The Wharf by the Docks by Florence Warden (novel24 TXT) 📖

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