While he was fumbling for the door, he found himself suddenly seized in a strong grip, and, taken unawares, he was unable to cope with an assailant so dexterous, so rapid in his movements, that, before Max had time to do more than realize that he was attacked, he was forced through an open doorway and flung violently to the ground. Then a door was slammed, and there was silence. As Max scrambled to his feet his hand, touched something clammy and cold. It was a hand--a dead hand. Max uttered a cry of horror. He remembered all that he had forgotten. He knew now that the girl's story was true, and that he was shut in the front room with the body of the murdered man. CHAPTER XI. A TRAP. Max tried to find the door by which he had been thrown into the room. The upper portion was of glass, he supposed, remembering the red curtain which hung on the other side of it. But although he felt with his hands in the place where he supposed the door to be, he found nothing but wooden shelves, such as are usually found lining the walls of shops, and planks of rough wood. He paused, looked around him, hoping that when his eyes got used to the darkness some faint ray of light coming either through the boarded-up front or through the glass upper half of the door, would enable him to take his bearings, or, at any rate, to help him avoid that uncanny "something" in the middle of the floor. But the blackness was absolute. Strain his eyes as he might, there was no glimmer of light in any direction to guide him, and he had used up his last match. So he went to work again with his hands. These rough planks were placed perpendicularly against the wall to a width of about three feet--the width of the door. Passing his fingers slowly all round them, he ascertained that they reached to the floor, and to a height of about seven feet above it. Evidently, thought he, it was the door itself which opened into the shop which had been carefully boarded up. As soon as he felt sure of this, he dealt at the planks a tremendous blow with his fist. He hurt his hand, but did no apparent injury to the door, which scarcely shook. Then he tried to tear one of the boards away from the framework to which it was attached, but without result. The nails which had been used to fasten it were of the strongest make, and had been well driven in. Foiled in his attempt to get out of the room by the way he had come, Max moved slowly to the left, and at the distance of only a couple of feet from the door found the angle of the wall, and began to creep along, still feeling with hands and feet most carefully, in the direction of the front of the shop. This side of the room presented no obstacles. The wall-paper was torn here and there; the plaster fell down in some places at his touch. A board shook a little under his tread when he had taken a few paces, but at the next step he made the floor seemed firm enough.