CHAPTER XXVIII
THE FOOTPRINTS
The man was lying face downwards in the grass and weeds which clusteredthickly at the foot of the hedgerow, and on the line of rough,weatherbeaten neck which showed between his fur cap and his turned-upcollar there was a patch of dried blood. Very still and apparentlylifeless he looked, but Vickers suddenly bent down, laid strong hands onhim and turned him over.
"He's not dead!" he exclaimed. "Only unconscious from a crack on hisskull. Gilling!--where's that brandy you brought?--hand me the flask."
Zachary Spurge watched in silence as Vickers and Gilling busiedthemselves in reviving the stricken man. Then he quickly pulledCopplestone's sleeve and motioned him away from the group.
"Guv'nor!" he muttered. "There's been foul play here--and all along ofthem nine boxes--that I'll warrant. Look you here, guv'nor--Jim's beendragged to where we found him--dragged through this here gap in the hedgeand flung where he's lying. See--there's the plain marks, all through thegrass and stuff. Come on, guv'nor--let's see where they lead."
The marks of a heavy, inanimate body having been dragged through the wetgrass were evidence enough, and Copplestone and Spurge followed them to acorner of the old tower where they ceased. Spurge glanced round thatcorner and uttered a sharp exclamation.
"Just what I expected!" he said. "Leastways, what I expected as soon as Isee Jim a-lying there. Guv'nor, the stuff's gone!"
He drew Copplestone after him and pointed to a corner of the weed-growncourtyard where a cavity had been made in the mass of fallen masonry andthe stones taken from it lay about just as they had been displaced andthrown aside.
"That's where the nine boxes were," he continued. "Well, there ain't oneof 'em there now! Naught but the hole where they was! Well--this must ha'been during the early morning--after I left Jim to go into Norcaster. Andof course him as put the stuff there must be him as fetched itaway--Chatfield. Let's see if there's footmarks about, guv'nor."
"Wait a bit," said Copplestone. "We must be careful about that. Movewarily. We 'd better do it systematically. There'd have to be some sortof a trap, a vehicle, to carry away those chests. Where's the nearestpoint of that road you spoke of?"
"Up there," replied Spurge, pointing to a flanking bank of heather. "Butthey--or him--wasn't forced to come that way, guv'nor. He--or them--couldcome up from that cove down yonder. It wouldn't surprise me if that thereyacht--the _Pike_, you know--had turned on her tracks and come in hereduring the night. It's not more than a mile from this tower down to theshore, and--"
At that moment Vickers called to them, and they went back to find JimSpurge slowly opening his eyes and looking round him with consciousnessof his company. His one eye lightened a little as he caught sight ofZachary, and the poacher bent down to him.
"Jim, old man!" he said soothingly. "How are yer, Jim? Yer been hit bysomebody. Who was it, Jim?"
"Give him a drop more brandy and lift him up a bit," counselled Gilling."He's improving."
But it needed more than a mere drop of brandy, more than cousinly wordsof adjuration, to bring the wounded man back to a state of speech. Andwhen at last he managed to make a feeble response, it was only to muttersome incoherent and disjointed sentences about and being struck down frombehind--after which he again relapsed into semi-unconsciousness.
"That's it guv'nor," muttered Spurge, nudging Copplestone. "That's theticket! Struck down from behind--that's what happened to him. Unawares,so to speak, I can reckon of it up--easy. They comes in thedarkness--after I'd left him here. He hears of 'em, as he says,a-moving about. Then he no doubt starts moving about--watching 'em, asfar as he can see. Then one of 'em gives him this crack on theskull--life-preserver if you ask me--and down he goes! And then--theydrag him in here and leaves him. Don't care whether he's a goner ornot--not they! Well, an' what does it prove? That there's been morethan one of 'em, guv'nor. And in my opinion, where they've come fromis--down there!"
He pointed down the glen in the direction of the sea, and the threeyoung men who were considerably exercised by this sudden turn of eventsand the disappearance of the chests, looked after his out-stretched handand then at each other.
"Well, we can't stand here doing nothing," said Gilling at last. "Lookhere, we'd better divide forces. This chap'll have to be removed and gotto some hospital. Vickers!--I guess you're the quickest-footed of thelot--will you run back to High Nick and tell that chauffeur to bring hiscar round here? If Sir Cresswell and the police are there, tell themwhat's happened. Spurge--you go down the glen there, and see if you cansee anything of any suspicious-looking craft in that bay you told us of.Copplestone, we can't do any more for this man just now--let's lookround. This is a queer business," he went on when they had all departed,and he and Copplestone were walking towards the tower. "The gold's gone,of course?"
"No sign of it here, anyway," answered Copplestone, leading him into theruinous courtyard and pointing to the cavity in the fallen masonry."That's where it was placed by Chatfield, according to Zachary Spurge."
