"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!—they came up the hill at the side of the wood—here they backed the car towards that gate, and then ran it backwards till they were abreast of the tower—then, when they'd loaded up with those chests they went straight off by the way they'd come. Look at the tracks—plain enough."