“Come and see—­come and see,” mumbled she, as she took up the candlestick from the table and shuffled across the room to the door which opened into the disused shop.

Dudley hesitated a moment; indeed, he glanced at the door by which he stood as if he felt inclined to make his escape without further delay.  But Mrs. Higgs, slow as she seemed, turned quickly enough to divine his purpose.

“No,” said she, sharply, “not that way.  This!”

Seizing him by the arm, she thrust a key into the lock of the door with her other hand, and half led, half pushed him into the dark front room.

Dudley was seized with a nervous tremor when he found himself inside the room.  By the light of the candle the woman held, he could see at a glance into every corner of the bare, squalid apartment—­could see the stains on the dirty walls, the cracks and defects in the dilapidated ceiling, even the thick clusters of cobwebs that hung in the corners.  Having taken in all these details in a very rapid survey, he looked down at the floor, at the very center of the bare, grimy boards, with a fixed stare of horror which the old woman, by passing the candle rapidly backward and forward before his eyes, tried vainly to divert.

Even she, however, seemed to be impressed by the hideous memory the room called up in her, for she spoke, not in her usual gruffly indifferent tones, but in a husky whisper.

“Tst—­tst!” she began, testily.  “Haven’t you got over that yet?  One Jew the less in the world!  What is it to trouble about?  Be a man—­come, be a man!  See, this is how I got rid of him.”

As she spoke, Mrs. Higgs suddenly dropped Dudley’s arm, which she had been clutching tenaciously, and hobbling away from him at an unusual rate of speed for her, she went back to the door, turned the key in the lock, and then withdrew it and dropped it into her pocket.  This action Dudley was too much absorbed to notice.

Then she made her way at her usual pace, leaning heavily on the stout stick she was never without, toward the corner where the heap of lumber lay, on the left-hand side of what had once been the fireplace.  Here she stooped, lifted a couple of bricks and a broken box-lid from the floor, and then easily raised the board on which they had stood, and beckoned to Dudley to come nearer.  He did so, slowly, and with evident reluctance.

“Look here,” said she, pointing down to the space where the board had been.  “Look down.  Don’t be afraid,” she added, in a jeering tone.  “There’s nothing there to frighten you.  See for yourself.”

Dudley stooped, and looking through the small opening available, saw that there was a space hollowed out underneath.

“And you put him there—­under the boards?” said Dudley, in a low voice.  “But it was in the water that the body was found—­in the river outside.”

“Why, yes, so it was,” said the old woman, slowly, as she lifted the board out of its place altogether, and displacing also the one next to it, descended through the opening she had made.