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

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