“Most unfortunate-there must be some mistake. Surely the girl may have gone out to meet a friend-I really can’t imagine-”

Most of these sentences were addressed to Jane, who merely received them with a shake of the head, upon which they petered out and led to nothing.

Inspector Crisp rapped upon the table at which he had seated himself and said,

“Eily Fogarty has disappeared. She is not in the hotel. Her outdoor coat and shoes are not missing, and it seems improbable that she would have gone out without them. Miss Silver has something which she wishes to say. I don’t take any responsibility for it, but I am willing to give her the opportunity of saying it. Miss Silver-”

Miss Silver rose to her feet and looked about her. Mildred Taverner was sniffing into a damp handkerchief. Her brother Geoffrey had a bewildered air. Annie Castell sat large and shapeless upon a chair which disappeared from view beneath her bulk. Her face was pale and without any expression, the eyelids faintly rimmed with pink. Her hands lay one on either knee. Every now and then the thumbs twitched. Castell, beside her, bobbed up like a jack-in-the-box.

“What a lot of nonsense is this? Eily is not in the house? Eily is out? Does a young girl never go out? Am I a slave-driver that I always keep her in? Does she not have a boy friend-a lover? Does John Higgins think he is the only one she meets? If he does, I tell him he can have another think coming!” He gave an angry laugh. “That she even runs away, how do I know? There has been a murder-there has been a suicide-she has a crisis of the nerves-and she goes off-with this one, that one-how do I know?”

Crisp said sharply,

“Sit down and hold your tongue, Castell!”

Miss Silver said what she had already said to John Higgins and to Jeremy and Jane.

When she had finished there was a silence which was broken by Jeremy.

“You are right about there being another passage. My grandfather told me enough to make me feel sure of that. And I think the entrance is on the bedroom floor, because a wounded man was brought up through it and died in the room which Eily has now.”

Frank Abbott said,

“How do you know that?”

“It was a corner room at the back. The younger children slept there to be near their parents, but on that occasion they had been turned out. My grandfather told me what his mother had told him. The whole thing was very hush-hush-I don’t think they could have risked carrying that wounded man through the house. That’s all I can tell you.”

Castell snapped his fingers.

“What you call an old wives’ tale!”

Miss Silver coughed reprovingly.

“It agrees with what Miss Taverner’s grandfather told her about being frightened at seeing a light come out of a hole in the wall when he was a little boy. He was one of the children who slept in what is now Eily’s room. But it is clear that he had left the room before he saw this light. It is impossible to believe that he went down to the cellar.”

John Higgins said heavily,

“I don’t know where it is, but there is a room. My grandmother told my father, and he told me. I’ve never spoken of it till now. I don’t know where it is.”

Miss Silver said,

“Miss Taverner?”

Mildred sobbed and sniffed.

“Oh, I don’t know anything-I don’t really. I only thought- he wouldn’t have gone very far-a little boy like that. It must have been somewhere near his room-he said he ran back to it.”

“Mr. Taverner?”

Geoffrey’s eyebrows drew together.

“Quite frankly, I have always thought my grandfather made the whole thing up-or dreamt it. He became very childish in his last illness, and I am afraid that my sister is credulous. There certainly is a passage which we have all seen, but as to anything more-well-” He shrugged his shoulders.

“Mrs. Castell?”

Annie Castell did not move. Miss Silver coughed and addressed her again.

“Mrs. Castell, what do you know about this secret room or passage?”

She did speak then, with the least possible movement of pale, flabby lips.

“Nothing.”

“Are you sure?”

The single word was not repeated. This time she shook her head.

Miss Silver rose to her feet.

“Then I think we must go and look for ourselves. There is certainly no time to be lost.”

Eily came back to consciousness. She had lost herself and all the world she knew when the door she was passing had opened slowly upon the dim passage and showed her a dead man standing there. Luke White was dead-but he stood there looking at her, and she fell from him down into fainting depths. Now she was coming back, but not to any place she knew. The ground was hard under her and she could not move. At first she did not know why. Consciousness ebbed and flowed. Then it came to her that her ankles were tied together, and her wrists, and that there was something stuffed into her mouth. It was difficult to breathe, and she couldn’t call out or speak. The thing in her mouth was a handkerchief-she could feel the stuff against her tongue-and there was a bandage which covered her mouth.

She made an instinctive movement with her bound hands, and from somewhere behind her Luke White said,

“Don’t do that!”

Her eyes had been shut, but she opened them now. She was in a small narrow place, and Luke White was coming into view with a candle in his hand. He set the candle on the ground, kneeled down beside her, and took both her hands in one of his. His touch was warm and strong, and at that the worst of the fear went out of Eily, because it wasn’t a dead man’s hand which lay on hers. As if he knew her thought, he gave her the kind of careless caress he might have given to a dog or a child, a mere flick of the fingers as he said,

“No call to look like that. I’m not a ghost, as you’ll very soon find out. It was a good trick, wasn’t it? And it took everybody in, just as it was meant to. They’d all seen me in my waiter’s jacket, and when they saw that jacket on a dead man they didn’t look past it-not close enough anyhow to see that it was Al Miller who was wearing it for a change. It was a very clever trick, and you’re going to have a very clever husband.”

With one fear gone, another began to take its place. This was not a dead man. It was Luke, most dangerously alive. She pulled to get her hands away, but he held them fast.

“Now, now-what’s the good of that? I’ll marry you safe enough when we get over to France. Floss is dead, and it can all be quite proper and legal. They’re coming for me tonight. There’s no moon till two, and the tide’s high at eleven. All you’ve got to do is to be good and quiet till then. We’ll be in France before morning along with as sweet a cargo as we’ve ever run, and we’ll be married just as soon as I can fix it.”

She moved her head in a frantic gesture of denial. Her tongue pushed against the gag and tried to make words, but nothing came except small muffled sounds without meaning or any power to reach him-or anyone.

His teeth showed white against the dark face as he smiled.

“Save the love words,” he said-“they’ll keep.” He touched her lightly on the cheek again. “Best try and sleep-it’ll be some hours yet.” And with that he went past her and out of sight, and took the candle with him.

Time went by.

Inspector Crisp led the way up the stairs, but when they came to the landing he stood aside, and it was Miss Silver who turned to the left-hand passage. To left and right were the rooms occupied by Jacob and Geoffrey Taverner. Beyond Geoffrey a large housemaid’s cupboard, a bathroom, and the room occupied by the Castells. Beyond Jacob Taverner a back stair, the linen-room, a lavatory, and Eily’s room.

Miss Silver turned to John Higgins.

“Mr. Higgins, you are a carpenter. If there is a concealed room here, what would you take to be the most likely place?”