"But what do you want me to do if I do get inside?" said Max. "It's the police you ought to send for, if a man has died in there. Go to the police station and give information."
The girl shook her head.
"I can't do that," she whispered. Then, after a shuddering pause, she came a step nearer and said, in a lower whisper than ever: "He didn't die—of his own accord. He was murdered."
Max grew hot, and cold. He heartily wished he had never come.
"All the more reason," he went on in a blustering voice, "why you should inform the police. You had better lose no time about it."
"I can't do that," said the girl, "because he—the man who did it—was kind to us—kind to Granny and me. If I tell the police, they will go after him, and perhaps find him, and—and hang him. Oh, no," and she shook her head again with decision, "I could not do that."
Max was silent for a few moments, looking at her for the first few seconds with pity and then with suspicion.
"Why do you tell all this to me, then—a stranger—if you're so afraid of the police finding out anything about it?"
The girl did not answer for a moment. She seemed puzzled to answer the question. At last she said:
"I didn't mean to. When I saw you first, at the wharf, at the back there, I just looked at you and hid myself again. And then I thought to myself that as you were a gentleman perhaps I might dare to ask you what I did."