,
+hoarsely.
+
+There was another pause, a longer one. Then Queenie gave utterance to a
+little sob. Dudley, who was sitting on the table at which she was at
+work, got upon his feet with an impatient movement. His dark face looked
+hard and angry. As he paced once or twice up and down the small space
+available in the disordered room, the inward fight which was going on
+between his passion and his sense of right convulsed his face, and
+Queenie shuddered as, glancing at him, she fancied she could see in the
+glare of his black eyes the haunting madness at which he seemed so
+plainly to have hinted.
+
+She rose in her turn.
+
+"But, Dudley--" she began.
+
+And then, unable to express what she felt, what she thought, any better
+than he had done, she turned abruptly away and sat down again.
+
+There was silence for a few moments, and then she heard the door close.
+Looking round, she saw that he had left the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE LITTLE STONE PASSAGE.
+
+
+Queenie kept Dudley's half-confessed secret to herself for the whole of
+that day. She was hoping against hope that he would change his mind
+again and speak to Doreen himself. Since there must be a definite and
+final breach, she thought it would be better for the principals
+themselves to come to an understanding, without the intervention of
+outsiders. She would have told him so, but she got no further
+opportunity of speaking to him alone.
+
+The day passed uncomfortably for everybody, although the only person who
+gave vent to his feelings by open ill-temper was Mr. Wedmore, who was
+waiting for the promised explanation which Dudley never attempted to
+give. And before dinner-time that evening the young barrister returned
+to town.
+
+Mr. Wedmore, who had been out shooting with Doctor Haselden, was
+furious, on returning home, to learn of Dudley's departure.
+
+"He has left a note for you, papa, in the study," said Doreen, who was,
+perhaps, a little paler than usual, but who gave no other outward sign
+of her feelings.
+
+Her father went into the study, after a glance at his daughter, and read
+the letter. It was not a very long one. Following the lines of his
+guarded confession to Queenie, Dudley expressed the sorrow he felt at
+having to give up the hopes he had had of being something more than the
+mere old friend he had been for so many years. He had thought it better,
+at the last, to say this on paper instead of by word of mouth, and he
+ended by expressing the deep gratitude he should always feel for the
+kindness shown to him by Mr. Wedmore and all his family during the
+happiest period of his life.
+
+Mr. Wedmore read this letter with little astonishment. It was, in fact,
+what he had been prepared to hear. He read it to his wife, who cried a
+great deal, but acquiesced in her husband's desire that Dudley should
+drop not only out of the ranks of their intimate friends, but even, as
+much as possible, out of their conversation.
+
+"Let us do our best," said he, "to make Doreen forget him."
+
+Mr. Wedmore showed the letter also to Doctor Haselden, who, perhaps,
+from pure love of contradiction, persisted in maintaining that the
+letter confessed nothing, and that the cause of the young man's
+withdrawal was, in all probability, quite different from what Mr.
+Wedmore supposed. The two gentlemen had quite a wrangle over the matter,
+at the end of which each was settled more firmly in his own opinion than
+before.
+
+When they went upstairs for the night, Doreen came to Queenie's room and
+demanded to know what her younger sister and Dudley had been talking
+about so earnestly in the breakfast-room that morning.
+
+"What do you mean by talking earnestly?" said Queenie, in the calm, dry
+manner which would have made any one but her sister think she was really
+surprised.
+
+"Max told me," said Doreen, "and I mean to stay here until I know."
+
+It needed very little reflection to tell Queenie that it was better for
+her sister to hear the truth at once. So she told her.
+
+Doreen listened very quietly, and then got up and wished her sister good
+night.
+
+"Well," said Queenie, "you take it very quietly. What do you think about
+it?"
+
+"I'll tell you--when I know myself," answered Doreen, briefly, as she
+left the room. The first result of the talks, however, was a
+conversation, not with Queenie, but with her brother, Max. Doreen ran
+after him next morning as he was on his way to the stables and made him
+take a walk through the park with her instead of going for a ride.
+
+"Max," she said, coaxingly, when they had gone out of sight of the
+house, "you have been my confidant about this unhappy affair of
+Dudley's--"
+
+But her brother interrupted her, and tried to draw away the arm she had
+taken.
+
+"Look here, Doreen," said he earnestly, "you'd better not think any more
+about him--much better not. I do really think the poor fellow's right in
+what he hinted to my father, and that he's going off his head; or,
+rather, I _know_ enough to be sure that he's not always perfectly
+sane. Surely you must see that, in the circumstances, the less you think
+about him the better."
+
+"There I disagree with you altogether," said Doreen, firmly. "Max, papa
+and mamma can't understand; they've forgotten how they felt when they
+were first fond of each other. Queenie's not old enough, and she's too
+good besides. Now, you do know, you do understand what it is to be head
+over ears in love."
+
+"Good heavens, Doreen, don't talk like that! You mustn't, you know!"
+
+"Don't talk nonsense," interrupted his sister, sharply. "I tell you I
+love Dudley, and ever so much more since I've found out he is in great
+trouble; as any decent woman would do. Now I don't feel nearly so sure
+as everybody else as to what his trouble is, but I want you to find out,
+and to help me if you can."
+
+"What, play detective--spy? Not me. It's ridiculous, unheard of. I've
+done it once on your account, and I never felt such a sneak in my life.
+I won't do it again, even for you, and that's flat."
+
+And Max thrust his hands deep into his pockets.
+
+"Won't you?" said Doreen, with a quiet smile. "Then I must, and I will."
+
+Her brother started and stared at her.
+
+"You! _You!_ What nonsense!"
+
+"It's not nonsense, as you will find when you hear me get permission to
+go up to town to stay with Aunt Betty."
+
+Max grew sincerely alarmed.
+
+"Look here, Doreen, be reasonable," said he. "You can do no good to
+Dudley, believe me. He has got into some dreadful mess or other; but
+it's nothing that you or I or any earthly creature can help him out of.
+I confess I didn't tell you all I found out when I went up to town. I
+couldn't. I can't now. But if you will persist, and if nothing else will
+keep you quietly here, I--well, I promise to go up again. And I'll
+warrant if I do I shall learn something which will convince even
+_you_ that you must give up every thought of him."
+
+"Will you promise," said Doreen, solemnly, "to tell me all you find
+out?"
+
+"No," replied Max, promptly, "I won't promise that. I can't. But I think
+you can trust me to tell you as much as you ought to know."
+
+With this promise Doreen was obliged to be content. And when, at
+luncheon time, it was discovered that certain things were wanted from
+town, and Max offered to go up for them, Doreen and her brother
+exchanged a look from which she gathered that he would not forget her
+errand.
+
+Max had plenty of time, while he was being jolted from Datton to Cannon
+Street, to decide on the best means of carrying out his promise. He
+decided that a visit to Limehouse, to the neighborhood where the
+property of the late Mr. Horne had been situated, would be better than
+another visit to Dudley.
+
+Plumtree Wharf was, he knew, the name of the most important part of the
+property which had belonged to Dudley's father. Putting together the two
+facts of the discovery of a ticket for Limehouse in Dudley's possession,
+and of the disappearance of Edward Jacobs after a visit to that locality
+on the same day, Max saw that there was something to be gleaned in that
+neighborhood, if he should have the luck to light upon it.
+
+It was late in the afternoon, and already dark, before he got out of the
+train at Limehouse station, and began the exploration of the unsavory
+district which fringes the docks.
+
+Through street after street of dingy, squalid houses he passed; some
+broken up by dirty little shops, some presenting the dull uniformity of
+row after row of mean, stunted brick buildings, the broken windows of
+many of which were mended with brown paper, or else not mended at all.
+Here and there a grimy public house, each with its group of loafers
+about the doors, made, with the lights in its windows, a spot of
+comparative brightness.
+
+Many of the streets were narrow and tortuous, roughly paved, and both
+difficult and dangerous to traverse by the unaccustomed foot passenger,
+who found himself now slipping on a piece of orange peel, the pale color
+of which was disguised by mud, now risking the soundness of his ankles
+among the uneven and slimy stones of the road.
+
+Max had to ask his way more than once before he reached the Plumtree
+Wharf, the entrance to which was through a door in a high wooden fence.
+Rather to his surprise, he found the door unfastened and unguarded. And
+when he had got through he looked round and asked himself what on earth
+he had expected to find there.
+
+There was nothing going on at this late hour, and Max was able to take
+stock of the place and of the outlook generally. Piles of timber to the
+right of him, the dead wall at the side of a warehouse on the left, gave
+him but a narrow space in which to pursue his investigations. And these
+only amounted to the discovery that the troubled waters of the Thames
+looked very dark and very cold from this spot; that the opposite bank,
+with little specks of light, offered a gloomy and depressing prospect,
+and that the lapping of the water among the black barges which were
+moored at his feet in a dense mass was the dreariest sound he had ever
+heard. He turned away with a shudder, and walked quickly up the narrow
+lane left by the timber, calling himself a fool for his journey.
+
+And just as he was reaching the narrow street by which he had come he
+was startled to find a girl's face peering down at him from the top of a
+pile of timber.
+
+Max stopped, with an exclamation. In an instant the girl withdrew the
+head, which was all he had seen of her, and he heard her crawling back
+quickly over the timber, out of his sight.
+
+Although he had seen her for a moment only, Max had been chilled to the
+bone by the expression of the girl's face. Ghastly white it had looked
+in the feeble light of a solitary gas lamp some distance away, and
+wearing an expression of fear and horror such as he had never seen on
+any countenance before. He felt that he must find out where she had
+gone, his first belief being that she was a lunatic. Else why should she
+have disappeared in that stealthy manner, with the look of fear stamped
+upon her face? There was nothing in the look or manner of Max himself to
+alarm her; and if she had been in need of help, why had she not called
+to him?
+
+He got a footing upon the timber and looked over it. But he could see
+nothing more of the girl. Beyond the stacks were some low-roofed
+outbuildings and the back of a shut-up warehouse. Reluctantly he got
+down, and passed into the narrow street. Not willing to leave at once a
+neighborhood which he had come so far to investigate, he turned, after
+going some dozen yards down the street, into a narrow passage on his
+left hand which led back to the river.
+
+The width between the high walls and the warehouses on either side was
+only some five feet. It was flagged with stone, very dark. About ten
+yards from the entrance there was a small warehouse, on the left hand,
+on which hung an old board, announcing that the building was "To Let."
+And next door to this was a dingy shop, with grimy and broken windows,
+the door of which was boarded up. This shop, also, was "To Be Let," and
+the board in this case had been up so long that the announcement had to
+be divined rather than read.
+
+Rather struck by the dilapidated appearance of these two buildings in a
+place where he supposed land must be valuable, Max paused for an
+instant. And as he did so, he became aware that there was some one by
+his side.
+
+Looking down quickly, he saw the young girl of whom he had caught a
+glimpse a few minutes before.
+
+He started.
+
+She looked up at him, and, still with the same look of stereotyped
+horror on her thin, white face, whispered, in a hoarse voice, as she
+pointed to the boarded-up shop-door with a shaking forefinger:
+
+"You daren't go in there, do you? There's a dead man in there!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+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."
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+It was "Poaching Wilson" who pulled the bell, after some difficulty in
+finding the handle, owing to the liberality with which he had "treated
+himself" as a preparation for the journey.
+
+Max, alarmed at the invasion, had made his way round to the
+billiard-room door at the back, bolted it on the inside, and hastened to
+give directions to the servants to lock all the other doors, and to
+secure the ground-floor windows.
+
+Then he rushed into the hall, just as his father had come out from the
+dining-room, serviette in hand, to learn the cause of the noise outside.
+
+"Hello, Max! Is it you back again? And have you brought down half the
+population of London with you?"
+
+"No, sir, they didn't come with me. They are guests of yours, I
+understand. And they expect to be treated to unlimited beer, so I gather
+from their remarks. They've brought some firewood, I believe."
+
+At this moment the clanging of the front-door bell resounded through the
+house for the second time. The frightened butler, who was a young man
+and rather nervous, stood by the door, not daring to open it. The ladies
+of the household had by this time come out of the dining-room; Mrs.
+Wedmore looked flush and frightened; the girls were tittering. Smothered
+explosions of laughter came from time to time to the ears of the master
+of the house, from the closed door which led to the servants' hall.
+
+"Shall--shall I see who it is, sir?" asked the butler, who could hear
+the epithets applied to him on the other side of the door.
+
+"No, no!" cried Doreen. "Not on any account! Tell them to put the thing
+down and go away."
+
+There was a pause, during which the bell rang again, and there was a
+violent lunge at the door.
+
+"They won't--they won't go away, Miss, without they get something
+first," said the butler, who was as white as a sheet.
+
+"Tell them," began Mr. Wedmore, in a loud tone of easy confidence, "to
+take it round to the back door, and--and to send a--deputation to me in
+the morning; when--er--they shall be properly rewarded for their
+trouble."
+
+"They ought to reward us for _our_ trouble, papa, don't you think?"
+suggested Doreen.
+
+"There! They've begun to reward themselves," said Queenie, as a stone
+came through one of the windows.
+
+Mr. Wedmore was furious. He saw the mistake he had made, but he would
+not own it. Putting strong constraint upon himself, he assumed a gay
+geniality of manner which his looks belied, and boldly advanced to the
+door. But Mrs. Wedmore flung her arms round her husband in a capacious
+embrace, dragging him backward with an energy there was no use
+resisting.
+
+"No, no, no, George! I won't have you expose yourself to those horrid
+roughs! Don't open the door, Bartram! Put up the bolt!"
+
+"Nonsense! Nonsense, my dear!" retorted Mr. Wedmore, who was, perhaps,
+not so unwilling to be saved from the howling mob as he wished to
+appear. "It's only good-humored fun--of a rough sort, perhaps, but quite
+harmless. It's some mischievous boy who threw the stone. But, of course,
+they must go round to the back."
+
+"Cook won't dare to open the door to 'em, sir," said the butler.
+
+The situation was becoming serious. There was no denying that the house
+was besieged. Mrs. Wedmore began to feel like a chatelaine of the
+Cavalier party, with the Roundhead army at the doors clamoring for her
+husband's blood. The cries of the villagers were becoming more derisive.
+
+As a happy thought, Mrs. Wedmore suggested haranguing the mob from an
+upper window. This course seemed rather ignominious, but prudence
+decided in its favor.
+
+There was a rush upstairs, and Mr. Wedmore, followed by all the ladies,
+flung himself into the bathroom and threw up the window.
+
+It was not at all the sort of thing that merry squire of the olden times
+might have been expected to do. In fact, as Doreen remarked, there were
+no bathrooms in the olden time to harangue a mob from. But Mr. Wedmore's
+medieval ardor being damped, he submitted to circumstances with
+fortitude.
+
+"Yah! There 'e is at last!" "'Ow are you, old un?" "Don't put your nose
+out too fur this cold night!"
+
+These and similar ribald remarks greeted Mr. Wedmore as he appeared at
+the window, telling him only too plainly that the merry days of old were
+gone, never to be restored, and that the feudal feeling which bound (or
+is supposed to have bound) rich and poor, gentle and simple, in one
+great tie of brotherhood had disappeared forever.
+
+Doreen and Queenie were secretly enjoying the fun, though they had the
+sense to be very quiet; but Mrs. Wedmore was in an agony of sympathy
+with her husband, and of fear for the results of his enterprise. He
+began a speech of thanks, but the noise below was too great for him to
+be heard. Indeed, it was his own servants who did the most toward
+drowning his voice by their well-meant endeavors to shout down the
+interrupting cries.
+
+"They're most of them tipsy, I think," whispered Doreen to her mother,
+who said, "Sh-sh!" in shocked remonstrance, but secretly agreed with her
+daughter's verdict.
+
+"Throw them some coppers, papa," suggested the sage and practical
+Queenie.
+
+Mr. Wedmore turned out his pockets, taking care to disperse his largesse
+as widely as possible. The girls helped him, hunting high and low for
+coins, among which, urged by the crowd in no subdued voice to "come down
+handsome," sixpences and shillings presently made their welcome
+appearance.
+
+"Oh, the hollies!" whispered Doreen to her sister.
+
+"Thank goodness, the look of the garden to-morrow morning will be an
+object-lesson to papa!"
+
+For the invaders, well aware of the value of such wares at Christmas
+time, filled out the pauses by slashing at the berry-bearing trees with
+their pocket-knives, secure in the safety of numbers.
+
+By the time the shower of money ceased the crowd had begun to thin;
+those members of it who had been lucky enough to secure silver coins had
+made off in the direction of the nearest public-house, and those who had
+cut down the holly had taken themselves off with their booty.
+
+There remained in front of the door, when this clearance had been
+effected, the Yule log itself, the laborers who had drawn it along and a
+group of manageable size.
+
+Max, who had been watching the proceedings from the study, after turning
+out the light, judged that the moment had come for negotiations to
+commence. So he told the butler to throw open the front door, and he
+himself invited the unwelcome guests to enter. He had taken the
+precaution to have all portable articles removed from the hall and all
+the doors locked except that which led to the servants' hall and the
+staircases.
+
+In they came, a little subdued, and with their first disastrous energy
+sufficiently exhausted for them to be able to listen and to do as they
+were told.
+
+The oaken center-table had been pushed on one side, and there was a
+clear space, wide, carpetless, from the front door to the big stone
+fireplace opposite.
+
+"This way with the log! Now, boys, pull with a will!" cried Max, not
+insensible to the novelty and picturesqueness of the situation, as a
+motley crowd, some in smock-frocks, some in corduroy and some in gaiters
+and great-coats, pressed into the great hall dragging the log after them
+with many a "Whoop!" and shout and cry.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Wedmore and the two girls hurried downstairs on hearing the
+door open, and stood by the fireplace, with a little glow of
+satisfaction and pleasure at the turn affairs had taken.
+
+It _was_ a log! Or, rather, it was more than a log; for it was half
+a tree. Slowly the huge thing came in, scraping the nicely polished
+floor, rolling a little from side to side, and threatening all those
+within a yard of it. And then, when its appearance had spread
+consternation through the household, the inevitable question came: What
+was to be done with it?
+
+The fire-basket had been taken out of the hearth on purpose for its
+reception, but it was evident that, even after this careful preparation,
+to think of burning it whole was out of the question. There was nothing
+for it but to send for a saw and to reduce the log then and there to a
+manageable size.
+
+This was done, amid considerable noise and excitement, drinking of the
+health of the family by villagers who had been drinking too much
+already, and much scraping of the polished floor by muddy, hob-nailed
+boots.
+
+Finally the deputation was got rid of, and the interrupted dinner was
+allowed to proceed, much to the comfort of Max, who had eaten nothing
+since breakfast, and much to the dismay of Mrs. Wedmore, who was then
+able to ascertain the extent of the damage done by the invaders.
+
+It was lucky for Max that he had arrived at such an opportune moment.
+His father had been grumbling at the number of visits he had made to
+town lately, and the young man would have found him in no very good
+humor if he had not discovered to his hand the opportunity of making
+himself conspicuously useful.
+
+It is scarcely necessary to say that Max did not tell anyone about the
+adventures he had met with. He knew that he should have to go through
+the ordeal of an interview with his sister, Doreen, who would want to
+know a great deal more than he was willing to tell her; but he was
+tired, and he made up his mind that he would not be interrogated that
+evening. So he gave her no opportunity for the confidential talk she was
+dying to have with him, but spent the remainder of the evening in
+dutiful attendance upon his mother.
+
+The following day was Christmas Eve. Max came down late to breakfast,
+and he had scarcely entered the morning-room when his father handed him
+the _Standard_, pointing to a certain paragraph without any comment
+but a glance at the girls, as a hint to his son not to make any remark
+which would recall Dudley and his affairs to their minds.
+
+The paragraph was as follows:
+
+"SHOCKING DISCOVERY!
