Scarhaven Keep

"You suggested that there may be more people than Chatfield and the Squire in at this business," continued Vickers. "Just so! We—Copplestone and myself—know very well that the skipper of the Pike, Andrius, is in it: that's undeniable. But there may be others—or one other, or two—on shore here. And as the Pike can communicate by wireless, those on board her may have sent a message to their shore confederates to remove those chests. So—"

"Capital suggestion!" said Sir Cresswell, who saw this point at once. "So we'd better lose no time in arranging our expedition out there. Spurge—you're the man who knows the spot best—what ought we to do about getting there—in force?"

Spurge, obviously flattered at being called upon to advise a great man, entered into the discussion with enthusiasm.

"Your honour mustn't go in force at all!" he said. "What's wanted, gentlemen, is—strategy! Now if you'll let me put it to you, me knowing the lie of the land, this is what had ought to be done. A small party ought to go—with me to lead. We'll follow the road that cuts across the moorland to a certain point; then we'll take a by-track that gets you to High Nick; there we'll take to a thick bit o' wood and coppice that runs right up to the peel tower. Nobody'll track us, nor see us from any point, going that way. Three or four of us—these here young gentlemen, now, and me—'ll be enough for the job—if armed. A revolver apiece your honour—that'll be plenty. And as for the rest—what you might call a reserve force—your honour said something just now about some warrants. Is the police to be in at it, then?"

"The police hold warrants for the two men we've been chiefly talking about," replied Sir Cresswell.

"Well let your honour come on a bit later with not more than three police plain-clothes fellows—as far as High Nick," said Spurge. "The police'll know where that is. Let 'em wait there—don't let 'em come further until I send back a message by my cousin Jim, You see, guv'nor," he added, turning to Copplestone, whom he seemed to regard as his own special associate, "we don't know how things may be. We might have to wait hours. As I view it, me having listened careful to what his honour the Admiral there says—best respects to your honour—them chaps'll never come a-nigh that place till it's night again, or at any rate, dusk, which'll be about seven o'clock this evening. But they may watch, during the day, and it 'ud be a foolish thing to have a lot of men about. A small force such as I can hide in that wood, and another in reserve at High Nick, which, guv'nor, is a deep hole in the hill-top—that's the ticket!"

"Spurge is right," said Sir Cresswell. "You youngsters go with him—get a motor-car—and I'll see about following you over to High Nick with the detectives. Now, what about being armed?"

"I've a supply of service revolvers at my office, down this very street," replied Vickers. "I'll go and get them. Here! Let's apportion our duties. I'll see to that. Gilling, you see about the car. Copplestone, you order some breakfast for us—sharp."

"And I'll go round to the police," said Sir Cresswell. "Now, be careful to take care of yourselves—you don't know what you've got to deal with, remember."

The group separated, and Copplestone went off to find the hotel people and order an immediate breakfast. And passing along a corridor on his way downstairs he encountered Mrs. Greyle, who came out of a room near by and started at sight of him.

"Audrey is asleep," she whispered, pointing to the door she had just left. "Thank you for taking care of her. Of course I was afraid—but that's all over now. And now the thing is—how are things?"

"Coming to a head, in my opinion," answered Copplestone. "But how or in what way, I don't know. Anyway, we know where that gold is—and they'll make an attempt on it—that's sure! So—we shall be there."

"But what fools Peter Chatfield and his associates must be—from their own villainous standpoint—to have encumbered themselves with all that weight of gold!" exclaimed Mrs. Greyle. "The folly of it seems incredible when they could have taken it in some more easily portable form!"

"Ah!" laughed Copplestone. "But that just shows Chatfield's extraordinary deepness and craft! He no doubt persuaded his associates that it was better to have actual bullion where they were going, and tricked them into believing that he'd actually put it aboard the Pike! If it hadn't been that they examined the boxes which he put on the Pike and found they contained lead or bricks, the old scoundrel would have collared the real stuff for himself."

