Scarhaven Keep by J. S. Fletcher (best value ebook reader TXT) 📕

in that cove at the end of the glen⁠—though she’ll have cleared out of it hours ago!” he concluded disappointedly. “We’re too late!”

“That theory’s not necessarily correct,” replied Copplestone. “Sir Cresswell’s message may have been quite right. For all we know the folks on the Pike had confederates on shore. Go carefully, Gilling⁠—let’s see if we can make out anything in the way of footprints.”

The ground in the courtyard was grassless, a flooring of grit and loose stone, on which no impression could well be made by human foot. But Copplestone, carefully prospecting around and going a little way up the bank which lay between the tower and the moorland road, suddenly saw something in the black, peat-like earth which attracted his attention and he 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 question in 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 is again⁠—going up the bank. Come on!”

There were more traces of this wearer of elegant footgear on the soft earth of the bank which ran between the moorland and the stone-strewn courtyard⁠—more again on the edges of the road itself. There, too, were plain signs that a motorcar of some sort had recently been pulled up opposite the tower⁠—Gilling pointed to the indentations made by the studded wheels and to droppings of oil and petrol on the gravelly soil.

“That’s evident enough,” he said. “Those chests have been fetched away during the night, by motor, and a woman’s been in at it! Confederates, of course. Now then, the next thing is, which way did that motor go with its contents?”

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 carefully examined the marks.

“That car came from Norcaster and it’s gone back to Norcaster,” he affirmed presently. “Look here!⁠—they came up the hill at the side of the wood⁠—here they backed the car towards that gate, and then ran it backwards till they were abreast of the tower⁠—then, when they’d loaded up with those chests they went straight off by the way they’d come. Look at the tracks⁠—plain enough.”

“Then we’d better get down towards Norcaster ourselves,” said Copplestone. “Call Spurge back⁠—he’ll find nothing in that cove. This job has been done from land. And we ought to be on the track of these people⁠—they’ve had several hours start already.”

By this time Zachary Spurge had been recalled, Vickers had brought the car round from High Nick, and the injured man was carefully lifted into it and driven away. But at High Nick itself they met another car, hurrying up from Norcaster, and bringing Sir Cresswell Oliver and three other men who bore the unmistakable stamp of the police force. In one of them 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 fastened round Jim Spurge’s head, rapped out a question.

“Gone!” replied Gilling, with equal brusqueness. “Came in a motor, during the night, soon after Zachary Spurge left Jim. They hit him pretty hard over his head and left him unconscious. Of course they’ve carried off the boxes. 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 the Keep. Foul play?⁠—that’s what you don’t know, eh, inspector?”

“Can’t say at all, sir,” answered the inspector. “He might have been thrown down, he might have fallen down⁠—it’s a bad place. Anyway, what the doctor said, just before I hurried in here to tell Mrs. Greyle, as the next relative that we know of, is that he’d been dead some days⁠—the body, 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 doctor thinks. The place is a cliff between the high road from Northborough and the house itself. There’s a shortcut across the park to the house from that road. It looks as if⁠—”

“Ah!” interrupted Gilling. “It’s clear how that happened, then. He took that shortcut, when he came from Northborough that night! But⁠—if he’s dead, who’s engineering all this? There’s the fact, those chests of gold have been removed from that old tower since Zachary Spurge left his cousin in charge there early this morning. Everything looks as if they’d been carried to Norcaster. Therefore⁠—”

“Turn this car round,” commanded Sir Cresswell. “Of course, we must get back to Norcaster. But what’s to be done there?”

The two cars went scurrying back to the old shipping town. When at last they had deposited the injured man at a neighbouring hospital and came to a stop near the Angel, Zachary Spurge pulled Copplestone’s sleeve, and with a look full of significance, motioned him aside to a quiet place.

XXIX Scarvell’s Cut

The quiet place was a narrow alley, which opening out of the Market Square in which the car had come to a halt, suddenly twisted away into a labyrinth of ancient buildings that lay between the centre of the town and the river. Not until Spurge had conducted Copplestone quite away from their late companions did he turn and speak; when he spoke his words were accompanied by a glance which suggested mystery as well as confidence.

“Guv’nor!” he said. “What’s going to be done?”

“Have you pulled me down here to ask that?” exclaimed Copplestone, a little impatiently. “Good