“It might add up to something,” he admitted. “Wait a minute and I’ll call up Howland-drugs are his pigeon. What’s the fellow’s name? Geoffrey Trent? Geoffrey with a G, or a J?… All right, I’ll just get him on to it.”

“One moment, Frank. You might at the same time enquire whether anything is known of a Miss Jacqueline Delauny.”

He cocked an eyebrow.

“Sounds as if it might be an alias-or even one of a series.”

A slight frown rebuked him.

“I know nothing at all to Miss Delauny’s discredit. I merely mention her because she is one of the group of which I was speaking. I believe she did at one time occupy a secretarial position.”

“Which is not in itself a crime. All right, if they don’t know anything about her she leaves the court without a stain upon her character.”

He turned to the telephone, had a short friendly conversation of which Miss Silver could only hear his side, and finally hung up, to turn back to her with a smile.

“He says he’ll get on to it right away. He’s an astonishing fellow-industrious past belief-in fact King Beaver number one. And now perhaps you’ll tell me all about these people.”

He listened attentively whilst she told him what she knew-things she had observed herself, and things which she had heard from Josepha Bowden, from Miss Falconer, from old Humphreys, and from Ione Muir.

Knowing the meticulous accuracy with which she could repeat a conversation, Frank did not doubt that he was hearing word for word what these people had told her. But what a confused, unintelligible business it all was. Or was it? Geoffrey Trent coming in for his cousin’s business in trust, together with his cousin’s abnormal child. The girl saying she had a big fortune, and Geoffrey Trent saying that the war had more or less smashed it, and that there wasn’t much left. It might be a case of fraudulent conversion, and a day of reckoning ahead when the girl’s money would have to be accounted for. Motive enough there for a contrived accident, especially if she was a bit of a problem anyhow. Well, suppose that was one thread clear of the tangle. What about the others? The fog story-Ione Muir hearing somebody bargaining over whether he would risk his neck for two thousand pounds. It might have meant anything. It might have meant murder. Miss Muir insisted that she followed the bargaining gentleman, who was diffusing a Scottish accent and an aroma of whisky, and that having run into a rising architect of the name of Severn, the three of them spent the best part of the night together in an empty house waiting for the fog to lift. The Scottish gentleman’s remarks during that time might, or might not, shed some light upon his previous conversation in the fog. He produced the old chestnut about the Chinese mandarin whose death was somehow to prove immensely beneficial to the human race-if by pressing a button you would kill this person, would you press it? As a sequel to the conversation about risking one’s neck for two thousand pounds, there was certainly something suggestive about this artless tale. There followed Miss Muir’s identification of the narrator as a Variety artist known as Professor Regulus Mactavish or The Great Prospero, and the very narrow escape experienced by Mrs. Trent and herself when the Professor was standing in the crowd behind them on a street island in Wraydon.

He turned, frowning, to Miss Silver.

“He could have pushed them?”

She shook her head.

“I cannot say. I was standing behind him, and I had no view. I believe that he could have done so.”

“You say Mrs. Trent went staggering out into the road right in the track of the bus, and that he then reached out with the crook of his stick and snatched her back. You did see that?”

“Everyone saw that. He is very tall, or he would not have been able to save Mrs. Trent. What he did was to reach across over the shoulders of the people in front of him and catch her arm with the crook of his stick.”

Frank got up and walked over to the hearth. Standing there looking down at Miss Silver, he said,

“But it doesn’t make sense. Why should he push her one minute, and snatch her back the next?”

“I do not think that he ever intended to push Mrs. Trent. She was holding her sister’s arm. Miss Muir had just moved some inches to the right. The blow therefore fell more or less between them, causing Mrs. Trent to lose her hold and totter out into the road.”

“You mean that the push was intended for Miss Muir?”

“I do.”

“Why?”

“Mrs. Trent and Miss Muir are considerable heiresses. If Mrs. Trent had suffered a fatal accident, her share of the inheritance would have passed to her sister. If it had been Miss Muir who was killed, her portion-her very considerable portion-would have passed to Mrs. Trent, who could then have made a will leaving both shares to her husband. I think you can see now why I find myself in some anxiety about the position of Miss Ione Muir.”

Frank nodded.

“Might be something-might be nothing. Might be one of those mare’s nests the Chief is so fond of casting up at us. There is, of course, no evidence.”

Miss Silver said with gravity.

“I would not wish to wait until the evidence of another crime was forced upon us.”

The telephone bell rang. Frank strolled across to his writing-table and picked up the receiver. There ensued a long and mostly inaudible conversation during which the telephone gurgled and Frank occasionally said things like, “Oh, there was, was there?… Well, well-” and finally, “Good work!” and, “Thanks very much, old chap.” He hung up, came back to stand in front of the fire, and said briefly,

“That was Howland.”

“Yes?”

“Well, there is a certain amount of information, but I don’t know what you will think about it. Here it is. The Trent cousin ran a very lucrative business in the Near East. He called himself a general exporter. I suspect he had a good many of the local people eating out of his hand, but the police of one or two other countries were beginning to sit up and take notice. All this, by the way, was before the war. There never was what you might call actual concrete evidence, but there was a very strong suspicion. Trent died some time in the early forties. Some idea that he had been trying to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. He was found shot, with a revolver in his hand. He may have done it himself, or someone may have done it for him-double-crossing is not a particularly healthy game. After the war was over Geoffrey Trent came out to clear up the mess. Quite a job! But there were, of course, the remnants of a legitimate business. He got it on its legs again, put in a manager, and left things running. Since then nothing has happened to revive the former suspicions. The business now appears to be a perfectly ordinary one-nothing like so extensive or so lucrative as it used to be, but no longer of any interest to the police.”

Miss Silver said, “Dear me!”

Frank laughed.

“It doesn’t get you any farther with your suspicions, does it? Except for just one thing. You do get the drug motif cropping up-not in Geoffrey Trent himself, but in his predecessor. Of course a cynic might say that the business owes its present blameless reputation to the fact that Geoffrey Trent is being cleverer than his cousin, and has so far been able to avoid being found out. But then you and I, my dear ma’am, are not cynics.”

Miss Silver took no notice of this. She said in a meditative tone.

“Is that all, Frank?”

“Oh, yes. Except about Miss Delauny. Nothing on record about anyone of that name, but as I said, it has a very strong smell of the alias. You say she was a secretary?”

“Miss Falconer gave me that impression. She said she was a great help to Mr. Geoffrey Trent with his business correspondence.”

“Besides looking after the abnormal girl? Well, well! She must be a tiger for work! And what is Geoffrey Trent like-how does he strike you?”