e from that time she saw me over the
packing-case business, before I took it out to sink it at sea. At any
rate, she ran off in a great hurry. If you aren't careful, she'll make
trouble yet."

"Apparently," remarked the inspector when he had read this aloud, "the
young lady was very luckily not watched closely enough and did make
trouble for them. Could I see her, do you think?"

"I don't know, I'll go and ask," Rupert said.

Ella was still very shaken, but she consented to see the inspector, and
they all went together to her room where she was lying on her bed with
her mother fussing nervously about her.

She told them in as few words as possible the story of how she had
always disliked and mistrusted the man whom so unfortunately her mother
had married, and how gradually her suspicions strengthened till she
became certain that he was involved in many unlawful deeds.

But always her inner certainty had fallen short of absolute proof, so
careful had he been in all he did.

"I knew I knew," she said. "But there was nothing I really knew. And
he made me do all sorts of things for him. I wouldn't have cared for
myself, but if I tried to refuse he made mother suffer. She was very,
very frightened of him, but she would never leave him. She didn't dare.
There was one night he made me go very late with a packing-case full of
silver things he had, and he wouldn't tell me where he had got them. I
believe he stole them all, but I helped him pack them, and I took them
away the night Mr. Dunsmore came and gave them to a man wearing a mask.
My stepfather said it was just a secret family matter he was helping
some friends in, and later on I saw the same man in the woods near here
one day--the day Mr. Clive was killed by the poachers--and when he
came another time to the house I thought I must try to find out what he
wanted. I listened while they talked and they said such strange things
I made up my mind to try to warn Mr. Dunsmore, for I was sure there was
something they were plotting."

"There was indeed," said Rupert grimly. "And but for that warning you
sent me they would have succeeded."

"Somehow they found out what I had done," Ella continued. "As soon as
I got back he kept looking at me so strangely. I was afraid--I had been
afraid a long time, for that matter--but I tried not to show it. In the
afternoon he told me to go up to the attic. He said he wanted me to help
him pack some silver. It was the same silver I had