The Talisman Ring (23 page)

The butler, seeing that a mill was in progress, set down the branch of candles on the table, and hurried, portly but powerful, to join the fray. Gregg called out: ‘That’s not the man! The other’s here, behind the panelling! This one makes no odds!’

‘This one’s good enough for me!’ said the groom between his teeth.

It was at this moment that Sir Tristram, mounted on Clem’s horse, reached the wicket-gate at the back of the garden. He had heard the pistol-shots as he rode across the park, and had spurred his horse to a gallop. He pulled it up, snorting and trembling, flung himself out of the saddle, and setting his hand on the wicket-gate, vaulted over, and went swiftly round the house to the library window.

An amazing sight met his eyes. Of Ludovic there was no sign, but three other men, apparently inextricably entangled, swayed and struggled over the floor, while Beau Lavenham’s prim valet hovered about the group, saying: ‘Not that one! I want the other!’

Sir Tristram stood for a moment, considering. Then he drew a long-barrelled pistol from his pocket, and with deliberate action cocked it and took careful aim. There was a flash, and a deafening report, and the branch of candles on the table crashed to the ground, plunging the room into darkness.

Sir Tristram, entering the library through the window, heard the valet shriek: ‘My God, he must have got out! No one else could have fired that shot!’

‘Oh, could they not?’ murmured Sir Tristram, with a certain grim satisfaction.

Half in and half out of the window, his form was silhouetted for a moment against the moonlit sky. The valet gave a shout of warning, and Sir Tristram, coolly taking note of his position from the sound of his voice, strode forward. The valet met him bravely enough, launching himself upon the dimly-seen figure, but he was no match for Sir Tristram, who evaded his clutch, and threw in a body-hit which almost doubled him up. Before he could recover from it Sir Tristram found him again, and dropped him from a terrific right to the jaw. He crashed to the ground and lay still, and Sir Tristram, his eyes growing accustomed to the darkness, turned his attention to Bundy’s captors. For a few seconds, there was some wild fighting. The groom, leaving Bundy to the butler, tried to grapple with Shield, was thrown off, and rattled in again as game as a pebble. There was no room for science; hits went glaringly abroad, furniture was sent flying, and the confused bout ended in Shield throwing his opponent in a swinging fall.

Bundy, who had very soon accounted for the butler, turned to assist his unknown supporter, but found it unnecessary. He was thrust towards the window, and scrambled through it just as the groom struggled to his feet again. Sir Tristram followed him fast, and two minutes later they confronted one another on the park side of the wicket-gate, both of them panting for breath, the knuckles of Shield’s right hand bleeding slightly and Bundy’s left eye rapidly turning from red to purple.

‘Dang me if I know who you may be!’ said Bundy, breathing heavily. ‘But I’m tedious glad to meet a cove so uncommon ready to sport his canvas, that I will say!’

‘You may not know me,’ said Shield wrathfully, ‘but I know you, you muddling, addle-pated jackass! Where’s Mr Ludovic?’

Bundy, rather pleased than otherwise by this form of address, said mildly: ‘What might you be up in the bows for, master? I misdoubt I don’t know what you’m talking about.’

‘You damned fool, I’m his cousin! Where is he?’

Bundy stared at him, a slow smile dawning on his swollen countenance. ‘His cautious cousin!’ he said. ‘If he hadn’t misled me I should have guessed it, surelye, for by the way you talk you might be the old lord himself! Lamentable cautious you be! Oh, l-a-amentable!’

‘For two pins I’d give you into custody for a dangerous law-breaker!’ said Shield savagely. ‘Will you answer me, or do I choke it out of you? Where’s my cousin?’

‘Now don’t go wasting time having a set-to with me!’ begged Mr Bundy ‘I don’t say I wouldn’t like a bout with you, but it ain’t the time for it. Mr Ludovic’s got himself into that priest’s hole he was so just about crazy to find.’

‘In the priest’s hole? Then why the devil didn’t he come out when I shot the candles over?’

‘Happen it ain’t so easy to get out as what it is to get in,’ suggested Bundy. ‘What’s more, the cat’s properly in the cream-pot now, for that screeching valet knows where he is, ay, and who he is! He means to watch till his precious master gets home.’

‘He’ll do no watching yet awhile,’ said Sir Tristram. ‘I took very good care to put him to sleep. He’s the only one we have to fear. The butler has never seen my cousin, and I doubt is not in his master’s confidence.’

