“No, it isn’t. I used to go up to the house to play with Cyril. Mrs. Lessiter was fond of my mother. I’ve been in the study often and seen those figures. Cyril always said they were gold. We used to make up stories about them and say they were pirates’ treasure.”

It occurred to Miss Silver that he was not making things any better for Cyril Mayhew. She said in the tone of an earnest enquirer,

“And are they gold?”

Allan Grover laughed.

“Oh, no, of course not! That was just talk. They wouldn’t have been left out like that if they had been gold.”

“But they were, Mr. Grover.”

“Who says so?”

“Miss Cray for one. I think the Mayhews are aware of the fact, and in all probability so is your friend Cyril.”

He actually put his hand on her arm.

“Miss Silver, Cyril isn’t mixed up in this-I swear he isn’t. He may have been down here that night-they say he was- but as for taking those figures or laying a finger on Mr. Lessiter, I’ll swear he didn’t. That’s what I wanted to see you about. I’ll swear Cyril hadn’t anything to do with it.”

“What makes you so sure about that?”

His hand was still on her arm. Its pressure increased.

“Just knowing Cyril-that’s all. If you knew him like I do you’d be just as sure as I am. I’ve thought it all out, if you’ll just listen to me.”

“I shall be very pleased to listen to you, Mr. Grover.”

“Well then, it’s this way. By all accounts Mr. Lessiter was in his study all that Wednesday evening. They say Cyril came down by the six-thirty and borrowed Ernie White’s bike to come out here. Mrs. Mayhew says he didn’t come, but I suppose that’s what she’s bound to say. Well then, suppose he took those figures-when did he take them? If it was early on, Mr. Lessiter was there, wasn’t he? And if he was out of the room for a minute he’d have been bound to notice they were gone when he came back-gold things, showing up like that against the black marble.”

Miss Silver coughed and said,

“They were still there at a quarter past nine when Miss Cray left.”

“Well, there you are. They say Mr. Lessiter was killed some time after nine o’clock. Cyril would never have dared take those figures with him using the room. And this I can tell you, and I’d swear to it, he’d never have taken them with Mr. Lessiter lying there dead.”

“Why do you say that, Mr. Grover?”

“Because I know Cyril. I don’t say he mightn’t take something that didn’t belong to him-he-he’s got a weakness that way-but he wouldn’t do it if he thought it was running any risk. And as for killing anyone or going into a room where there was a man with his brains beaten out, I really do know what I’m talking about, and I tell you he just couldn’t do it at all. I’ve seen him run out of the kitchen with his fingers in his ears when his mother was going to kill a mouse. And when it came to rabbiting, or ratting, or anything of that sort, he was worse than a girl-a drop of blood, and he’d come over sick. I tell you he couldn’t have gone into that study with Mr. Lessiter dead the way he was, any more than he could have taken up the poker and killed him-and I can’t put it stronger than that. You see, Miss Silver, it isn’t as if there could have been anything like a struggle. Even a rabbit will bite if it’s cornered-any creature will. Cyril, he might have hit out with one of those figures if he’d been caught taking them, but it didn’t happen like that. Whoever killed Mr. Lessiter, it was someone he was comfortable and easy with. There he was, sitting up to the writing-table and someone just behind him over by the fire. You don’t sit that way with anyone unless you’re easy with them. And whoever it was meant murder. There wasn’t any struggle. I don’t see how there could even have been a quarrel. You don’t quarrel with someone like that, sitting with your back to them, do you? But the one that was behind him, he meant murder, and he picked up the poker and let him have it. Well, I tell you Cyril couldn’t have done that. There are things people can do, and things they can’t do. I’ve know him all my life, and he couldn’t squash a wasp, let alone hit a man over the head with a poker. If you told me he’d lifted some loose change or a shilling’s worth of stamps, I’d believe you, but murder, or going into a room with a murdered man-well, it’s just plain nonsense, he couldn’t have done it.”

They had reached the edge of the Green. Miss Silver had only to cross the road in order to see the welcoming glow from the curtained windows of Mrs. Voycey’s drawing-room. She paused at the end of the path. Alan Grover’s hand dropped from her arm. After a moment’s thoughtful silence she said,

“You have interested me extremely, Mr. Grover. There is a good deal in what you say, and I will give it my most careful attention. Goodnight.”

A good deal later than this Randal March was taking his way home. He was glad to be done with the day’s business, and very glad to be done with Superintendent Drake. Drake’s reactions to the footprints discovered by Miss Silver had been quite extraordinarily irritating. He was mortified, he was huffed, he took umbrage. He suggested that the footprints might have been made at any time, and when March pointed out that there had been heavy rain on Wednesday afternoon, and that they must have been made since then, he took umbrage all over again. There is, of course, nothing more trying for a police officer than to have a well substantiated theory undermined, or to see it tottering to its fall without being able to give it a sustaining hand. With Rietta Cray and Carr Robertson as suspects, Drake had been in a state of blissful and offensive self-satisfaction. It was his first important murder case. He saw promotion looming. The social position of the suspects ministered agreeably to his class-consciousness. When Mr. Holderness produced Cyril Mayhew as a possible alternative he wasn’t pleased-nobody could have expected him to be pleased-but he put up a very creditable performance as a fair-minded officer anxious only to come at the truth.

And then completely unrelated footprints of an unknown woman. It was enough to put any man out of temper, let alone that he knew, and the Chief Constable knew, that he ought to have found them himself. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they could have been made out to be Miss Cray’s footprints, but they couldn’t, and it wasn’t any good trying. He didn’t need the Chief Constable to point it out to him either. He remarked with some acerbity that if he’d got to choose between a crime without a clue at all, and one where they were buzzing round like so many bluebottles, he’d take the first and say thank you. It was one of the few times during their association that the Chief Constable felt inclined to agree with him.

Well, the business was over now. The footprints had been photographed by flashlight, cement had been poured into them to provide casts, and a tarpaulin spread to protect them from the weather. Randal March was taking his way home.

He came out on the far side of Melling and drove slowly along a dark, narrow lane. There was a hedgerow on either side, rather wild and unkempt, with the black mass of holly breaking it here and there. There was no one else abroad- no lights of any other car, no low-set gleam of a bicycle-lamp, no foot-passenger shrinking back against the hedge. The dark loneliness pleased him. He was more physically tired than he could remember to have been for years, and his mind was tired to death. To and fro in it for the last two days his thoughts had paced, struggled, and rebelled. Even as he strove to order them, to hold the balance between the prosecution and the defence, to do his job without fear or favour, he could not be sure that the scale did not tip.

He drove on down the bright path which his headlights made for him, and wished with all his heart that he could see his way as plainly.