u do with--_him_? Did anybody help you--any of your
friends here? Or did you--"

Mrs. Higgs cut him short with an ugly laugh. At the mention of the dead
man her face had changed, and a strange gleam of mingled cunning and
ferocity came into her small, light eyes.

"Come and see--come and see," mumbled she, as she took up the
candlestick from the table and shuffled across the room to the door
which opened into the disused shop.

Dudley hesitated a moment; indeed, he glanced at the door by which he
stood as if he felt inclined to make his escape without further delay.
But Mrs. Higgs, slow as she seemed, turned quickly enough to divine his
purpose.

"No," said she, sharply, "not that way. This!"

Seizing him by the arm, she thrust a key into the lock of the door with
her other hand, and half led, half pushed him into the dark front room.

Dudley was seized with a nervous tremor when he found himself inside the
room. By the light of the candle the woman held, he could see at a
glance into every corner of the bare, squalid apartment--could see the
stains on the dirty walls, the cracks and defects in the dilapidated
ceiling, even the thick clusters of cobwebs that hung in the corners.
Having taken in all these details in a very rapid survey, he looked down
at the floor, at the very center of the bare, grimy boards, with a fixed
stare of horror which the old woman, by passing the candle rapidly
backward and forward before his eyes, tried vainly to divert.

Even she, however, seemed to be impressed by the hideous memory the room
called up in her, for she spoke, not in her usual gruffly indifferent
tones, but in a husky whisper.

"Tst--tst!" she began, testily. "Haven't you got over that yet? One Jew
the less in the world! What is it to trouble about? Be a man--come, be a
man! See, this is how I got rid of him."

As she spoke, Mrs. Higgs suddenly dropped Dudley's arm, which she had
been clutching tenaciously, and hobbling away from him at an unusual
rate of speed for her, she went back to the door, turned the key in the
lock, and then withdrew it and dropped it into her pocket. This action
Dudley was too much absorbed to notice.

Then she made her way at her usual pace, leaning heavily on the stout
stick she was never without, toward the corner where the heap of lumber
lay, on the left-hand side of what had once been the fireplace. Here she
stooped, lifted a couple of bricks and a broken box-lid from the floor,
and t