+
+"The body of a man was found floating in the river close to
+Limehouse Pier late yesterday evening. Medical evidence points to
+death by violence, and the police are making inquiries. It is
+thought that the description of the body, which is that of a man of
+a Jewish type of countenance, rather under than over the middle
+height, aged between fifty and fifty-five, gray hair and short,
+gray beard, tallies with that given a few days ago by a woman who
+applied at the ---- Street Police Court, alleging that her husband
+had disappeared in the above neighborhood. The police are extremely
+reticent, but at the present they have no clue to the authors of
+the outrage. The body awaits identification at the mortuary, and an
+inquest will be held to-day."
+
+"I wonder whether Dudley will see that?" said Mr. Wedmore, in a low
+voice, as soon as his daughters were engaged in talk together. "It looks
+like the sequel to the other paragraph which upset him so the other
+evening, doesn't it? I shall watch the papers for the result of the
+inquest. It seems to me pretty certain that it was Edward Jacobs.
+Curious affair, isn't it, that he should be murdered in a slum, after
+making a fortune at other people's expense? Retribution--just
+retribution! Curious, isn't it!"
+
+To Max it was so much more than merely "curious," knowing what he did,
+that he felt sick with horror. Surely this body, found floating near
+Limehouse Pier, was the one he had touched in the dark!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+IS IT BLACKMAIL?
+
+
+Mr. Wedmore repeated his comment: "Curious, isn't it?" before Max could
+reply. At last he nodded, and handed back the paper to his father. Then
+he turned his chair toward the fire, and stared at the blazing coals. He
+had lost his appetite; he felt cold, miserable.
+
+His father could not help noticing that something was wrong with him;
+and, after watching him furtively for a few minutes, he said, with an
+abruptness which made Max start:
+
+"Did you see anything of Dudley when you were in town?"
+
+Max changed color, and glanced apprehensively at his father, as if
+fearing some suspicion in the unexpected question.
+
+"No, sir," he answered, after a moment's hesitation. "I called at his
+chambers; but they told me he had gone away for the holidays and had
+left no address. All letters were to be kept for him till his return."
+
+Both question and answer had been uttered very softly, but Max saw, by
+the look on Doreen's face, as she glanced over from the other side of
+the table, that she guessed what they were talking about, if she had not
+heard their words.
+
+"Aren't you going to have any breakfast, Max?" asked she, as she came
+round to him. "We've kept everything about for you, and we want the
+table."
+
+"Well, you can have it," said he, jumping up, quickly, and making for
+the door. "I don't want any breakfast this morning."
+
+"Nonsense. You will not be allowed to leave the room until you have had
+some," retorted his sister, as she sprang at him and attempted to pinion
+his arms. "We allow no ill-temper on Christmas Eve, especially as we've
+got a surprise for you--a beautiful, real surprise. Guess who is coming
+this morning to stay till New Year!"
+
+Queenie had come up by this time, and the two girls between them brought
+their brother back to the table, where the younger sister began to pour
+out his coffee.
+
+But Max refused to show the slightest interest in the coming guest, and
+would not attempt to guess who it was. So they had to tell him.
+
+"It was all on your account that we asked her," said Doreen, hurt by his
+indifference. "You took such a fancy to her, and she to you, apparently,
+at the Hutchinsons' dance, that we thought you'd be delighted.
+_Now_, don't you know who it is?"
+
+To their great disappointment, both girls saw that he didn't. Mr.
+Wedmore, from the other end of the room, was observing this little
+incident with considerable annoyance. The young lady in question, Miss
+Mildred Appleby, was very pretty, and would be well dowered, and Mr.
+Wedmore had entered heartily into the plan of inviting her to spend
+Christmas with them, in the hope that Max would propose, be accepted,
+and that he would then make up his mind to settle.
+
+"Why, it's Mildred Appleby," said Doreen, impatiently, when her
+brother's blank look had given her the wrong answer. "Surely, you don't
+mean to say you've forgotten all about her?"
+
+"Oh, no, I remember her," answered Max, indifferently. "Tall girl with a
+fashion-plate face, waltzes pretty well and can't talk. Yes, I remember
+her, of course."
+
+"Is that all you have to say about her?" cried Doreen, betraying her
+disappointment. "Why, a month ago she was the nicest and the jolliest
+and the everythingest girl you had ever met."
+
+"He's seen somebody else since then," remarked the observant Queenie, in
+her dry, little voice. "When he was in town yesterday, perhaps."
+
+Max looked at his sister with a curious expression. Was she right? Had
+he, in that adventurous thirty-six hours in London, seen somebody who
+took the color out of all the other girls he had ever met? He asked
+himself this question when Queenie's shrewd eyes met his, and he
+remembered the strange sensation he had felt at the touch of Carrie's
+hand, at the sound of her voice.
+
+Before he could answer his sister, Mr. Wedmore spoke impatiently:
+
+"Rubbish!" cried he, testily. "Every young man thinks it the proper
+thing to talk like that, as if no girl was good enough for him. Miss
+Appleby is a charming girl, and she will find plenty of admirers without
+waiting for Max's valuable adoration."
+
+He had much better not have spoken, blundering old papa that he was. And
+both daughters thought so, as they saw Max raise his eyebrows and gather
+in all the details of the little plot in one sweeping glance at the
+faces around him. He drank his coffee, but he could not eat. Doreen sat
+watching him, ready to spring upon him at the first possible moment, and
+to carry him off for the _tete-a-tete_ he was so anxious to put off.
+
+What should he tell his sister of that adventure of his in the slums of
+the East End? Would she be satisfied if he told a white lie, if he said
+he had found out nothing?
+
+Max felt that Doreen would not be satisfied if he got himself out of the
+difficulty like that. In the first place, she would not believe him. He
+saw that her quick eyes had been watching him since his return, and he
+felt that he had been unable to hide the fact that something of greater
+significance had occurred during that brief stay in town. What then
+should he tell her? Perfect frankness, perfect confidence was out of the
+question. To look back now, in the handsome, spacious house of his
+parents, from the snug depths of an easy-chair, on the time he had
+passed on and about the wharf by the docks, was so strange that Max
+could hardly believe in his own experiences.
+
+Who would believe the story of his adventures, if he himself could
+scarcely do so? Would Doreen, would anybody give credence to the story
+of the dead body that he touched, but never saw, the eyes that looked at
+him from an unbroken wall, the girl who lured him into the shut-up
+house, and then let him out again with an air of secrecy and mystery?
+
+The transition had been so abrupt from the gloomy wharf, with its
+suspicious surroundings and the heavy, fog-laden air of the riverside,
+back to the warmth and light and brightness of home, that already his
+adventures had receded into a sort of dreamland, and he began to ask
+himself whether Carrie, with her fair hair and moving blue eyes, her
+vibrating voice and changeful expression, were not a creature of his
+imagination only.
+
+He was still under the influence of the feelings roused by this dreamy
+remembrance, when he snatched the opportunity afforded by Doreen's being
+called away by Mrs. Wedmore, to go out into the grounds, on his way to
+the stables. A ride through the lanes in the frosty air would, he
+thought, be the best preparation for the trying ordeal of that
+inevitable talk with Doreen, whose wistful eyes haunted him as she
+waited for a chance of speaking to him alone.
+
+In the garden a scene of desolation met his eye.
+
+The lawns were torn up and trodden down; the gravel path from the
+stables looked like a freshly plowed field; every tree and every bush
+bore the marks of the marauder.
+
+The head gardener was in a condition of unapproachable ferocity, and it
+was generally understood that he had given notice to leave. The
+under-gardeners kept out of the way, but could be heard at intervals
+checking outbursts of derisive laughter behind the shrubberies. The
+story of the Yule log and its adventures was the best joke the country
+had had for a long time, and it was bound to lose nothing as it passed
+from mouth to mouth. And poor Mr. Wedmore began to dread the ordeal of
+congratulations he would have to go through when he next went to church.
+
+Max felt sorry for his father. As he entered the stable-yard, which was
+a wide expanse of flagged ground at the back of the house, round which
+were many outbuildings, he came upon a group of snickering servants, all
+enjoying the story of the master's freak.
+
+The group broke up guiltily on the appearance of Max, the laundry-maids
+taking flight in one direction, while the stablemen became suddenly busy
+with yard-broom and leather.
+
+Max put a question or two to the groom who saddled his horse for him.
+
+"There was no great harm done last night, was there, except in the
+garden? You have not heard of anything being stolen, eh?"
+
+"Well, no, sir. But it brought a lot of people up as had no business
+here. There was a person come up as we couldn't get rid of, asking
+questions about the family, sir; and about Mr. Horne, too, sir. She
+wouldn't believe as he wasn't here, an' she frightened some of the
+women, I believe, sir. They didn't know where she'd got to, an' nobody
+saw her go out of the place, so they've got an idea she's hiding about.
+A fortune-telling tramp, most likely, sir," added the man, who wished he
+had held his tongue about the intruder when he saw how strongly the
+young master was affected by this story.
+
+The fact was that Max instantly connected this apparition of a woman
+"who asked questions about Mr. Horne" with the ugly story told him at
+the house by the wharf, and he was glad that Dudley was not spending
+Christmas at The Beeches.
+
+He was oppressed during the whole of his ride by this suggestion that
+the questionable characters of the wharfside were pursuing Dudley; it
+gave color to Carrie's statement that it was Dudley who killed the man
+whom Max believed to have been Edward Jacobs; and it looked as if the
+object of the woman's visit was to levy blackmail.
+
+Or was it--could it be that the woman was Carrie, and that her object
+was to warn Dudley? To associate Carrie herself with the levying of
+blackmail was not possible to the susceptible Max in the present state
+of his feelings toward her.
+
+And, just as he was meditating upon this mystery, all unprepared for a
+meeting with his sister, Doreen waylaid him. He was entering the house
+by the back way, muddy from his ride, when she sprang upon him from an
+ambush on the stairs.
+
+"I've been waiting all the morning to catch you alone," said she, as she
+ran out from behind the tall clock and seized his arm. "You've been
+trying to avoid me. Don't deny it. I say you have. As if it was any use!
+No, you shall not go upstairs and take off your boots first. You will
+just come into the study, mud and all, and tell me--tell me what you
+_know_, not what you have been making up, mind! I'm going to have
+the truth."
+
+"Well, you can't," returned her brother, shortly, as he allowed himself
+to be dragged across the hall, which looked cheerless enough without a
+fire, and with the great, clumsy, hideous, maimed old Yule log filling
+up the fireplace and reminding everybody of all that it had cost.
+
+Doreen pushed him into the study and shut the door.
+
+"Why can't I know the truth?" asked she, eying him steadily. "Do you
+mean that you have found out Dudley doesn't care for me."
+
+Max glanced at his sister's face, and then looked away. He had not known
+till that moment, when he caught the tender look of anxiety in her big
+brown eyes, how strong her love of Dudley was. An impulse of anger
+against the man seized him, and he frowned.
+
+"Why, surely you know already that he doesn't care for you, in the way
+he ought to care, or he would never have neglected you, never have given
+you up!" said he, ferociously.
+
+"I'm not so sure about that. At any rate I want to know what you found
+out. Don't think I'm not strong enough to bear it, whatever it is!"
+
+"Well, then, I'll tell you. He _is_ off his head. He has got mixed
+up in some way with a set of people no sane man would trust himself with
+for half an hour, and--and--and--well, they say--the people say he's done
+something that would hang him. There! Is that enough for you?"
+
+He felt that he was a brute to tell her, but he could see no other way
+out of the difficulty in which her own persistency had placed him. She
+stared at him for a few seconds with blanched cheeks, clasping her
+hands. Then she said in a whisper:
+
+"You don't mean--murder?"
+
+Her brother's silence gave her the answer.
+
+There was a long pause. Then she spoke in a changed voice, under her
+breath:
+
+"Poor Dudley!"
+
+Max was astonished to see her take the announcement so quietly.
+
+"Well, now you see that it is impossible to do anything for him, don't
+you?"
+
+"Indeed, I do not!" retorted Doreen, with spirit. "We don't know the
+story yet. We don't know whether there is any truth in it at all; or, if
+there is, what the difficulties were that he was in. Look, Max. You must
+remember how worried he has been lately. I have heard him make excuses
+for people who did rash things, and I have always agreed with him. You
+see, I knew how good-hearted he was, and I know that he would never have
+done anything mean or underhand or unworthy."
+
+"Don't you call murder, manslaughter--whatever it is--unworthy?" asked
+Max, irritably.
+
+"Not without knowing something about it," answered she. "And I think
+there's generally more to be said for the man who commits murder than
+for any other criminal. And--and"--her voice gave way and began to shake
+with tears--"I don't care what he's done, I'm sorry for him. I--I want
+to help him, or--or, at least, I want to see him to tell him so!"
+
+Max was alarmed. Knowing the spirit and courage of his brilliant sister,
+he was afraid lest she should conceive the idea of starting off herself
+on some mad enterprise; so he said hastily:
+
+"He's away now, you know. He's gone without leaving any address. Perhaps
+I was wrong, after all. Perhaps when he comes back he will be himself
+again, and--and everything will be cleared up. We can only wait and
+see."
+
+But this lame attempt at comfort met with no warm response from his
+sister. She looked at him with a poor little attempt at a contemptuous
+smile, and then, afraid of breaking down altogether, sprang up from the
+arm-chair in which she had been sitting and left him to himself.
+
+Max did not recover his usual spirits at luncheon, where everybody else
+was full of mirthful anticipation of the household dance, another idea
+of Mr. Wedmore's, which was to be a feature of the evening. And after
+that meal, instead of offering to drive to the station to meet Miss
+Appleby, as everybody had expected, Max took himself off, nobody knew
+where, and did not return home until dusk.
+
+Coming through a little side gate in the park, he got into the great
+yard behind the house, where the stables stood on one side and a huge
+barn, which was only used as a storage place for lumber, on the other.
+And it occurred to him that if the woman of whom the groom told him were
+still hanging about the premises, as the servants seemed to think, this
+was the very place she might be expected to choose as a hiding-place.
+
+So he pushed open the great, creaking door of the barn and went in. It
+was very dark in there, and the air was cold and damp. A musty smell
+from old sacks, rotting wood and mildewed straw came to his nostrils, as
+he made his way carefully over the boards with which the middle part of
+the barn had, for some forgotten purpose or other, been floored.
+
+Little chinks of light from above showed great beams, some with ropes
+hanging from them, and stacks of huge lumber of fantastic shapes to
+right and left.
+
+Max stood still in the middle of the floor and listened for a sound. But
+he heard nothing. Suddenly he thought of the signal by the use of which
+he had summoned Carrie to the door of the house by the wharf.
+
+Getting close to one of the piles of lumber, he gave two taps on the
+panel of a broken wooden chest, waited a couple of seconds, and then
+gave two taps more.
+
+There was a shuffling noise along the boards on the other side of the
+stack, followed by the striking of a match.
+
+Max was around the obstacle in a moment. Holding a piece of candle in
+her bony hand was Mrs. Higgs.
+
+"Hello!" said he.
+
+She said nothing. But the candle shook in her hand, and by the glassy
+look of dull yet fierce surprise in her colorless eyes Max saw that this
+woman, who had connived at his imprisonment in the room with the dead
+man, had never expected to see him again--alive.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+MR. WEDMORE'S SECOND FREAK.
+
+
+Even if Max had not had such an ugly experience of the ways of Mrs.
+Higgs, even if this meeting with her in the barn had been his first, his
+sensations would hardly have been agreeable ones. There was something
+uncanny about the old woman, something which her quiet, shuffling
+movements and her apparent lack of interest in what went on around her
+only served to accentuate. Even now, while suffering the shock of a
+great surprise, Max could feel rather than see the effect which the
+unexpected meeting had upon her.
+
+For she uttered no cry, no word; her eyes scarcely opened wider than
+before. Her jaw dropped a little, and then began to move rapidly up and
+down; that was all. And yet, as Max looked at her--at this helpless,
+infirm old creature with the palsied hands and the lackluster eyes--he
+shivered.
+
+"You vile old hag!" thought he to himself. And then his thoughts flew to
+Carrie, and he asked himself what the attraction could be which bound
+her to this wicked old woman.
+
+Mrs. Higgs, after staring at him in dead silence for what seemed a long
+time, asked, as composedly as if their meeting had been the most natural
+thing in the world:
+
+"Where's your friend, young man?"
+
+"W--what friend?" stammered Max.
+
+"Oh, you don't know, I suppose!" retorted Mrs. Higgs, derisively. "No
+more than you know what you wanted to come spying about Plumtree Wharf
+for, eh?"
+
+Max made no answer. There came a vixenish gleam into the old woman's
+faded eyes.
+
+"What did you come for, eh?" pursued she, sharply. "Who sent you? Not
+he, I know! When he's got anything to do at the wharf he comes himself."
+
+And Mrs. Higgs gave an ugly, mirthless chuckle.
+
+As Max stared at the withered, lined face, which was growing each moment
+more repulsive in his eyes, a feeling of horror and of intense pity for
+Dudley seized him. To be pursued, as his friend evidently was pursued,
+by this vicious old hag, was a fate hideous enough to expiate every
+crime in the Decalogue.
+
+A little rapid reflection made him decide that a bold course of defiance
+was the best to be taken. Whatever Dudley might have done, and whatever
+terrors Mrs. Higgs might hold over his head, it was very certain, after
+all, that the evidence of such a creature, living in such an underground
+fashion, could never be a serious danger to a man in his position.
+Dudley himself seemed rather to have lost sight of this fact, certainly;
+but it could not be less than a fact for all that.
+
+"Mr. Horne is not likely to trouble you or the rest of the thieves at
+the wharf again," said Max, with decision. "He's gone abroad for a
+holiday. And if you don't take yourself off at once, or if you turn up
+here again, or if you attempt to annoy us or Mr. Horne, in any way
+whatever, you'll find the police at your heels before you know where you
+are."
+
+Then into her dull eyes there came a look of malignity which made Max
+doubt whether he had done well to be so bold.
+
+"Thieves, eh? Tell your friend we're thieves, and see what he says to
+that! Police, eh? Tell your friend _that_, tell your friend
+_that_, and see whether he'll thank you for your interference!"
+
+"Mr. Horne is away, as I told you."
+
+"Away, is he? But he won't be away long. Oh, no; he'll come back--he'll
+come back. Or if he doesn't," added Mrs. Higgs, with complacency, "I'll
+fetch him."
+
+"Well, you've got to leave this place at once," said Max, with decision.
+"We don't allow strangers in the barn, and if you don't go quietly at
+once, I must send somebody to turn you out."
+
+Mrs. Higgs kept her eyes fixed upon him with her usual blank stare while
+he said this in a very loud and decided tone. When he had finished she
+suddenly blew out the light with so much unnecessary force that Max felt
+something like a gust of wind upon his face.
+
+"Turn me out!" and she laughed harshly. "Turn me out! Send for the
+police to do it, if you like."
+
+Max went out of the barn, listening to her cackling laugh, and not
+feeling comfortable until he had found his way into the open air. He at
+once gave orders to the stablemen and gardeners to search the barn and
+to turn out the strangers they might find there.
+
+But though they hunted in every corner, they found no one, and Max was
+only too glad to come to the conclusion that Mrs. Higgs had taken his
+advice, and got away with as little delay as possible.
+
+This incident, however, following so closely on the heels of his
+experiences at the wharf, took away all the zest with which Max should
+have entered into the programme which, by Mr. Wedmore's special wish,
+had been prepared for that evening; and while Doreen and Queenie and
+Mildred Appleby and two young nephews of Mr. Wedmore's chattered and
+laughed, and made dinner a very lively affair, Max was quiet and what
+his cousins called "grumpy," and threatened to be a wet blanket on the
+evening's entertainment.
+
+"Going to have all the servants in to dance Sir Roger!" cried he, in
+dismay, when Doreen told him the news. "Good heavens! Hasn't he had a
+lesson in yesterday's tomfoolery and what came of it? How do the
+servants like the idea?"
