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Page 27
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.
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