The Talisman Ring (11 page)

‘I did not!’ said Ludovic indignantly.

‘You know nothing of the matter, my dear boy. You and Chance between you showed Basil how he could be rid of you. You became enraged with the man whose name Eustacie cannot remember (or I, for that matter), and I dare say you were drinking heavily, and –’

‘He was,’ said Sir Tristram.

‘Of course. He was in a mood for violence. I’ve no doubt he talked very wildly, and swore he would be avenged. Now you must think, Ludovic, if you please! Did not Basil know that you meant to waylay that man upon – upon the fatal night?’

‘I don’t know. I think I made no secret of it. Basil knew the whole story.’

‘I am quite sure he did,’ said Miss Thane. ‘Now you see, do you not, how easy it was for him? It needed no planning at all. He had only to lie in wait for the man in the spinney, to leave a handkerchief of yours beside the body, and to steal the ring. Afterwards he had nothing to do but enact the rôle of champion. I perceive that he must have a very subtle brain.’ She closed her eyes, and said in a seer-like voice: ‘He is, I am sure, a sinister person.’

‘The Beau?’ said Ludovic. ‘No, he isn’t!’

Miss Thane frowned. ‘Nonsense, he must be!’

‘Yes,’ said Eustacie regretfully, ‘but truly he is not.’

Miss Thane opened her eyes again. ‘You put me out. What then is he like?’

‘He is very civil,’ said Eustacie. ‘He has manners of the most polished.’

Miss Thane readjusted her ideas. ‘I will allow him to be smooth-spoken. I think he smiles.’

‘Yes, he does,’ admitted Eustacie.

Miss Thane gave a shudder. ‘His smile hides a wolfish soul!’ she announced.

Ludovic burst out laughing. ‘Devil a bit! There’s nothing wolfish about him. He’s a mighty pleasant fellow, and I’d have sworn not one to wish anybody harm.’

‘Alas, it is true!’ said Eustacie sadly. ‘He is just nothing.’

Sir Tristram’s eyebrows went up a shade. Miss Thane pointed a triumphant finger at him, and said: ‘Sir Tristram knows better! A wolf, sir?’

He shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think I should put it quite like that, Miss Thane. He is pleasant enough – a little too pleasant. He purrs like a cat.’

‘He does,’ agreed Ludovic. ‘But do you know any ill of him? I don’t.’

‘One thing,’ replied Shield. ‘I know that Sylvester mistrusted him.’

‘Sylvester!’ said Ludovic scornfully.

‘Oh, Sylvester was no fool,’ answered Shield.

‘Good God, he mistrusted scores of people, me amongst them!’

‘So little did he mistrust you,’ said Shield, putting his hand into his waistcoat-pocket, ‘that he bade me give you that if ever I should see you again, and tell you not to pledge it.’

Ludovic stared at the great ruby. ‘Thunder and Turf, did he leave me
that
?’

‘As you see. He asked me just before he died whether I thought your story had been true after all.’

‘I dare swear you told him No,’ remarked Ludovic, slipping the ring on to his finger.

‘I did,’ said Shield calmly. ‘You remember that I heard that shot not ten minutes after I had parted from you, and I knew what sort of a humour you were in.’

Ludovic shot him a fiery glance. ‘You thought me capable of murder, in fact!’

‘I thought you three-parts drunk,’ said Shield. ‘I also thought you a rash young fool. I still think that. What possessed you to turn smuggler? Have you been sailing off the coast of Sussex all this time?’

‘“Hovering” is the word,’ said Ludovic, with a gleam of mischief. ‘Free-trading seemed to me an occupation eminently suited to an outlaw. Besides, I always liked the sea.’

Sir Tristram said scathingly: ‘I suppose that was reason enough.’

‘Why not? I knew some of the Gentlemen, too, from old days. But I was never off these shores till now. Don’t like ’em: there’s too much creeping done, and the tidesmen are too cursed sharp. I’ve been helping to run cargoes of brandy and rum – under Bergen papers, you know – into Lincolnshire. That’s the place, I can tell you. I’ve been dodging revenue cruisers for the past fifteen months. It’s not a bad life, but the fact of the matter is I wasn’t reared to it. I only came into Sussex to glean what news there might be from Nye.’

‘But you will stay,
mon cousin
, won’t you?’ asked Eustacie anxiously.

‘He can’t stay,’ Shield said. ‘It was madness to come at all.’

Ludovic lifted his head, and regarded Sylvester’s ring through half-closed eyes. ‘I shall stay,’ he said nonchalantly, ‘and I shall find out who holds the talisman ring.’

‘Ludovic, you may trust me to do all I can to discover it, but you must not be found here!’

