Scarhaven Keep by J. S. Fletcher (best value ebook reader TXT) 📕

The group separated, and Copplestone went off to find the hotel people and order an immediate breakfast. And passing along a corridor on his way downstairs he encountered Mrs. Greyle, who came out of a room near by and started at sight of him.

“Audrey is asleep,” she whispered, pointing to the door she had just left. “Thank you for taking care of her. Of course I was afraid⁠—but that’s all over now. And now the thing is⁠—how are things?”

“Coming to a head, in my opinion,” answered Copplestone. “But how or in what way, I don’t know. Anyway, we know where that gold is⁠—and they’ll make an attempt on it⁠—that’s sure! So⁠—we shall be there.”

“But what fools Peter Chatfield and his associates must be⁠—from their own villainous standpoint⁠—to have encumbered themselves with all that weight of gold!” exclaimed Mrs. Greyle. “The folly of it seems incredible when they could have taken it in some more easily portable form!”

“Ah!” laughed Copplestone. “But that just shows Chatfield’s extraordinary deepness and craft! He no doubt persuaded his associates that it was better to have actual bullion where they were going, and tricked them into believing that he’d actually put it aboard the Pike! If it hadn’t been that they examined the boxes which he put on the Pike and found they contained lead or bricks, the old scoundrel would have collared the real stuff for himself.”

“Take care that he doesn’t collar it yet,” said Mrs. Greyle with a laugh as she went into her own room. “Chatfield is resourceful enough for⁠—anything. And⁠—take care of yourselves!”

That was the second admonition to be careful, and Copplestone thought of both, as, an hour later, he, Gilling, Vickers and Spurge sped along the desolate, windswept moorland on their way to the Reaver’s Glen. It was a typically North Country autumnal morning, cold, raw, rainy; the tops of the neighbouring hills were capped with dark clouds; seabirds called dismally across the heather; the sea, seen in glimpses through vistas of fir and pine, looked angry and threatening.

“A fit morning for a do of this sort!” exclaimed Gilling suddenly. “Is it pretty bare and bleak at this tower of yours, Spurge?”

“You’ll be warm enough, guv’nor, where I shall put you,” answered Spurge. “One as has knocked about these woods and moors as much as I’ve had to knows as many places to hide his nose in as a fox does! I’ll put you by that tower where you’ll be snug enough, and warm enough, too⁠—and where nobody’ll see you neither. And here’s High Nick and out we get.”

Leaving the car in a deep cutting of the hills and instructing the driver to await the return of one or other of them at a wayside farmstead a mile back, the three adventurers followed Spurge into the wood which led to the top of the Reaver’s Glen. The poacher guided them onward by narrow and winding tracks through the undergrowth for a good half mile; then he led them through thickets in which there was no paths at all; finally, after a gradual and cautious advance behind a high hedge of dense evergreen, he halted them at a corner of the wood and motioned them to look out through a loosely-laced network of branches.

“Here we are!” he whispered. “Tower⁠—Reaver’s Glen⁠—sea in the distance. Lone spot, ain’t it, gentlemen?”

Copplestone and Gilling, who had never seen this part of the coast before, looked out on the scene with lively interest. It was certainly a prospect of romance and of wild, almost savage beauty on which they gazed. Immediately in front of them, at a distance of twenty to thirty yards, stood the old peel tower, a solid square mass of grey stone, intact as to its base and its middle stories, ruinous and crumbling from thence to what was left of its battlements and the turret tower at one angle. The fallen stone lay in irregular heaps on the ground at its foot; all around it were clumps of furze and bramble. From the level plateau on which it stood the Glen fell away in horseshoe formation gradually narrowing and descending until it terminated in a thick covert of fir and pine that ran down to the land end of the cove of which Spurge had told them. And beyond that stretched the wide expanse of sea, with here and there a red-sailed fishing boat tossing restlessly on the white-capped waves, and over that and the land was a chill silence, broken only by the occasional cry of the seabirds and the bleating of the mountain sheep.

“A lone spot indeed!” said Gilling in a whisper. “Spurge, where is that stuff hidden?”

“Other side of the tower⁠—in an angle of the old courtyard,” replied Spurge, “Can’t see the spot from here.”

“And where’s that road you told us about?” asked Copplestone. “The moor road?”

“Top o’ the bank yonder⁠—beyond the tower,” said Spurge. “Runs round yonder corner o’ this wood and goes right round it to High Nick, where we’ve cut across from. Hush now, all of you, gentlemen⁠—I’m going to signal Jim.”

Screwing up his mobile face into a strange contortion, Spurge emitted from his puckered lips a queer cry⁠—a cry as of some trapped animal⁠—so shrill and realistic that his hearers started.

“What on earth’s that represent?” asked Gilling. “It’s bloodcurdling?”

“Hare, with a stoat’s teeth in its neck,” answered Spurge. “H’sh⁠—I’ll call him again.”

No answer came to the first nor to the second summons⁠—after a third, equally unproductive, Spurge looked at his companions with a scared face.

“That’s a queer thing, guv’nors!” he muttered. “Can’t believe as how our Jim ’ud ever desert a post. He promised me faithfully as how he’d stick here like grim death until I came back. I hope he ain’t had a fit, nor aught o’ that sort⁠—he ain’t a strong chap at the best o’ times, and⁠—”

“You’d better take a careful look round, Spurge,” said Vickers. “Here⁠—shall I come with you?”

But Spurge waved a hand to them to stay where they were. He himself