"Yes, with the belief that when he has us there, warmth, good liquor, and pleasant company will prove more attractive than hunting rascals in the cold."
"Why did you accept, then?"
"First, to look after you, Mildmay. Second, to keep my eyes open. Third, to make Trevanion think I don't suspect him, so that the smugglers may go forward with their plans. He is playing a deep game, I'm sure of it."
"That's detestably unjust, Polwhele," said Mr. Mildmay, with some heat. "Give a dog a bad name, and——I tell you what. We will both leave at nine; not a minute later. That's several hours before any run took place that ever I heard of. Nine it shall be, and call me jackass if the shore's not as quiet all night as the churchyard."
Meanwhile, what had Dick been doing?
At the hour when Mr. Carlyon was driving the terms of his proclamation into Petherick's reluctant skull, Dick rose from bed, and taking the key of Penwarden's cottage, brought to the Towers by Gammer Oliver, went up the cliff to make a more thorough examination of the premises than he had made on the previous day. He wished that he had thought of doing so before, for there had not only been rain in the night which would help to obliterate any traces that the kidnappers might have left on the ground, but the neighbourhood had been visited by inquisitive boys, dairymaids, farm-hands, and idle folk from the village, who tramped round the cottage, gazed at the door, and peered in at the windows, leaving innumerable footprints on the soil.
Dick was puzzled to think how Joe's captors had obtained entrance to the cottage. It was not by the front door, unless Penwarden had carelessly left it open; its timbers were sound and the lock unbroken; not by the chimney, which was too narrow to admit anything larger than a pigeon. They might have gone through the garden and forced the back door; though they would surely have tried to effect an entrance quietly, while the old man lay asleep.
Arriving at the cottage, Dick unlocked the door, entered, and went through the passage to the back door, which opened on a tiny garden. The lock had not been tampered with. Penwarden was very proud of his garden, devoting many hours a day in the summer, when his duties were light, to the cultivation of peonies, fuchsias, nasturtiums, and other flowering plants, together with onions, artichokes, and vegetable marrows. The flowers were on one side of a narrow path, the vegetables on the other. There was a small gate in the rear fence. At this time of year the ground was bare, Penwarden finding nothing to do but a little rake and spade work.
A glance at the path apprised Dick that the captive had been carried out this way. The pebbles were disturbed; parts of the boxwood borders were trampled down, and over the edge there were prints of heavy boots on the brown earth. Dick examined the kitchen window. The explanation was at once clear to him. There were deep scratches on the sill and the woodwork; the conclusion was irresistible; the kidnappers had climbed into the kitchen and gained the bedroom before Penwarden was aware of their presence. That they had carried their victim out by the back door seemed to show that at any rate they had taken him inland, and not down to the shore. How the front door came to be unlocked was a puzzling circumstance, since they had clearly neither entered nor come out that way.
Dick went again to the back, and sought to trace the footsteps beyond the gate; but the grass there was so beaten down by the rain and the feet of the curious idlers, that the most careful investigation must prove fruitless. He returned into the cottage, to make a thorough search of the bedroom. Gammer Oliver had made the bed, straightened the rug, set the chair on its legs, and washed over the stained plank. It seemed probable that his instruction to her to tidy up had robbed him of any chance of making a discovery. But Dick resolved not to err again through over-haste, and, the small window admitting little light, he found a candle, lit it, and began to prowl methodically round the room. For some time his search met with no reward, but all at once, catching a glint of light reflected from some object on the floor in the angle between a grandfather's clock and the fireplace, he stooped, and picked up a large steel button, to which hung by the broken threads a torn scrap of blue cloth.