The Talisman Ring (18 page)

Eustacie, pale with alarm, gripped the edge of the table, and said: ‘But you must not! you shall not!’

Sir Hugh cast an indulgent glance towards her. ‘They won’t ask me,’ he said simply.

It seemed improbable that the Runners’ zeal would lead them to haunt the vicinity of the Red Lion after dark, so as soon as the windows were bolted and the blinds drawn, Ludovic emerged from his underground retreat and joined the rest of the party in the parlour. Some expectation was felt of receiving a visit from Sir Tristram, and at a little after eight o’clock he walked into the inn, having taken advantage of the moonlight to drive over from the Court.

He was met by demands to know whether he had met any men lurking outside the house. He had not, but the anxious question at once aroused his suspicions, and he asked what had been going forward during his absence. When he heard that information had been laid against Ludovic in Bow Street, he did not say anything at all for some moments, thus disappointing Eustacie, who had hoped to startle him into an expression at least of surprise. When he did speak, it was not in admiration of the stratagem which had hoodwinked the Runners, but in a serious voice, and with his eyes on his cousin. ‘If you won’t go to Holland, will you at least leave Sussex, Ludovic?’

‘Devil a bit! There’s no danger. The Runners think they’re on a wild-goose chase.’ He observed a tightening of Shield’s lips, a certain considering look in the eyes which rested on himself, and sat up with a jerk. ‘Tristram, if you try to kidnap me, I swear I’ll shoot you!’

Sir Tristram laughed at that, but shook his head. ‘I won’t promise not to kidnap you, but I will promise to get your gun first.’

‘It never leaves me,’ grinned Ludovic.

‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ retorted Shield. ‘If there’s an attempt made on you, you’ll shoot, and there’ll be a charge of real murder to fight.’

Eustacie said sharply: ‘An attempt on him? Do you mean on his life?’

‘Yes, I do,’ replied Shield. ‘We may not be certain that the Beau killed Plunkett, but we can have no doubt that it is he who has brought the Runners down on Ludovic now. He would like the Law to remove Ludovic from his path, but if the Runners fail, I think he may make the attempt himself. Have you considered how easy of access this place is?’

Eustacie cast an involuntary glance over his shoulder. ‘N-no,’ she faltered. ‘Is – is it easy? Perhaps you had better go after all, Ludovic. I do not want you to be killed!’

‘Ah, fiddlesticks,’ Ludovic said impatiently. ‘The Beau don’t even know I’m here. He may suspect it, but there’s not a soul has seen me outside ourselves, and Nye, and Clem.’

‘You are forgetting the Excise officer,’ interrupted his cousin.

‘What odds? I’ll admit it was he who put the notion into Basil’s head, but it’s no more than a notion, and when Basil hears the Runners found no trace of me, he’ll think himself mistaken, after all. Nye’s of the opinion they don’t set much store by the information laid.’

‘It’s plain they set very little store by it, since they didn’t send their best men down to investigate it, but they are likely to take a more serious view of the matter when they discover that Eustacie has no abigail with her.’

‘Ludovic,’ said Miss Thane in a meditative voice, ‘thinks it would be a good thing to capture the Runners and bestow them in the cellar.’

‘A famous plan!’ said Sir Tristram sardonically.

‘Yes, but me, I do not agree,’ said Eustacie, frowning.

‘You surprise me.’

‘Just a moment!’ interposed Thane, who all the time had been sitting at a small table by the fire, casting his dice, right hand against left. ‘You can’t imprison law officers in the cellar. For one thing, it’s a criminal offence, and for another there’s a deal of precious liquor in the cellar. I don’t like that red-nosed fellow; I think he ought to be got rid of. What’s more, I’ve had a score against Sampson Wright for a long time, and I don’t mind putting a spoke in his wheel. But I won’t have his Runners kidnapped.’

‘Well!’ said his sister. ‘I think you are most unreasonable, Hugh, I must say. After all, it was you who threw a boot at the Runner.’

‘That’s a very different thing,’ replied Thane. ‘There’s nothing to be said against throwing a boot at a fellow who comes nosing into one’s room. But kidnapping’s another matter.’

‘Oh well!’ said Ludovic airily. ‘Ten to one we shan’t see any more of them. I dare say they will go back to London on to-morrow’s coach.’

Had Mr Stubbs followed his own inclination, he would not have waited for the morrow’s coach but would have boarded the night mail, deeming a night on the road preferable to one spent at the ale-house. But his companion, a grave person with a painstaking sense of duty and an earnest desire to prove himself worthy of his office, held to the opinion that their search had not been sufficiently thorough.

