On turning the next angle in the wall he came to the shop door--the one leading into the stone passage outside. Here he made another attempt to force an exit, but it was boarded up as securely as the inner one, and the window, which was beside it, was in the same condition. It by no means increased the confidence of Max as to his own safety to observe what elaborate precautions had been used by the occupants of the house to secure themselves from observation. He could no longer doubt that he was in a house which was the resort of persons of the worst possible character, and in a position of the gravest danger. While opposite the window, he listened eagerly for some sound in the passage outside. If a foot-passenger should pass, he would risk everything and shout for help with all the force of his lungs. Even while he indulged this hope, he felt that it was a vain one. It was now late; traffic on the river had almost ceased; there was no attraction for idlers on the landing-stage in the cold and the darkness. He continued his investigations. At the next angle in the wall he came to more shelves, decayed, broken, left by the last tenant as not worth carrying away. And presently his feet came upon something harder, colder than the boards; it was a hearthstone, and it marked the place where, before the room was turned into a shop, there had been a small fireplace. And on the other side of this, near the wall, was a collection of rubbish, over the musty items of which Max stumbled as he went. Old boxes, bits of carpet, broken bricks; every sort of worthless lumber. And so, without accident, without incident, without hearing a sound but the faint noise of his own movements, Max got back to the point where he had started. Then he paused and listened at the inner door. In spite of everything, he refused to yield to the suggestion that Carrie had anything to do with his incarceration. Would she not, on finding that he had disappeared, make an effort to get him out? While he was standing between doubt and hope, on the alert for any sound on the other side which should suggest the presence of the girl herself and give him the cue to knock at the door again, his attention was attracted by a slight noise which thrilled him to the marrow; for it came, not from outside, but from some part of the room itself, in which he had supposed himself to be alone with the dead body of a man. Instantly he put his back to the door and prepared to stand on the defensive against the expected attack of an invisible assailant. That was the awful part of it, that he could not see. For a moment he thought of creeping back to the rubbish heap in the corner and trying to find, amongst the odds and ends lying there, some sort of weapon of defense. But a moment's reflection told him that the act of stooping, of searching, would put him more at the mercy of an assailant than ever. There was absolutely nothing to do but to wait and to listen.