The inn, seen in the grey evening of a grey day, had a stark and sinister aspect, an atmosphere of mystery and secretiveness, an air of solitary aloofness in the dreary marshes, standing half shrouded in the night mists which were sluggishly crawling across the oozing flats from the sea.

It was not a place where people could be happy--this battered abode of a past age on the edge of the North Sea, with the bitter waters of the marshes lapping its foundations, and the cold winds for ever wailing round its gaunt white walls.
The portion buried in the hillside, with only the tops of the windows peering above, suggested the hidden holes and burrowing byways of a dead and gone generation of smugglers who had used the inn in the heyday of Norfolk's sea prosperity.

It may have been a thought of the possibilities of the inn as a hiding place which prompted Mr.Cromering to exclaim, after gazing at it attentively for some seconds: "We had better go through this place from the bottom." As they approached the inn a stout short man, who was looking out from the low and narrow doorway, retreated into the interior, and immediately afterwards the long figure of the innkeeper emerged as though he had been awaiting the return of the party, and had posted somebody to watch for them.
The innkeeper showed no surprise on receiving Mr.Cromering's instruction to show them over the inn.

Walking before them he led them along a side passage opposite the bar, opening doors as he went, and drawing aside for them to enter and look at the rooms thus revealed.
It was a strange rambling old place inside, full of nooks and crannies, and unexpected odd corners and apertures, short galleries and stone passages winding everywhere and leading nowhere; the downstairs rooms on different levels, with stone steps into them, and queer slits of windows pierced high up in the thick walls.

On the ground floor a central passage divided the inn into two portions.