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!--