‘You’m right there,’ corroborated Bundy, ‘he ain’t. But he knows there’s a man in the priest’s hole, because t’other cove told him so.’

‘I can handle him,’ said Shield briefly, and catching his horse’s bridle, set his foot in the stirrup. ‘Stay here, and if I whistle come to the window. I may need you to show me where to find the catch that opens the panel.’ He swung himself into the saddle as he spoke, wheeled the horse, and cantered off towards the gap in the hedge through which Ludovic and Bundy had entered the park.

Mr Bundy, tenderly feeling his contused eye, was shaken by inward mirth for the second time that evening. ‘Lamentable cautious!’ he repeated. ‘Oh ay, l-a-amentable!’

Sir Tristram, breaking through on to the road, turned towards the Dower House, and rode up the neat drive at a canter. Dismounting, he not only pulled the iron bell violently, but also hammered an imperative summons with the knocker on the front door.

In a few minutes the door was cautiously opened on the chain, and the butler, looking pale and shaken, and with a black eye almost equal to Bundy’s, peered out.

‘What the devil’s amiss?’ demanded Sir Tristram. ‘Don’t keep me standing here! Open the door!’

‘Oh, it’s you, sir!’ gasped the butler, much relieved, and making haste to unfasten the chain.

‘Of course it’s I!’ said Sir Tristram, pushing his way past him into the hall. ‘I was on my way home from Hand Cross when I heard unmistakable pistol-shots coming from here. What’s the meaning of it? What are you doing up at this hour?’

‘I’m – I’m very glad you’ve come, sir,’ said the butler, wiping his face. ‘Very glad indeed, sir. I’m so shook up I scarce know what I’m about. It was Gregg’s doing, sir. No, not precisely that neither, but it was Gregg as had his suspicions there was a robbery planned for to-night. He was quite right, sir: we’ve had house-breakers in, and one of them’s hidden in some priest’s hole I never heard of till now. I’ve never been so used in all my life, sir, never!’

‘Priest’s hole! What priest’s hole?’ said Shield. ‘How many house-breakers were there? Have you caught any of them?’

‘No, sir, and there’s Gregg laying like one dead. There was a great many of them. We did what we could, but the candlestick was shot over, and in the dark they got away. It was the one in the panelling Gregg set such store by catching, so I’ve left one of the stable-lads there to keep watch. In the library, sir.’

‘It seems to me you have conducted yourselves like a set of idiots!’ said Sir Tristram angrily, and walked into the library.

The candelabra had been picked up from the wreckage on the floor, and the candles, most of them broken off short by their fall, had been relit. The valet’s inanimate form was stretched on a couch, and the young groom, looking bruised and dishevelled but still remarkably pugnacious, was standing in the middle of the room, his serious grey eyes fixed on the wainscoting. He touched his forelock to Sir Tristram, but did not move from his commanding position.

Shield went over to look at the valet, who was breathing stertorously. ‘Knocked out,’ he said. ‘You’d better carry him up to his bed. Where’s this precious panel you talk of?’

‘It’s here, sir,’ answered the groom. ‘I’m a-watching of it. Only let the cove come out, that’s all I ask!’

‘I’ll keep an eye on that,’ replied Sir Tristram. ‘You take this fellow’s legs, and help Jenkyns carry him up to his room. Get water and vinegar, and see what you can do to bring him round. Gently, now!’

Under his authoritative instructions the groom and the butler lifted Gregg from the couch, and bore him tenderly from the room. No sooner had they started to mount the stairs than Sir Tristram closed the library door and called softly: ‘Ludovic! All’s clear: come out!’

‘Happen he’s suffocated inside that hole,’ remarked Mr Bundy’s fatalistic voice from the window.

‘Nonsense, there must be enough air! Where’s the catch that opens the panel?’

Bundy, leaning his head and shoulders in at the window, indicated the portion of the frieze where it might be found. Shield ran his hands over the carving, presently found the device Ludovic had twisted, and turned it. The panel slid back once more, and Shield, picking up the candelabra, went to it, saying sharply: ‘Ludovic! Are you hurt?’

There was no answer. Sir Tristram bent, so that the candles illumined the cavity, and looked in. It was quite empty.

Sir Tristram put the candelabra down, and once more twisted the device, closing the panel. ‘He’s not there,’ he said.

