The Wharf By The Docks Part 9

"I'll tell you--when I know myself," answered Doreen, briefly, as she left the room. The first result of the talks, however, was a conversation, not with Queenie, but with her brother, Max. Doreen ran after him next morning as he was on his way to the stables and made him take a walk through the park with her instead of going for a ride.

"Max," she said, coaxingly, when they had gone out of sight of the house, "you have been my confidant about this unhappy affair of Dudley's--"

But her brother interrupted her, and tried to draw away the arm she had taken.

"Look here, Doreen," said he earnestly, "you'd better not think any more about him--much better not. I do really think the poor fellow's right in what he hinted to my father, and that he's going off his head; or, rather, I _know_ enough to be sure that he's not always perfectly sane. Surely you must see that, in the circ.u.mstances, the less you think about him the better."

"There I disagree with you altogether," said Doreen, firmly. "Max, papa and mamma can't understand; they've forgotten how they felt when they were first fond of each other. Queenie's not old enough, and she's too good besides. Now, you do know, you do understand what it is to be head over ears in love."

"Good heavens, Doreen, don't talk like that! You mustn't, you know!"

"Don't talk nonsense," interrupted his sister, sharply. "I tell you I love Dudley, and ever so much more since I've found out he is in great trouble; as any decent woman would do. Now I don't feel nearly so sure as everybody else as to what his trouble is, but I want you to find out, and to help me if you can."

"What, play detective--spy? Not me. It's ridiculous, unheard of. I've done it once on your account, and I never felt such a sneak in my life.

I won't do it again, even for you, and that's flat."

And Max thrust his hands deep into his pockets.

"Won't you?" said Doreen, with a quiet smile. "Then I must, and I will."

Her brother started and stared at her.

"You! _You!_ What nonsense!"

"It's not nonsense, as you will find when you hear me get permission to go up to town to stay with Aunt Betty."

Max grew sincerely alarmed.

"Look here, Doreen, be reasonable," said he. "You can do no good to Dudley, believe me. He has got into some dreadful mess or other; but it's nothing that you or I or any earthly creature can help him out of.

I confess I didn't tell you all I found out when I went up to town. I couldn't. I can't now. But if you will persist, and if nothing else will keep you quietly here, I--well, I promise to go up again. And I'll warrant if I do I shall learn something which will convince even _you_ that you must give up every thought of him."

"Will you promise," said Doreen, solemnly, "to tell me all you find out?"

"No," replied Max, promptly, "I won't promise that. I can't. But I think you can trust me to tell you as much as you ought to know."

With this promise Doreen was obliged to be content. And when, at luncheon time, it was discovered that certain things were wanted from town, and Max offered to go up for them, Doreen and her brother exchanged a look from which she gathered that he would not forget her errand.

Max had plenty of time, while he was being jolted from Datton to Cannon Street, to decide on the best means of carrying out his promise. He decided that a visit to Limehouse, to the neighborhood where the property of the late Mr. Horne had been situated, would be better than another visit to Dudley.

Plumtree Wharf was, he knew, the name of the most important part of the property which had belonged to Dudley's father. Putting together the two facts of the discovery of a ticket for Limehouse in Dudley's possession, and of the disappearance of Edward Jacobs after a visit to that locality on the same day, Max saw that there was something to be gleaned in that neighborhood, if he should have the luck to light upon it.

It was late in the afternoon, and already dark, before he got out of the train at Limehouse station, and began the exploration of the unsavory district which fringes the docks.

Through street after street of dingy, squalid houses he pa.s.sed; some broken up by dirty little shops, some presenting the dull uniformity of row after row of mean, stunted brick buildings, the broken windows of many of which were mended with brown paper, or else not mended at all.

Here and there a grimy public house, each with its group of loafers about the doors, made, with the lights in its windows, a spot of comparative brightness.

Many of the streets were narrow and tortuous, roughly paved, and both difficult and dangerous to traverse by the unaccustomed foot pa.s.senger, who found himself now slipping on a piece of orange peel, the pale color of which was disguised by mud, now risking the soundness of his ankles among the uneven and slimy stones of the road.

Max had to ask his way more than once before he reached the Plumtree Wharf, the entrance to which was through a door in a high wooden fence.

Rather to his surprise, he found the door unfastened and unguarded. And when he had got through he looked round and asked himself what on earth he had expected to find there.

There was nothing going on at this late hour, and Max was able to take stock of the place and of the outlook generally. Piles of timber to the right of him, the dead wall at the side of a warehouse on the left, gave him but a narrow s.p.a.ce in which to pursue his investigations. And these only amounted to the discovery that the troubled waters of the Thames looked very dark and very cold from this spot; that the opposite bank, with little specks of light, offered a gloomy and depressing prospect, and that the lapping of the water among the black barges which were moored at his feet in a dense ma.s.s was the dreariest sound he had ever heard. He turned away with a shudder, and walked quickly up the narrow lane left by the timber, calling himself a fool for his journey.

And just as he was reaching the narrow street by which he had come he was startled to find a girl's face peering down at him from the top of a pile of timber.

Max stopped, with an exclamation. In an instant the girl withdrew the head, which was all he had seen of her, and he heard her crawling back quickly over the timber, out of his sight.

Although he had seen her for a moment only, Max had been chilled to the bone by the expression of the girl's face. Ghastly white it had looked in the feeble light of a solitary gas lamp some distance away, and wearing an expression of fear and horror such as he had never seen on any countenance before. He felt that he must find out where she had gone, his first belief being that she was a lunatic. Else why should she have disappeared in that stealthy manner, with the look of fear stamped upon her face? There was nothing in the look or manner of Max himself to alarm her; and if she had been in need of help, why had she not called to him?

He got a footing upon the timber and looked over it. But he could see nothing more of the girl. Beyond the stacks were some low-roofed outbuildings and the back of a shut-up warehouse. Reluctantly he got down, and pa.s.sed into the narrow street. Not willing to leave at once a neighborhood which he had come so far to investigate, he turned, after going some dozen yards down the street, into a narrow pa.s.sage on his left hand which led back to the river.

The width between the high walls and the warehouses on either side was only some five feet. It was flagged with stone, very dark. About ten yards from the entrance there was a small warehouse, on the left hand, on which hung an old board, announcing that the building was "To Let."

And next door to this was a dingy shop, with grimy and broken windows, the door of which was boarded up. This shop, also, was "To Be Let," and the board in this case had been up so long that the announcement had to be divined rather than read.

Rather struck by the dilapidated appearance of these two buildings in a place where he supposed land must be valuable, Max paused for an instant. And as he did so, he became aware that there was some one by his side.

Looking down quickly, he saw the young girl of whom he had caught a glimpse a few minutes before.

He started.

She looked up at him, and, still with the same look of stereotyped horror on her thin, white face, whispered, in a hoa.r.s.e voice, as she pointed to the boarded-up shop-door with a shaking forefinger:

"You daren't go in there, do you? There's a dead man in there!"

CHAPTER VII.

A QUESTIONABLE GUIDE.

Max started violently at the girl's voice.

"A dead man? In there? How do you know?"

In a hoa.r.s.e 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 pa.s.sage, 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, pa.s.sing 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.