He looked at her, frowning and intent.

“Round about the chimney or the stair it would be.”

“The stair is an old one?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“But the lavatory-that wouldn’t be so old. There must have been work done here when the plumbing was put in. The passage would be older than that. They wouldn’t have risked the secret by having work done too near the hidden place. It won’t be that side. But I have thought the linen-room would guard such an entrance very well. It would be quite natural to keep it locked. It seems to me that the entrance may very well be somewhere between the linen-room and the back stair. It might even be that the treads of the stair were utilized.”

Castell flung up his arms.

“But this is madness! Are you going to pull my house down over my head because Eily has taken a fright and run away?”

There was a delay over the key of the linen-cupboard.

“I tell you, Eily will have it! She is in charge of the linen. She has to change the sheet, the pillow-case, the towel. Do you think she comes running every time to me? Have I nothing else to do?”

Miss Silver turned to Annie Castell.

“There will be a duplicate key. I think you have it. Will you get it? Or must I ask Mr. Higgins to force the lock?”

Annie’s lips moved without sound. But before it was possible to know what she would do her husband stepped between.

“This is folly! You cannot break my doors!”

Miss Silver coughed quite gently.

“There will be no need to do so if you will give me the key, Mr. Castell.”

He flung out his hands.

“You insult me! But I have nothing to hide. If there is another key, you shall have it. You shall see that there is nothing.” He turned upon his wife with a gesture of command. “Annie!”

She went across the passage then, into their room. After a lagging minute she came back with a key in her hand. Castell took it from her, fitted it in the lock, flung the door open with a flourish, and stood aside.

“There-you can see for yourself! There are no girls shut up, no corpses-there is only the linen of the house! On the middle shelf there is a candle-take it, light it, and look for yourselves! And when you have found nothing except my sheets and my pillow-cases, perhaps you will apologize for this insult that you make me!”

The linen-room had no window, but in every other respect it really was a small room. Shelves ran from floor to ceiling. The candlelight played upon orderly piles of linen. There was a shelf devoted to pillows, another to the old-fashioned honeycomb bedspreads which are now hardly more than a memory. There was a smell of lavender and a just perceptible trace of something else.

Miss Silver went first into the room. She found the trace quite definite. As she struck a match and lighted the candle, it was for the moment overlaid by the smell of sulphur. But when the sulphur trace was gone the other was still there- a faint, light trail of cigarette smoke. None of the party was smoking, and there had been no hint of tobacco until Miss Silver stepped across the threshold of the linen-room and met it there.

She set down the lighted candle upon one of the shelves and came back to the doorway. She was looking for John Higgins, but when she saw him she waited for a moment before speaking his name. He stood back against the passage wall behind all those who had crowded forward to look into the linen-room. His hands were clenched at his sides, his eyes were closed, and his lips moved. There was sweat on his brow. The old-fashioned phrase, “wrestling in prayer,” came into Miss Silver’s mind. After a momentary hesitation she stepped forward, the others making way for her, and went to him.

“Mr. Higgins-”

As her touch fell on his arm, his eyes opened. They had a bewildered look, as if he had been a long way off and suddenly called back.

“Mr. Higgins, I think that you can help me. Will you come?”

He came after her then into the candlelight and the smell of lavender and that something else. As soon as they were there he said, speaking low so that only she could hear,

“I’d clean forgot, but the Lord has brought it to my mind- something my grandfather said, but I didn’t rightly know what he meant-not till now. It was some carpenter’s work he’d done up here, working with his father when he was a lad. That’s how he came to court my grandmother, Joanna Taverner.” He was down on his knees as he spoke, feeling along under the bottom shelf. “He rambled a bit when he was old, and talked about his courting days, and about the work he’d done at the Catherine-Wheel with his grandfather. ‘A handle made clever to look like a strut,’ that’s what he said. And he picked himself up and said, ‘And I took my Bible oath I’d never tell a living soul, so you take and forget it, my lad.’ And it went clean out of my head till the Lord brought it back. Just give me that candle, ma’am… I think I’ve got it. There’s a strut here where there’s no call for one to be.”

Miss Silver gave the candle into his hand and stepped to the door. Her eye met Frank Abbott’s. She noted with approval that he and Inspector Crisp stood side by side between the rest of the party and the back stair, and that Willis had cropped up again and was on the other side of the group. Mildred Taverner was sobbing audibly. Jane had her hand on Jeremy’s arm. Geoffrey Taverner was leaning forward to see what was happening inside the linen-room, his expression one of vexation and surprise.

The Castells stood side by side, he for the moment silent, she with her hands at her apron, pinching the stuff into pleats and letting it go-the same action mechanically repeated over and over again. There was no expression on her face, but the pale skin glistened with sweat.

As Miss Silver turned back to the linen-room, something very strange was happening. John Higgins had set the candle down upon the floor. He was using both his hands to move something under the left-hand bottom shelf, and as he pulled on it it did move, and the whole shelf with it, pivoting round so that one end of the shelf with a double pile of pillow-cases stuck out across the door and the other end went back and disappeared into the wall. There was left a gap some three feet wide and just over three feet high.

John Higgins reached for the candle and went forward through the gap. Miss Silver nodded to Jeremy Taverner and stood back to let him pass.

Outside in the passage Castell gave a roar like a bull and plunged for the stairs, to come down with a crash as Frank Abbott tripped him. During the ensuing struggle Annie Castell did not turn her head. She looked down at her apron and pleated it-four pleats and let it go, and four pleats and let it go again.

Mildred Taverner screamed when the shelf swung in. She said,

“Oh, that’s what he saw! Oh, no wonder it frightened him, poor little boy-the hole in the wall and the light coming out of it! Oh-”

Geoffrey said, “Be quiet!” He leaned forward and listened. The light was receding now. The sound of footsteps was receding, going down an unseen stair which followed the line of the one which they could see.

Castell was handcuffed. He lay cursing vociferously. Crisp left him, ran to the linen-room, and so down after the others.

When Frank Abbott was about to follow him Miss Silver shook her head.

At the sound of those feet upon the stair Eily opened her eyes again. She could see nothing except the rough plastered roof and walls of the place where she lay. And then Luke White came into view, bending to pick her up. She tried again, most horribly, to scream. The effort sent the blood against her ear-drums, deafening them. She felt that she was dropped, her head bruised against the floor. And then her hearing came back, and there were voices-Luke White’s-“Fight for her then!” and John’s, cursing him. At least it sounded like a curse, and even at that moment it surprised her a good deal. She heard them clash somewhere behind her just out of sight, and the sound of a fall, and more running steps and voices, and quite a lot more cursing, only this time it wasn’t John.