"You are wrong," said she then, quickly. "Mrs. Higgs was an agent only, in the hands of some one else. If I tell you what I believe, you will only laugh at me."
"I mean that she was a harmless, good-hearted, kind woman until--until Mr. Horne came to see her; that she was always good to me till then. And that, after that awful day when the man was killed--murdered by Mr. Horne--"
"It's not true! It can't be true!" burst out Max.
But Carrie went on, as if he had not spoken:
"After that day she changed; she was irritable, unkind, neglectful--not like the same woman. She left me alone sometimes; she gave me no food at others; she hid herself away from me; she was angry at the least thing. And then--then," went on the girl, in a frightful whisper, "I found out something."
"That some one used to get into the place at night--I don't know how; some one she was afraid of--a man."
"I have heard him--seen him twice," went on Carrie, in the lowest of whispers. "And I believe--"
Carrie was silent. Max went on, indignantly:
"How could you take such a silly idea into your head? What reason should Mr. Horne have for creeping about a hole like that at night?"
"Well, what reason should he have for coming to it at any time? Yet you know he came in the daytime."
It was the turn of Max to remain silent. There was a long pause, and then Carrie went on:
"I used to sleep in a little attic over the outhouse, just a corner of the roof it was. And twice at night I have heard a noise underneath, and looked through the cracks in the boards and seen a man down there, with a light. And each time, when the light was put out and the noise had stopped, I have gone downstairs and found the doors bolted still on the inside."
"Well, the place seems to be honeycombed with ways in and ways out. The strange man either went out by some way even you knew nothing about, or else Mrs. Higgs let him out."
"No, she didn't. I should have heard or seen her."
"Well, but what reason can you have for supposing that this man was Mr. Dudley Horne?"
"And you think it was the face of this man here beside you?"
Max struck a light and held it over the face of the unconscious Dudley. Carrie looked at him steadily.
"Well," she said at last, "it did look like him, that's all I can say."