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Page 40
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 turned
into a shop, there had been a small fireplace. And on the other side of
this, near the wall, was a collection of rubbish, over the musty items
of which Max stumbled as he went. Old boxes, bits of carpet, broken
bricks; every sort of worthless lumber.
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