of you were
looking?"

"Quite. Because, you see, Betty and I were expecting her, and we kept
looking round in case we saw her, so that we should all be playing with
our backs to her."

"You and Miss Calladine were playing together?"

"I say, however do you know that?"

"Brilliant deductive reasoning. Well, then you suddenly saw her?"

"Yes, she walked across that side of the lawn." He indicated the
opposite side, nearer to the house.

"She couldn't have been hiding in the ditch? Do you call it the moat, by
the way?"

"Mark does. We don't among ourselves. No, she couldn't. Betty and I
were here before the others, and walked round a bit. We should have seen
her."

"Then she must have been hiding in the shed. Or do you call it the
summer-house?"

"We had to go there for the bowls, of course. She couldn't have been
there."

"Oh!"

"It's dashed funny," said Bill, after an interval for thought. "But it
doesn't matter, does it? It has nothing to do with Robert."

"Hasn't it?"

"I say, has it?" said Bill, getting excited again.

"I don't know. We don't know what has, or what hasn't. But it has
got something to do with Miss Norris. And Miss Norris--" He broke off
suddenly.

"What about her?"

"Well, you're all in it in a kind of way. And if something unaccountable
happens to one of you a day or two before something unaccountable
happens to the whole house, one is well, interested." It was a good
enough reason, but it wasn't the reason he had been on the point of
giving.

"I see. Well?"

Antony knocked out his pipe and got up slowly.

"Well then, let's find the way from the house by which Miss Norris
came."

Bill jumped up eagerly.

"By Jove! Do you mean there's a secret passage?"

"A secluded passage, anyway. There must be."

"I say, what fun! I love secret passages. Good Lord, and this afternoon
I was playing golf just like an ordinary merchant! What a life! Secret
passages!"

They made their way down into the ditch. If an opening was to be found
which led to the house, it would probably be on the house side of the
green, and on the outside of the ditch. The most obvious place at which
to begin the search was the shed where the bowls were kept. It was a
tidy place as anything in Mark's establishment would be. There were two
boxes of croquet things, one of them with the lid open, as if the
balls and mallets and, hoops (neatly enough put away, though) had been
recently used; a box of bowls, a