The Talisman Ring (22 page)

‘Where’s Clem?’ demanded Miss Thane under her breath.

He shook his head. ‘No, no, Clem was of my own mind over this. You must have been mistook, ma’am. He wouldn’t set out to walk that distance, and he can’t saddle a horse with his arm in a sling.’ He broke off suddenly, and his eyes narrowed. ‘By God, you’re right, ma’am!’ he said. ‘He must have seen Abel! That accounts for him being so uncommon cheerful, drat the boy! Get you back to your room if you please, ma’am. I’ll have Clem saddle me a horse while I get some clothes on, and be off after them.’

Miss Thane had been thinking. ‘Wait, Nye, I’ve a better notion. Send Clem to inform Sir Tristram. You’ll not catch that wretched boy in time to stop him entering the Dower House, and once he has stepped into whatever trap may have been set for him, Sir Tristram’s perhaps the one person who might be able to get him out of it.’

Nye paused. After a moment’s reflection he said reluctantly: ‘Ay, that’s true enough. And Clem’s a smaller man than what I am, and will ride faster. It’s you who have the head, ma’am.’

While Clem was flinging on his clothes, and Nye was in the stable saddling a horse, and Miss Thane was sitting on the edge of her bed wondering whether there was anything more she could do to avert disaster from Ludovic, the object of all this confusion was striding down the lane leading to Warninglid, quite oblivious of the possibility of pursuit. The moon, hidden from time to time behind drifting clouds, gave enough light to enable him to see his way, and in a little while showed him two horses, drawn up in the lee of a hedge of hornbeam.

Abel greeted him with a grunt, and offered him a flask produced from the depths of his pocket. ‘Play off your dust afore we start,’ he recommended.

‘No, I must keep a clear head,’ replied Ludovic. ‘So must you, what’s more. I don’t want you disguised.’

‘You’ve never seen me with the malt above the water – not to notice,’ said Mr Bundy, refreshing himself with a nip.

‘I’ve seen you as drunk as a wheelbarrow,’ retorted Ludovic, taking the flask away from him and putting it in his own pocket. ‘It makes you devilish quick on the pull, and taking the fat with the lean, I think we won’t do any shooting unless we’re forced. My cautious cousin’s against it, and I admit there’s a deal in what he says. I don’t want to be saddled with any more corpses. Give me a leg-up, will you?’

Bundy complied with this request, and asked what he was to do if it came to a fight.

‘Use your fists,’ answered Ludovic. ‘Mind you, I dare say there’ll be no fighting.’

‘Just as well if there ain’t,’ said Bundy, hoisting himself into the saddle. ‘A hem set-out it will be if you get yourself into a mill with only one arm! I doubt I done wrong to come with you.’

This was said not in any complaining spirit but as a mere statement of fact. Ludovic, accustomed to Mr Bundy’s processes of thought, agreed, and said that there was a strong likelihood of them ending the night’s adventure in the County Gaol.

They set off down the lane at an easy trot, and since Clem had chosen the shorter but rougher way to the Court that led through the Forest, they were not disturbed by any sound of pursuit. As they rode, Ludovic favoured his companion with a brief explanation of what they were to do at the Dower House. Bundy listened in silence, and at the end merely expressed his regret that he was not to be given an opportunity of darkening Beau Lavenham’s daylights for him. His animosity towards the Beau seemed to be groundless but profound, his main grudge against him being that he stood a good chance of stepping into Sylvester’s shoes. When he spoke of Sylvester he betrayed something as nearly approaching enthusiasm as it was possible for a man of his phlegmatic temperament to feel. ‘He was a rare one, the old lord,’ he said simply.

When they arrived within sight of the Dower House they reined in their horses and dismounted. The house stood a little way back from the lane, in a piece of ground cut like a wedge out of the park belonging to the Court. After a brief consultation they led their horses through a gap in the straggling hedge, and tethered them inside the park. Bundy set about the task of lighting the lantern he had brought while Ludovic went off to reconnoitre.

When he had circumnavigated the house he returned to Bundy’s side to find that that worthy, having covered his lantern with a muffler, was seated placidly beside it on a tree-stump.

‘There’s no light showing in any window that I can see,’ reported Ludovic. ‘Now, the Beau told my cautious cousin that the bolt was off one of the library casements, and as that’s the room I fancy I want, we’ll risk a trap and try to get in by that window.’ He drew the pistol from his boot as he spoke, and said: ‘If there is a trap this is our best safeguard. In these parts they believe I can’t miss, and it makes ’em wary of tackling me. If they mean to capture me they’ll try to take me unawares.’