+
+"Of course they hate it," answered Doreen, "and mamma has been all day
+trying to coax the cook to indulge him, and not to walk off and leave us
+to cook the Christmas dinner. And, of course, this assurance that the
+notion was distasteful to everybody had made papa more obstinate than
+ever. Oh, we shall have a merry time."
+
+Now, down in the depths of his heart Mr. Wedmore had begun to feel some
+misgivings about his plans for keeping Christmas in the good old
+fashion. But the first failure, the colossal mistake of the Yule Log,
+had made him obstinate instead of yielding, and he had set his teeth and
+made up his mind that they should all be merry in the way he chose, or
+they should not be merry at all.
+
+The fact was that this prosaic middle-aged gentleman, who had passed the
+greater part of his life immersed in day-books and ledgers and the
+details of a busy city man's life, found time hang heavy on his hands in
+these prosperous days of his retirement, and in this condition he had
+had his mind inflamed by pictures of the life that was led in The
+Beeches by his forerunners, easy-going, hard-riding, hard-drinking
+country gentlemen, with whom, if the truth were known, he had nothing in
+common.
+
+Fired by the desire to live the life they led, to enjoy it in the
+pleasant old fashion, it had seemed to him an especially happy custom to
+give a dance at which masters and servants should join hands and make
+merry together. He had never assisted at one of these balls, and he
+refused to listen to his wife's suggestion that it should take place in
+the servants' hall, that the servants should be allowed to invite their
+own friends, and that the family should limit itself to one brief dance
+with their dependants and then leave them to enjoy themselves in their
+own way.
+
+No, it was his will that the dance should be held in the hall of the
+house, and that the pictures of the Illustrated Christmas Numbers should
+be realized to the utmost.
+
+Dinner, therefore, was scrambled over in a hurry, and the family with
+their guests went upstairs to the drawing-room or out to the
+billiard-room, while preparations were made for the great event of the
+evening, the lighting of the Yule Log and Sir Roger de Coverley.
+
+Then the first mishap occurred in the inopportune arrival of the Rev.
+Lisle Lindsay, whose rather sedate and solemn appearance cast a slight
+gloom upon everybody's spirits, which deepened when Queenie whispered to
+Mildred that he looked upon dancing as a frivolous and worldly amusement
+scarcely to be tolerated and never to be encouraged.
+
+He soon made an opportunity of devoting himself to Doreen, who was
+playing the lightest of light music at the piano in the corner of the
+room.
+
+It had been a fancy of Mr. Wedmore's, who had his own way in everything
+with his wife, to have this drawing-room, which was large and square and
+lighted by five windows, three at the front and two at the side,
+furnished entirely with old things of the style of eighty years back,
+with Empire chairs, sofas and cabinets, as little renovated as possible.
+The effect was quaint and not unpleasing; a little cold, perhaps, but
+picturesque and graceful.
+
+The grand piano had a case specially made for it, painted a dull
+sage-green and finished in a manner to give it a look of the less
+massive harpsichord.
+
+It was at this instrument that Doreen sat, making a very pretty picture
+in her white silk, square-necked frock, with bands of beaver fur on the
+bodice and sleeves and an edging of the same fur round the bottom of the
+skirt.
+
+"My purpose in coming here to-night, Miss Wedmore," said Mr. Lindsay,
+when he had delivered an unimportant message from the vicar's wife about
+the church decorations, "was really to bring you my good wishes for this
+blessed season. I am afraid I shall have no opportunity of speaking to
+you to-morrow, though, of course, I shall see you in the church."
+
+"Oh, yes, we shall all be at church," said Doreen, quickly.
+
+She noted something rather unusual in the curate's manner--a nervous
+excitement which presaged danger; and she dashed into an air from "The
+Shop-Girl" with an energy which was meant to have the effect of checking
+his solemn ardor.
+
+But the curate had the stuff of a man in him, and did not mean to be put
+off. This opportunity was really a good one, for the talk in the room,
+which his arrival had checked for an instant, was now going on merrily.
+Mrs. Wedmore did her best to keep up the conversation. Nothing would
+have pleased her better than to see Doreen transfer her tender feeling
+for the discredited Dudley to such a suitable and irreproachable person
+as Lisle Lindsay. She kept a hopeful eye on the pair at the piano while
+she went on talking to her husband's old friend, Mrs. Hutchinson, who
+was staying with them for Christmas.
+
+"And at the same time," went on Mr. Lindsay, as he moved his chair a
+little nearer, so that, under cover of the music, he could speak without
+being overheard, "to speak to you on a subject which is--is--in fact,
+very near my heart."
+
+This was worse than Doreen had expected. She glanced round at him with
+rather a frightened expression. "Oh, don't let us talk about
+anything--anything serious now," said she. "Just when we shall be going
+downstairs to--to dance--in a few minutes."
+
+It was a very inconsequent objection to make, and Mr. Lindsay simply
+ignored it.
+
+"It is, in fact, about myself that I wish to speak, Miss Wedmore," he
+pursued relentlessly. "You cannot have failed to notice what a--what a
+deep interest I take in all that concerns you. And latterly I have
+flattered myself that--"
+
+"But people should never flatter themselves about anything!" cried
+Doreen, desperately, as she suddenly laid her hands in her lap and
+turned from the piano to face the worst. "Now I'll give you an example.
+I flattered myself a little while ago that a man cared a great deal
+about me--a man I cared a great deal for myself. And all the while he
+didn't; or, at least, I am afraid he didn't. And yet, you know, I can't
+help hoping that perhaps I didn't only flatter myself, after all; that
+perhaps he will come back some day and tell me I was right."
+
+Mr. Lindsay heard her in silence, with his mild eyes fixed on the
+carpet. But when she had finished he looked up again, and she was
+shocked to find that the gentle obstinacy which had been in his face
+before was there still.
+
+"I am, indeed, sorry for your disappointment," he said sweetly. "Or
+rather I should be if it were such a one that you could not hope
+to--to--in fact, to get over it. But--but these are trials which may be,
+perhaps, only sent to show that you, even you, happily placed as you are
+and gifted of the Almighty, are human, after all, and not beyond
+suffering. And--and it may give you an opportunity of seeing that there
+are others who can appreciate you better, and who would only be too glad
+to--to--to--"
+
+"To step into his shoes!" finished Doreen for him, with a sigh. "I know
+what you were going to say, and if you won't be stopped, I suppose I
+must hear you out. But, oh, dear, I do wish you wouldn't!"
+
+He was not to be put off like that. In fact, he was not to be put off by
+any available means. He sighed a little, and persisted.
+
+"I am glad you have guessed what I was going to say, Miss Wedmore,
+though I should not have put it quite in that way. And why should you
+not want to hear it? I should have thought that even you must be not
+quite indifferent to any man's honest feelings of esteem and admiration
+toward you!"
+
+Doreen was looking at him helplessly, with wide-open eyes. Did he really
+think any girl was ever moved by this sort of address, deliberately
+uttered, with the words well chosen, well considered? As different as
+possible from the abrupt, staccato method used by Dudley in the dear old
+days!
+
+"Oh, I'm not indifferent at all!" said she, quickly. "I'm never
+indifferent to anything or anybody. But I'm sorry, very sorry that--that
+you should feel--"
+
+She stopped short, looked at him for a moment curiously, and asked with
+great abruptness:
+
+"_Do_ you feel anything in the matter? _Really_ feel, I mean?
+I don't think you do; I don't think you can. You couldn't speak so
+_nicely_, if you did."
+
+He looked at her with gentle reproach. His was not a very tempestuous
+feeling, perhaps, but it was genuine, honest, sincere. He thought her
+the most splendid specimen of handsome, healthy well-brought-up
+womanhood he had ever met, and he thought also that the beneficent
+influence of the Church, exercised through the unworthy medium of
+himself, would mold her into a creature as near perfection as was
+humanly possible.
+
+Her way of receiving his advances was perplexing. He was not easily
+disconcerted, but he did not answer her immediately. Then he said
+softly:
+
+"How could I speak in any way but what you call 'nicely' to _you_? To
+the lady whom I am asking to be my wife?"
+
+Doreen looked startled.
+
+"Oh, don't, please! You don't know what a mistake you're making. I'm not
+at all the sort of wife for you, really! Indeed, I couldn't recommend
+myself as a wife to anybody, but especially to you."
+
+"Why--especially to me?"
+
+"Well, I'm not good enough."
+
+"That sounds rather flattering. And yet, somehow, I don't fancy you mean
+it to be so."
+
+"Well, no, I don't," said Doreen, frankly; "for I mean by 'good' a lot
+of qualities that I don't think highly of myself, such as getting up in
+the middle of the night to go to early service, and being civil to
+people I hate, and--and a lot of things like that. Don't you know that
+I'm eminently deficient in all the Christian virtues?"
+
+This was a question the curate had never asked himself; but it came upon
+him at this moment with disconcerting force that she was right. Luckily
+for his self-esteem, it did not occur to him at the same time that it
+was this very lack of the conventional virtues, a certain freshness and
+originality born of her defiant neglect of them, which formed the
+stronger part of her attractiveness in his eyes.
+
+After a short pause he answered, with his usual deliberation:
+
+"Indeed, I am quite sure that you do yourself injustice."
+
+"Oh, but I'm equally sure that I don't. I not only leave undone the
+things which you would say I ought to do, and do the things which I
+ought not to do, but I'm rather proud of it."
+
+Still, Mr. Lindsay would not accept the repulse. He persisted in making
+excuses for her and in believing them.
+
+"Well, you fulfill your most important duty; you are the happiness and
+the brightness of the house. Your father's face softens whenever you
+come near him. Now, as that is your chief duty, and you fulfill it so
+well, I am quite sure that if you entered another state of life where
+your duties would be different, you would accommodate yourself, you
+would fulfill your new duties as well as you did the old."
+
+Doreen rewarded him for this speech with a humorous look, in which there
+was something of gratitude, but more of rebellion.
+
+"Accommodate myself? No, I couldn't. I think, do you know, that if I
+were ever foolish enough to marry--and it would be foolishness in a
+spoiled creature like me--I should want a husband who could accommodate
+himself to me. Now, you couldn't. Clergymen never accommodate themselves
+to anything or anybody."
+
+The Reverend Lisle Lindsay did at last look rather disconcerted.
+Mischievous Doreen saw her triumph and made the most of it.
+
+"So that settles the matter, doesn't it? I can't accommodate myself; you
+can't either. What could possibly come of a union like that?"
+
+"The greatest happiness this world is capable of affording, and the hope
+of a happiness more abiding hereafter," said he; "all the happiness that
+a true woman can bring to the man she loves."
+
+Doreen threw up her head quickly.
+
+"Ah! that's just it," cried she. "'To the man she loves!' But you are
+not the man I love, Mr. Lindsay. I suppose it's one of the things I
+ought not to do--one of the unconventional and so unchristian things--to
+own that I love a man who doesn't love me. But I do. Now, you know who
+it is, and everybody knows; but, for all that, you mustn't tell; you
+must keep it as a secret that Doreen Wedmore--proud, stuck-up Doreen--is
+breaking her heart for the sake of a man who--who--" Her voice broke and
+she paused for a moment to recover herself; then she said, in a lighter
+tone: "Ah, well, we mustn't be hard upon him, either, for we don't
+know--it's so difficult to know."
+
+She sprang up from her seat; and the curate rose too. By her tactful
+mention of her own unlucky love she had softened the blow of her
+rejection of him. She had been rather too kind indeed, considering the
+tenacity of the person she had to deal with; for the curate considered
+his case by no means so hopeless as it was; and instead of taking
+himself off forlornly, as she would have wished, he stayed on until the
+young men swarmed up from the billiard-room and bore the whole party
+down to the hall.
+
+Mr. Wedmore, in great glee at having carried his point in the face of
+the family resistance, led Mrs. Hutchinson down stairs, and then handed
+her over to Max, while he himself threw open the door leading to the
+servants' quarters, and invited the group of neat maids and stalwart
+young men from the garden and stable to enter.
+
+But here there was a hitch in the arrangements. The cook, in a bad
+temper, smarting with disapproval of the whole business, had refused to
+join the others, and, as nothing could be done without her, Mr. Wedmore
+had to penetrate into the servants' hall, where he found her sitting in
+state, and, luckily, dressed for the occasion.
+
+Never in his life had Mr. Wedmore exerted himself so much to please any
+woman as he now did to soften the outraged feelings of the cook, who was
+a stout, red-faced woman, whose days of comeliness and charm were long
+since gone by. He at last succeeded in inducing her to accompany him to
+the hall, where he arrived in triumph, with a flushed face and nervous
+manner, after an interval which had been put to great advantage by the
+younger gentlemen of the party, who were all anxious to dance with the
+prettiest housemaid.
+
+Their eagerness had the effect of annoying the rest of the maids, and
+effectually spoiling whatever enjoyment they might have got out of the
+dance in the circumstances, while it by no means pleased the ladies of
+the family and their friends, who stood a little apart and whispered to
+each other that this sort of thing was bound to be a failure, and why
+couldn't papa, dear old, stupid papa, leave _them_ out of the affair,
+and let the boys have a romp in the servants' hall without their
+assistance?
+
+The pause had made the ladies so frigid and the men-servants so shy, the
+pretty housemaid so merry and the plain ones so solemn, that disaster
+threatened the gathering, when Mr. Wedmore and the cook made their
+opportune appearance.
+
+Max, his cousins and young Hutchinson gave three cheers, in the midst of
+which demonstration the Rev. Lisle Lindsay endeavored to make his escape
+by the front door.
+
+Unhappily, Mr. Wedmore, elated by his victory over the cook, espied him,
+and straightway forbade him to leave the house until after "Sir Roger."
+In vain the curate protested; pleaded the privileges and exemptions of
+his sacred calling.
+
+Mr. Wedmore was obdurate; and, to the disgust of everybody, including
+himself, the Rev. Lisle Lindsay found himself told off to dance with the
+pretty housemaid, being the only man in the room who was not anxious for
+the honor.
+
+This mishap cast a gloom over the proceedings. The rest of the gentlemen
+found it hard to extract a word from the other maids, who all considered
+themselves slighted. And Mr. Wedmore had great difficulty in persuading
+the men-servants to come forward and take their places by the partners
+he chose for them. To get them to choose for themselves was out of the
+question, after one young gardener had availed himself of the invitation
+by darting across the floor and asking Miss Queenie, in a hoarse voice
+and with many blushes, if she would dance with him.
+
+Of course, this piece of daring made a sensation so great that to get
+another man follow the bold example was impossible.
+
+In the end, Mrs. Wedmore found a partner in the coachman, who was a
+portly and solemn person, with no talents in the way of dancing or of
+conversation. Doreen danced with the butler, who, between nervousness
+and gloom, found it impossible to conceal his opinion that master was
+making a fool of himself; and the rest of the company being quite as ill
+matched, "Sir Roger" was performed with little grace and less
+liveliness, while the Yule Log, after emitting a great deal of smoke,
+sputtered out into blackness, to everybody's relief.
+
+The end of it was, however, a little better than the beginning. As the
+dancers warmed to their work, their latent enthusiasm for the exercise
+was awakened; and "Sir Roger" was kept up until the fingers of the
+organist, who had been engaged to play for them on a piano placed in a
+corner of one of the passages, ached with the cold and with the hard
+work.
+
+When the dance was over and the party had broken up, Doreen, who had
+done her best to keep up the spirits of the rest, broke down. Max met
+her on her way to her room, and saw that the tears were very near her
+eyes.
+
+"What's the matter now?" said he, crossly. "You seemed all right
+downstairs. I thought you and Lindsay seemed to be getting on very well
+together."
+
+"Did you? Well, you were wrong," said she, briefly, as she shut herself
+into the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A MESSAGE FROM THE WHARF.
+
+
+Christmas was over, and The Beeches had subsided into its normal state
+of prosperous tranquility. Max had had a fresh situation discovered for
+him, and he was now wasting his time on a stool in a merchant's office,
+as he had wasted it in other offices many times before. His father's
+chronic state of exasperation with his laziness was growing acute, and
+he had informed Max that unless he chose to stick to his work this time
+he would have to be shipped off to the Cape. No entreaties on the part
+of Mrs. Wedmore or the girls were of any avail against this fixed
+resolution on Mr. Wedmore's part, or against the inflexible laziness of
+Max himself. He detested office work, and he confessed that if he was
+not to be allowed to lead the country life he loved, he would prefer
+enlistment in the Cape Mounted Police to drudgery in a dark corner of a
+city office.
+
+It was on a foggy evening in January that Max, for the first time in
+three weeks (an unprecedented interval), knocked at the door of Dudley
+Horne's chambers.
+
+There was a long delay, and Max, after a second knock, was going to
+withdraw, in the belief that Dudley was not in, after all, when he heard
+slow steps within, and paused.
+
+The door was opened a very little way, and Dudley looked out.
+
+Max stared at him for a moment without speaking. For over his friend
+there had passed some great change. Dudley had never been florid of
+complexion, but now he looked ghastly. His face had always been grave
+and strong rather than cheerful, but now the expression of his
+countenance was forbidding.
+
+He looked at Max, glanced down the stairs, and nodded without a smile.
+
+"Hello!" said he, with the letter of familiarity, but without its
+spirit. "Haven't seen anything of you for a century. Up in town again,
+eh?"
+
+"Yes. Can't I come in?" said Max.
+
+Dudley had come outside instead of inviting his friend in. At these
+words, however, he turned abruptly, and himself led the way into the
+little ante-chamber.
+
+"Oh, yes, oh, yes, come in, of course. Come in."
+
+Max accepted the cool invitation in silence, shut the door behind him,
+and followed his friend into the sitting-room, where the table was laid
+for a solitary dinner.
+
+But it was the writing-table which caught the eye of Max and riveted his
+attention. For a photograph lay there, a woman's photograph, and as it
+was just in front of the chair Dudley had been using, as if he had been
+occupied in looking at it, it was not unnatural that the brother of
+Doreen should be curious to know whose picture it was.
+
+So Max got around the table quickly by the opposite way to that which
+Dudley took, and threw himself into a chair by the writing-table in such
+a position that he could see what was on it. And he saw two things: One
+was that the photograph was that of Doreen; the other that a postal
+order for one pound, which lay beside the photograph, and upon which the
+ink was not yet dry, was made out to "Mrs. Edward Jacobs."
+
+Max felt himself blushing as Dudley snatched up the postal orders--there
+were two of them--and slip them into an envelope. Then the eyes of the
+two men met. And Dudley knew what Max had seen.
+
+He seemed to hesitate a moment, then glanced at Max again, sat down to
+the writing-table, and took up a pen. As he directed the letter, he said
+quietly:
+
+"Do you know whom I'm sending this money to?"
+
+"Well, I did catch sight of the name," stammered Max, unable to hide the
+fact that the question was an embarrassing one to him.
+
+"Yes," went on Dudley, as he showed him the directed letter, "it is to
+the widow of the poor devil who was found in the Thames the other
+day--man who was once in my late father's employment--Edward Jacobs."
+
+"Oh, yes, I've heard," stammered Max again.
+
+The incident of Dudley sending money to the woman would have seemed to
+him trivial and even natural enough, if it had not been for the curious
+look of hard defiance which Dudley gave him out of his black eyes. It
+was like a challenge; it set his friend wondering again, asking himself
+again all those tormenting questions about Edward Jacobs's death which
+he had allowed to slip into a back place in his thoughts.
+
+As he looked down at the end of the white table-cloth which touched the
+floor a loud laugh from Dudley startled him and made him look up. And
+when he did so the conviction that his friend was mad, or, at least,
+subject to attacks of insanity, flashed into his mind more strongly than
+ever. Dudley was leaning back, tilting his chair till it touched the
+dinner table, distending his jaws in a hard, mocking laugh as unlike
+mirth as possible.
