"What light?" asked the others.
"I wended my way to the ruins to hear the spooks groan. They groan jolly well--a mellow note, mostly on B flat, I fancy, though it sometimes shrieks up a chromatic scale to what you may call vanishing point. Of course, it's caused by the wind, but what surprises me is how the wind can fetch such a musical tone out of a chimney-pot. It must be a tube of some sort, and what else could it be but a chimney-pot? I tried to find it, but that required an acrobatic feat too difficult for a man of my avoirdupois."
"But the light?" asked Warrender.
"Oh yes, I was forgetting! I was looking over towards my uncle's place when I saw a reddish sort of glow, just about the level of the tree-tops. It came and went, and presently it dawned upon my usually alert intelligence that it stood a good deal upon the order of its comings and goings; in fact, that it was a signal. It must have been just about the time that tramp steamer came in sight."
"But why on earth should anybody at the house, even if they are customers of Rush's, signal to the smuggling steamer?" asked Armstrong. "There aren't any revenue officers about here, and if there were any about the coast the people at the house wouldn't know anything about them."
"My dear chap, there are wheels within wheels," said Pratt, oracularly. "You have two contemporaneous phenomena--jolly good phrase, that!--the signal light, and the accosting of a tramp steamer by a poacher and a burglar. That's circumstantial evidence good enough for me."
"Well, drop theories, and come to practice," said Warrender. "Whatever the game is, we're going to find it out. It's time for us to take the offensive. These fellows have stalked us; it's now for us to stalk them. I vote we leave the island, and accept old Crawshay's offer. The enemy will chortle at having succeeded in driving us away, and will very likely be off his guard. Then we'll chip in."
"Just so; we'll reculer pour mieux sauter--you recognise the phrase, as your Gradoff would say? Your suggestion smiles to me, Phil. We carry it unanimously, and we'll strike camp the morn's morn. I say, listen!"
The wind had increased in force, and there came from the direction of the ruins the musical moan which Warrender, alone of the three, had not yet heard.
"'The horns of Elfland faintly blowing,'" quoted Pratt. "Really, it seems a pity, after all, to leave a spot which one can imagine the haunt of fairies, the seat of an enchanted palace, the----"