‘What we’ve done is, we’ve Lulled them,’ he said, slowly nodding his head. ‘Properly Lulled them, that’s what we’ve done. We didn’t find no trace of any desperate criminal, and they know we didn’t find no trace. So what happens?’

‘Well, what does happen?’ said Mr Stubbs, lowering his tankard.

‘They’re Lulled, that’s what happens.’

‘You said that before,’ remarked Mr Stubbs, with slight asperity.

‘Ah, but what do we do now we’ve got them Lulled?’ demanded his companion. ‘We makes a Pounce, and takes this Ludovic Lavenham unawares.’

Mr Stubbs turned it over in his mind. ‘I won’t say you’re wrong, William,’ he pronounced cautiously. ‘Nor I’ve no objection, provided we
do
take him unawares. It’s a queer thing, but I can’t get out of my mind what that French hussy told me about Loodervic being so handy with his pops. It makes things awkward. I won’t say no more than that. Awkward.’

‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ said the zealous Mr Peabody, ‘and the conclusion I’ve come to, Jerry, is that she made it up out of her head just for to scare you.’

For a moment Mr Stubbs pondered this. Then he said somewhat severely: ‘She should ha’ known better.’ He took a pull at his ale, and wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, added: ‘Mind you, I’ve had my doubts about it all along. Sixteen candles is what she said. Now, I put it to you, William, is that a likely story?’

Mr Peabody gave it as his opinion that it was a most unlikely story. They discussed the question for a little while, Mr Stubbs contending that had Eustacie spoken of six candles, he might have believed her, and Mr Peabody, a more practical man, distrusting the entire story on the grounds that there was no sense in firing at candles at all.

They had, by these divergent paths, arrived at the same comfortable conclusion when their privacy was disturbed by the arrival of a visitor, who turned to be none other than Gregg, Beau Lavenham’s discreet valet. He came into the tap-room with a prim little bow and a tight-lipped smile, and ordered a brandy with hot water and lemon. Until this had been procured for him, he stayed by the bar, only glancing once out of the corners of his eyes at the two Runners snugly ensconced in the inglenook by the fire. When his glass had been handed to him, however, he walked over to the fireplace drew up a chair close to a high-backed settle, and bade the Runners good evening.

They returned this civil greeting without showing any marked degree of cordiality. They were aware that he was the man to whom they were indebted for what information they had, but although they would be grateful for any further information that he might be able to give them, they had a prejudice against informers as a race, and saw no reason to make an exception in this one’s favour. Accordingly, when Gregg leaned forward in his chair, and said in a keen but subdued voice: ‘Well?’ it was in chilly accents that Mr Stubbs replied: ‘It ain’t well. We’ve been fetched down for nothing, that’s what.’

‘So you didn’t find him!’ said Gregg, frowning.

‘Nor him, nor any sign of him. Which I will say didn’t surprise me.’

‘But he was there, for all that,’ said Gregg, tapping his front teeth with one finger-nail. ‘I am sure he was there. You looked everywhere?’

‘There now!’ said Mr Stubbs, with scathing irony. ‘If you haven’t put me in mind of it! Dang me, if I didn’t forget to look inside of one of the coal-boxes!’

Gregg, perceiving that he had offended, smiled and made a deprecating movement with his hand. ‘It is an old house, and full of nooks and hidden cupboards. You are sure – I expect you are sure – that he had no opportunity to seek safety in the cellars?’

‘Yes,’ replied Mr Stubbs. ‘I am sure. By the time I was in by the front door, Mr Peabody here was in by the back. And not so much of a sniff of any criminal did we get. What’s more, we had very nice treatment from the landlord, very nice indeed we had. There are plenty as would have behaved different, but Mr Nye, he made no bones at all. “It’s not what I like,” he says, “but I don’t blame you, nor I’m not one to stand in the way of an officer what is only executing his dooty.”’

The valet’s light eyes flickered from one stolid face to the other. ‘He had him hidden. When I went he was not hidden. The tapster would not let me set foot outside the tap-room. They did not wish me to go anywhere inside the house. It was most marked.’

‘That don’t surprise me,’ said Mr Stubbs. He put his empty tankard down and regarded the valet narrowly. ‘What’s the interest in this Loodervic Lavenham? What makes you so unaccountable anxious to have him laid by the heels?’

The valet folded his lips closely, but after a moment replied: ‘Well, you see, Mr Stubbs, that is my business. I have my reasons.’