"And of course Chatfield's removed it during the night," remarkedGilling. "That message which Sir Cresswell read us must have been allwrong--the _Pike's_ come south and she's been somewhere about--maybe beenin that cove at the end of the glen--though she'll have cleared out of ithours ago!" he concluded disappointedly. "We're too late!"
"That theory's not necessarily correct," replied Copplestone. "SirCresswell's message may have been quite right. For all we know the folkson the Pike had confederates on shore. Go carefully, Gilling--let's seeif we can make out anything in the way of footprints."
The ground in the courtyard was grassless, a flooring of grit and loosestone, on which no impression could well be made by human foot. ButCopplestone, carefully prospecting around and going a little way up thebank which lay between the tower and the moorland road, suddenly sawsomething in the black, peat-like earth which attracted his attention andhe called to his companion.
"I say!" he exclaimed. "Look at this! There!--that's unmistakable enough.And fresh, too!"
Gilling bent down, looked, and stared at Copplestone with a questionin his eyes.
"By Gad!" he said. "A woman!"
"And one who wears good and shapely footwear, too," remarked Copplestone."That's what you'd call a slender and elegant foot. Here it isagain--going up the bank. Come on!"
There were more traces of this wearer of elegant foot-gear on the softearth of the bank which ran between the moorland and the stone-strewncourtyard--more again on the edges of the road itself. There, too, wereplain signs that a motor-car of some sort had recently been pulled upopposite the tower--Gilling pointed to the indentations made by thestudded wheels and to droppings of oil and petrol on the gravelly soil.
"That's evident enough," he said. "Those chests have been fetched awayduring the night, by motor, and a woman's been in at it! Confederates, ofcourse. Now then, the next thing is, which way did that motor go with itscontents?"
They followed the tracks for a short distance along the road, until,coming to a place where it widened at a gateway leading into the wood,they saw that the car had there been backed and turned. Gilling carefullyexamined the marks.
"That car came from Norcaster and it's gone back to Norcaster," heaffirmed presently. "Look here!--they came up the hill at the side of thewood--here they backed the car towards that gate, and then ran itbackwards till they were abreast of the tower--then, when they'd loadedup with those chests they went straight off by the way they'd come. Lookat the tracks--plain enough."
"Then we'd better get down towards Norcaster ourselves," saidCopplestone. "Call Spurge back--he'll find nothing in that cove. This jobhas been done from land. And we ought to be on the track of thesepeople--they've had several hours start already."
By this time Zachary Spurge had been recalled, Vickers had brought thecar round from High Nick, and the injured man was carefully lifted intoit and driven away. But at High Nick itself they met another car,hurrying up from Norcaster, and bringing Sir
Cresswell Oliver and threeother men who bore the unmistakable stamp of the police force. In one ofthem Copplestone recognized the inspector from Scarhaven.
The two cars met and stopped alongside each other, and Sir Cresswell,with one sharp glance at the rough bandage which Vickers had fastenedround Jim Spurge's head, rapped out a question.
"Gone!" replied Gilling, with equal brusqueness. "Came in a motor, duringthe night, soon after Zachary Spurge left Jim. They hit him pretty hardover his head and left him unconscious. Of course they've carried off theboxes. Car appears to have gone to Norcaster. Hadn't you better turn?"
Sir Cresswell pointed to the Scarhaven police inspector.
"Here's news from Scarhaven," he said, bending forward to the other car,"The inspector's just brought it. The Squire--whoever he was--is dead.They found his body this morning, lying at the foot of a cliff near theKeep. Foul play?--that's what you don't know, eh, inspector?"
"Can't say at all, sir," answered the inspector. "He might have beenthrown down, he might have fallen down--it's a bad place. Anyway, whatthe doctor said, just before I hurried in here to tell Mrs. Greyle, asthe next relative that we know of, is that he'd been dead some days--thebody, you see, was lying in a thicket at the foot of the cliff."
"Some days!" exclaimed Copplestone, with a look at Gilling. "Days?"
"Four or five days at least, sir," replied the inspector. "So the doctorthinks. The place is a cliff between the high road from Northborough andthe house itself. There's a short cut across the park to the house fromthat road. It looks as if--"
"Ah!" interrupted Gilling. "It's clear how that happened, then. He tookthat short cut, when he came from Northborough that night! But--if he'sdead, who's engineering all this? There's the fact, those chests of goldhave been removed from that old tower since Zachary Spurge left hiscousin in charge there early this morning. Everything looks as if they'dbeen carried to Norcaster. Therefore--"
"Turn this car round," commanded Sir Cresswell. "Of course, we must getback to Norcaster. But what's to be done there?"
The two cars went scurrying back to the old shipping town. When atlast they had deposited the injured man at a neighbouring hospitaland came to a stop near the "Angel," Zachary Spurge pulledCopplestone's sleeve, and with a look full of significance, motionedhim aside to a quiet place.