Frank Abbott drew up his legs, leaned forward, and put a log upon the fire. He knew his Miss Silver tolerably well, and it wasn’t like her to flog a dead horse. He said,

“But Jacob Taverner knew all about the passage to the shore. He took the whole party through it on the Saturday night as soon as they had finished dinner. He showed it to us without any hesitation, and we’ve been through it with the proverbial toothcomb. No contraband, no corpses. Not the least, farthest smell of a clue.”

The fire blazed up. Miss Silver’s needles caught the glow and flashed it back. She said very composedly,

“I refer, of course, to the other passage.”

There was a brief electric silence. Frank Abbott got to his feet gracefully and without hurry. Standing against the mantelpiece and looking down at her, he said with some accentuation of his usual manner,

“Would you mind saying that again?”

“My dear Frank, you heard me perfectly.”

“It was the mind that boggled, not the ear.”

“Pray bring your mind to bear upon the evidence. Since Jacob Taverner was already aware of the passage leading from the cellars to the shore, his questions cannot be taken as referring to it. But he did, either directly or by implication, question four or five of the Taverner cousins as to their knowledge of a secret passage. I believe he questioned them all, but there is no evidence in the cases of Mr. Geoffrey Taverner, John Higgins, or Albert Miller. These questions cannot be taken to apply to the passage leading out of the cellars.”

“He might have wanted to find out if they knew about it.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“I believe not. The impression left upon my mind after hearing what these people have to say, and especially after listening to Miss Mildred Taverner, is that the entrance to this second passage is somewhere upstairs. Miss Taverner’s grandfather-he was Matthew, the second son of old Jeremiah Taverner-told her that when he was a very little boy he woke up frightened because he heard a noise. He went to see what it was, and he saw a light coming out of a hole in the wall. He was dreadfully frightened, and he ran away back to his bed and pulled the blankets over his head.”

“Is that all?”

“That is all she could tell me.”

“He may have dreamed the whole thing.”

“It is, of course, possible, but I do not think so. It is the kind of thing that a child would remember.”

Frank looked down meditatively into the fire.

“Interesting theory,” he said. “Not of any immediate practical value perhaps.” He bent down and carefully added another log. Then, as he straightened up again, “And what, after all this, are your views on Jacob Taverner?”

She stopped knitting for a moment and looked at him very seriously indeed.

“I am unable to make up my mind. There are, of course, two possibilities. His father was old Jeremiah Taverner’s eldest son, a second Jeremiah. After his father’s death he came in for the whole of the family property, but he is said almost immediately to have severed his connection with the Catherine-Wheel. I gather there was an impression that a sale had taken place. But this was not the case. The inn was leased.”

“Yes-March handed that on. There were two generations of Smiths, father and son, and when the last one died the place reverted to Jacob Taverner. Castell was already manager and he kept him on. The question of course is, had the Taverner connection with the Catherine-Wheel ever really ceased-did the smuggling trade still go on, with part of the profits going to Jeremiah the second, and afterwards to his son Jacob-have they continued during the last five years-and is Jacob an active partner? That’s what we’re here to find out, isn’t it?”

Miss Silver was knitting again. She said,

“Precisely.”

“Well, that brings us back to what do you think of Jacob Taverner?”

Miss Silver coughed.

“I have seen very little of him. Yesterday, as you know, he kept to his room. Today he came down to lunch. He complains of the cold, and is said to be suffering from a chill. He appears to me to have had a shock, but so have we all. He may be implicated in the smuggling, but not in the murder.”

“You think that?”

“No. I have not enough information to draw any conclusions. It is merely a hypothesis which would account for the known facts. If he were implicated in the smuggling, it would explain his desire to find out whether his Taverner cousins were in a position to give away any secrets. If there were two passages, one of which was very much more important than the other, he might consider it well worth while to sacrifice one of them by making it public property, and thus protect the secrecy of the other. He would hope that any stories or rumours, whether current locally or preserved by the family, would thus be laid to rest. This would account for his getting the family together and making a feature of displaying the passage from the cellars and the shore. It will, of course, occur to you that Luke White may have been murdered in order to preserve the secret of the other passage. If he knew of it, and was using his knowledge to blackmail his associates, there would be no need to look any farther for a motive. I may say that I consider this far more likely than the motive of jealousy insisted on by Inspector Crisp.”

“It might be.”

“It is not possible at present to say whether Mr. Jacob Taverner is implicated or not. He may be merely what he appears to be, an elderly man with a great deal of money, no ties, and the desire to promote a family reunion, perhaps with the intention of deciding upon the terms of his will. He might have a financial interest in the Catherine-Wheel, without any knowledge of its smuggling activities, if indeed these exist. There is, of course, no proof that they do, only a good deal of suspicion, and the suggestion that where there is smoke one would expect to discover a fire.”

Frank stood up straight.

“In fact Jacob may be innocent, and so may the Catherine-Wheel. We’ve got nasty suspicious minds, and we are apt to see what we are looking for-as per my esteemed colleague Crisp. Well, we shall see.”

Miss Silver was folding up her knitting and putting it away. She now rose to her feet.

“Just one moment, Frank. I would like you to have this carpet washed.”

“My dear Miss Silver!”

“Very carefully, of course. I should not, perhaps, have said washed. I should like it to be examined very carefully, with a view to ascertaining whether there are any bloodstains.”

“Bloodstains?”

“Recent ones, of course. The colour of the carpet and its dirty condition would conceal them.”

He gazed at the floor. The square of carpet which covered it to within a foot of the walls must originally have been of a deep brownish red with a small all-over pattern now almost entirely lost in the general gloom. He said slowly,

“Just what do you expect to find?”

Miss Silver coughed.

“Evidence that Luke White was killed in this room,” she said.