"You'd better take a few doses of bromide," said the detective brusquely. "A man with your nerves should not live in a place like this. You had better go to bed now. Good night."
"Good night, sir." The innkeeper hurried out of the room without another word.
Colwyn sat by the fire for some time longer pondering over this unexpected incident, until the kitchen clock chiming eleven warned him to go to bed. He turned off the gas at the meter underneath the stairs as Benson had requested. When he reached the room in which Mr. Glenthorpe had been murdered, he paused outside the door, and turned the handle. The door was locked.
As he was about to enter the adjoining bedroom which had been allotted to him, a slender pencil of light pierced the darkness of the passage leading off the one in which he stood. As he watched the gleam grew brighter and broader; somebody was walking along the other passage. A moment later the innkeeper's daughter came into view, carrying a candle. She advanced quickly to where the detective was standing.
"I heard you coming upstairs," she explained, in a whisper. "I have been waiting and listening at my door. I wanted to see you, but it is difficult for me to do so without the others knowing. So I thought I would wait. I wanted to let you know that if you wish to see me at any time—if you need me to do anything—perhaps you would put a note under my door, and I could meet you down by the breakwater at any time you appoint. Nobody would see us there."
Colwyn nodded approvingly. Decidedly this girl was not lacking in resource and intelligence.
"I am so glad you are here," she went on earnestly. "I was afraid, after I left you to-day, that you might change your mind. I waited at one of the upstairs windows all the afternoon till I saw you coming. You will save him, won't you?"
She looked up at him with a faint smile, which, slight as it was, gave her face a new rare beauty.
"I will try," responded Colwyn, gravely. "Can you tell where the key of Mr. Glenthorpe's room is kept?"
"It hangs in the kitchen. Do you want it? I will get it for you. If Ann or Charles see me, they, will not think it as strange as if they saw you."