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.
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