We spread ourselves out along the shore, crossing the spit of sand, now encroached on considerably by the tide, and began to search amongst the black rocks that jutted out of it thereabouts. Presently we came across the boat, slightly rocking in the lapping water alongside a ledge—I took a hasty glance into it and drew Miss Raven away. For on the thwarts, and on the seat in the stern, and on one of the oars, thrown carelessly aside, there was blood.
A sharp cry from one of the men who had gone a little ahead brought us all hurrying to his side. He had found, amongst the rocks, a sort of pool at the sides of which there was dry, sand-strewn rock; there were marks there as if a man had knelt in the sand, and there was more blood, and there were strips of clothing—linen, silk, as if the man had torn up some of his garments as temporary bandages.
"He's been here," said Lorrimore in a low voice. "Probably washed his wounds here—salt is a styptic. Flesh wounds, most likely, but," he added, sinking his voice still lower, "judging from what we've seen of the blood he's lost, he must have been weakening by the time he got here. Still, he's a man of vast strength and physique, and—he'd push on. Look for marks of his footsteps."
We eventually picked up a recently made track in the sand and followed it until it came to a point at the end of the overhanging woods, where they merged into open moorland running steeply downwards to the beach. There, in the short, wiry grass of the close-knitted turf, the marks vanished.
"Just as I said," muttered Lorrimore, whom with Miss Raven and myself, was striding on a little in advance of the rest. "He's made for my place—as I knew he would. I knew enough of this country to know that there's a road at the head of these moors that runs parallel with the railway on one side and the coast on the other towards Ravensdene—he'd be making for that. He'd take up the side of this wood, as the nearest way to strike the road."
That he was right in this we were not long in finding out. Twice, as our party climbed the steep side of the moorland we came across evidences of the fugitive. At two points we found places whereat a man had recently sat down on the bank beneath the trees, to rest. And at one of them we found more—a blood-soaked bandage.
"No man can go far, losing blood in that way," whispered Lorrimore to me as we went onward. "He can't be far off."
And suddenly we came across our quarry. Coming out on the top of the moorland, and rounding the corner of the woods, we hit the road of which Lorrimore had spoken—a long, white, hedgeless, wall-less ribbon of track that ran north and south through treeless country. There, a few yards away from us, stood an isolated cottage, some gamekeeper's or watcher's place, with a bit of unfenced garden before it. In that garden was a strange group, gathered about something that at first we did not see—Mr. Cazalette, obviously very busy, the police-inspector (a horse and trap, tethered to a post close by, showed how they had come) a woman, evidently the mistress of the cottage, a child, open-mouthed wide-eyed with astonishment at these strange happenings, a dog that moved uneasily around the two-legged folk, whimpering his concern. The bystanders moved as we hurried up, and then we caught glimpses of towels and water and hastily-improvised bandages and smelt brandy, and saw, in the midst of all this Wing, propped up against a bank of earth, his eyes closed, and over his yellow face a queer grey-white pallor. His left arm and shoulder were bare, save for the bandages which Cazalette was applying—there were discarded ones on the turf which were soaked with blood.
Lorrimore darted forward with a hasty exclamation, and had Cazalette's job out of the old gentleman's hands and into his own before the rest of us could speak. He motioned the whole of us away except Cazalette and the woman, and the police-inspector turned to Mr. Raven and his niece, and to myself and Scarterfield.
"I think we were just about in time," he said, laconically. "I don't know what it all means, but I reckon the man was about done for. Bleeding to death, I should say."