‘Well,’ said Bundy judicially, ‘I’m bound to say I disremember when I’ve seen you miss your target.’

Ludovic gave a short laugh. ‘I missed an owl once, the fool that I was!’

Bundy looked at him with disapproval. ‘What would you want to go shooting owls for, anyways?’

‘Drunk,’ said Ludovic briefly. ‘Now, get this into your head, Abel! If we walk into a trap it’s one laid for me, not for you, and I’ll save myself. Get yourself out of it, and don’t trouble your head over me. All I want you to do is to help me to get into the house.’

Mr Bundy arose from the tree-stump and picked up the lantern, vouchsafing no reply.

‘Understand?’ said Ludovic, a ring of authority in his voice.

‘Oh ay!’ said Bundy. ‘But there! When I see trouble I’m tedious likely to get to in-fighting with it. If you take my advice, which I never known you do yet, you’ll turn up that coat-collar of yourn, and pull your hat over your face. You don’t want no one to reckernize you.’

Ludovic followed this sage counsel, but remarked that he had little expectation of being known. ‘The valet would know me, if he’s there, but the butler is since my time.’

‘Maybe,’ said Bundy. ‘But I’ll tell you to your head what I’ve said a-many times behind your back, Master Ludovic, which is that you’ve got a bowsprit that’s the spit and image of the old lord’s.’

‘Damn this curst family nose!’ said Ludovic. ‘It’ll ruin me yet.’

‘That’s what I’m thinking,’ agreed Bundy. ‘However, there’s no sense in dwelling on what can’t be helped. If you’re ready to start milling this ken we’d best start without wasting any more time. And if you keep in mind that though maybe there ain’t enough light for anyone to know you by, there’s enough and to spare to make you a hem easy target for any cove as might be sitting inside the house with a gun, I dare say you’ll come off safe yet.’

‘It’s odds there’s no one there at all,’ returned Ludovic. ‘But you needn’t fear me: I’m taking no risks to-night.’

This remark seemed to tickle Bundy’s sense of humour. He went off without warning into a paroxysm of silent laughter, which made his eyes water and his whole frame shake like a jelly. Ludovic paid not the least heed to this seizure, but led the way to a wicket-gate at the back of the house, which gave on to the park from the shrubbery.

Traversing the shrubbery they made their way round to the front of the house, taking care not to tread upon the gravel path. Under the tall casement windows there were flowerbeds, in which a few snowdrops thrust up their heads. Ludovic counted the windows, made up his mind which room must be the library, and indicated it to Bundy with a jerk of his head. Bundy stepped across the path on to the flowerbed, and laid his ear to the grass. He could detect no sound within the room, nor any light behind the drawn curtains, and after a few moments of intent listening he put down his muffled lantern and produced a serviceable knife from his pocket. While he worked on the window Ludovic stood beside him, on the look-out for a possible ambush in the garden. His hat cast a deep shadow over his face, but the moonlight caught the silver mountings on his pistol, and made them gleam. The garden was planted with too many trees and shrubs to make it possible for him to be sure that no one was in hiding there, but he could discover no movement in any of the shadows, and was more than ever inclined to discount his cousin Tristram’s forebodings.

A click behind him made him turn his head. Bundy jerked his thumb expressively at one of the windows, and shut his knife. Having forced back the latch he gently prised the window open with his finger-nails. It swung outwards with a slight groan of its hinges. Bundy picked up his lantern in his left hand, unveiled it, and with his right grasped a fold of the velvet curtain, and drew it aside. The muzzle of Ludovic’s gun almost rested on his shoulder, but there was no need for it. The lantern’s golden beam, travelling round the room, revealed no lurking danger. The room was empty, its chairs primly arranged, its grate laid with sticks ready to be kindled when the master should return.

Bundy took a second look round, and then whispered: ‘Will you go in?’

Ludovic nodded, slid the pistol back into his boot and swung a leg over the window-sill.

‘Easy now!’ Bundy muttered, helping him to hoist himself into the room. ‘Wait till I’m with you!’

Ludovic, alighting in the room, said under his breath: ‘Stay where you are: I’m not sure whether it’s this room I want, or another. Give me the lantern!’

Bundy handed it to him, and he directed its beam on to the wainscoting covering the west wall. Bundy waited in untroubled silence while the golden light travelled backwards and forwards over carved capitals, and fluted pilasters, and the rich intricacies of a frieze composed of cartouches and devices.

