And the one window, a small one, which looked out upon the wharf, in a corner formed by the outhouse on the one side and a shed on the other, was carefully boarded up.

Grimly desolate the dark, bare room looked, small as it was; and a couple of rats, which scurried over the floor as Max entered, added a suggestion of other horrors to the deserted room.  The girl had managed to get behind Max, and he turned sharply with a suspicion that she meant to shut him into the room by himself.

“It’s all right—­it’s all right,” whispered she, reassuringly.  “He isn’t in here.  But he’s there.”

And she pointed to the door with the red curtain.

Max stopped.  The farther he advanced into this mysterious house the less he liked the prospect presented to his view.  And the girl herself seemed to have forgotten her pretext of wanting something fetched out of that mysterious third room.  She remained leaning against the wall, close by the door by which she and Max had entered, still holding the candlestick and staring at the red curtain with eyes full of terror.  Max found his own eyes fascinated by the steady gaze, and he looked in the same direction.

Staring intently at the bit of faded stuff, he was almost ready to imagine, in the silence and gloom of the place, that he saw it move.  His breath came fast.  Overcome by the uncanny influences of the dreary place itself, of the hideous story he had heard, of the girl’s white face, Max began to feel as if the close, cold air of the unused room was like the touch of clammy fingers on his face.

Even as this consciousness seized upon him, he heard a moan, a sliding sound, a thud, and the light went suddenly out.

In the first impulse of horror at his position Max uttered a sharp exclamation, but remained immovable.  Indeed, in the darkness, in this unknown place, to take a step in any direction was impossible.  He stood listening, waiting for some sound, some ray of light, to guide him.

All he heard was the scurrying of the rats as they ran, disturbed by the noise, across the room and behind the wainscot in the darkness.

At last he turned and tried to find the door by which he had come in.  He found it, and had his hand upon the latch, when his right foot touched something soft, yielding.  He opened the door, which was not locked, as he had feared, and was about to make his way as fast as he could into the open air, when another moan, fainter than before, reached his ears.

No light came into the room through the open door; so he struck a wax match.  His nerves were not at their best, and it was some time before he could get a light.  When he did so, he discovered that the thing his foot had touched was the body of the girl, lying in a heap on the floor close to the wainscot.

Now Max was divided between his doubts and his pity; but it was not possible that doubt should carry the day in the face of this discovery.  Whether she had fainted, or whether this was only a ruse on her part to detain him, to interest him, he could not leave her lying there.