"A dead man? In there? How do you know?"
In a hoarse voice the girl answered:
"How do I know? The best way possible. I saw it done!"
There was an awful silence. Max was so deeply impressed by the girl's words, her looks, her manner, by the gloom of the cold, dark passage, by the desolate appearance of the two deserted buildings before which they stood, that his first impulse was an overpowering desire to run away. Acting upon it he even took a couple of rapid steps in the direction of the street he had left, passing the girl and getting clear of the uncanny boarded-up front of the shop.
A moan from the girl made him stop and look around at her. Emboldened by this, she came close to him again and whispered:
"You're a man; you ought to have more pluck than I've got. It's two days since it happened—"
"Two days!" muttered Max, remembering that it was two days ago that he had surprised Dudley with his blood-stained hands.
"And for those two days I've been outside here waiting for somebody to come because I daren't go inside by myself. Two days! Two days!" she repeated, her teeth chattering.
Max looked at her with mixed feelings of doubt, pity and astonishment. It was too dark in the ill-lighted passage for him to see all the details of her appearance. She was young, quite young; so much was certain. She looked white and pinched and miserably cold. Her dress was respectable, very plain, and bore marks of her climbing and crawling over the timber on the wharf.
"Won't you go in with me?" she asked again, more eagerly, more tremulously than before. "I can show you the road—round at the back. You will have a little climbing to do, but you won't mind that."