aused for an
instant. And as he did so, he became aware that there was some one by
his side.

Looking down quickly, he saw the young girl of whom he had caught a
glimpse a few minutes before.

He started.

She looked up at him, and, still with the same look of stereotyped
horror on her thin, white face, whispered, in a hoarse voice, as she
pointed to the boarded-up shop-door with a shaking forefinger:

"You daren't go in there, do you? There's a dead man in there!"

CHAPTER VII.

A QUESTIONABLE GUIDE.

Max started violently at the girl's voice.

"A dead man? In there? How do you know?"

In a hoarse voice the girl answered:

"How do I know? The best way possible. _I saw it done!_"

There was an awful silence. Max was so deeply impressed by the girl's
words, her looks, her manner, by the gloom of the cold, dark passage, by
the desolate appearance of the two deserted buildings before which they
stood, that his first impulse was an overpowering desire to run away.
Acting upon it he even took a couple of rapid steps in the direction of
the street he had left, passing the girl and getting clear of the
uncanny boarded-up front of the shop.

A moan from the girl made him stop and look around at her. Emboldened by
this, she came close to him again and whispered:

"You're a man; you ought to have more pluck than I've got. It's two days
since it happened--"

"Two days!" muttered Max, remembering that it was two days ago that he
had surprised Dudley with his blood-stained hands.

"And for those two days I've been outside here waiting for somebody to
come because I daren't go inside by myself. Two days! Two days!" she
repeated, her teeth chattering.

Max looked at her with mixed feelings of doubt, pity and astonishment.
It was too dark in the ill-lighted passage for him to see all the
details of her appearance. She was young, quite young; so much was
certain. She looked white and pinched and miserably cold. Her dress was
respectable, very plain, and bore marks of her climbing and crawling
over the timber on the wharf.

"Won't you go in with me?" she asked again, more eagerly, more
tremulously than before. "I can show you the road--round at the back.
You will have a little climbing to do, but you won't mind that."

"But what do you want me to do if I do get inside?" said Max. "It's the
police you ought to send for, if a man has died in there. Go to the
police station and give information."

The girl