"Take care that he doesn't collar it yet," said Mrs. Greyle with a laugh as she went into her own room. "Chatfield is resourceful enough for—anything. And—take care of yourselves!"

That was the second admonition to be careful, and Copplestone thought of both, as, an hour later, he, Gilling, Vickers and Spurge sped along the desolate, wind-swept moorland on their way to the Reaver's Glen. It was a typically North Country autumnal morning, cold, raw, rainy; the tops of the neighbouring hills were capped with dark clouds; sea-birds called dismally across the heather; the sea, seen in glimpses through vistas of fir and pine, looked angry and threatening.

"A fit morning for a do of this sort!" exclaimed Gilling suddenly. "Is it pretty bare and bleak at this tower of yours, Spurge?"

"You'll be warm enough, guv'nor, where I shall put you," answered Spurge. "One as has knocked about these woods and moors as much as I've had to knows as many places to hide his nose in as a fox does! I'll put you by that tower where you'll be snug enough, and warm enough, too—and where nobody'll see you neither. And here's High Nick and out we get."

Leaving the car in a deep cutting of the hills and instructing the driver to await the return of one or other of them at a wayside farmstead a mile back, the three adventurers followed Spurge into the wood which led to the top of the Beaver's Glen. The poacher guided them onward by narrow and winding tracks through the undergrowth for a good half-mile; then he led them through thickets in which there was no paths at all; finally, after a gradual and cautious advance behind a high hedge of dense evergreen, he halted them at a corner of the wood and motioned them to look out through a loosely-laced network of branches.

"Here we are!" he whispered. "Tower—Reaver's Glen—sea in the distance. Lone spot, ain't it, gentlemen?"

Copplestone and Gilling, who had never seen this part of the coast before, looked out on the scene with lively interest. It was certainly a prospect of romance and of wild, almost savage beauty on which they gazed. Immediately in front of them, at a distance of twenty to thirty yards, stood the old peel tower, a solid square mass of grey stone, intact as to its base and its middle stories, ruinous and crumbling from thence to what was left of its battlements and the turret tower at one angle. The fallen stone lay in irregular heaps on the ground at its foot; all around it were clumps of furze and bramble. From the level plateau on which it stood the Glen fell away in horseshoe formation gradually narrowing and descending until it terminated in a thick covert of fir and pine that ran down to the land end of the cove of which Spurge had told them. And beyond that stretched the wide expanse of sea, with here and there a red-sailed fishing boat tossing restlessly on the white-capped waves, and over that and the land was a chill silence, broken only by the occasional cry of the sea-birds and the bleating of the mountain sheep.

"A lone spot indeed!" said Gilling in a whisper. "Spurge, where is that stuff hidden?"

"Other side of the tower—in an angle of the old courtyard," replied Spurge, "Can't see the spot from here."

"And where's that road you told us about?" asked Copplestone. "The moor road?"

"Top o' the bank yonder—beyond the tower," said Spurge. "Runs round yonder corner o' this wood and goes right round it to High Nick, where we've cut across from. Hush now, all of you, gentlemen—I'm going to signal Jim."

Screwing up his mobile face into a strange contortion, Spurge emitted from his puckered lips a queer cry—a cry as of some trapped animal—so shrill and realistic that his hearers started.

"What on earth's that represent?" asked Gilling. "It's blood-curdling?"

"Hare, with a stoat's teeth in its neck," answered Spurge. "H'sh—I'll call him again."

No answer came to the first nor to the second summons—after a third, equally unproductive, Spurge looked at his companions with a scared face.

"That's a queer thing, guv'nors!" he muttered. "Can't believe as how our Jim 'ud ever desert a post. He promised me faithfully as how he'd stick here like grim death until I came back. I hope he ain't had a fit, nor aught o' that sort—he ain't a strong chap at the best o' times, and—"

"You'd better take a careful look round, Spurge," said Vickers. "Here—shall I come with you?"

