"What are you waiting for—listening for?" asked Max sharply.
"Nothing," she answered with a start. "I'm nervous, that's all. Wouldn't you be, if you'd been waiting two days outside an empty house with a dead man inside it?"
Her tone was sharp and querulous. Max looked at her in bewilderment.
"Empty house!" he repeated. "What were you doing in it, then?"
And he glanced round him, assuring himself afresh by this second scrutiny of the fact that the brick floor and the bare walls of this scullery had been kept scrupulously clean.
The girl's white face, pale with the curious opaque pallor of the Londoner born and bred, flushed a very little. She dropped her eyelids guiltily.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," she said, at last, rather sulkily. "I was living here. Is that enough?"
It was not. And her visitor's looks told her so.
"I was living here with my grandmother," she went on hurriedly, as she saw Max glance at the outer door and take a step toward it. "We're very poor, and it's cheaper to live here in a house supposed to be empty than to pay rent."
"But hardly fair to the landlord," suggested Max.