+
+"Oh, yes, so I've heard--so I've heard!" repeated he, mockingly. "And,
+of course, that's all you've heard, isn't it? And you've never taken the
+trouble to make any personal inquiries in the matter? Or thought of
+taking a journey, say, as far as Plumtree Wharf to make any private
+investigations?"
+
+Max was startled. He saw clearly enough that which he would fain have
+denied--that Dudley was in communication with the people at the wharf,
+from whom he must have obtained this information. For a moment he was
+silent. It was not until Dudley's harsh laughter had died away, and he,
+rather surprised to see how quietly Max took his accusation, had wheeled
+round in his chair to look at his friend, that Max said:
+
+"Well, I did go to the wharf. And I'll tell you why. Doreen is breaking
+her heart about you, and she would have me find out what was wrong with
+you."
+
+Then there was silence.
+
+"God bless her!" said Dudley at last, in a hoarse whisper.
+
+Another silence.
+
+"What did you tell her?" whispered Dudley.
+
+"What could I tell her? I said you were mad."
+
+"And what did you--_think_?"
+
+"Well, I hardly know myself."
+
+"That's right! That's the proper attitude!" cried Dudley.
+
+And then he laughed again uproariously.
+
+And in the midst of his laughter there was a knock at the door.
+
+For a moment neither man moved. Then Dudley got up slowly and walked out
+of the room, closing the door behind him. Max heard him open the outer
+door, and then he heard a voice he knew--a young girl's voice--say:
+
+"This is Mr. Dudley Horne's place, and you are Mr. Dudley Horne?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then let me come in. I've come from--"
+
+The voice dropped, and Max did not catch the rest.
+
+"Stop! I'll speak to you here," said Dudley, trying to keep her in the
+little ante-room.
+
+But the girl came straight in. It was Carrie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+A SORCERESS.
+
+
+Max was standing on the other side of the lamp, and Carrie did not see
+him. She announced her errand at once in a straightforward and
+matter-of-fact manner.
+
+"Dick Barker's been nabbed for stealing a watch. You've got to get him
+off."
+
+"What do you mean? I've got to get him off?" cried Dudley, indignantly.
+
+Carrie laughed.
+
+"It's the message I was told to give you; that's all."
+
+"Well, take this message back: that I refuse to have anything to do with
+your pickpocket."
+
+Carrie turned to the door.
+
+"All right. I'm to say that to Mrs. Higgs?"
+
+"Stop!" thundered Dudley.
+
+Carrie paused, with her hand on the door.
+
+"Did Mrs. Higgs send you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then wait a minute."
+
+All the indignation, all the defiance, had gone from his tone. He looked
+anxious, haggard.
+
+Carrie sat down like an automaton in the chair nearest to the door.
+
+There was a silence of some minutes' duration when Carrie announced
+herself as a messenger from Mrs. Higgs.
+
+Dudley, who had either forgotten the presence of Max or was past caring
+how much his friend learned, since he already knew so much, walked up
+and down between the fireplace and the bookcase on the opposite wall,
+evidently debating what he should do. Carrie never once raised her eyes
+from the carpet, but sat like a statue beside the door, apparently as
+indifferent as possible as to the message she should take back.
+
+Max had risen from his seat and was standing where he could get a full
+view of her over the lamp on the dinner-table between them. Perhaps it
+was the yellow paper shade around the light which made the young girl's
+face look so ghastly, or the rusty black clothes she wore. A plain
+skirt, the same that she had worn when he saw her first, a black stuff
+cape of home-made pattern, and a big black straw hat which had evidently
+done duty throughout the summer; all were neatly brushed and clean, but
+well-worn and lusterless, and they heightened the appearance of deadly
+pallor which, struck Max so much.
+
+Her eyes he could not see; her scarlet lips were tightly closed, and her
+face seemed to him to wear an air of dogged determination which helped
+him to understand how it was that she had escaped the perils of her
+unprotected girlhood. Certainly it would have taken a good deal of
+courage, impudence or alcoholic excitement to make a man address to this
+statuesque and cold-faced creature a flippant word.
+
+She did not see Max, who kept so quiet that it was easy for her to
+overlook the presence of a third person in the room. He watched her
+intently, taking even more interest in her under these new conditions
+than he had done before. Would she retain her cold look and manner when
+he made his presence known to her, as he intended presently to do? The
+question was full of interest to him.
+
+Presently Dudley stopped short in his walk, right in front of Carrie,
+who seemed, however, unconscious of or indifferent to the fact.
+
+"Who are you?" he asked, abruptly.
+
+Carrie looked up and surveyed him as if from a great distance.
+
+"I don't know," she answered, rather quaintly, but evidently unconscious
+of the oddity of her own answer. There was a moment's pause, and then
+she asked, briskly:
+
+"However, that doesn't matter to you, does it?"
+
+"Well, yes, it does. You come here as a messenger. Now, I want to know
+your credentials."
+
+"I don't know what you mean. I live with Mrs. Higgs. She makes me call
+her 'Granny.'"
+
+Dudley at once became strongly interested.
+
+"Live with her, do you, and call her Granny? I've never seen you when I
+have visited Mrs. Higgs."
+
+"I've seen you, though. I've seen--"
+
+She stopped.
+
+Dudley's hand, the one Max could see from where he stood, moved
+convulsively. After another short pause, Carrie raised her head, and
+their eyes met. Each evidently saw something oddly interesting in the
+face of the other.
+
+"I shall have to make some inquiries about you," said he at last.
+
+"Very well. You can go and make them."
+
+Her tone was matter-of-fact, but neither impudent nor defiant. She did
+not seem to care.
+
+"This Dick Barker, who has been nabbed, as you elegantly express it, is
+some sweetheart of yours, I suppose? And you have persuaded Mrs. Higgs
+to send me this absurd message, asking me to appear for him?"
+
+"No. He's nothing to me. Mrs. Higgs wants him got off, because if he's
+convicted he'll tell all he knows, or at least enough to set the police
+on."
+
+"And what is that to me?"
+
+Another pause, during which she looked down. Then Carrie raised her eyes
+again, and looked at him steadily.
+
+"Oh, well, you know best."
+
+Dudley turned away, muttering something under his breath. But the next
+moment he faced her again.
+
+"And you are waiting to take my answer back?"
+
+"Mrs. Higgs said there would be no answer."
+
+"Then what are you waiting for?"
+
+"To see whether there is one or not."
+
+"And you're going straight back with it to your granny, whatever it is?"
+asked Dudley, with the same sharp tone of cross-examination.
+
+"No. I am not going back to her. But I shall give the message to some
+one who is."
+
+There was another pause, longer than any of the previous ones. Then
+Dudley said, shortly:
+
+"You need not wait here any longer. I am going to see her myself."
+
+Carrie had got upon her feet in the automatic manner she had maintained
+throughout the interview.
+
+"Going to the wharf, are you?" she said, with the first sign of human
+interest she had shown. "Oh, very well."
+
+There was something noticeable in her tone, something which made Max
+suspicious and anxious on his friend's account. He came round the table
+with rapid steps, touched Dudley's shoulder, and said, in a low voice:
+
+"I'll go with you!"
+
+At the sound of his voice Carrie started violently, and looked up at
+Max, staring with eyes full of wonder and something very like delight.
+The rigidity with which she had held herself, the automatic manner, the
+hard, off-hand tone, all disappeared at once; and it was a new, a
+transformed Carrie, the fascinating, wayward, irresistible girl he had
+remembered, who gave him a smile and a nod, as she said, in a voice full
+of the old charm he remembered:
+
+"You! Is it you?" Then, breathlessly, with a change to anxiety in her
+voice: "And are you going, too?"
+
+"Yes. I'm going with my friend," said Max, as he came forward and held
+out a hand, into which she put hers very shyly; "from what I remember of
+my visit to your place, I think two visitors are better than one."
+
+"I don't know whether granny will think so," said Carrie, still in the
+same altered voice.
+
+She was shy, modest, charming. All her femininity had returned, and both
+the young men felt the influence of the change.
+
+Dudley, who had instinctively stepped back to make way for his friend,
+was watching them both with surprise and uneasiness.
+
+"We must risk Mrs. Higgs's displeasure," said Max, dryly, "unless,
+indeed, Dudley," and he turned to his friend, "you will give up this
+expedition altogether, as I strongly advise."
+
+But Dudley had made up his mind. He did not want Max to go with him, but
+he was resolved to go to the wharf. And his friend's heart failed within
+him at the news.
+
+"Don't you think it would be advisable to get a policeman to accompany
+you?" he hazarded in a low voice.
+
+But Dudley started violently at the suggestion.
+
+"Policeman!" repeated he in a louder tone than Max had used. "Good
+heavens, no!"
+
+Max, looking round, saw that Carrie had overheard; but she betrayed no
+emotion at the suggestion, even if she felt any.
+
+Dudley pulled out his watch.
+
+"I have an appointment for this evening," said he; "I must get out of
+it. Max, if you persist in going with me to the wharf, you're a fool.
+When your friends are doing well, you should stick to them; when they
+have got into a mess, you should have appointments elsewhere." Although
+he spoke cynically, there was underneath his scoffing tone a strain of
+tenderness. He turned quickly to the girl at this point, as if afraid of
+betraying more feeling than he had intended to do. "You've delivered
+your message," said he, sharply, "now you can go."
+
+But Carrie lingered. Looking shyly at Max, she said in a low voice:
+
+"Have you made up your mind that you will go with him?"
+
+"Yes," said Max.
+
+"All right," nodded Carrie. "Then I'll go, too."
+
+Dudley looked down at the girl with an impatient frown on his face.
+
+"Supposing we don't want you?" said he, dryly.
+
+"You will," she answered briefly, without even looking at him.
+
+Dudley considered for a moment, and then said shortly:
+
+"All right. We may as well keep an eye on you."
+
+Carrie laughed, and then remained silent. As for Max, he was struck with
+an odd likeness between the girl's dry, short manner of speaking to
+Dudley and Dudley's manner of speaking to her.
+
+At that moment there was an interruption in the shape of the waiter from
+a neighboring restaurant, who came in with the dinner Dudley had ordered
+for himself.
+
+"I shan't want it now," said Dudley, as the man put down the covered
+dishes on the table.
+
+"Why, surely you're not in such a hurry that you haven't time to dine?"
+said Max.
+
+Dudley made an impatient gesture.
+
+"I can get a biscuit somewhere, if I want it. I can't eat just now."
+
+"Let me eat your dinner for you, then," said Max. "I've had none. And if
+I'm to go rambling all over the town to look after you, I shall want
+something to keep me going."
+
+"All right," said Dudley. "I'm to come back here for you, then?"
+
+And he took up his overcoat. Max began to help him on with it.
+
+"Come in here a moment," said Dudley, in the same dry, abrupt manner as
+before; "I want to speak to you."
+
+Max followed him into the ante-room, and Dudley shut the sitting-room
+door.
+
+"That girl," said he, with, a frown--"where did you pick her up? At the
+wharf?"
+
+"I met her there. She was walking about outside, afraid to go in. The
+old woman had left her there alone, with a--a--dead body in the place."
+
+At these words a change came over Dudley's face.
+
+"You had better have left her alone," said he, sharply. "I wonder you
+hadn't more sense than to take up with a girl like that."
+
+Max fired up indignantly.
+
+"Like what? There's nothing wrong with the girl--nothing whatever.
+Surely her behavior to-night showed you that."
+
+"Her behavior!" said Dudley, mockingly. "Do you mean her behavior to me,
+or to you?"
+
+"Both. It was that of a modest, straightforward girl."
+
+"Very straightforward--to me. Very modest to you. But I would not waste
+too much time over her virtues if I were you."
+
+"I don't want to waste any," replied Max, shortly. "I don't see how we
+can shake her off, since she has offered to go back to the wharf with
+us. But I shall only be alone with her for the few minutes you leave us
+here. Or, better still, I'll go with you, and wait while you see your
+friend."
+
+"What friend?"
+
+"I thought you said you had an appointment with some one, and were going
+to put him off."
+
+"Oh, yes. Well, let us go to him now."
+
+And Dudley softly opened the outer door.
+
+Max perceived that what he proposed was to give Carrie the slip. He drew
+back a step.
+
+"We can't go without telling her, at least _I_ can't. The girl's
+quite right. It would be safer for her to go with us. For it's an awful
+place, not fit to trust oneself in."
+
+"And you think it would be the safer for the presence with us of one of
+the gang?"
+
+"She is not one of the gang!" cried Max, involuntarily raising his
+voice. "I'd stake my life on there being no harm in her!"
+
+The door of the sitting-room was opened behind them, and Carrie came
+out.
+
+"I couldn't help hearing what you said," she said, quietly. "But you
+needn't quarrel about me. One of you says there's no harm in me; the
+other says there is. I dare say you're both right. If you don't want me
+to go to the wharf with you, Mr. Horne, why, I won't go, of course. Good
+evening."
+
+She wanted to go out, but Dudley stood in the way, preventing her.
+
+"You're quite wrong, I assure you," said he, quickly. "There has been a
+little discussion about it, certainly; but I think you and my friend are
+quite right, and it would be much better if you would go with us--much
+better. Pray don't be annoyed at anything I've said. Remember, I have
+never seen you before, while my friend, who knows you better, naturally
+appreciates you more."
+
+Carrie maintained an attitude of cold stolidity while Dudley spoke.
+
+"Am I to go with you now, then?" she asked, coldly, when he had finished
+speaking.
+
+"Well, no, I think not. It will only take me ten minutes to go down into
+the Strand and put off the fellow I was going to the theatre with. I'll
+come back here, and we'll all go on together."
+
+Carrie looked at him steadfastly while he spoke, and he returned her
+gaze. For a few moments there was silence, and then it was broken by an
+exclamation from Max. He was staring first at one and then at the other
+with a face full of perplexity.
+
+"Do you know," cried he at last, "that when you both look like that, and
+I turn from one to the other, it is as if I were looking all the time
+_at the same face_?"
+
+Both Dudley and Carrie looked startled as they withdrew their eyes from
+each other's face. Then each sought the eyes of the other again as if it
+were furtively. Dudley seemed, of the two, the more impressed by his
+friend's words. He laughed with some constraint.
+
+"Fanciful, very fanciful," said he, mockingly. "What likeness can there
+be between a girl with a white face, fair hair and blue eyes," and he
+gave a glance at Carrie which had in it something of fear, "and a man of
+my type?"
+
+Max looked at him, and then said slowly:
+
+"It's not in the features, I know; it's not in the coloring; but it is
+there, for all that."
+
+"The young lady will not feel flattered," said Dudley, ironically. "I
+will leave you to make your peace with her, and when I come back, in ten
+minutes, I expect to find you both ready to start."
+
+He had his hand on the door, when some thought seemed to strike him, and
+he hesitated and turned to put his hand on the shoulder of Max. Then he
+swung the young man round in such a way that his own back was turned to
+Carrie. Looking steadily and with a certain look of affectionate regard
+into his friend's face, he formed with his lips and eyes a final warning
+against the girl. Then, with a nod, he went out, closing the door behind
+him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+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 _meringues a la creme_, 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE PREY OF THE RIVER.
+
+
+"Help! Help!" shouted Dudley. "Do you want to drown me?"
+
+Great as the shock was of finding himself flung suddenly into what he
+supposed was a flooded cellar, Dudley did not at first believe that the
+old woman had any worse intention than that of playing him an ugly and
+malicious trick.
+
+But as he uttered this question he looked up, and saw her face half a
+dozen feet above him, wearing an expression of fiendish malignity which
+froze his blood.
+
+She was holding the candle so that she might see his face, and as he
+kept himself afloat in the small space available--for he had no room to
+strike out, and no foothold on the slimy earthen sides--he began to
+understand that she was in grim, deadly earnest, and that the place
+where the dead body of Edward Jacobs had been concealed was to be his
+own grave.
+
+Then he did not cry out. He saw that he would only be wasting his
+breath; that there was no mercy in the hard-light eyes, in the lines of
+the wicked, wrinkled mouth.
+
+He made a struggle to climb up one side of the pit in which he found
+himself; but the soft earth, slimy with damp, slipped and gave way under
+him. He tore out a hole with his fingers, then another, and another
+above that. And all the while she watched him without a word, apparently
+without a movement.
+
+But just as he came to a point in his ascent from which he might hope to
+make a spring for the top, she raised her thick stick and dealt him a
+blow on the head which sent him, with a splash and a gurgling cry, back
+into the water.
+
+He saw strange lights dancing before his eyes. He heard weird noises
+thundering in his ears, and above them all a chuckling laugh, like the
+merriment of a demon, as the boards of the displaced flooring were drawn
+slowly up by a cord from above until they closed over his head, shutting
+him down.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the police made their descent upon Dudley's chambers, Max, after
+giving his name and address, was allowed to go away without hindrance.
+
+He wanted Carrie to go with him, but as she persistently held down her
+head and refused to look at him, he came to the conclusion that she had
+her own reasons for wishing him to go away without her.
+
+So he went slowly down into the Strand, wondering whether he dared to go
+to the wharf to try to warn Dudley, or whether he would be drawing down
+danger upon his friend's head by doing so. For although he could not
+ascertain that he was himself shadowed, he thought that it might very
+possibly be the case.
+
+He had reached the corner of Arundel Street, when he found that Carrie
+was beside him. She was panting, out of breath.
+
+"Hello!" said he.
+
+"I've been such a round!" said she. "Just to see whether they were
+following me. But they weren't. I guessed you'd come this way, and I
+went down by the embankment and up to try to meet you. Are they after
+you?"
+
+"I don't think so. Dare we--"
+
+"Wharf? Yes, I think we may. By the way, I'll show you."
+
+She took him across Waterloo Bridge, where they took a cab and traversed
+southward to a point at which she directed the driver to stop.
+
+On the way, Max, from his corner of the hansom, watched the girl
+furtively. For a long time there was absolute silence between them. Then
+he came close to her suddenly, and peered into her face.
+
+"Carrie," said he, "I want you to marry me."
+
+Now Max had been some time making up his mind to put this
+proposition--some minutes, that is to say. He had been turning the
+matter over in his brain, and had imagined the blushing, trembling
+astonishment with which the lonely girl would receive his most
+unexpected proposal.
+
+But the astonishment was on his side, not on hers; for Carrie only
+turned her head a little, scarcely looking at him and staring out again
+in front of her immediately, remarked in the coolest manner in the
+world:
+
+"Marry you! Oh, yes, certainly. Why not?"
+
+Max was taken aback, and Carrie, at last stealing a glance at him,
+perceived this. She gave a pretty little kindly laugh, which made him
+expect that she would say something more tender, more encouraging.
+
+But she didn't.
+
+Turning her head away again, she went on quietly laughing to herself,
+until Max, not unnaturally irritated by this acceptance of his offer,
+threw himself back in his corner and tried to laugh also.
+
+"It's a very good joke, isn't it--an offer of marriage?" said he at
+last, in an offended tone.
+
+"Very," assented Carrie at once. "About the best I ever heard."
+
+And she went on laughing.
+
+"And I suppose," went on Max, unable to hide his annoyance, "that if I
+were to tell you it was not a joke at all, but that I spoke in downright
+earnest, you would laugh still more?"
+
+"Well, I think I should."
+
+"Well, laugh away, then. I was in earnest. I meant what I said. I was
+idiot enough to suppose you might find marrying me a better alternative
+than wandering about without any home. Extraordinary, wasn't it?"
+
+"Well," answered Carrie, subduing her mirth a little and speaking in
+that deep-toned voice she unconsciously used when she was moved--the
+voice which Max found in itself so moving--"I should say it was
+extraordinary, if I didn't know you."
+
+"If you didn't know me for an idiot, I suppose you mean," said Max,
+coldly, with much irritation.
