Everybody seemed to think it meant the Duck Club, and in a few moments we were all off once more except the Smith boys, who were talking loudly and examining their engine. But Tish was not quite certain.
“These clews are tricky,” she said. “They are not obvious, but subtle. It sounds too much like the Duck Club to be the Duck Club. Besides, what symbols of dead ducks would they keep? I’ve never seen anything left over but the bones.”
“The feathers?” Aggie suggested.
“They wouldn’t keep feathers in a closet. And besides, there’s nothing sturdy about a feather. What other large building is on the lake front?”
“The fish cannery,” I said.
“True. And they might keep boards in a closet with the outlines of very large fish on them. But the less said about the air there the better. However, we might try it.”
Having made this decision, as soon as we were outside of Penzance we began once more to travel with extreme rapidity, retracing for some distance the road we had come in on, and thus it happened that we again saw the motorcycle policeman with his side car. He was repairing something and shouted angrily at us as we passed, but we did not even hesitate, and soon we arrived at the fish cannery.
None of the others had apparently thought of this possibility, and when we reached it there was no one in sight but a bearded watchman with a lantern, sitting on a barrel outside. Tish hopefully leaped from the car and gave him the password at once.
“‘Good evening, dearie.’”
But the wretch only took his pipe out of his mouth and, after expectorating into the lake, replied: