“Suspecting him again?”

“Suzanne, I’ve got into that state that I can’t help suspecting somebody! I don’t really suspect him⁠—but, after all, he is Pagett’s employer, and he did own the Mill House.”

“I’ve always heard that he made his money in some way he isn’t anxious to talk about,” said Suzanne thoughtfully. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean crime⁠—it might be tin tacks or hair restorer!”

I agreed ruefully.

“I suppose,” said Suzanne doubtfully, “that we’re not barking up the wrong tree? Being led completely astray, I mean, by assuming Pagett’s complicity? Supposing that, after all, he is a perfectly honest man?”

I considered that for a minute or two, then I shook my head.

“I can’t believe that.”

“After all, he has his explanations for everything.”

“Y⁠—es, but they’re not very convincing. For instance, the night he tried to throw me overboard on the Kilmorden , he says he followed Rayburn up on deck and Rayburn turned and knocked him down. Now we know that’s not true.”

“No,” said Suzanne unwillingly. “But we only heard the story at secondhand from Sir Eustace. If we’d heard it direct from Pagett himself, it might have been different. You know how people always get a story a little wrong when they repeat it.”

I turned the thing over in my mind.

“No,” I said at last, “I don’t see any way out. Pagett’s guilty. You can’t get away from the fact that he tried to throw me overboard, and everything else fits in. Why are you so persistent in this new idea of yours?”