+
+"Not quite that," replied she, in the same tone as before. "I meant if I
+hadn't known you to be one of those good-natured people who speak before
+they think."
+
+Max sat up angrily.
+
+"I have not spoken without thinking," said he, quickly. "I have done
+nothing but think of you ever since I first saw you; and my asking you
+to marry me is the outcome of my thinking."
+
+"Well, if I were you, I should think to better purpose than that."
+
+Her tone was rather puzzling to Max. There was mockery in it; but there
+was something more. He came to the conclusion, after a moment's
+consideration of it, and of the little that he could see of her face,
+that she felt more than she chose to show. So he put his arm around her
+and caught one of her hands.
+
+"Look here, Carrie," said he in a whisper. "I understand you. I know how
+you feel. I know you think it's neither decent nor wise to ask a girl to
+be your wife when you've only seen her twice. But just consider the
+circumstances. If I don't get you to say what I want you to say now, I
+shall lose sight of you to-night and never see you again. Now, I
+couldn't bear that--I couldn't, Carrie. I never saw a girl like you; I
+never met one who made me feel as you make me feel. And you like me,
+too. You wouldn't have troubled yourself about my going to the wharf if
+you hadn't cared. It's no use denying that you like me."
+
+Carrie turned upon him with energy.
+
+"Well, I don't deny it, if you care to hear that," said she, quickly. "I
+do like you. How could I help it? I liked you the moment I first saw
+you; I shouldn't have spoken to you if I hadn't; I should have been
+afraid. But what difference does that make? Do you think I'm a fool? Do
+you think I don't know that this feeling you have--and I believe in it,
+mind--is just because I'm a new sensation to you, who are a spoiled
+child--nothing more nor less. Oh, don't let's talk about it; it's
+silly."
+
+She had wrenched herself impatiently away from him, and now sat upright,
+frowning and looking straight in front of her as before.
+
+Max, not finally rebuffed, but rather puzzled what to make of this form
+of repulse, was silent for a few moments.
+
+"Well, if you won't let me talk about that," he said at last, "will you
+promise to let me know where you are going to, so that I shan't have to
+lose sight of you? Come, you like me well enough to agree to that, don't
+you?"
+
+Carrie hesitated.
+
+"I told you," she said at last, in a low voice, "that I didn't know
+myself where I was going. Have you forgotten that?"
+
+"But it wasn't true. You said it to put me off. You must know!"
+
+"Well, I shan't tell you. There!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because it would be the beginning of what I don't want and won't have.
+Because you'd come and see me, and I shouldn't have the heart to say you
+mustn't come; and in the end, if you persisted, I shouldn't have the
+heart to stop you from making a fool of yourself."
+
+"How, making a fool of myself?"
+
+"Why, by marrying me. Now don't pretend you don't know it's true.
+Marrying me would be just ruin--ruin! Oh, I know! What would your family
+say, and be right in saying? That you'd been got hold of by a girl
+nobody knew anything about, without any parents or friends, and who came
+from nobody knew where."
+
+"Ah, but when they knew you--"
+
+"They'd think less of me than they did before."
+
+"Nonsense! When they saw how beautiful you are and well educated and
+refined, they wouldn't believe you came from such a place as Limehouse."
+
+Carrie smiled.
+
+"I seem refined to you, because you didn't expect much where you found
+me. Put me beside your sisters and their friends, and I should be shy
+and awkward enough. No, I will not listen, and I want you to tell the
+driver to stop here."
+
+Whether this was the point she had proposed to reach or whether she
+wanted to cut short the subject, Max could not tell. But as the hansom
+stopped she sprang out and led the way hurriedly in the direction of the
+river. She knew her way about on this side of the river as well as on
+the other, for she went straight to the water's edge, got into a boat
+which was moored there with a dozen others, and, with a nod to a man
+with a pipe in his mouth who was loafing near the spot, she directed Max
+to jump in, and seized one oar while he took the other.
+
+"If we go from this side," she said, "we can make sure we're not
+followed, at all events."
+
+In the darkness they began to row across the river, where the traffic
+had practically ceased for the night.
+
+Threading their way between the barges, the great steam traders, with
+their ugly square hulks standing high out of the water, and the lesser
+craft that clustered about the larger like a swarm of bees round the
+hive, they came out upon the gray stream, slowly leaving behind one dim
+shore, with its gloomy wharves and warehouses, and nearing the other.
+The London lights looked dim and blurred through the mist.
+
+As they drew near the wharf, Carrie jerked her head in the direction of
+the little ugly cluster of buildings which Max remembered so well.
+
+"There's a passage under there," she said in a whisper, leaning forward
+on her oar, "through which they let the dead body of the man--you
+know--out into the river. It's just near here."
+
+Max shuddered, and at the same moment there burst from the girl's lips a
+hoarse cry.
+
+Max turned sharply, and saw that she was staring down into the water.
+
+"Look! Look there!" whispered she, gasping, trembling.
+
+"What is it?" cried he.
+
+But even as he asked, he knew that the dark object he saw floating in
+the water was the body of a man.
+
+By a dexterous movement of her oar, Carrie had brought the boat
+alongside the black mass, and then, with the boat-hook, which she used
+with an evidently practiced hand, she drew the body close.
+
+Max, sick with horror, leaned over just as Carrie's exertion's brought
+the face of the man to view.
+
+"He's dead!" cried he, hoarsely. "It's another murder by those vile
+wretches in there!"
+
+An exclamation burst from the girl's lips.
+
+"Look at him! Look at his face! Who is he?" whispered she, with
+trembling lips.
+
+Max looked, putting his hand under the head and lifting it out of the
+water.
+
+Then, with a great shout, he tore at the body, clutching it, trying to
+drag it into the boat.
+
+"Great Heaven! It's Dudley!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+A DUBIOUS REFUGE.
+
+
+The night was clammy and cold. The fog was growing thicker, blacker. And
+the water of the Thames, as Max plunged his hand into it, struggling to
+raise the body of his friend, was ice-cold to the touch.
+
+Carrie had seized her oar again, and was bringing the boat's head
+rapidly round, right under the stern of a barge which was moored close
+to Plumtree Wharf.
+
+"Hold him; don't let him go!" cried she imperiously. "But don't try to
+drag him into the boat until I get her alongside. You can't do it
+without help. And if you could you'd pull the boat over."
+
+The caution was necessary. Max had lost his head, and was making frantic
+efforts to raise the body of his friend over the boat's side.
+
+"But he may be alive still! And if there's a chance--oh, if there's the
+least chance--"
+
+"There'll be none if you don't do as I tell you!" cried Carrie, tartly.
+
+By this time a lad on board the barge was looking over the side at them,
+not seeing much, however, in the gloom. Carrie whistled twice.
+
+"Hello!" replied he, evidently recognizing a signal he was used to.
+
+"Is that Bob?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Lower a rope, and hold on like a man, Bob. We've got a man here drowned
+or half-drowned; and we want to get him on the wharf in a twinkling."
+
+"Right you are."
+
+The next moment the lad had lowered a rope over the side of the barge,
+and Carrie directed Max to pass it round the body of his friend. Then,
+she giving the orders as before, Bob from the barge above and Max from
+the boat below raised the body out of the water. Carrie had brought the
+little boat close to the barge, and held it in place with the boat-hook
+until the difficult task was safely accomplished, and the body of Dudley
+Horne laid upon the deck of the barge.
+
+"Now," said she to Max, "get up and help Bob to carry him ashore."
+
+Max, who was speechless with grief and as helpless as a child in these
+new and strange circumstances, obeyed her docilely, and climbed to the
+deck of the barge.
+
+"Now, Bob," went on Carrie, as she seized the second oar and prepared to
+row away, "carry him into the kitchen--you know your way--as fast as you
+can. And lay him down before the fire, if there is a fire; if not, make
+one. Sharp's the word, mind!"
+
+"All right, missus."
+
+Max looked down. Already she had disappeared in the gloom, and only the
+muffled sound of the oars as they dripped on the water told him that she
+had not yet gone far away.
+
+Suddenly he felt a rough pull at his arm.
+
+"Come on, mister!" cried Bob, briskly. "She said, 'Sharp is the word.'
+And when she says a thing she means it, you bet your life."
+
+Max pulled himself together and turned quickly, ashamed of his own lack
+of vigor in the face of Carrie's intelligence and energy. Bob and he
+raised the body of Dudley and carried it across the plank to the wharf,
+where Bob, who knew his way about there, led the way to the door which
+Max remembered so well.
+
+It was open, and they passed through the outhouse, meeting no one, to
+the kitchen, which was also deserted. There they laid Dudley on the
+hearth, as Carrie had directed, and Bob proceeded to rake up the fire,
+which had died down to a few embers.
+
+Meanwhile Max had taken off some of Dudley's clothes, and began to apply
+friction with his hands to the inanimate body. He had scarcely begun,
+when Carrie came in with an armful of dry towels and a couple of
+pillows.
+
+"He is dead, quite dead!" cried Max, hoarsely.
+
+Carrie never even looked at him. Placing herself at once on her knees
+behind Dudley's head, she curtly directed Max to raise the upper part of
+his body, and slipped the two pillows, one on the top of the other,
+under the shoulders of the unconscious man.
+
+"Now," said she, "go on with your rubbing--rub with all your might; and
+you, Bob, bring in a couple of big stone-bottles you'll find in the
+wash-house, fill them with hot water from the boiler, wrap them up in
+something, and put one to his feet and the other to the side that's away
+from the fire."
+
+While she spoke she was working hard in the endeavor to restore
+respiration, alternately drawing Dudley's arms up above his head and
+laying them against his sides, with firm and steady movements.
+
+For a long time all their efforts seemed to be useless. Max, indeed, had
+little or no hope from the first. He still worked on, however,
+perseveringly, but with despair in his heart, until he heard a sharp
+sound, like a deep sigh, from Carrie's lips.
+
+She had detected a movement, the slightest in the world, but still a
+movement, in the senseless body. With straining eyes she now watched,
+that her own movements might coincide with the natural ones which Dudley
+had begun to make, and that real breathing might gradually take the
+place of the artificial.
+
+"Let me do it. Let me help you," cried Max, who saw the strained look of
+utter fatigue which Carrie wore in spite of her excitement.
+
+"No, no; I dare not. I must go on!" cried the girl, without lifting her
+eyes.
+
+And presently another cry escaped her lips, a cry of joy.
+
+"He is alive!"
+
+"Thank God!"
+
+The tears sprang to the eyes of Max. It was more than he had hoped.
+
+"A doctor! Shall I fetch a doctor?" said he.
+
+Carrie shook her head.
+
+"A doctor could do no more than we've done," said she. "He'll be all
+right now--well enough to be got away, at all events. And the wound on
+his head isn't much, I think."
+
+"Wound on his head!"
+
+"Yes. It saved his life, most likely. Prevented his getting so much
+water into his lungs. Stunned him, you see."
+
+Something like a sigh from the patient stopped her and directed the
+attention of them all to him. Bob, who had been standing in the
+background, almost as much excited as the others, came a few steps
+nearer. There was a moment of intense, eager expectancy, and then Dudley
+half opened his eyes.
+
+Max uttered a deep sob and glanced at Carrie. She was deadly pale, and
+the tears were standing in her eyes.
+
+"You've saved him!" said Max, hoarsely.
+
+The sound of his voice seemed to rouse Dudley, who looked at him with a
+vacant stare, and then let his eyelids drop again.
+
+"So glad, old chap--so glad to--to see you yourself again!" whispered
+Max, huskily.
+
+But Dudley was not himself. He looked up again, then tried to smile, and
+at last turned his head abruptly and seemed to be listening.
+
+Carrie beckoned to Max and spoke low in his ear.
+
+"You'd better take him away from here as quickly as you can, for half a
+dozen reasons."
+
+Max nodded, but looked doubtful.
+
+"He's ill," said he. "How shall I get him away? And where shall I take
+him to?"
+
+"Down to your father's house" answered she at once.
+
+Max looked rather startled.
+
+"But--you know--the police!" muttered he, almost inaudibly. "Won't that
+be the very first place they'd come to--my home?"
+
+"Never mind that. You must risk it. He's going to be ill, I think, and
+he can't be left here. Surely you know that."
+
+She gave a glance round which made Max shiver.
+
+"And how am I to get him all that way to-night? The last train has gone
+hours ago."
+
+"Take him by road, then. We'll get a carriage--a conveyance of some sort
+or other--at once. I'll send Bob."
+
+She turned to the lad and gave him some directions, in obedience to
+which he disappeared. Then she turned fiercely to Max.
+
+"Don't you see," said she, "that if he wakes up and finds himself here,
+after what's happened, it'll about settle him?"
+
+The words sent a shudder through Max.
+
+"After what's happened!" repeated he, with stammering tongue. "What was
+it? Who did it?"
+
+But, instead of answering, Carrie threw herself down beside Dudley, who
+was now rapidly recovering strength, although he hardly seemed to
+understand where he was or by whom he was being tended.
+
+"Do you feel all right now?" she asked, cheerfully.
+
+He looked at her with dull eyes.
+
+"Oh, yes," said he. "But I--I don't remember what--"
+
+"Take a drink of this," interrupted Carrie, quickly, as she put to his
+lips a flask of brandy which Bob had fetched. "You've got to take a long
+drive, and you want something to warm you first."
+
+"A drive! A long drive!"
+
+Dudley repeated the words as if he hardly understood their meaning. But
+he was not satisfied, and as he sipped the brandy he looked at her
+curiously. His next words, however, were a criticism on the restorative.
+
+"What vile stuff!"
+
+"Never mind. It's better than nothing. Try a little more."
+
+But instead of obeying, he looked her steadily in the face.
+
+"Where did I see you? I remember your face!" said he. "And who was that
+I heard talking just now?"
+
+Suddenly, without any warning, he disengaged one hand from the hot
+towels in which he was swathed and sat up. A hoarse cry broke from his
+lips as full recognition of the place in which he found himself forced
+itself upon him. With a wild light of terror in his eyes, he looked
+searchingly round him.
+
+"Where is he? Where is he?" cried he, in a thick whisper.
+
+Carrie's face grew dark.
+
+"Here is your friend," she cried cheerily, "here is Mr. Wedmore. He's
+going with you; he's not going to leave you; be sure of that."
+
+"Yes, old chap, I'm going with you," said Max, hurrying forward and
+trying to shut out the view of the room with his person as he knelt down
+by his friend.
+
+Dudley frowned impatiently.
+
+"You, Max!" said he. "What are you doing here?"
+
+But he asked the question without interest, evidently absorbed in
+another subject.
+
+"I'm going to take you down to The Beeches," answered Max, promptly.
+
+To his infinite satisfaction, this reply had the effect of distracting
+Dudley's thoughts. Into his pallid face there came a tinge of color, as
+he looked intently into his friend's eyes, and repeated:
+
+"The Beeches! You don't mean that!"
+
+"I do; the carriage will be here in a minute or two. And in the meantime
+we must think upon getting you dressed."
+
+This question of clothing promised to be a difficult one, as Dudley's
+own things were saturated with water. Carrie sprang to her feet.
+
+"I'll see about that," said she, briskly, as she disappeared from the
+room.
+
+Max, alarmed at being left alone with Dudley, in whose eyes he could see
+the dawn of struggling recollection, babbled on about Christmas, his
+mother, his sisters, anything he could think of till Carrie came back
+again, with her arms full of men's clothes--a motley assortment.
+
+Max looked at them doubtfully. They were all new--suspiciously new.
+
+Carrie laughed, with a little blush.
+
+"Better not ask any questions about them," said she. "Take your choice,
+and be quick."
+
+With his lips Max formed the word: "Stolen?" but Carrie declined to
+answer. As there was no help for it, Max dressed his friend in such of
+the clothes as were a passable fit for him, while Carrie went out to
+watch for the expected carriage. When she returned to the kitchen,
+Dudley was ready for the journey. He was lying back in a chair, looking
+very white and haggard and exhausted, casting about him glances full of
+expectancy and terror, and starting at every sound.
+
+But he asked no more questions, and he made no mention of Mrs. Higgs.
+
+Bob had fulfilled his errand well. Outside the wharf they found a
+comfortable landau, with two good horses, hired from the nearest
+livery-stable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+TWO WOMEN.
+
+
+Bob grinned with satisfaction when Max, expressing his gratification,
+dropped into his hand a half-sovereign.
+
+"Thought you'd be pleased, sir," said he, as he helped to get Dudley
+into the carriage. "I said it was for a toff, a reg'lar tip-topper; and
+so it was, s' help me!"
+
+Dudley, who was very lame, and who had to be more than half carried,
+looked out of the window.
+
+Max was still outside, trying to get hold of Carrie, who was on the
+other side of the carriage.
+
+"You're coming, Max?"
+
+"Yes, oh, yes, rather."
+
+"And--you?"
+
+Dudley turned to Carrie, who drew back quickly and shook her head.
+
+"I? No."
+
+Max ran round at the back of the carriage and caught her by the arm as
+she was slinking quietly away.
+
+"Where are you going? Not back in there? You must come with us."
+
+"I!--come with you? To your father's house? Catch me!"
+
+"Well, part of the way, at any rate," urged Max, astutely. "I dare not
+go all that way with him alone. See, he wants you to go. You shall get
+out just when you please."
+
+Carrie hesitated. Although she saw through the kindly ruse which would
+protect her against her will, she saw, also, that Dudley was indeed in
+no fit state to take the long journey which was before him, and at
+length she allowed herself to be persuaded to accompany them on at least
+the first part of the journey.
+
+And so, in the fog and the gloom of a January night, they began their
+strange drive.
+
+The road they took was by way of Greenwich and Dartford to Chatham,
+where there would be no difficulty in getting fresh horses for the rest
+of the journey.
+
+Dudley, who had been made as comfortable as possible by a sort of bed
+which was made up for him in the roomy carriage, seemed, after a short
+period of restlessness and excitability, to sink into sleep.
+
+Max was rejoicing in this, but Carrie looked anxious.
+
+"It isn't natural, healthy sleep, I'm afraid," said she, in a low voice.
+"It's more like stupor. It wasn't the water that did it, it was a blow
+on the head. You saw the mark. I'm afraid it's concussion of the brain."
+
+"Ought he to travel, then?" asked Max, anxiously.
+
+Carrie, who was sitting beside Dudley, and opposite to Max, hesitated a
+little before answering:
+
+"What else could we do? We couldn't leave him there at the wharf, could
+we? And where else could we have taken him? Not back to his chambers,
+certainly!"
+
+There was silence. The carriage jogged on in the darkness through
+London's ugly outskirts, and the two watchers listened solicitously to
+the heavy breathing of their patient. It was a comfort to Max, a great
+one indeed, to have Carrie for a companion on this doleful journey. But
+she was not the same girl, now that she had duties to attend to, that
+she had been over that _tete-a-tete_ dinner, or even during the
+journey in the hansom. He himself felt that he now counted for nothing
+with her, that he was merely the individual who happened to occupy the
+opposite seat; that her interest, her attentions, were absorbed by the
+unconscious man by her side.
+
+"Why didn't you become a hospital nurse?" asked Max, suddenly.
+
+He heard rather than saw that she started.
+
+"That's just what I thought of doing," she answered, after a little
+pause. "I'm just old enough to enter one of the Children's Hospitals as
+a probationer. They take them at twenty."
+
+"I see. Then you couldn't have tried before."
+
+"No; they're very strict about age."
+
+"I should think you were cut out for the work, if only you are strong
+enough," said Max, with warmth. "You seem to do just the right thing in
+just the right way."
+
+"I've had plenty of experience," said Carrie, shortly, breaking in upon
+rhapsodies which threatened to become tender. "I did a lot of visiting
+among poor people who had no one to nurse them when I lived with Miss
+Aldridge. Down in these parts, the East End, you get practice enough
+like that, I can tell you!"
