from above. Morning light filled the hollow place and
the officers working methodically left no cranny unexplored; but
their combined efforts by daylight revealed little more than Brendon
had already found for himself in the darkness. There was nothing but
the trampled sand, the partially eaten store of food, the lamp on
its stone bracket, the black blot of blood, and the shallow trench
left by some rounded object that had been dragged to the steps. The
tide was down but the little beach only displayed the usual debris
at high-water mark. Inspector Damarell returned to the steam launch
and bade the skipper go back to Dartmouth.

"We'll ride home by motor from above," he said. "Tell them to bring
my runabout car to the top of Hawk Beak Hill; and let 'em fetch
along some sandwiches and half a dozen bottles of Bass; I'm thinking
we shall want 'em by noon."

The launch was off and once more the chimney with the steps, the
inclined plane beyond, and the plateau halfway up the cliff were all
examined with patient scrutiny. The police went at a foot's pace,
yet nothing appeared save an occasional drop of blood upon a stone
and the trail of the object dragged upward on the previous night.

"He must be a Samson," said Mark. "Consider if you or I had to pull
a solid, eleven-stone man in a sack up here."

"I could not," admitted the inspector. "But it was done. We're going
to have a repetition of that job at Berry Head in the summer. We
shall hunt the cliffs, like a pack of hounds, and presently find
some place hanging over deep water. Then we shall hit on a sack in a
rabbit hole or badger's earth--and that will be all there is to it."

On the plateau they rested, while Brendon found some clear marks of
feet--a heavy, iron-shod boot, which he recognized. They occurred in
a soft place just outside the mouth of the tunnel and he recollected
the toe plates and the triangle-headed nails that held them.

He called Inspector Damarell.

"When this is compared with the plaster casts taken at Foggintor,
you'll find it's the same boot," he said. "That's no surprise, of
course, but it proves probably that we are dealing with the same
man."

"And he'll use the same means to vanish into thin air that he did
six months ago," prophesied the other. "You mark me, Brendon, this
is not one man's work. There's a lot hid under this job that hasn't
seen light--just as there was under the last. It's very easy to say,
because we can't find a m