"Look
here, we'd better divide forces. This chap'll have to be removed and got
to some hospital. Vickers!--I guess you're the quickest-footed of the
lot--will you run back to High Nick and tell that chauffeur to bring his
car round here? If Sir Cresswell and the police are there, tell them
what's happened. Spurge--you go down the glen there, and see if you can
see anything of any suspicious-looking craft in that bay you told us of.
Copplestone, we can't do any more for this man just now--let's look
round. This is a queer business," he went on when they had all departed,
and he and Copplestone were walking towards the tower. "The gold's gone,
of course?"
"No sign of it here, anyway," answered Copplestone, leading him into the
ruinous courtyard and pointing to the cavity in the fallen 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.
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