Mr Bundy betrayed no surprise. ‘Ah!’ he remarked, preparing to climb into the room. ‘I’d a notion we shouldn’t get out of this so hem easy. As good be nibbled to death by ducks as set out on one of Master Ludovic’s ventures! Where’s he got to, by your reckoning?’

‘God knows! He must have slipped out after the candles were knocked over. Don’t come in!’

Bundy obediently stayed where he was. ‘Just as you say, master. But it ain’t like him to keep out of a fight.’

‘He’d be no use in a mill with one arm in a sling,’ replied Sir Tristram. ‘Go and see if he has gone back to where you left your horses. If he’s not there he must be somewhere in the house.’

‘Well, I’ll do it,’ said Bundy, ‘but I reckon it’s no manner of use. ’Twouldn’t be natural if young master were to start behaving sensible all on a sudden. You’d be surprised the number of cork-brained scrapes he’s got himself into these two years and more.’

‘You’re wrong; I shouldn’t,’ retorted Sir Tristram.

‘Ah well, he’s a valiant lad, surelye!’ said Bundy, indulgently, and withdrew.

Sir Tristram stayed where he was, and in a very few minutes Mr Bundy once more appeared at the window and said simply: ‘He ain’t there.’

‘Damn the boy!’ said Sir Tristram. ‘Get away from that window! There’s someone coming!’

Bundy promptly ducked beneath the level of the window-sill just as the door opened, and Gregg staggered in, supported by the butler.

His jaw was much swollen and two front teeth were broken. Sir Tristram put his grazed right hand into his pocket. It was evident that although his head might be swimming, the valet still had some of his wits about him, for no sooner did his bleared gaze fall upon Shield than he turned an even more sickly colour, and catching at a chair-back to steady himself, said in a thick voice: ‘It’s like that, is it? But I’ll watch. I have the keys of the doors. If he’s there still he won’t get away!’

The groom came into the room and said in his serious young voice: ‘I’d get him a drop of brandy if I were you, Mr Jenkyns. Regular shook to pieces he is. Now, don’t you fret, Mr Gregg! No one can’t get out while you’ve got them keys.’

The butler, who thought that a drop of brandy would do him good also, said graciously that he believed the lad was right, and went away to fetch the decanter. The groom, coming up behind the valet, said solicitously: ‘You shouldn’t ought to have come down, Mr Gregg,’ and knocked him out with one nicely-delivered blow under the ear. The unfortunate valet collapsed on to the floor, and the groom looking down at him with a smouldering expression of wrath in his pleasant grey eyes, said grimly: ‘Maybe that’ll be a lesson to you, you cribbage-faced tooth-drawer, you!’

Before Sir Tristram, considerably astonished by this unexpected turn events had taken, had time to speak, the butler, hearing the sound of Gregg’s fall, came hurrying back into the room. The groom at once turned to meet him, saying: ‘Blessed if he ain’t swooned off again, Mr Jenkyns! Done to a cow’s thumb, he is!’

‘Carry the poor fellow up to his room again, and this time keep him there!’ commanded Sir Tristram, recovering from his surprise.

‘Just what I was a-going to do, sir,’ said the groom. ‘Now, Mr Jenkyns, if you’ll take his legs we’ll soon have him in his bed!’

‘Ah, I warned him not to get up!’ said the butler, shaking his head.

The groom thrust a hand into Gregg’s pocket and extracted the keys from it. ‘I’m thinking your Honour had best keep these,’ he said, and held them out to Sir Tristram.

The butler, puffing as he bent to raise Gregg, agreed that Sir Tristram was certainly the man to take charge of the keys. For a second time the valet was borne off upstairs. Mr Bundy, reappearing at the window, like a jack-in-the-box, remarked phlegmatically: ‘It looks to me like young master’s met a friend. Who’s that young cove?’

‘I fancy he must be Jim Kettering’s boy,’ replied Sir Tristram.

‘Well, he’s caused us a peck of trouble this night,’ said Bundy, ‘but I’m bound to say he seems an accountable nice lad! Handy with his fives he is.’

At this moment Ludovic strolled into the room. ‘Well, of all the shambles!’ he remarked, glancing around. ‘I’d give a monkey to see the Beau’s face when he comes home! What brought you here, Tristram?’

‘Clem fetched me,’ replied Shield. ‘How did you get out of the priest’s hole, and what the devil have you been doing all this while?’

