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?”
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.”