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

"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