“Why don’t you come back with me? I live quite near here,” she murmured. “Go on. You look as if you wanted someone to make a fuss of you.”
Already they were beside the five houses that rose jet-black against the star-incrusted sky.
“Come on, dear. I live in the corner house.”
Michael looked at her in astonishment, and she mistaking his scrutiny smiled in pitiable allurement. He felt as if a marionette were blandishing him. The woman evidently thought he was considering the question of money, and she sidled close up to him.
“Go on, dear, you’ve got some money with you?”
“It’s not that,” said Michael. “I don’t want to come in with you.”
Yet he knew that he must enter Number One with her in order to find in what secret room she lived. And to-morrow morning he would leave the house forever, since it would be unimaginable to stay there longer with the consciousness that perhaps they were creatures like this, who slammed the doors in passages far upstairs. He would not sleep comfortably again with the sense that women like this were creeping about the stairs like spiders. He must probe her existence, and he put his foot on the steps of the front door.
“Not that door,” she said. “Down here.”
She pushed back the gate of the area-steps, and led the way down into the basement. It was incredible that she could live on the same floor as the Cleghornes. Yet obviously she did.
“Don’t make a noise,” she whispered. “Because the woman who keeps the house sleeps down here.”