The candle is at its fourth mark when you come up the cellar stair with Kit's card in your hand, and Edmund is back at the table, asking his question.

Mark Five: The Last Question

Kit's card is the size of a playing card, soft at the corners from a pocket. On one side, in pencil, one line:

.--. . .- -.-. .

On the other, in the same hand: If anybody ever tells you I'm in that house, Dad, tell them this. You know it. You taught me.

Sir Arthur confesses that he never learnt the code; Holmes, he says, would have had it by heart. The signallers' alphabet is not on the card. Kit did not need it there, and nor did his father.

Upstairs, Edmund has come back to the table, and he is asking the question. On your other side Sir Arthur asks one of his own, very quietly, so that nobody else hears: whether there is anybody else here tonight, a boy called Kingsley, who died three days before Kit.

Answer Edmund with Kit's own word.