16Detective Inspector Abbott came out from Ledlington in the early afternoon next day and was closeted with Lucius Bellingdon. When they had talked for a time he interviewed members of the family party and of the household. It was not until the last of them was disposed of that he expressed a desire to see Miss Silver.
She came into the small writing-room which had been placed at his disposal, greeted him, and settled herself in an armless chair of the type which she preferred. Looking at her, Frank had the thought that she was a fixed point in a changing world. Wars came and went, political changes like vast landslides swept the habitable globe, monarchies dissolved and new tyrannies took their place, but here she was, not changed at all as far as he could see from the time when he had f
