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.
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.
"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!"
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.
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.