‘I’m not going to be found here,’ replied Ludovic. ‘You don’t know Joe’s cellars. I do.’

‘Go over to Holland, and wait there,’ Shield said. ‘You can do no good here.’

‘Oh yes, I can!’ sad Ludovic, turning his hand so that the jewel caught the light. ‘Moreover, I’ll be damned if I’ll be elbowed out of my own business!’

‘What can you hope to do in hiding that I cannot do openly?’ asked Shield. ‘Why add to your folly by running the risk of being arrested?’

‘Because,’ said Ludovic, at last raising his eyes from the ruby, ‘if the Beau has the ring I know where to look for it.’

This announcement produced all the effect upon the ladies which Ludovic could have desired. They gazed at him in surprise and admiration, breathlessly waiting for him to tell them more. Shield, not so easily impressed, said: ‘If you really know where to look for it you had better tell me, and I’ll do it for you.’

‘That’s just the trouble,’ replied Ludovic shamelessly. ‘I’m not at all sure of the place.’ He saw Eustacie’s face fall, and added: ‘Oh, I should know it again if I saw it! The thing is that I’d be mighty hard put to it to direct anyone how to find it. I shall have to go myself.’

‘Go where?’ demanded Sir Tristram.

‘Oh, to the Dower House!’ replied Ludovic airily. ‘There’s a secret panel. You wouldn’t know it.’

‘A secret panel?’ repeated Miss Thane in an awed voice. ‘You mean actually a secret panel?’

Ludovic regarded her in some slight concern. ‘Yes, why not?’

‘I thought it too good to be true,’ said Miss Thane. ‘If there is one thing above all others I have wanted all my life to do it is to search for a secret panel! I suppose,’ she added hopefully, ‘it would be too much to expect to find an underground passage leading from the secret panel?’

Eustacie clasped her hands ecstatically. ‘But yes, of course! An underground passage –’

‘With bats and dead men’s bones,’ shuddered Miss Thane.

French common sense asserted itself. Eustacie frowned. ‘Not bats, no. That is not reasonable. But certainly some bones, chained to the wall.’

‘And damp – it must be damp!’

‘Not damp; cobwebs,’ put in Ludovic. ‘Huge ones, which cling to you like –’

‘Ghostly fingers!’ supplied Miss Thane.

‘Oh, Ludovic, there is a passage?’ breathed Eustacie.

He laughed. ‘Lord, no! It’s just a priest’s hole, that’s all.’

‘How wretched!’ said Miss Thane, quite disgusted. ‘It makes me lose all heart.’

‘If there is not a passage we must do without one,’ decreed Eustacie stoutly. ‘One must be practical.
Tout même
, it is a pity there is not a passage. I thought it would lead from the Court to the Dower House. It would have been
magnifique
! We might have found treasure!’

‘That is precisely what I was thinking,’ agreed Miss Thane. ‘An old iron chest, full of jewels.’

Sir Tristram broke in on these fancies with a somewhat withering comment. ‘Since we are not searching for treasure, and no passage exists save in your imaginations, this discussion is singularly unprofitable,’ he said. ‘Where is the panel, Ludovic?’

‘There you have the matter in a nutshell,’ confessed Ludovic. ‘I know my uncle used to use it as a strong-room, and I remember Sylvester showing it to me when I was a lad, but what I can’t for the life of me recall is which room it’s in.’

‘That,’ said Sir Tristram, ‘is, to say the least of it, unfortunate, since the Dower House is panelled almost throughout.’

‘I think it’s either in the library or the dining-room,’ said Ludovic. ‘There are two tiers of pillars with a lot of fluted pilasters and carvings. I dare say I shall recognize it when I see it. You twist one of the bosses on the frieze between the tiers, and one of the square panels below slides back.’

‘How do you propose to see it?’ asked Shield. ‘The Beau is at the Dower House now, and means to stay there.’

‘Well, I shall have to break in at night,’ replied Ludovic.

‘A very proper resolve,’ approved Miss Thane, before Sir Tristram could condemn it. ‘But something a trifle disturbing has occurred to me: are you sure that your cousin would have kept the ring?’

‘Yes, for he would not dare to sell it,’ replied Ludovic at once.

‘He would not perhaps have thrown it away?’

Ludovic shook his head. ‘Not he. He knows its worth,’ he answered simply.

‘Oh well, in that case, all we have to do is to find the panel!’ said Miss Thane.

Sir Tristram looked at her across Ludovic’s bed. ‘We?’ he said.

‘Certainly,’ replied Sarah. ‘Eustacie told me I might share the adventure.’

‘You are surely not proposing to remain here!’

‘Sir,’ said Miss Thane. ‘I shall remain here until we have cleared Ludovic’s fair name.’