+
+"But the treatment of a drowning man--that requires special knowledge,
+surely!"
+
+"Yes, but down by the river is just the place to get it. He's the fifth
+person I've seen taken out for dead in the time I've lived there. Three
+out of the five were dead. The other two, a boy and a woman, were
+brought around."
+
+There was silence again.
+
+Presently Max whispered:
+
+"Do you know--can you guess--how he got into the water?"
+
+Carrie shivered.
+
+"Wait--wait till he can tell us himself," said she, hurriedly. "It's no
+use guessing. Perhaps it was an accident, you know."
+
+"You don't think so?"
+
+"Sh--sh!" said Carrie.
+
+But Max persisted.
+
+"You know as well as I do that that villainous old Mrs. Higgs is at the
+bottom of the affair."
+
+Carrie bent over Dudley, to assure herself that, if not asleep, he was
+at least unconscious of what was passing. Then she turned to Max.
+
+"You are wrong," said she then, quickly. "Mrs. Higgs was an agent only,
+in the hands of some one else. If I tell you what I believe, you will
+only laugh at me."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that she was a harmless, good-hearted, kind woman until--until
+Mr. Horne came to see her; that she was always good to me till then. And
+that, after that awful day when the man was killed--murdered by Mr.
+Horne--"
+
+"It's not true! It can't be true!" burst out Max.
+
+But Carrie went on, as if he had not spoken:
+
+"After that day she changed; she was irritable, unkind, neglectful--not
+like the same woman. She left me alone sometimes; she gave me no food at
+others; she hid herself away from me; she was angry at the least thing.
+And then--then," went on the girl, in a frightful whisper, "I found out
+something."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"That some one used to get into the place at night--I don't know how;
+some one she was afraid of--a man."
+
+"Well?" said Max, excited by her tone.
+
+"I have heard him--seen him twice," went on Carrie, in the lowest of
+whispers. "And I believe--"
+
+"Yes, yes; go on!"
+
+"That it was Mr. Dudley Horne."
+
+"Oh, rubbish!"
+
+Carrie was silent. Max went on, indignantly:
+
+"How could you take such a silly idea into your head? What reason should
+Mr. Horne have for creeping about a hole like that at night?"
+
+"Well, what reason should he have for coming to it at any time? Yet you
+know he came in the daytime."
+
+It was the turn of Max to remain silent. There was a long pause, and
+then Carrie went on:
+
+"I used to sleep in a little attic over the outhouse, just a corner of
+the roof it was. And twice at night I have heard a noise underneath, and
+looked through the cracks in the boards and seen a man down there, with
+a light. And each time, when the light was put out and the noise had
+stopped, I have gone downstairs and found the doors bolted still on the
+inside."
+
+"Well, the place seems to be honeycombed with ways in and ways out. The
+strange man either went out by some way even you knew nothing about, or
+else Mrs. Higgs let him out."
+
+"No, she didn't. I should have heard or seen her."
+
+"Well, but what reason can you have for supposing that this man was Mr.
+Dudley Horne?"
+
+"Once I saw his face," answered Carrie.
+
+"And you think it was the face of this man here beside you?"
+
+Max struck a light and held it over the face of the unconscious Dudley.
+Carrie looked at him steadily.
+
+"Well," she said at last, "it did look like him, that's all I can say."
+
+Max frowned uneasily. But after a few moments a new thought struck him,
+and he turned to her sharply. The match he had struck had burned itself
+out, and they were again in darkness.
+
+"If Mrs. Higgs was only a tool in his hands, as you suggest, for some
+mysterious purposes which nobody can understand or guess at, how do you
+account for her trying to drown him?"
+
+"They must have quarreled," said Carrie, quickly. Then, instantly
+perceiving that she had made an admission, she added: "That is,
+supposing she had anything to do with it."
+
+"Amiable old lady!" exclaimed Max.
+
+The mystery of the whole affair hung over both him and Carrie like a
+pall; and the long night-drive seemed never-ending in the death-like
+silence. Max tried from time to time to break it, but Carrie grew more
+reserved as the hours went by, until her curt answers ceased altogether.
+
+Then, when dawn came, the dull dawn of a foggy morning, and the carriage
+drew up at the hotel in Chatham where they were to change horses, Max
+discovered that she was asleep.
+
+Dudley opened his eyes when the carriage stopped, but shut them again
+without a word to Max, who asked him how he felt.
+
+Max, when the people of the hotel had been roused, succeeded in
+borrowing a rug, which he wrapped gently round Carrie, without waking
+her. And presently the carriage jogged on again on its journey, and the
+morning sun began to pierce the mist as the bare Kentish hop-fields and
+orchards were reached.
+
+Max leaned forward and looked at Carrie's sweet face with infinite
+tenderness. Now in her sleep she looked like a child, with her lips
+slightly parted and her eyelashes sweeping her thin, white cheeks. The
+alert look of the Londoner, which gave an expression of premature
+shrewdness to her waking face, had disappeared under the relaxing
+influence of slumber. She looked pitifully helpless, sad and weak, as
+her tired, worn-out little body leaned back in the corner of the
+carriage.
+
+Max looked at her with yearning in his eyes. This young ne'er-do-weel,
+as his father called him, had enjoyed the privilege of his type in being
+a great favorite with women. As usual in such cases, he had repaid their
+kindness with ingratitude, and had had numerous flirtations without ever
+experiencing a feeling either deep or lasting.
+
+Now, for the first time, in this beautiful waif of the big city he had
+found a mixture of warmth and coldness, of straightforward simplicity
+and boldness, which opened his eyes as to there being in her sex an
+attraction he had previously denied. He felt as he looked at her that he
+wanted her; that he could not go away and forget her in the presence of
+the next pretty face he happened to see.
+
+This shabbily dressed girl, with the shiny seams in her black frock and
+the rusty hat, inspired him with respect, with something like reverence.
+
+In his way he had been in love many, many times. Now for the first time
+he worshiped a woman.
+
+When the carriage stopped at the park gate of The Beeches, Max sprang
+out, and without waiting to answer the hurried questions of Carrie, who
+had awakened with a start, he ran across the grass and up the slope to
+the house.
+
+It was nine o'clock, and, when the door was opened by Bartram, Max came
+face to face with Doreen, who was entering the hall on her way to the
+breakfast-room.
+
+"Why, Max, is it you? What a strange time to arrive! And where have you
+been? You look as if you'd been up all night!" cried she, and she ran
+forward to kiss him, and swinging him round to the light, examined him,
+with an expression of amazement and horror.
+
+"I have been up all night," said he, briefly. "I've driven all the way
+from London--"
+
+"What!"
+
+"And--and I've brought some one with me--some one who is ill, who is in
+trouble. Some one--"
+
+A cry broke from her lips. She had grown quite white, and her hands had
+dropped to her sides.
+
+She understood.
+
+"Dudley!" she whispered. "Where is he? Why haven't you brought him in?"
+
+"He is at the gate. Where is my father? I must speak to him first, or to
+mother."
+
+Mrs. Wedmore herself, having been informed by Bartram of the arrival of
+her son, now came out of the breakfast-room to meet him. In a few words
+he informed her of the circumstances, adding, as he was bound to do,
+that there was a possibility that the police might come to make
+inquiries, if not to arrest Dudley. But Doreen, who insisted on hearing
+everything, overruled the faint objection which Mrs. Wedmore made, and
+determined to have him brought in before her father could learn anything
+about it.
+
+Max, therefore, went down to bring the carriage up to the door, and
+Dudley, having been roused into a half-conscious condition, was assisted
+into the house and up to one of the spare bedrooms--Max on one side and
+Bartram on the other.
+
+By this time Mr. Wedmore had, of course, become aware of what was going
+on; but it was now too late to interfere, even if he had wished to do
+so. When Dudley had been taken upstairs, Doreen met her brother as he
+came down.
+
+"Who is the girl with the sweet face inside the carriage?"
+
+Max stammered a little, and then said, by a happy inspiration:
+
+"Oh, that's the nurse. You see--he was so ill--"
+
+Doreen looked at him keenly, but did not wait for anymore explanations.
+
+"Why doesn't she come in, then? Of course she must come in."
+
+And she ran out to the door of the carriage, with Max not far behind.
+
+"Aren't you coming in? They've taken your patient upstairs," she said
+gently, as poor Carrie, who looked more dead than alive, sat up in the
+carriage and tried to put her hat and her cape straight.
+
+"Oh, I shan't be wanted now, shall I?" asked Carrie, with a timid voice
+and manner which contrasted strongly with her calm, easy assurance while
+she was at work.
+
+Max threw a glance of gratitude at his sister, as he quickly opened the
+door of the carriage and more than half dragged Carrie out.
+
+As the girl stepped, blinking, into the broad sunlight, Doreen stared at
+her intently, and then glanced inquiringly at her brother, who, however,
+did not see her questioning look. He led Carrie into the house and
+straight up the stairs toward the room where they had put Dudley.
+
+"Don't make me stay," pleaded she, in a low voice. "They will know I'm
+not a regular nurse, and--and I shall be uncomfortable, miserable. You
+can do without me now."
+
+She was trying to shrink away. Max stopped in the middle of the stairs,
+and answered her gravely, earnestly:
+
+"I only ask you to stay until we can get a regular nurse down. He is too
+ill to do without a trained attendant; you know that. Will you promise
+to wait while we send for one?"
+
+Carrie could scarcely refuse.
+
+"Yes, I will stay till then, if I am really wanted," assented she.
+
+"Ask my sister. Here she comes," said Max.
+
+Doreen was on the stairs behind them.
+
+"Is it really necessary--do you want me to stay while a nurse is sent
+for?" asked Carrie, diffidently.
+
+Doreen looked up straight in her face.
+
+"What more natural than that you should stay with him?" returned she,
+promptly; "since you are his sister."
+
+Max and Carrie both started. The likeness between Dudley and Carrie,
+which Max had taken time to discover, had struck Doreen at once. Carrie
+would have denied the allegation, but Max caught her arm and stopped
+her.
+
+"Quite true," said he quietly. "This is the way, Miss Horne, to your
+brother's room."
+
+Doreen was quick enough to see that there was some little mystery about
+the relationship which she had divined, and she went rapidly past her
+brother without asking any questions.
+
+It was about two hours after Dudley's arrival that Carrie, now installed
+in the sick-room, came to the door and asked for Max. Her face was rigid
+with a great terror. She seemed at first unable to utter the words which
+were on her tongue. At last she said, in a voice which sounded hard and
+unlike her own:
+
+"Don't send for a nurse. I must stay with him. He is delirious, and I
+have just learned--from him--from his ravings, a secret--a terrible
+secret--one that must not be known!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+THE BLUE-EYED NURSE.
+
+
+It was at the door of Dudley's sick-room that Carrie informed Max that
+she had learned a secret from the lips of the sick man, and Max, by a
+natural impulse of curiosity, nay, more, a deep interest, pushed the
+door gently open.
+
+Dudley's voice could be heard muttering below his breath words which Max
+could not catch.
+
+But Carrie pulled the young man sharply back by the arm into the
+corridor, and shut the door behind her. Her face was full of
+determination.
+
+"No," said she, "not even you."
+
+Max drew himself up, offended.
+
+"I should think you might trust me," he said, stiffly. "The doctor will
+have to hear when he comes. And the secret, whatever it is, will be
+safer with me than with old Haselden."
+
+Carrie smiled a little, and shook her head.
+
+"The doctor," said she, "wouldn't be able to make head or tail of what
+he says. Now, you would."
+
+"And if I did, what of that? Don't I know everything, or almost
+everything, already? Didn't I bring him down here, to my father's house,
+after I knew that there was a warrant out against him? What better proof
+do you want that the secret would be safe with me?"
+
+But Carrie would not give way. Without entering into an argument, she
+stood before him with a set look of obstinacy in her mouth and eyes,
+slowly shaking her head once or twice as he went on with his
+persuasions.
+
+"Do you think I should make a wrong use of the secret?" asked Max,
+impatiently.
+
+"Oh, no."
+
+"Do you think it would turn me against him?"
+
+But at this question she hesitated.
+
+"I don't know," said she, at last.
+
+"It is something that has given you pain?" Max went on, noting the
+traces of tears on her face and the misery in her eyes.
+
+"Yes, oh, yes."
+
+The answer was given in a very low voice, with such a heart-felt sob
+that Max was touched to the quick. He came quite close to her, and,
+bending down, so that his mustache almost brushed the soft fair hair on
+her forehead, he whispered:
+
+"I'm so sorry. Poor Carrie! I won't worry you, then; I won't ask any
+more questions, if only--if only you'll let me tell you how awfully
+sorry I am."
+
+He ventured to put his hand upon her shoulder, as he bent down to look
+into her face.
+
+And, as luck would have it, Mr. Wedmore at that very moment bounced out
+of one of the rooms which opened on the corridor, and caught sight of
+this pretty little picture before it broke up.
+
+Of course, Max withdrew his hand and lifted up his head so swiftly that
+he flattered himself he had been too quick for his father, who walked
+along the corridor toward the drawing-room as if he had seen nothing.
+
+But Max was mistaken. Mr. Wedmore, already greatly irritated by his
+son's repeated failures to settle down, found in this little incident a
+pretext for a fresh outburst of wrath.
+
+Unluckily for poor Carrie, Mrs. Wedmore was in a state of irritation, in
+which she was even readier than usual to agree with her husband. The
+arrival of Dudley, with a terrible charge hanging over his head, in such
+circumstances as to stir up Doreen's feelings for him to the utmost, was
+bad enough. But for him to descend upon them in the company of a young
+woman of whom she had never heard, and in whose alleged relationship to
+Dudley she entirely disbelieved, had reduced the poor lady to a state
+which Queenie succinctly described as "one of mamma's worst."
+
+As soon as Mr. Wedmore entered the drawing-room, where his wife and
+daughters were discussing some invitations to dinner which were to have
+been sent out, but about which there was now a doubt, he abruptly
+ordered the two girls to leave the room. They obeyed very quietly, but
+Doreen threw at her mother one imploring glance, and gently pulling her
+father's hair, told him that he was not to be a hard, heartless man.
+
+When the door was shut, however, Mr. Wedmore addressed his wife in no
+very gentle tones.
+
+"Ellen," said he, curtly, "you must get rid of that baggage they call
+the nurse. She's no more a nurse than you are!"
+
+"And she's no more his sister than I am, either!" chimed in Mrs.
+Wedmore, who had risen from her chair in great excitement.
+
+Mr. Wedmore stared at his wife.
+
+"Sister!" cried he, in a voice of thunder. "Whose sister? Dudley Horne
+never had a sister!"
+
+"I know that, but that's the story they have made up for us; and the
+girls--our girls--are ready to believe it, and I don't want them to know
+it isn't true."
+
+"Well, whatever she is, and whoever she is, I want her to be outside the
+house before lunch time," said Mr. Wedmore. "I've just caught Max with
+his arm around her, and I haven't the slightest doubt that it was he who
+made up the story. Any tale's good enough for the old people! Look at
+her face--look at her dress! She is some hussy who ought never to have
+been allowed inside the house!"
+
+"It was Doreen who brought her in. And, to do her justice, George, I
+believe the girl didn't want to come," said Mrs. Wedmore. "And it's
+about Doreen I wanted to talk to you, George. This coming of Dudley has
+upset all the good we did by never mentioning him to her. To-day she's
+as much excited, as anxious and as miserable as if they were still
+engaged. And--and--oh! if the police come here to the house and take him
+awa-a-ay,"--and here the poor lady became almost too hysterical to
+articulate--"it will break the child's heart, George; it will indeed.
+And, oh! do you think it possible he really did--really did--"
+
+"Did what?"
+
+"Oh, you know! It's to dreadful to say. Why do you make me say it? They
+say something about his having gone out of his mind, and--and--killed
+somebody. It isn't true, George, is it?"
+
+"I don't know, I'm sure. Who told you?"
+
+"Max first, and then I learned the rest from the guesses of the girls.
+Oh, it is dreadful--shocking! And to think of his having been planted
+down upon us like this, just when I was beginning to hope that Doreen
+was getting kinder to Mr. Lindsay."
+
+"It's all the doing of that idiot Max!" said Mr. Wedmore, angrily. "I'll
+send him out to the Cape, and make an end of it. He shall go next
+month."
+
+"Oh, I didn't want that," pleaded Mrs. Wedmore, with a sudden change to
+tenderness and self-reproach. "Don't do anything in a hurry, George,
+anything you will be sorry for afterward."
+
+"Sorry for! The only thing I'm sorry for is that I didn't send him
+before, and saved all this."
+
+"And as for the girl, no doubt it's her fault, and Dudley's, a great
+deal more than Max's," went on the mother of Max, with the usual
+feminine excuse for the darling scapegrace. "When she's gone he will
+forget all about her, as he always does."
+
+This speech was an unlucky one.
+
+"Yes, that's just what I complain of, that he always forgets," said he,
+turning sharply upon his wife. "If he would stick to anything or to
+anybody for so much as a week, or a day, or an hour, I shouldn't mind so
+much. But he isn't man enough for that. As soon as this girl's out of
+the house, he'll be looking about for another one."
+
+"I'm sure it wasn't his fault that she came here at all," persisted Mrs.
+Wedmore, who never opposed her husband except in the interest of her
+son. "And I'm sure you can't blame him for doing what he could for his
+friend, even if he does put us to a little inconvenience. After all,
+Dudley's been like a son to you for a great many years--"
+
+"That's just what I complain of--that he's so like a son," interrupted
+her husband. "That is to say, he has brought upon us no end of worry and
+bother, and a bill for five guineas for this pleasant little drive down
+from London."
+
+"Well, how could we refuse to take him in?"
+
+"How did he get into the mess?"
+
+"What mess?"
+
+"That's what I want to know, too--what mess? I am told he fell into the
+water, striking his head against the side of a bridge, or of a church,
+or it doesn't matter what, as he fell. They haven't thought it worth
+while to make up a good story. But whether he was drunk, or whether he
+was escaping from the police, or what he was doing, nobody seems to
+know. If I'd been consulted, if I hadn't been treated as a cipher in the
+matter, he should have driven straight back to London again with the
+girl, and with Max himself."
+
+Mrs. Wedmore thought it better to say nothing to this, but to let her
+husband simmer down. These ferocious utterances came from the lips only,
+as she very well knew, and might safely be disregarded.
+
+Fortunately his attention was diverted at this point by the arrival of
+the doctor, who had been out on his rounds when they first sent for him.
+
+Rather relieved to have a fresh person to pour out his complaints to,
+Mr. Wedmore hastened to give his old friend a somewhat confused account
+of the patient's arrival and condition, in which "cheap, ready-made
+clothes," "a bill for five guineas," "a baggage of a girl" and "the
+police" were the prominent items.
+
+But as for any details concerning the patient's state of health and the
+reasons for his needing medical care, Doctor Haselden could learn
+nothing at all until he had prevailed upon Mr. Wedmore to let him see
+Dudley instead of listening to abuse of him.
+
+Doctor Haselden was a long time in the sick-room, and when he came out
+he looked grave. Mr. Wedmore, who met him outside the door, was annoyed.
+
+"It's nothing, I suppose, that a few days' quiet won't set right?" he
+asked quickly.
+
+"I don't know, I'm sure," answered the doctor. "It's more serious than I
+thought by what you said--a great deal more serious. I don't know, I'm
+sure, whether we shall get him round at all."
+
+A little cry startled both men and made them look round. In a recess of
+the corridor above they could distinguish the figure of a woman, and Mr.
+Wedmore's heart smote him, for it was Doreen.
+
+"Go away, child! Go away!" said he, half petulantly, but yet with some
+remorse in his tone. "The girl's crazy about him," he added, with
+irritation, when his daughter had silently obeyed.
+
+"Poor child! Poor child!" said Doctor Haselden, sympathetically. "She's
+the real old-fashioned sort, with a warm heart under all her little
+airs. I hope he'll get round, if only for her sake. But--"
+
+"She couldn't marry him in any case," said Mr. Wedmore, shortly. "I
+thought I told you that affair was broken off--definitely broken
+off--weeks ago. And now--"
+
+He stopped and intimated by a gesture of the hand that the break was
+more definite than ever.
+
+The doctor was curious, but he tried not to show it.
+
+"I should wire up to town for another nurse, I think," said he. "This
+little girl can't do it all."
+
+Mr. Wedmore pricked up his ears.
+
+"Then I must wire for two--for two nurses," said he, decidedly. "We're
+going to send this girl off. She's not a nurse at all."
+
+"Ah, but she does very well," objected the doctor, promptly, "and you
+will be doing very unwisely if you send her away. It seems she
+understands all the circumstances of the case, and that counts for
+something in treating a patient who has evidently something on his mind.
+She seems to be able to soothe him, and in a case of concussion--"
+
+"But she's trying to get hold of my fool of a son Max!" protested Mr.
+Wedmore.
+
+"But it isn't a question of your son Max, but of young Horne," said
+Doctor Haselden, with decision. "As for Max, he can take care of
+himself; and, at any rate, he's got all his family about to take care of
+him. You keep the girl. She's got a head on her shoulders. Most uncommon
+thing, that--in a girl with such eyes!"
+
+And the doctor, with a humorous nod to his angry friend, went
+downstairs.
+
+After this warning of the real danger in which Dudley lay, it was, of
+course, impossible for Mr. Wedmore to send poor Carrie away, at any rate
+until the arrival of some one who could take her place. And as there was
+clearly some sense in the doctor's suggestion that her knowledge of the
+case was valuable, Mr. Wedmore ended by sending up for one trained nurse
+to relieve her, instead of for two, as he had proposed.
+
+And, after all, there seemed to be less danger in the direction of Max
+than he had supposed; for Carrie never once left the sick-room until the
+professional nurse arrived at ten o'clock that night. And as Mrs.
+Wedmore was then in waiting to mount guard over Carrie, and to carry her
+off to her supper and then to her bedroom, the first day's danger to the
+susceptible son and heir seemed to have been got through rather well.
+
+On the following morning, however, the well-watched Carrie escaped from
+the supervision of her jailers, and boldly made a direct attack upon Max
+under the family's nose.
+
+Carrie was looking out of one of the back windows of the house to get a
+breath of fresh air, before taking her turn of duty in the sick-room,
+when she saw Max talking to one of the grooms outside the stables. He
+saw her, and his face flushed. Mrs. Wedmore, who was standing on guard a
+few paces from Carrie, noted the fact with maternal anxiety. She rather
+liked the girl, whose modest manners were as attractive as her pretty
+face; but with the fear of "entanglements" before her eyes, she tried to
+check her own inclination. Carrie turned to her abruptly.
+
+"The nurse won't mind waiting a few minutes for me," said she, quickly.
+"I must speak a few words to Mr. Max."
+
+And before Mrs. Wedmore could get breath after this audacious statement,
+Carrie was down the stairs and half away across the yard, where Max
+hastened to meet her.
+
+"I have something to say to you," she began at once with a grave face.
+"Do you know that--_they've come_?"
+
+"Who? Who have come?"
+
+"The police."
+
+Max started.
+
+"Nonsense! What makes you think so? I've seen no one."
+
+"I have, though. I've been expecting them, for one thing, and it's made
+me sharp, I suppose. But I've seen in the park, among the trees, this
+morning before anybody was up almost, a man walking about, taking his
+bearings and looking about him."
+
+"One of the gardeners," said Max. "There are several."
+
+"Oh, no, it wasn't a gardener. Can't you trust my London eyes? And
+listen: Presently another one came up, and they talked together. Then
+one went one way and the other another, not like gardeners or
+workingmen, but like men on the lookout."
+
+"What should they be on the lookout for?" asked Max. "If they want
+Dudley, why don't they come up to the house? I don't doubt that by this
+time they know where he is."
+
+Carrie said nothing; but there was in her eyes, as she glanced
+searchingly round her, a peculiar look of wistful dread which puzzled
+Max and made him wonder what fear it was that was in her mind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+MAX MAKES A STAND AND A DISCOVERY.
+
+
+There was a pause, and then Carrie, without answering him, turned to go
+back into the house. But Max followed and caught her by the arm.
+
+"Carrie," said he, "they're making a slave of you, without a word of
+thanks. You look worn out."
+
+"No, I'm not," said she, briskly. "I've only taken my turns; I should
+look all right if it hadn't been for that long, tiring journey
+yesterday. I haven't quite got over that yet."
+
+She was trying to free her hand, which Max was holding in his.
+
+"You'll never be strong enough for a hospital nurse, Carrie!"
+
+"Oh, yes, but I shall!" retorted she. And as she spoke, the pink color,
+the absence of which made her usually look so delicate, came into her
+cheeks. "And you must remember that I shall be better fed, better
+clothed then. I am not really weak at all."
+
+"I repeat--you will never be strong enough for a nurse. Better take my
+advice and marry me, Carrie!"
+
+But at that, a sudden impulse of hot anger gave the girl the necessary
+strength to snatch her hand away from him. She faced him fiercely.
+
+"What! To be looked at always as your father, your mother, look at me
+now? As if I were a thief who must be watched, lest she should steal
+something? They needn't be afraid either, if only they knew! And before
+I go I'll tell them. Yes, I'll tell them what a mistake they make in
+thinking I want to take their son, their precious son, away from them!
+That for their son!"
+
+And Carrie, very ungratefully, to be sure, held her right hand close to
+the face of Max and snapped her fingers scornfully. She had seen Mrs.
+Wedmore's eyes over the half blind of one of the windows, and the minx
+thought this little scene would be a wholesome lesson.
+
+But Max, following the direction of Carrie's eyes, had also seen the
+watching face, and a manful spirit of defiance on the one hand, of
+passion on the other, moved him to show both Carrie and his mother how
+things were going with him.
+
+Seizing the girl round the waist when her little spurt of defiance was
+scarcely over, he held her head with his disengaged hand and pressed
+upon her eyes, her cheeks and her lips a dozen hot kisses.
+
+"There!" said he, when at last he let her go, and she, staggering,
+blushing, ran toward the shelter of the house. "That's what you get for
+being ungrateful, you little cat. And it's nothing to what you'll get
+from my mother, who's sure to say it's all your fault. And so--" roared
+he up the stairs after her, as she reached the top, "so it is, of
+course!"
+
+But Carrie found a refuge inside the sick-room, where Dudley, who had
+passed a better night than they had even hoped, was now lying with
+closed eyes, quiet and apparently calm.
+
+It was upon Max himself, for a wonder, that the vials of the family
+wrath were poured. Mrs. Wedmore, happening to meet her husband while the
+last grievance against the girl was fresh, and before she had had the
+time to meditate on the result of a premature disclosure, made known to
+him the outrage of which she had been a witness, taking care to dwell
+upon the audacity of the girl in pursuing and provoking Max.
+
+Mr. Wedmore listened in silence, and then said, curtly:
+
+"Where is he now? Send him to me."
+
+Max, bent upon making himself as conspicuous and, therefore, as
+offensive as possible, was whistling in the hall at the moment. And
+there was a defiant note in his very whistling which worked his father
+up to boiling point. Mr. Wedmore sprang off his chair and dashed open
+the door.
+
+"Max, you fool, come here!" was his unpromising summons.
+
+Max came at once, rather red in the face and bright of eyes. Mrs.
+Wedmore, standing, frightened and anxious, in the background, thought
+she had never seen her darling boy look so handsome, so manly. He came
+in very quietly, without swaggering, without defiance, as if he had not
+noticed the offensive epithet.
+
+His father, who was by this time on the post of vantage, the hearth-rug,
+with his hands behind him and his back to the fire, pointed imperiously
+to a chair.
+
+"Sit down, sir."
+
+Max sat down very deliberately on a chair other than the one his father
+had chosen for him, and looked down on the floor.
+
+"So you are at your old tricks, your old habits!" began Mr. Wedmore.
+
+Max looked up. Then he sat up.
+
+"What old tricks and habits do you mean, sir?"
+
+"Running after every girl you see, and in defiance of all decency, under
+your mother's very nose."
+
+Mrs. Wedmore would have interposed here, but her husband waved his hand
+imperially, and she remained silent. Max leaned back in his chair and
+met his father's eyes steadily.
+
+"You have made a mistake, sir, and my mother has made a mistake, too. It
+is quite true she may have seen me kissing Miss--Miss--Carrie, in fact.
+But I hope to have the right to kiss her. I want to marry her."
+
+"To marry this--this--"
+
+"This beautiful young girl, whom nobody has a word to say against,"
+interrupted Max, in a louder voice. "Come, sir, you can't say I'm at my
+old tricks _now_. I've never wanted to marry any girl before."
+
+For the moment Mr. Wedmore was stupefied. This was worse, far worse than
+he had expected. Mrs. Wedmore, also, was rather shocked. But the
+sensation, was tempered, in her case, with admiration of her boy's
+spirit in daring to make this avowal.
+
+"Mind, I only say I _want_ to marry her. Because, so far, she has
+refused to have anything to say to me."
+
+"Not refused to marry you!" broke in Mrs. Wedmore, unable to remain
+quiet under such provocation as this.
+
+"Yes, refused to marry me, mother. I have asked her--begged her."
+
+"Oh, it's only artfulness, to make you more persistent," cried Mrs.
+Wedmore, indignantly.
+
+"Or perhaps," suggested Mr. Wedmore, in his driest tones, "the girl is
+shrewd enough to know that I should cut off a son who was guilty of such
+a piece of idiocy and leave him to his own resources."
+
+Max said nothing for a moment; then he remarked, quietly:
+
+"You have been threatening to do that already, sir, before there was any
+question of my marrying."
+
+Mrs. Wedmore was frightened by the tone Max was using. He was so much
+quieter than usual, so much more decided in his tone, that she began to
+think there was less chance than usual of his coming to an agreement
+with his father.
+
+"You know, Max," she said, coming over to his chair and putting an
+affectionate hand on his head, "that your father has only spoken to you
+as he has done because he wanted to rouse up your spirit and make you
+ashamed of being lazy."
+
+Max rose from his chair and turned to her with flashing eyes.
+
+"And now, when there is a chance of my rousing myself at last, when I am
+ready and anxious to prove it, and to set to work, and to settle down,
+he is angrier with me than ever. Mother, you know I'm right, and you
+know it isn't fair."
+
+Mrs. Wedmore looked with something like terror into her son's handsome,
+excited face.
+
+"But, my dear boy, don't you see that this would be ruin, to tie
+yourself to a girl like that? Why, she told me herself that she didn't
+belong to anywhere or anybody."
+
+"And is that any reason why she should never belong to anywhere or to
+anybody? If there was anything wrong about the girl herself, I would
+listen to you--"
+
+"Listen to us! You'll have to listen!" interrupted his father.
+
+Max glanced at him, and went on:
+
+"But there is not."
+
+"And how do you know that? How long have you known her?"
+
+Max was taken aback. It had not occurred to him to think how short his
+acquaintance with Carrie had been.
+
+"Long enough to find out all about her," he answered, soberly; "and to
+make up my mind that I'll have her for my wife."
+
+"Then that settles it," broke in Mr. Wedmore, whose ill-humor had not
+been decreased by the fact that Max evidently considered it more
+important to conciliate his mother than to try to convince him. "You
+will go to the Cape next month; and if you choose to take this baggage
+with you, you can do so. It won't much matter to us what sort of a wife
+you introduce to your neighbors out there."
+
+But Max strode across the room and stood face to face with his father,
+eye to eye.
+
+"No, sir," he said, in a dogged tone of voice, thrusting his hands deep
+into his pockets and looking at him steadily. "I shall not go to the
+Cape. You have a right to turn me out of your house if you please. In
+fact, it's quite time I went, I know. It's time I did settle down. It's
+time I did try to do something for myself. And I'm going to. I'm going
+to try to earn my own living and to make enough to keep a wife--the wife
+I want. And I shall do it somehow. But I'm not going to be packed off to
+Africa, as if my marrying this girl were a thing to be ashamed of. I'm
+going to stay in England. I sha'n't come near you. You needn't be afraid
+of that. I shall be too proud of my wife to bring her among people who
+would look down upon her. And perhaps you'd better not inquire where I
+live or what I'm doing, for we sha'n't be able to live in a fashionable
+neighborhood, nor to be too particular about what we turn our hands to."
+
+While Max made this speech very slowly, very deliberately, his father
+listened to him with ever-increasing anger and disgust, and his mother,
+not daring to come too close while he was right under the paternal eye,
+hung over the table in the background, with yearning, tremulous love in
+her eyes, and with her lips parted, ready to utter the tender words of a
+pleading peacemaker.
+
+But the tone Mr. Wedmore chose to take was that of utter contempt,
+complete irresponsibility. When his son had finished speaking he waited
+as if to hear whether there was any more to come, and then abruptly
+turned his back upon him and began to poke the fire.
+
+"Very well," said he, with an affectation of extreme calmness. "Since
+you have made up your mind, the sooner you begin to carry out your plans
+the better. I'm very glad to see that you have a mind to make up."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Max.
+
+And he was turning to leave the room, when his mother sprang forward and
+stopped him.
+
+"No, no! Don't go like that! My boy! George! Don't say good-bye yet.
+Take a little time. Let him try a little trouble of his own for a
+change. He has made up his mind, he says. I'm sure he's old enough.
+Leave him alone."
+
+Max put his arm round his mother, gave her a warm kiss, disengaged
+himself, and left the room.
+
+The poor woman was almost hysterical.
+
+"He means it, George! He means it this time!" she moaned.
+
+And her husband, though he laughed at her, and though he said to himself
+that he did not care, was inclined to agree with her.
+
+Max went straight up to his own room, and began to do his packing with
+much outward cheerfulness. Indeed he felt no depression over the dashing
+step he was taking, although he felt sore over the parting with home and
+his mother and sisters.
+
+He was debating within himself whether he should try to see Carrie
+before he went, or whether he should only leave a note to be given to
+her after he was gone, when he heard the voice of his sister Doreen
+calling him. He threw open the door and shouted back.
+
+She was in the hall.
+
+"Max," cried she, in a hissing whisper, "I want to speak to you. Make
+haste!"
+
+He ran downstairs and found her standing with two of the maids, both of
+whom looked rather frightened.
+
+"Max," said Doreen, "there's an old woman hanging about the place--" Max
+started. He guessed what was coming. "The same old woman that came at
+Christmas time. She jumped up in the well-house at Anne, and sent her
+into hysterics. And now they've lost sight of her, just as they did last
+time, and we want you to help to ferret her out and send her away."
+
+"All right," said Max. "We'll pack her off."
+
+He was at the bottom of the staircase by this time, and was starting on
+his way to the yard, when a little scream from one of the two maids, as
+she glanced up the stairs, made him look around. Carrie had come down so
+lightly and so swiftly that she was upon the group before they had heard
+a sound. She beckoned to Max, who came back at once.
+
+Carrie was shaking like a leaf; her eyes were wide with alarm, with
+terror. Max went up a few stairs, to be out of hearing of the others, as
+she seemed to wish. Then she whispered:
+
+"You know who it is. I saw her. Leave her alone. I implore you to leave
+her alone! She'll do no harm. Let her rest. Let the poor creature rest.
+If--if the police--"
+
+At that moment there was a shout from the yard outside. Carrie sprang
+like a hare up the stairs to the window, and looked out with straining
+eyes.
+
+The afternoon was one of those dull misty winter days, with a leaden sky
+and an east wind.
+
+"I'll see that she isn't hurt!" called out Max, as he bounded down the
+stairs and ran into the yard behind the house.
+
+Here he found a motley group--the stablemen, the laundry-maids and the
+gardeners--all hunting in the many corners and crannies of the
+outbuildings for the old woman who had alarmed Anne.
+
+Max spoke sharply to the men.
+
+"Here, what are you about?" said he. "Hunting a poor old woman as if she
+were a wild animal? Go back to your work. She'll never dare to show her
+face while you are all about!"
+
+"She's left the well-house, sir, and, we think, she's got into the big
+barn," explained one of the lads, with the feeling that Mr. Max himself
+would want to join in the chase when he knew that the game was to hand.
+
+"Well, leave her there," answered Max, promptly. "She'll come out when
+you've all gone, and I'll send her about her business."
+
+Max saw, as he spoke, that there was a man standing at a little distance
+just outside the stable-gate, whom he did not recognize. Before he could
+ask who he was, however, the man had disappeared from view. He
+remembered what Carrie had said about the presence of a policeman, and
+he thought the time was come to take the bull by the horns.
+
+So he walked rapidly in the direction of the gate, and addressed the man
+whom he found there.
+
+"Are you a policeman?" he asked, abruptly.
+
+"Yes, sir," answered the man, touching his hat.
+
+"What is your business here?"
+
+"I'm on the lookout for some one I have a warrant for. Charge of murder,
+sir."
+
+"Man or woman?"
+
+"Man, sir."
+
+"Will you tell me his name?"
+
+"Horne, sir."
+
+Max thought a moment.
+
+"Why are you pottering about here, instead of going straight up to the
+house?"
+
+"Well, sir, I'm obeying orders."
+
+"Come with me," said Max suddenly. "There's an old hag hiding in the
+barn now, who knows more about this business than Mr. Horne."
+
+Behind the young gentleman's back the detective smiled, but he professed
+to be ready to follow him.
+
+"There's only one way out of this barn," explained Max, as he approached
+the door, beside which a groom was standing. "By this door, which is
+never locked. There is a window, but it's too high up for anybody to get
+out by."
+
+Telling the groom to guard the door, Max went into the barn, followed by
+the detective. There was still light enough for them to find their way
+about among the lumber.
+
+"Where's the window, sir?" asked the detective.
+
+Max pointed to a speck of light high in the south wall of the barn.
+
+"She couldn't get out there," said he, "even if she could climb up to
+it. Unless she could swarm a rope."
+
+And he touched one of the ropes which dangled from a huge beam.
+
+The detective, however, walked rapidly past him, and stopped short,
+pointing to something which was lying on the floor under the window.
+
+It was the body of a man, lying in a heap.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED.
+
+
+Max helped the detective raise the man from the ground. He was quite
+dead, and from the position in which they had found him, both men
+concluded that he had been in the act of climbing up to the high window,
+when the rope by which he was holding broke under his weight. It was
+evident that he had fallen upon an old millstone which was among the
+lumber on the floor beneath, and that the shock of the fall had broken
+his neck.
+
+They had found out all this before Max could form any opinion as to the
+identity of the dead man. He was short of stature, and apparently
+between fifty and sixty years of age, slightly built, but muscular. The
+body was dressed in the clothes of a respectable mechanic.
+
+There was very little light in the barn by this time, and Max directed
+the groom, who had been standing outside, and who had entered, attracted
+by Max's shout of discovery, to bring a lantern.
+
+"I suppose we'd better send for a doctor," said Max, "though the man's
+as dead as a doornail. In the meantime, just give a look around and see
+whether the woman is anywhere about."
+
+The detective appeared to follow the suggestion, for he at once
+proceeded to a further inspection of the building by the aid of one of
+the two lanterns which the groom had by this time brought. And presently
+he came back to Max with a bundle in his hand.
+
+Max, by the light of the lantern which the groom was holding for him,
+was looking at the face of the dead man, whom he guessed to be one of
+Mrs. Higgs's accomplices, perhaps the mysterious person whose influence
+over the old woman, according to Carrie, was so bad.
+
+While he was staring intently at the dead face, he heard a stifled cry,
+and looking up, saw that Carrie had stolen into the barn behind the
+groom, and had her eyes fixed upon the body.
+
+Max sprang up.
