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CHAPTER XXVII
THE PEEL TOWER

Gilling took the message from Sir Cresswell and thoughtfully read it over. Then he handed it back and motioned the old seaman to look at Spurge.

"I think you ought to know what this man has just told us, sir," he said. "We've got a story from him that exactly fits in with what Chatfield told Mr. Vickers when the Pike returned to carry him off yesterday. Chatfield, you'll remember, said that the gold he'd withdrawn from the bank is hidden somewhere—well, there's no doubt that this man Zachary Spurge knows where it is hidden. It's there now—and the presumption is, of course, that these people on the Pike will certainly come in to this coast—somehow!—to get it. So in that case—eh?"

"Gad!—that's valuable!" said Sir Cresswell, glancing again at Spurge, and with awakened interest. "Let me hear this story."

Copplestone epitomized Spurge's account, while the poacher listened admiringly, checking off the main points and adding a word or two where he considered the epitome lacking.

"Very smart of you, my man," remarked Sir Cresswell, nodding benevolently at Spurge when the story was over. "You're in a fair way to find yourself well rewarded. Now gentlemen!" he continued, sitting down at the table, and engaging the attention of the others, "I think we had better have a council of war. Petherton has just gone to speak to the police authorities about those warrants which have been taken out against Chatfield and the impostor, but we can go on in his absence. Now there seems to be no doubt that those chests which Spurge tells us of contain the gold which Chatfield procured from the bank, and concerning which he seems to have played his associates more tricks than one. However, his associates, whoever they are—and mind you, gentlemen, I believe there are more men than Chatfield and the Squire in all this!—have now got a tight grip on Chatfield, and they'll force him to show them where that gold is—they'll certainly not give up the chances of fifty thousand pounds without a stiff try to get it. So—I'm considering all the possibilities and probabilities—we may conclude that sooner or later—sooner, most likely—somebody will visit this old peel tower that Spurge talks of. But—who? For we're faced with this wireless message. I've no doubt the vessel here referred to is the Pike—no doubt at all. Now she was seen making due east, near this side of the Dogger Bank, late last night—so that it would look as if these men were making for Denmark, or Germany, rather than for this coast. But since receiving this message, I have thought that point out. The Pike is, I believe, a very fast vessel?"

"Very," answered Vickers. "She can do twenty-seven or eight knots an hour."

"Exactly," said Sir Cresswell. "Then in that case they may have put in at some Northern port, landed Chatfield and two or three men to keep an eye on him and to accompany him to this old tower, while the Pike herself has gone off till a more fitting opportunity arises of dodging in somewhere to pick up the chests which Chatfield and his party will in the meantime have removed. From what I have seen of it this is such a wild part of the coast that Chatfield and such a small gang as I am imagining, could easily come back here, keep themselves hidden and recover the chests without observation. So our plain duty is to now devise some plan for going to the Reaver's Glen and keeping a watch there until somebody comes. Eh?"

"There's another thing that's possible, sir," said Vickers, who had listened carefully to all that Sir Cresswell had said. "The Pike is fitted for wireless telegraphy."

"Yes?" said Sir Cresswell expectantly. "And you think—?"

"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.

"Well, we can't stand here doing nothing," said Gilling at last. "Look here, we'd better divide forces. This chap'll have to be removed and got to some hospital. Vickers!—I guess you're the quickest-footed of the lot—will you run back to High Nick and tell that chauffeur to bring his car round here? If Sir Cresswell and the police are there, tell them what's happened. Spurge—you go down the glen there, and see if you can see 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 look round. 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 the ruinous 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," remarked Gilling. "That message which Sir Cresswell read us must have been all wrong—the Pike's come south and she's been somewhere about—maybe been 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 foot-gear 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 motor-car 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 short cut 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 short cut, 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.