It came to rest on one section of the frieze, shifted to another, lingered a moment, and returned again to the first. Ludovic moved forward, counting the divisions between the pilasters. At the third from the window-end of the room he stopped, and held the lantern up close to the wall. He drew his left arm painfully from its sling, and raised it, wincing, to fumble with the carving on the frieze. His tongue clicked impatiently at his own helplessness; he returned his arm to the sling, and stepped back to the window. ‘You’ll have to hold the lantern, Abel.’

Bundy climbed into the room and took the lantern, directing its beam not on to the wainscoting but on to the lock of the door. He looked thoughtfully at it, and said: ‘No key.’

Ludovic frowned a little, but replied: ‘It may be lost. Wait!’ He trod softly over the carpet to the door, and stood listening with his ear to the crack. ‘If I don’t find what I want in the priest’s hole we’ll open that door, and take a look round the rest of the house,’ he said. ‘Hold the light so that I may see the frieze. No, more to the right.’ He put up his hand, and grasped one of the carved devices. ‘I think – no, I’m wrong! It’s not the fourth, but the third! Now watch!’

Bundy saw his long fingers twist the device, and simultaneously heard the scroop of a door sliding back. The sudden noise, slight though it was, sounded abnormally loud in the stillness. He swung the lantern round, and saw that between two of the pilasters on the lower tier the panelling had vanished, disclosing a dark cavity.

‘The lantern, man, give me the lantern!’ Ludovic said, and almost snatched it from him.

He reached the priest’s hole in two strides, and as he bent peering into it, Bundy heard a faint sound, and wheeling about saw a thin line of light appear at one end of the room, gradually widening. Someone was stealthily opening the door.

‘Out, sir! Save yourself!’ he hissed, and pulling his pistol out of his pocket prepared to hold all comers at bay until Ludovic was through the window.

Ludovic heard the warning, and quick as a flash, thrust the lantern into the priest’s hole, and swung round. He said clearly: ‘The window, man! Be off!’ and bending till he was nearly double, slipped backwards into the priest’s hole, and pulled the panel to upon himself.

Wavering candlelight illumined the room, a voice shouted: ‘Stand! Stand!’ and Bundy, hidden behind the window-curtains, saw a thin man with a pistol in his hand rush into the room towards the priest’s hole, and claw fruitlessly at the panel, saying: ‘He’s here, he’s here! I saw him!’

The butler, who was standing on the threshold with a branch of candles in his hand, stared at the wainscoting and said: ‘Where?’

‘Here, behind the panel! I saw it close, I tell you! There’s a priest’s hole; we have him trapped!’

The butler looked a good deal astonished and advancing further into the room said: ‘Since you know so much about this house, Mr Gregg, perhaps you know how to get into this priest’s hole you talk of?’

The valet shook his head, biting his nails. ‘No, we were too late. Only the master knows the catch to it. We must keep it covered.’

‘It seems to me that there’s someone else as knows,’ remarked the butler austerely. ‘I’m bound to say that I don’t understand what it is you’re playing at, Mr Gregg, with all this mysterious talk about house-breakers, and setting everyone on to keep watch like you have. Who’s behind the panel!’

Gregg answered evasively: ‘How should I know? But I saw a man disappear into the wall. We must get the Parish Constable up here to take him the instant the master gets back and opens the panel.’

‘I presoom you know what you’re about, Mr Gregg,’ said the butler in frigid tones. ‘If I were to pass an opinion I should say that it was more my place than yours to give orders here in the master’s absence. These goings-on are not at all what I have been accustomed to.’

‘Never mind that!’ said Gregg impatiently. ‘Send one of the stable-hands to fetch the Constable!’

‘Stand where you be!’ growled a voice from the window. ‘Drop the gun! I have you covered, and my pop’s liable to go off unaccountable sudden-like.’

The valet wheeled round, saw Mr Bundy, and jerked up his pistol-hand. The two guns cracked almost as one, but in the uncertain light neither bullet found its mark. The butler gave a startled gasp, and nearly let the candle fall, and through the window scrambled a third man, who flung himself upon Bundy from the rear, panting: ‘Ah,
would
you, then!’

Abel Bundy was not, however, an easy man to overpower. He wrenched himself out of the groom’s hold, and jabbed him scientifically in the face. The groom, a young and enthusiastic man, went staggering back, but recovered, and bored in again.