If he don't choose to speak, then we must still remain in ignorance, although I feel confident that he knows something of the strange affair up in the wood." And although I was silent, I shared the Scotch detective's belief.
The afternoon was chill and wet as I climbed the hill to Greenlaw.
The sudden disappearance of the tenants of Rannoch was, I found, on everyone's tongue in Dumfries.

In the smoke-room of the railway hotel three men were discussing it with many grimaces and sinister hints, and the talkative young woman behind the bar asked me my opinion of the strange goings-on up at the Castle.
As I walked on alone, with the dark line of woods crowning the hill-top before me, the scene of that double tragedy, I again calmly reviewed the situation.

I longed to go to the hospital and see Hylton Chater, yet when I recollected the part he had played with Hornby on board the _Lola_, I naturally hesitated.

He was allied with Hornby, apparently against Leithcourt, although the latter was Hornby's friend.
What, I wondered, had transpired in the library of that gray old castle which stood out boldly before me, dark and grim, as I plodded on through the rain?
How had Leithcourt succeeded in rendering his enemy insensible and hiding him in that cupboard?
Did he believe that he had killed him?
If I went boldly to Chater, then it would only be the betrayal of myself.No.I decided that the man who had smoked and chatted with me so affably on that hot, breathless night in the Mediterranean must remain in ignorance of my presence, or of my knowledge.

Therefore I stayed for a week at Greenlaw with eyes and ears ever open, yet exercising care that the patient in the hospital should be unaware of my presence.
Mackenzie saw him on several occasions, but he still persisted in that tantalizing silence.