‘But, of course!’ said Eustacie, opening her eyes very wide. ‘What else?’

Sir Tristram told her in a few brief words. When it was made plain to him that both ladies meant to play important parts in Ludovic’s affair, and that neither of them would so much as listen to the notion of retiring, the one to London, the other to Bath, he said roundly that he would have nothing to do with so crazy an escapade. Eustacie at once replied with the utmost cordiality that he might retire from it with her good-will, but Ludovic objected that since his left arm would be useless for some little time, he would need Tristram to help him with his housebreaking.

‘Do you imagine that I am going to break into Basil’s house?’ demanded Sir Tristram.

‘Why not?’ said Ludovic.

‘Not only that,’ said Miss Thane thoughtfully, ‘but we might need you if there is to be any fighting. My brother tells me you have a Right.’

‘If,’ said Sir Tristram, ‘you would all of you rid yourselves of the notion that you are living within the pages of one of Mrs Radcliffe’s romances, I should be grateful! Do you realize that tongues are already wagging up at the Court over Eustacie’s ill-judged, unnecessary, and foolish flight? I dare swear the news of it has even now reached Basil’s ears. If she remains here, what am I to tell him?’

‘Let me think,’ said Miss Thane.

‘Don’t put yourself to that trouble!’ said Sir Tristram, with asperity. ‘Eustacie must go to my mother in Bath.’

‘I have it!’ said Miss Thane, paying no heed to him. ‘I knew Eustacie in Paris some years ago. Finding myself in the vicinity of her home, I sent to inform her of my arrival, whereupon the dear creature, misliking the Bath scheme, formed the idea of putting herself under my protection. Unfortunately, you, Sir Tristram, knowing nothing of me, and being possessed of a tyrannical disposition – I beg your pardon?’

‘I did not speak,’ replied Sir Tristram, eyeing her frostily.

Miss Thane met his look with one of liquid innocence. ‘Oh, I quite thought you did!’

‘I choked,’ explained Sir Tristram. ‘Pray continue! You had reached my tyrannical disposition.’

‘Precisely,’ nodded Sarah. ‘You refused to accede to Eustacie’s request, thus leaving her no alternative to instant flight. But now you have seen me, you realize that I am a respectable female, altogether a proper person to have the charge of a young lady, and you relent.’

The corners of his mouth twitched slightly. ‘Do I?’ he said.

‘Certainly. We arrange that Eustacie shall stay with me in London on a visit. All is in train for our departure when my brother, finding his cold to be no better, declares himself to be unable to risk the dangers of travel in this inclement weather. Which reminds me,’ she added, rising from her chair, ‘that I had better go and inform Hugh that his cold is worse.’

A little while later, coming down from Sir Hugh’s bedchamber, she found Sir Tristram waiting in the coffee-room. He looked up as she rounded the bend in the stairs, and said sardonically: ‘I trust you were able to convince your brother, ma’am?’

‘It was unnecessary,’ she returned. ‘Nye has taken him up a bottle of Old Constantia. He thinks it would be foolhardy to brave the journey to London until he is perfectly recovered.’

‘I thought he held strong views on the subject of smuggled liquor?’ remarked Sir Tristram.

‘He does,’ replied Miss Thane, not in the least abashed. ‘Very strong views.’ She went to the fire and seated herself on one of the high-backed settles placed on either side of it. A gesture invited Sir Tristram to occupy the other. ‘I think those two children will make a match of it, do not you?’

‘Ludovic cannot ask any woman to be his wife as matters now stand,’ he responded, frowning into the fire.

‘Then we must certainly establish his innocence,’ said Miss Thane.

He glanced up. ‘Believe me, I should be glad to do anything in my power to help the boy, but this coming into Sussex is madness!’

‘Well,’ said Miss Thane reasonably, ‘he cannot be moved until his wound is in some sort healed, so we must make the best of it. Tell me, do you think his cousin Basil is indeed the real culprit?’

He was silent for a moment. At last he said: ‘I may be prejudiced against him. It sounds fantastic, but I would not for the world have him know of Ludovic’s whereabouts now.’ He looked at her searchingly. ‘What is your part in this, Miss Thane?’

She laughed. ‘My dear sir, my part is that of Eustacie’s chaperon, of course. To tell you the truth, I have taken a liking to your romantic cousin, and I mean to see this adventure to a close.’

‘You are very good, ma’am, but –’

‘But you would do very much better without any females,’ nodded Miss Thane.

‘Yes,’ said Sir Tristram bluntly. ‘I should!’

‘I expect you would,’ said Miss Thane, quite without rancour. ‘But if you imagine you can induce Eustacie to leave this place now that she has found her cousin Ludovic, you have a remarkably sanguine nature. And if you are bound to have Eustacie, you may just as well have me as well.’

