“There is somebody signalling to us!” he exclaimed. “Down there! A woman!”
Blick looked in the direction indicated, and started in surprise. Far away below them, a little to their right, he saw a woman’s figure standing near a grove of trees which lay at the foot of the most precipitous part of the ravine. And, as the Professor said, she was certainly endeavouring to attract their attention.
“Good Heavens!” he said. “That’s Miss Valencia Markenmore! Whatever is she doing down there? Do you know what they call this place?—the Devil’s Grip! Grip, I suppose, means a sharp cut in the surface of the land. But what can she want?”
“Let us make our way down,” suggested the Professor. “We are evidently wanted. Hello! there are men, too!”
Two figures had just emerged from amongst the cluster of pine trees near which Valencia stood. Blick suddenly recognized them as those of Harborough and Mr. Fransemmery. They, recognizing the detective, also began signalling to him.
“There’s something afoot down there!” he muttered. “Looks to me as if they’d made some discovery. Look here, sir!—that tall man is Harborough, who, as I told you, was accused of the murder by Mrs. Tretheroe; the other is Mr. Fransemmery, the old gentleman who has figured in the case.”
“I know Fransemmery by name,” replied the Professor. “He’s a member of an archaeological society to which I also belong—I’ve corresponded with him. Now, how can we get down there without breaking our necks.”
“There’ll be a sheep-track somewhere along here,” said Blick. “Where a sheep can go, we can—at a pinch.”
But some minutes passed before they found a means of descending into the depths of the ravine wherein the others there awaited their coming. Once in its recesses the Professor wondered at the precipice-like character of the cliff down which they had made their way. Above the spot at which Valencia and her two companions were standing, the granite walls rose high and cliff-like; at one place there was a sheer drop of two hundred feet, terminating in a wild and broken mass of rock and shrub; it was at the lower edge of this wilderness that the three stood, looking alternately into its recesses and at the men hurrying along the level floor of the ravine towards them. At Mr. Fransemmery’s heels, held in a leash made out of his master’s handkerchief, the Airedale terrier fretted and whimpered, evidently desirous of once more penetrating into the gorse bushes from whence he had been unceremoniously dragged.