The Runner eyed him with growing disfavour. ‘Lookee!’ he pronounced. ‘When I go ferreting for news of a desprit criminal, that’s dooty. When you does the same thing, Mr Gregg, it looks to me uncommon like Spitefulness, and Spitefulness is what I don’t hold with, and never shall.’

‘That’s right,’ agreed Mr Peabody.

The valet smiled again, but unpleasantly, and said in his silky way: ‘Why, you may say so if you choose, Mr Stubbs. And I hope I may ask whom you saw at the Red Lion?’

‘I didn’t see no desprit criminal,’ answered Mr Stubbs. ‘It’s my belief there ain’t no desprit criminal. Is it likely the place would house such with a Justice of the Peace putting up there?’

‘You went into the little back bedchamber? They let you go there?’

‘I went into two back bedchambers, one which is the landlord’s and the other which the young French lady’s maid has.’

The valet’s eyelids were quickly raised. ‘Her maid? Did you see her maid?’

‘Ay, poor wench, I saw her right enough, and I heard Miss a-scolding of her all for breaking a bottle.’

‘What was she like?’ demanded Gregg, leaning forward again.

Mr Stubbs looked at him with a shade of uneasiness in his eyes. ‘Why, I didn’t get much sight of her face, she being crying into her shawl fit to break her heart.’

‘Ah, so you didn’t see her face!’ said Gregg. ‘Perhaps she was a tall girl – a very tall girl?’

Mr Stubbs had been engaged in filling a long clay pipe, but he laid it down, and said slowly: ‘Ay, she was a rare, strapping wench. She had yaller hair, by what I could see of it.’

Gregg sat back in his chair and set his finger-tips together, and over them surveyed the Runners with a peculiar glint in his eyes. ‘So that was it!’ he said. ‘Well, well!’

‘What do you mean, “that was it”?’ said Mr Stubbs.

‘Only that you have seen Ludovic Lavenham; yes, and let him slip through your fingers too, I dare say.’

Mr Peabody, observing his colleague’s evident discomfiture, came gallantly to the rescue. ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ he said. ‘What we’ve done is, we’ve Lulled him – if so be it is him, which we ain’t proved yet. What we have to do now is to make a Pounce, and that, Mr Gregg, is what we decided to do without any help of yourn.’

‘You had better have made your pounce when you had him under your hand,’ said the valet dryly. ‘It is said in these parts that there are cellars below the ones you may see at the Red Lion; cellars which only Nye and Clem know the way into.’

‘If that’s true, we shall find them,’ said Mr. Stubbs, with resolution.

‘I hope you may,’ responded Gregg. ‘But take my advice, and go armed! The man you are after is indeed desperate, and I fancy he will not be without his pistols.’

The Runners exchanged glances. ‘I did hear tell of him being handy with his pops,’ remarked Mr Stubbs in a casual voice.

‘They say he never misses,’ said Gregg, lowering his eyes demurely. ‘If I were in your shoes, I should think it as well to shoot him before he could shoot me.’

‘Yes, I dare say,’ said Mr Stubbs bitterly, ‘but we ain’t allowed to go a-shooting of coves.’

‘But if you told – both of you – how he shot first, and would have escaped, it would surely be overlooked?’ suggested Gregg gently.

It was left to Mr Peabody to sum up the situation, but this he did not do until the valet had gone. Then he said to his troubled companion: ‘You know what this looks like to me, Jerry? It looks to me like as if there’s someone unaccountable anxious to have this Ludovic Lavenham put away quick – ah, and quiet, too!’

Mr Stubbs shook his head gloomily, and after a long silence, said: ‘We got to do our dooty, William.’

Their duty took them up the road to the Red Lion very early next morning. Their plan of surprising the household was frustrated by Nye, who had taken the precaution of setting Clem on the watch. By the time the Runners had reached the inn Ludovic had been roused, and haled, protesting, to the cellar, and his room swept bare of all trace of him. The Runners were not gratified by the least sign of surprise in Nye, who greeted them with no more than the natural annoyance of a landlord knocked up at an unseasonable hour. In the tap-room Clem was prosaically engaged in scrubbing the floor; he turned a blank, inquiring face towards the Runners, and with the stolid air of one who has work to do, returned to his task.

‘Well, and what might you be wanting at this hour of the morning?’ asked Nye testily.

‘What we want is a word with that abigail we saw yesterday,’ said Mr Stubbs.

‘Do you mean Mamzelle’s Lucy?’ said Nye.

‘Ah, that’s the one I mean,’ nodded Mr Stubbs.