“No—­o,” answered the girl, in a voice which was thick with sobs.  “But I can show you where to get one when you get inside.”

Max had by this time reached the ground, which was slimy and damp under the eaves; and he pushed his way, with an air of recklessness which hid some natural trepidation, into the outhouse, the door of which was not even fastened.

“Why,” said he, turning to the girl, who was close behind him, “you could have got in yourself easily enough.  At least you would have been warmer in here than outside.”

His suspicions were starting up again, and they grew stronger as he perceived that she was paying little attention to him, that she seemed to be listening for some expected sound.  The place in which they now stood was quite dark, and Max, impatient and somewhat alarmed by the position in which he found himself, struck a match and looked round him.

“Now,” said he, “find me a candle, if you can.”

Even by the feeble light of the match he could see that he was in a sort of a scullery, which bore traces of recent occupation.  A bit of yellow soap, some blacking and a couple of brooms in one corner, a pail and a wooden chair in another, were evidently not “tenant’s fixtures.”

And then Max noted a strange circumstance—­the two small windows were boarded up on the inside.

By the time he had taken note of this, the girl had brought him a candle in a tin candlestick, which she had taken from a shelf by the door.

“That’s the way,” she said, in a voice as low a before, pointing to an inner door.  “Through the back room, and into the front one.  He lies in there.”

Max shuddered.

“I can’t say that I particularly want to see him,” said he, as he took stock of her in the candle-light, and was struck by the peculiar beauty of her large blue eyes.

He felt a strong reluctance to venturing farther into this very questionable and mysterious dwelling; and he took care to stand where he could see both doors, the one which led farther into the house and the one by which he had entered.

The girl heaved a little sigh, of relief apparently.  And she remained standing before him in the same attitude of listening expectancy as he had remarked in her already.

“What are you waiting for—­listening for?” asked Max sharply.

“Nothing,” she answered with a start.  “I’m nervous, that’s all.  Wouldn’t you be, if you’d been waiting two days outside an empty house with a dead man inside it?”

Her tone was sharp and querulous.  Max looked at her in bewilderment.

“Empty house!” he repeated.  “What were you doing in it, then?”

And he glanced round him, assuring himself afresh by this second scrutiny of the fact that the brick floor and the bare walls of this scullery had been kept scrupulously clean.

The girl’s white face, pale with the curious opaque pallor of the Londoner born and bred, flushed a very little.  She dropped her eyelids guiltily.