The landlord smiled.

“It ’ud take a clever head to keep the addresses of all the chance customers as comes in here.  For the matter of that, very few of ’em have any addresses in particular; it’s one court one week, and t’other the next.”

“But she’s a very respectable woman, the Mrs. Higgs I mean,” said Max, tentatively.

“Oh, yes, sir; I’ve nothin’ to say ag’inst her,” and the landlord, with a look which showed that he objected to be “pumped,” turned to another customer.

Max took the brandy he had bought for the girl and hurried back to the place where he had left her.  As he went, an instinct of curiosity, natural enough, considering his recently acquired knowledge, made him go down the passage and try to look in through the grim, dusty window of the shop.  But this also was boarded up on the inner side, so that no view could be obtained of what was within.

It seemed to Max, however, as he stood there, with his eyes fixed on the planks, trying to discover an aperture, that between the cracks of the boards there glimmered a faint light.  It seemed to flicker, then it died out.

Surely, he thought, the girl has not summoned enough courage to go into the room by herself?

He hurried back down the passage, and made his way as before to the wharf.  Stumbling round the piles of timber, he found the lane by which he had entered and left the house.  It seemed to him, though he told himself it must be only fancy, that some of the loose planks had been disturbed since his last journey over them.  Reaching the door of outhouse, which he had left ajar, he found it shut.

He was now sure that some one had gone in, or come out, since he left; and for a moment the circumstance seemed to him sufficiently suspicious to make him pause.  The next moment, however, the remembrance of the girl’s white face, of the pleading blue eyes, returned to him vividly, calling to him, drawing him back by an irresistible spell.  He pushed open the door boldly, crossed the brick floor and reentered the inner room.  The candle was still burning on the table, but the girl was not there.

Max looked round the room.  He was puzzled, suspicious.  As he stood by the table staring at the wall opposite the fireplace, wondering whether to go out or to explore further, he found his eyes attracted to a spot in the wall-paper where, in the feeble light, something like two glittering beads shone out uncannily in the middle of the pattern.  With a curious sensation down his spine, Max took a hasty step back to the door, and the beads moved slowly.

It was a pair of eyes watching him as he moved.

CHAPTER IX.

THE MAN WHO HESITATES.

Max had become accustomed, in the course of this adventurous visit, to surprises and alarms.  Every step in the enterprise he had undertaken had brought a fresh excitement, a fresh horror.  But nothing that he had so far heard or seen had given him such a sick feeling of indefinable terror as the sight of these two eyes, turning to watch his every movement.  For a moment he watched them, then he made a bold dash for the place where he had seen them, and aimed a blow with his fist at the wall.