CHAPTER XVIIMiss Silver continued to knit. She had a thoughtful expression and she did not appear to be in any hurry to speak. Frank Abbott watched her. That she could have stayed for twenty-four hours in the same house as Alan Field or been the repository of his stepmother’s confidences regarding him without receiving some very definite impressions, he was unable to believe. To what extent she was prepared to impart them was another matter.
After a lapse of time which made him wonder whether he was to be told anything at all she said,
“I have felt uncertain in my own mind as to just what I had better do. I have no professional connection with this case, and no direct evidence to offer to the police. There are, on the other hand, certain things in the background which you will be bound t