+
+"Do you know him? Is it the man who used to get into the place by
+night?" asked he, eagerly.
+
+Carrie, without answering, looked from the dead man to the detective,
+and from him to the bundle he was carrying.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed she.
+
+Max looked in his turn. The detective was displaying, one by one, a
+woman's skirt, bodice, bonnet, shawl and a cap with a "front" of woman's
+hair sewn inside it.
+
+"I think you can guess, sir, what's become of the woman now?" said the
+officer, grimly.
+
+Max started violently, shocked by a surprise which, both for the
+detective and for Carrie, had been discounted some time ago.
+
+"Mrs. Higgs" was a man.
+
+Even with this knowledge to help him, Max, as he stared again at the
+dead face, found it difficult to recognize in the still features those
+which in life had inspired him with feelings of repulsion.
+
+Just a quiet, inoffensive, respectable-looking man not coarse or low in
+type; this would have been his comment upon the dead man, if he had
+known nothing about him. Max shuddered as he withdrew his gaze; and, as
+he did so, he met the eyes of Carrie.
+
+He beckoned to her to come away with him, and she followed him as far as
+the door, toward which some members of the household, to whom the news
+had penetrated, were now hastening.
+
+"Carrie!" cried he, as he looked searchingly in her face, "you knew
+this? How long have you known it?"
+
+She could scarcely answer. She was shaking from head to foot, and was
+evidently suffering from a great shock.
+
+"Yes, I knew it, but only since I came here. It was part of what Mr.
+Dudley Horne let out in his raving."
+
+"Only part of it?" cried Max.
+
+But Carrie would confess nothing more. And, as Mr. Wedmore came across
+the yard at this moment, followed by Dr. Haselden, Carrie ran back into
+the house as Max met his father.
+
+"What's all this about a dead man found in the barn?" asked Mr. Wedmore,
+with all the arrogance of the country gentleman, who thinks that no one
+has a right to die on his premises without his permission.
+
+Max held his father back for a moment until the doctor had passed on. In
+the excitement of this occurrence, Mr. Wedmore was glad to have an
+opportunity of appearing to forget that there was any quarrel between
+them. On second thoughts, he inclined to think that he had perhaps, on
+this occasion, been a little too hard on his son, and he was anxious for
+some loop-hole by which he could creep out of the consequences of his
+own sternness. This, however, could hardly have been guessed by his
+manner, which was at least as arrogant as ever.
+
+"It's somebody who was mixed up in the death of Edward Jacobs, sir, I
+think," said Max, in a low voice. "A man who has been living down at the
+East End of London disguised as a woman, and who was, I believe, at the
+bottom of all the mischief."
+
+"Man disguised as a woman?" cried Mr. Wedmore, incredulously. "What an
+improbable story! And what should he do down here in my barn?"
+
+"I think he must have come down to see Dudley, sir. We believe that it
+was he who tried to drown Dudley, after he had succeeded in drowning
+Edward Jacobs."
+
+Mr. Wedmore frowned in perplexity.
+
+"Trying to drown Dudley! What on earth should he do that for? What had
+Dudley to do with him?"
+
+"Well, sir, we don't quite know. But Dudley was acquainted with this
+man, undoubtedly, though we don't know whether he knew him to be a man,
+or only as Mrs. Higgs, which was the name the man went by."
+
+"Let me see the man," said Mr. Wedmore.
+
+And, pushing past his son, he entered the barn.
+
+The doctor made way for him.
+
+"He is quite dead. He must have been killed instantly," said Doctor
+Haselden, as his friend came up.
+
+Mr. Wedmore took the lantern from the man who held it, and looked at the
+dead face. As he did so, his first expression of curiosity gave place to
+one of perplexity, followed by a stare of intense amazement and horror.
+
+"What is it? Do you know him?" asked Doctor Haselden, while Max, who had
+followed his father in, watched with intense interest and surprise.
+
+Mr. Wedmore did not seem to hear. He continued to look at the dead face
+for some moments with an appearance of utter absorption, and then,
+suddenly staggering back, he made for the open air without a word of
+explanation.
+
+Max stared at the doctor, and then followed his father out. But Mr.
+Wedmore was already half way to the house, where he shut himself into
+the study, and locking the door, refused to be disturbed.
+
+Max was more bewildered than ever by this new turn of affairs. With a
+dogged determination not to be kept any longer out of a secret of which
+everybody but himself seemed to know something, he went straight up to
+the sick-room in search of Carrie. His knock, however, was answered by
+the professional nurse, who opened the door and asked him what he
+wanted.
+
+"Oh, it doesn't matter," said Max. "At least--I wanted to know how Mr.
+Horne is now."
+
+"He won't be so well to-night, I expect," answered the nurse, tartly.
+"There's been a great noise and disturbance outside, and he's heard
+something of it, and it's made him restless and curious. He is asking
+questions about it all the time, and he won't be satisfied. He keeps
+asking for the other nurse, who is out taking her walk, as I tell him."
+
+At this point Dudley's voice was heard from the bed. "Who's that at the
+door? Who is it?"
+
+Max, after a moment's hesitation, during which the nurse assumed an air
+of washing her hands of the whole matter, answered:
+
+"Me, old chap--Max. How are you?"
+
+Dudley sprang up in bed. The nurse folded her arms and frowned.
+
+"Come in, oh, come in, just one moment! I'll be quiet, nurse, quite
+quiet. But I must see him--I must see somebody."
+
+Max threw an imploring glance at the nurse, who refused to look at him.
+Then he went in.
+
+"Only a minute--I won't stay a minute."
+
+The nurse shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"It's against the doctor's orders. I wash my hands of the consequences,"
+said she.
+
+And, with her head held very high, she left the room.
+
+Max stood irresolute. By the look of excitement on Dudley's face, he
+judged that anything must be better for him than the eager suspense from
+which he was evidently suffering. This news of the death of the odious
+inhabitant of the house by the wharf must surely bring relief to him. As
+soon as they were alone together, Dudley burst out eagerly:
+
+"That noise! It's no use deceiving me; I know what it was. They were
+after him. Tell me--has he got away? Has my father got away?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+BACK TO LOVE AND LIFE.
+
+
+Max fell into a chair. He stared at Dudley for a few moments before he
+could speak. Dudley's father! The man supposed to have died years and
+years ago in an asylum abroad, was the person who had passed as "Mrs.
+Higgs!" Even before he had had time to learn any of the details of the
+strange story, the outlines of it were at once apparent to the mind of
+Max.
+
+Here was, then, the explanation of the mysterious bond between Dudley
+and Mrs. Higgs; here was the meaning of his visits to Limehouse.
+
+Dudley repeated his question before Max had recovered from the shock of
+his surprise.
+
+"Yes," said he at last, "he has got away."
+
+But Dudley detected some reserve in his manner, or perhaps his own
+suspicions were aroused. He looked searchingly at Max, and asked
+abruptly:
+
+"Is he dead?"
+
+Max looked at him askance.
+
+"Yes," he said at last.
+
+Dudley lay back in his pillows.
+
+"Thank God!"
+
+And Max knew by the look of intense relief on his friend's face that he
+had done right in telling him the truth.
+
+But, indeed, Max could not guess how intense the relief was from the
+burden of the secret which Dudley had had to bear for so long; and
+undoubtedly the discovery that it was a secret no longer, that the
+necessity for concealment was now over, helped his recovery materially.
+
+Max told him, as briefly as possible, the details of the occurrence; but
+he neither asked nor invited any more questions.
+
+It was not until some time afterward, when Dudley had left the
+sick-room, that the whole of the story became known to the family. But,
+in the meantime, the inquest on the body brought many facts to light.
+
+Mrs. Edward Jacobs, the widow of the man who had been found drowned in
+the Thames off Limehouse some weeks before, had been, so it was
+discovered, the person to give information to the police against Dudley,
+as the suspected murderer of her husband. She had traced to him the
+weekly postal orders, which she looked upon as blood-money, and she had
+then hung about his chambers, and on one occasion followed him to
+Limehouse, without, however, penetrating farther than the entrance of
+the wharf.
+
+Upon the information given by her a warrant was issued against Dudley;
+but in searching his chambers a number of letters were found, all
+addressed to Dudley, which threw a new and lurid light upon the affair.
+The letters were written by the father to the son, and contained the
+whole story of his return to England a few months before; of his anxiety
+to see his son; his morbid fear of being recognized and shut up as a
+lunatic, and his equally morbid hankering after information concerning
+Edward Jacobs, the man who had ruined him.
+
+All these letters, which were directed in a feigned handwriting, seemed
+sane and sensible enough, although they showed signs of eccentricity of
+character.
+
+The next batch were written after the disappearance of Edward Jacobs,
+and in them the signs of morbid eccentricity were more apparent. The
+writer owned to having "put Jacobs out of the way," upbraided Dudley for
+interfering on behalf of such a wretch, and accused him of ingratitude
+in refusing to leave England with his father, who had done mankind in
+general and him in particular a service in killing a monster. The writer
+went on to accuse Dudley of siding with his father's enemies, of wishing
+to have him shut up, and told him that he should never succeed.
+
+Some of these letters were directed to The Beeches, and some to Dudley's
+chambers, showing an intimate knowledge of his whereabouts.
+
+The latest letters were wilder, more bitter, showing how insanity which
+had broken out into violence before was increasing in intensity, and how
+the feelings of regard which he had seemed to entertain for his son had
+given place to strong resentment against him.
+
+After the reading of these letters, it was plain that the crime of
+murder which Mrs. Jacobs had laid to Dudley's charge had been really the
+work of his father; and Mrs. Jacobs herself, on being made acquainted
+with these facts, agreed with this conclusion.
+
+There remained only the question of Dudley's complicity in the crime to
+be considered, and that was a matter which could be left until the sick
+man's recovery.
+
+It was on the first day of Dudley's appearance in the family circle that
+the subject was broached, clumsily enough, by Mr. Wedmore, who was dying
+to know a great deal more than anybody had been willing to tell him.
+
+Dudley had come into the drawing-room, which had been well warmed for
+the occasion with a roaring fire, and it was here that they found him
+after luncheon, with the professional nurse beside him.
+
+The girls greeted him rather shyly, especially Doreen, but Mrs. Wedmore
+was motherly and gentle. Mr. Wedmore attacked him at once.
+
+"I can't understand, Dudley, why you kept it all so dark. Couldn't you
+see for yourself that it was better for your father to be under
+restraint, as well as safer for other people?"
+
+Mrs. Wedmore tried to interpose and to change the conversation to
+another subject, but Dudley said:
+
+"I would rather explain now, once and for all. I shall be going away
+to-morrow, and there are several things which I should like to make
+clear first." He paused, and Mrs. Wedmore, her daughters and the nurse
+took the opportunity to leave the room. "Now, Mr. Wedmore, tell me what
+you want to know."
+
+"Well, you told us nothing about your father's being alive and back in
+England, for one thing."
+
+"It was by his wish that I kept it a secret. He persisted that he was
+sane; he seemed to be sane. But he believed that if it were known that
+he was in England he would be shut up."
+
+"But the passing himself off as an old woman, this living in a sort of
+underground way, didn't that look like madness?"
+
+"I took it for eccentricity and nothing more, until--until he sent for
+me one day, and brought me suddenly into a room--a little dark, bare
+room--where there was a man lying on the ground asleep, as I thought. My
+father told me to bring him into the next room, and--when I stooped to
+touch him"--Dudley shuddered at the ghastly recollection--"my hands were
+covered with blood."
+
+"Good gracious! He had murdered him?"
+
+"Yes. And from that time he seemed a different man. I saw that he was
+mad. I tried to persuade him to give himself up, to let himself be put
+under restraint. I laid traps for him, trying to take him to an asylum.
+But he was too cunning for me, and all I got by it was to rouse in him a
+bitter feeling of hatred of myself."
+
+"Why didn't you give information--to the police, if necessary?"
+
+"How could I? My own father! I believed he would be hanged if he was
+caught. I believe so still. The last time I saw him he seemed sane,
+except for a feeling of irritation against me and against Carrie, who,
+it seems, is my half-sister. But he attacked me suddenly, knocked me on
+the head, and tried to drown me. There, now you know as much as I do.
+Can you wonder now that I was obliged to cut myself off from my friends,
+with such a burden as that on my mind?"
+
+Mr. Wedmore was silent for a time.
+
+"Poor lad!" he said at last. "Poor lad! I think you might have found
+some better way out of it than holding your tongue and shutting yourself
+up from all your friends; but, on the other hand, it was a jolly
+difficult position. Jolly difficult! And so you never even told Max?"
+
+"No, though I more than once felt inclined to. But it was such a ghastly
+business altogether that I thought I'd better hold my tongue, especially
+as--I was afraid--it might filter through him to--to somebody
+else--somebody who couldn't be told a beastly secret like that."
+
+Mr. Wedmore nodded.
+
+"And this girl--this Carrie?" said he.
+
+Dudley's face lighted up.
+
+"That's my one comfort in all this," said he, "that it has led to my
+finding out the girl and doing something for her. I never heard of her
+before. But my father told me she was my half-sister, and they say there
+is something in our faces which confirms the story. Anyhow, she's a
+grand girl, and I'm going to look after her. She's gone away--"
+
+"Gone away!" repeated Mr. Wedmore, disconcerted.
+
+There had been a lull in the quarrel between him and his son for the
+last few days, during which Carrie had avoided Max and Max had avoided
+his father.
+
+"Yes," said Dudley. "She would go, and she thought it best to go without
+any fuss, leaving me to say good-bye for her. She's all right. I'm going
+to look after her; and she's going into training as a hospital nurse."
+
+"Oh, well, I'm sure I hope she'll get on," said Mr. Wedmore, rather
+vaguely.
+
+He had been getting used, during the last few days, to the thought of
+the pretty, blue-eyed girl as a daughter-in-law, and he found himself
+now rather hoping than fearing that Max would stick to his choice.
+
+"Well," said he at last, "I must send the ladies to have a look at you
+now, I suppose. I wouldn't let them talk my head off on the first day,
+if I were you."
+
+Dudley sprang to his feet. He seemed restless and excited.
+
+"I won't talk much. I won't let them talk much," said he, in an unsteady
+voice. "But may I see--may I speak to Doreen?"
+
+Mr. Wedmore nodded good-humoredly.
+
+"Well, you may speak to her, if she'll let you," said he, cheerfully.
+"But, really, she's a thorny young person. She's treated young Lindsay,
+the curate, very cruelly, and I'm sure he's a much better looking fellow
+than you. However, you can try your luck."
+
+Dudley did not wait for any more encouragement. No sooner had Mr.
+Wedmore left the room than the convalescent followed. He found Doreen in
+the hall, putting a handful of letters on the table ready for the post.
+She started when she turned and saw him, and, leaning back with her
+hands upon the table, she asked him what he meant by leaving the nice,
+warm, ox-roasting fire they had built up expressly for him upstairs.
+
+"I hear you've been treating the curate very badly," said he. "I've come
+to ask for an explanation."
+
+Doreen looked down at the tip of her shoe, and, after a pause, said
+demurely:
+
+"Well, I suppose if you don't know the reason, nobody does."
+
+"Why, was it anything connected with me, then?"
+
+"So I have been informed," answered Doreen, more primly than ever.
+
+And then he waited for her to look up; and when she did, he kissed her.
+And they didn't exchange a word upon the subject of the long
+misunderstanding, but just strolled into the dining-room and saw
+pictures in the fire together.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was no trial and no scandal; there were rumors, and that was all.
+Max remained true to his fancy for Carrie, and gave proof of his
+sincerity by settling down to work in a merchant's office, after the
+manner so dear to his father's heart. And in return, Mr. Wedmore
+consented to Carrie's being invited down to The Beeches in the spring,
+to be present at Doreen's wedding.
+
+And when Carrie came, several details concerning the life led by her and
+the supposed Mrs. Higgs in the house by the docks came to light, and the
+last remains of the mystery were cleared away.
+
+She told how her father, passing himself off as Mrs. Higgs, an old
+servant in the Horne family, of whom Carrie had heard in the lifetime of
+Miss Aldridge, had found her out, had touched her heart by a kindness
+evidently genuine, and had prevailed upon her to go and make her home in
+the deserted house, which, Mrs. Higgs said, had been intended for her by
+her late master.
+
+In the empty house they found that an entrance had been made into the
+adjoining warehouse, which had been used by a gang of thieves as a
+hiding-place for stolen goods. In the little front shop these ingenious
+persons had fashioned an ingenious hiding-place by hollowing out a
+tunnel to the river. Into this tunnel the water flowed at high tide; but
+when the tide was low an entrance could be effected from the river, by
+which the thieves could pass in and out, and in which they could safely
+deposit, in a chest in the slimy earth, property too valuable to be left
+above ground.
+
+Carrie explained how Mrs. Higgs fraternized with the thieves, before she
+herself guessed who they were, and how she had got used to them before
+she learned their character, though not before she had grown suspicious
+about them. How she had seen Dudley with Mrs. Higgs, without knowing who
+he was, and how she had set him down as a suspicious character from the
+furtive manner of his visits. How she herself posted the two letters,
+the one to Edward Jacobs and the other to Dudley, which brought them to
+the place on the same day. How she herself was sent out of the way on
+that occasion, and returned in time to witness, through the hole in the
+floor above, the stooping over the body by Dudley, and his drawing back
+covered with blood, which she took for the actual murder. How Mrs. Higgs
+and Dudley had then left the house together, while she was too sick with
+fright to move. How she had remained outside the house until she saw
+Max; and how, when he was gone, and Mrs. Higgs had come back, she found
+that the manner of the supposed old woman had changed toward her and
+grown unbearably cruel and harsh. How she had been left for days and
+nights by herself, until she resolved to bear it no longer. And how,
+when Mrs. Higgs had sent her to Dudley's chambers with the message about
+Dick Barker, she had told her never to come back again.
+
+Carrie added that she herself had always been treated with kindness, not
+only by the gang, of whom, indeed, they saw little, but by such of the
+men and boys on the barges which came to the wharf as knew her, and
+"winked" at her unauthorized tenancy of the deserted house.
+
+In broad daylight, in the company of half a dozen policemen, Max and
+Dudley revisited the house together. They found the holes in the wall
+through which "Mrs. Higgs" took stock of Max on the occasion of his
+first visit; they tested the ingenious device by means of which the
+middle boards in the front shop could be made to fall and deposit
+anything laid upon them in the tunnel beneath. They found the hole in
+which Mrs. Higgs had stepped, and the pole which had been used to
+underpin the middle boards. This hole extended under the floor of the
+kitchen, so that by creeping under the flooring from the one room to the
+other the pole could be withdrawn or replaced without the knowledge of a
+person in the front room.
+
+This final discovery explained to Max the manner in which the body of
+Jacobs had been made to disappear while he himself was in the room with
+it.
+
+The gang, of which the illustrious Dick Barker had formed one, had
+wisely disappeared, never to return.
+
+But one day, when Carrie, in her nurse's dress, was walking along Oxford
+Street, in the company of Max, to whom, with Mr. Wedmore's permission,
+she was now engaged, she felt a hand in her pocket, and turning quickly,
+found that she was having her purse stolen, "for auld lang syne," by
+Dick Barker.
+
+Max recognized in the well-dressed young man, with the low type of face,
+the man whom he had once supposed to be his rival.
+
+As Dick promptly disappeared, Carrie and Max looked at each other, and
+the girl burst into tears.
+
+"Oh, Max, if it hadn't been for you--" whispered she, as she dried her
+eyes quickly and hurried on with him.
+
+"And, oh, Carrie, if it hadn't been for you--" whispered Max back, as he
+took her into the shop of the Hungarian Bread Company, and made her have
+a cup of tea.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHARF BY THE DOCKS***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 16092.txt or 16092.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/0/9/16092
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/old/16092.zip b/old/16092.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bede4e9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/16092.zip