CHAPTER VI

The inn, seen in the grey evening of a grey day, had a stark and
sinister aspect, an atmosphere of mystery and secretiveness, an air of
solitary aloofness in the dreary marshes, standing half shrouded in the
night mists which were sluggishly crawling across the oozing flats from
the sea. It was not a place where people could be happy--this battered
abode of a past age on the edge of the North Sea, with the bitter waters
of the marshes lapping its foundations, and the cold winds for ever
wailing round its gaunt white walls.

The portion buried in the hillside, with only the tops of the windows
peering above, suggested the hidden holes and burrowing byways of a dead
and gone generation of smugglers who had used the inn in the heyday of
Norfolk's sea prosperity. It may have been a thought of the
possibilities of the inn as a hiding place which prompted Mr. Cromering
to exclaim, after gazing at it attentively for some seconds:

"We had better go through this place from the bottom."

As they approached the inn a stout short man, who was looking out from
the low and narrow doorway, retreated into the interior, and immediately
afterwards the long figure of the innkeeper emerged as though he had
been awaiting the return of the party, and had posted somebody to watch
for them.

The innkeeper showed no surprise on receiving Mr. Cromering's
instruction to show them over the inn. Walking before them he led them
along a side passage opposite the bar, opening doors as he went, and
drawing aside for them to enter and look at the rooms thus revealed.

It was a strange rambling old place inside, full of nooks and crannies,
and unexpected odd corners and apertures, short galleries and stone
passages winding everywhere and leading nowhere; the downstairs rooms on
different levels, with stone steps into them, and queer slits of windows
pierced high up in the thick walls. On the ground floor a central
passage divided the inn into two portions. On the one side were several
rooms, some empty and destitute of furniture, others barely furnished
and empty, and a big gloomy kitchen in which a stout countrywoman, who
shook and bobbed at the sight of the visitors, was washing greens at a
dirty deal table. Off the kitchen were two small rooms, poorly furnished
as servants' bedrooms, and the windows of these looked out on the
marshes at the back of the house. On the other side of the centre
passage was the bar, which was subte