‘Certainly,’ said Shield, ‘but do you – does your brother realize that this is an adventure that is likely to lead us all to Newgate?’

‘I do,’ she replied placidly. ‘I doubt whether my brother realizes anything beyond the facts of a cold in the head and a well-stocked cellar. If we do reach Newgate, perhaps you will be able to get us out again.’

‘You are very intrepid!’ he said, with a look of amusement.

‘Sir,’ said Miss Thane, ‘during the course of the past twelve hours my life seems to have become so full of smugglers, Excisemen, and wicked cousins that I now feel I can face anything. What in the world possessed the boy to take to smuggling, by-the-by?’

‘God knows! You might as well ask what possessed Eustacie to leave the Court at midnight to become a governess. They should deal extremely together if ever they can be married.’ He rose. ‘I must go back and do what I can to avert suspicion. Somehow or other we must find this panel Ludovic speaks of before he can thrust his head into a noose.’

Miss Thane gave a discreet cough. ‘Do you – er – place much dependence on the panel, Sir Tristram?’

‘No, very little, but I place every dependence upon Ludovic’s breaking into the Dower House in search of it,’ he replied frankly. ‘For the moment we have him tied by the heels, but that won’t be long, if I know him. They are tough stock, the Lavenhams.’ He walked to the table and picked up his hat and riding-whip. ‘I’ll take my leave now. I fancy we have fobbed off the riding-officer, but there may be others. If you should want me, send Clem over to the Court with a message, and I’ll come.’

She nodded. ‘Meanwhile, is Ludovic in danger, do you think?’

‘Not at Nye’s hands, but if information were lodged against him at Bow Street by anyone suspecting his presence here, yes, in great danger.’

‘And at his cousin’s hands?’

He met her questioning look thoughtfully, and after a moment said: ‘I may be wrong, but I believe so. There is a good deal at stake.’ He tapped his riding-whip against his top-boot. ‘It all turns on the talisman ring,’ he said seriously. ‘Whoever has that is the man who shot Plunkett. I must cultivate a more intimate acquaintance with the Beau.’

He took his leave of her and went out, calling for his horse to be brought round. Miss Thane saw him ride away and went slowly back to her patient.

Had it been possible to have sent for a surgeon to attend Ludovic, cupping would certainly have been prescribed. Miss Thane was a little anxious lest serious fever should set in, but both Shield and the landlord maintained that Ludovic had a strong enough constitution to weather worse things than a mere wound in his shoulder, and after a couple of days she was bound to acknowledge that they were right. The wound began to heal just as it should, and the patient announced his intention of leaving his sick-bed. This perilous resolve was frustrated by Shield, who, though he visited the Red Lion every day, omitted to bring with him the raiment he had promised to procure from Ludovic’s abandoned wardrobe at the Court.

While Ludovic lay in the back bedchamber, either playing piquet with his cousin or evolving plans for the recovery of his ring, Sir Hugh Thane continued to occupy one of the front rooms. His cold really had been a great deal worse on the morning of Shield’s first visit, and once having gained a hold on the unfortunate baronet, it ran the whole gamut of sore throat, thick head, watering eyes, loss of taste, and ended up with a cough on the chest which Sarah, with unwonted solicitude, declared to be bad enough to lead (if great care were not taken) to an inflammation of the lungs.

It was not, therefore, in the least difficult to persuade Sir Hugh to keep to his room. His only complaint was that he was without his valet, this indispensable person having gone to London in advance of his master with the major part of the baggage and Sarah’s abigail. It took all Sarah’s ingenuity to think out enough plausible reasons for not summoning Satchell to his master’s sick-bed. Satchell had been in Sir Hugh’s employment for some years, but Miss Thane did not feel that he could be trusted with the secret of Ludovic’s presence at the Red Lion. Luckily Clem proved himself a deft attendant, and beyond remarking two or three times a day that he wished he had Satchell with him, Sir Hugh made no complaint. He accepted Sarah’s story of the heiress fleeing from a distasteful marriage. It was doubtful whether the original tale of Ludovic’s misfortunes occupied any place in his erratic memory, but he did once ask his sister whether she had not mentioned having met a smuggler. She admitted it, but said that he had left the inn.

‘Oh!’ said Sir Hugh. ‘A pity. If you should see him again, you might let me know.’

What Sir Tristram Shield told Beau Lavenham the ladies did not know, but it brought him over to Hand Cross within two days. He came in his elegant chaise, a graceful affair slung on swan-neck perches, and upholstered with squabs of pale blue. He was ushered into the parlour, where Miss Thane and Eustacie were sitting, early one afternoon, and was greeted by his cousin with a baleful stare.