But Spurge waved a hand to them to stay where they were. He himself crept along the back of the hedge until he came to a point opposite the nearest angle of the tower. And suddenly he gave a great cry—human enough this time!—and the three young men rushing forward found him standing by the body of a roughly-clad man in whom Copplestone recognized the one-eyed odd-job man of the "Admiral's Arms."

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE FOOTPRINTS

The man was lying face downwards in the grass and weeds which clustered thickly at the foot of the hedgerow, and on the line of rough, weatherbeaten neck which showed between his fur cap and his turned-up collar there was a patch of dried blood. Very still and apparently lifeless he looked, but Vickers suddenly bent down, laid strong hands on him and turned him over.

"He's not dead!" he exclaimed. "Only unconscious from a crack on his skull. Gilling!—where's that brandy you brought?—hand me the flask."

Zachary Spurge watched in silence as Vickers and Gilling busied themselves in reviving the stricken man. Then he quickly pulled Copplestone's sleeve and motioned him away from the group.

"Guv'nor!" he muttered. "There's been foul play here—and all along of them nine boxes—that I'll warrant. Look you here, guv'nor—Jim's been dragged to where we found him—dragged through this here gap in the hedge and flung where he's lying. See—there's the plain marks, all through the grass and stuff. Come on, guv'nor—let's see where they lead."

The marks of a heavy, inanimate body having been dragged through the wet grass were evidence enough, and Copplestone and Spurge followed them to a corner of the old tower where they ceased. Spurge glanced round that corner and uttered a sharp exclamation.

"Just what I expected!" he said. "Leastways, what I expected as soon as I see Jim a-lying there. Guv'nor, the stuff's gone!"

He drew Copplestone after him and pointed to a corner of the weed-grown courtyard where a cavity had been made in the mass of fallen masonry and the stones taken from it lay about just as they had been displaced and thrown aside.

"That's where the nine boxes were," he continued. "Well, there ain't one of '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. And of course him as put the stuff there must be him as fetched it away—Chatfield. Let's see if there's footmarks about, guv'nor."

"Wait a bit," said Copplestone. "We must be careful about that. Move warily. We 'd better do it systematically. There'd have to be some sort of a trap, a vehicle, to carry away those chests. Where's the nearest point of that road you spoke of?"

"Up there," replied Spurge, pointing to a flanking bank of heather. "But they—or him—wasn't forced to come that way, guv'nor. He—or them—could come up from that cove down yonder. It wouldn't surprise me if that there yacht—the Pike, you know—had turned on her tracks and come in here during the night. It's not more than a mile from this tower down to the shore, and—"

At that moment Vickers called to them, and they went back to find Jim Spurge slowly opening his eyes and looking round him with consciousness of his company. His one eye lightened a little as he caught sight of Zachary, and the poacher bent down to him.

"Jim, old man!" he said soothingly. "How are yer, Jim? Yer been hit by somebody. 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 words of adjuration, to bring the wounded man back to a state of speech. And when at last he managed to make a feeble response, it was only to mutter some incoherent and disjointed sentences about and being struck down from behind—after which he again relapsed into semi-unconsciousness.

"That's it guv'nor," muttered Spurge, nudging Copplestone. "That's the ticket! Struck down from behind—that's what happened to him. Unawares, so to speak, I can reckon of it up—easy. They comes in the darkness—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, as far as he can see. Then one of 'em gives him this crack on the skull—life-preserver if you ask me—and down he goes! And then—they drag him in here and leaves him. Don't care whether he's a goner or not—not they! Well, an' what does it prove? That there's been more than one of 'em, guv'nor. And in my opinion, where they've come from is—down there!"

He pointed down the glen in the direction of the sea, and the three young men who were considerably exercised by this sudden turn of events and the disappearance of the chests, looked after his out-stretched hand and then at each other.