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Page 41
And so, without accident, without incident, without hearing a sound but
the faint noise of his own movements, Max got back to the point where he
had started.
Then he paused and listened at the inner door.
In spite of everything, he refused to yield to the suggestion that
Carrie had anything to do with his incarceration. Would she not, on
finding that he had disappeared, make an effort to get him out?
While he was standing between doubt and hope, on the alert for any sound
on the other side which should suggest the presence of the girl herself
and give him the cue to knock at the door again, his attention was
attracted by a slight noise which thrilled him to the marrow; for it
came, not from outside, but from some part of the room itself, in which
he had supposed himself to be alone with the dead body of a man.
Instantly he put his back to the door and prepared to stand on the
defensive against the expected attack of an invisible assailant.
That was the awful part of it, that he could not see. For a moment he
thought of creeping back to the rubbish heap in the corner and trying to
find, amongst the odds and ends lying there, some sort of weapon of
defense. But a moment's reflection told him that the act of stooping, of
searching, would put him more at the mercy of an assailant than ever.
There was absolutely nothing to do but to wait and to listen.
And the noise he heard was like the drawing of a log of wood slowly
along the floor. This was followed by a dull sound, like the falling of
a log to the earth.
And then there followed two sounds which made his flesh creep: The first
was the creaking, and cracking of wooden boards, and the second was a
slow, sliding noise, which lasted, intermittently for what seemed an
hour.
When the latter noise ceased something fell heavily to the ground. That
was a sound there was no mistaking, and then the creaking went on for
what seemed a long time, and ceased suddenly in its turn.
And then, again, there was dead silence, dead stillness.
By this time Max was as cold as ice, and wet from head to foot with the
sweat of a sick terror. What the sounds meant, whence they proceeded, he
could not tell, but the horror they produced in him was unspeakable,
never to be forgotten.
He did not move for a long time after the sounds had ceased. He wanted
to shout, to batter with his fists on the doors, the window. But a
hideous paralysis of fear seemed to have taken possession of him and
benumbed his limbs and his tongue.
Max was no coward. He was a daring rider, handy with his fists, a young
man full of spirit and courage to the verge of recklessness, as this
adventure had proved. But courage must have something to attack, or at
least to resist, before it can make itself manifest; and in this
sickening waiting, listening, watching, without the use of one's eyes,
there was something which smacked of the supernatural, something to damp
the spirits of the bravest man.
There was nothing to be gained, there was, perhaps, much to be risked,
by a movement, a step. So Max felt, showing thereby that he possessed an
instinct of sane prudence which was, in the circumstances, better than
bravery.
And presently he discerned a little patch of faint light on the floor,
which gradually increased in size until he was able to make out that it
was thrown from above, and from the corner above the rubbish heap.
Max kept quite still. The relief he felt was exquisite. If once he could
have a chance of seeing the man who was in the room with him, and who he
could not doubt was the person who had thrown him in, Max felt he should
be all right. In a tussle with another man he knew that he could hold
his own, and a sight of the ruffian would enable him to judge whether
bribery or force would be the better weapon with him.
In the meantime he watched the light with anxious eyes, determined not
to move and risk its extinction until he had been able to examine every
corner of the little shop.
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