‘There’s another way out of the hole,’ explained Ludovic. ‘I thought there might be. It leads up to Basil’s bedchamber. It seemed to me I might as well hunt for the ring since you had the affair so well in hand down here. Then I heard Bob Kettering’s voice, and gave him a whistle –’

‘Gave him a whistle?’ echoed Sir Tristram. ‘With the whole household looking for you, you
whistled
?’

‘Yes, why not? I knew he’d recognize it. It’s a signal we used when we were boys. Bob hadn’t a notion he’d been set on to hunt for me. Lord, we used to go bird’s-nesting together!’

‘I thought you’d met a friend,’ nodded Bundy. ‘Did you happen to find that ring o’ yourn?’

Ludovic’s face clouded over. ‘No. Bob helped me to ransack Basil’s room, but it’s not there, and it wasn’t in the priest’s hole.’

‘Did young Kettering chance to remember that he is in Basil’s service?’ inquired Sir Tristram.

Ludovic looked at him. ‘Yes, but this was for
me
, my dear fellow!’

Sir Tristram smiled faintly. ‘I suppose he is as shameless as you are. Do you feel that you have done enough damage for one night, or is there anything else you’d care to set your hand to before you go?’

‘Damage!’ said Ludovic. ‘If that don’t beat everything! Who smashed all this furniture, I should like to know?
I
didn’t!’

The groom came back into the library as he spoke, and said urgently: ‘Mr Ludo, you’d best go while you may. We’ll have Jenkyns down again afore we know where we are!’

‘Have you ever thought to go into the prize-ring, young fellow?’ interrupted Bundy, who was leaning in at the window with his arms folded on the sill, after the fashion of one who was prepared to remain there indefinitely. ‘You’ve a sizeable bunch of fives, and you display none so bad.’

Kettering grinned rather deprecatingly, and said in an apologetic tone to Sir Tristram: ‘I didn’t know it was Mr Ludo, sir. Nor I didn’t know it was you neither. I’m proud, surelye, to have had a turn-up with you, even if it were in the dark.’

‘Well, it’s more than I’d care to do,’ remarked Ludovic. ‘To hell with you, Bob! Don’t keep on pushing me to the window! I’ll go all in good time, but I’ve mislaid that damn lantern.’

Sir Tristram grasped him by his sound shoulder, and propelled him to the window. ‘Take him away, Bundy. Kettering can find the lantern when you’ve gone. If you don’t go you’ll find yourself in difficulties again, and I warn you I won’t get you out of any more tight corners.’

Ludovic, astride the window-sill, said: ‘You don’t call this a tight corner, do you? I was safe as be damned!’

‘Just about, you were,’ growled Bundy, trying to haul him through the window, ‘playing your silly rat-in-the-wall tricks, with a whole pack of gurt fools fighting who was to find you first! And you saying you wasn’t going to take no risks! Now, come out of it, master!’

‘I can’t help it if you disobey my orders!’ said Ludovic indignantly. ‘Didn’t I tell you to save yourself? Instead of doing anything of the kind you blazed off your pistol (and a damned bad shot it must have been) and started a mill, so that my cousin had to make a wreck of the place to bring you off! What’s more, that’s not the sort of thing he likes. He’s a cautious man – aren’t you, Tristram?’

‘I am,’ replied Sir Tristram, thrusting him through the window into Bundy’s arms, ‘but my love of caution isn’t going to stop me knocking you on the head and carrying you away if you don’t go immediately. Wait for me by your horses. I shan’t be many moments.’

He saw Ludovic go off under Bundy’s escort, and turned back to Kettering. His level gaze seemed to measure the younger man. He said: ‘I take it you can keep your mouth shut?’

The groom nodded. ‘Ay, sir, I can that. Me to help trap Mr Ludo! Begging your pardon, sir, but it do fair rile me to think of it!’

‘Well, if you get turned off for this night’s work come to me,’ said Sir Tristram. ‘Now where’s that butler?’ He went out into the hall, and called to Jenkyns, who presently came hurrying down the stairs. ‘Here are your keys,’ said Sir Tristram, holding them out to him. ‘Now let me out!’

The butler took the keys, but said in a blank voice: ‘Are – are you going now, sir?’

‘Certainly, I am going,’ replied Shield, with one of his coldest glances. ‘Do you imagine that I propose to remain here all night to keep watch for a house-breaker who, if he ever entered the priest’s hole (which I take leave to doubt), must have escaped half an hour ago?’

‘No, sir. Oh no, sir!’ said the butler very chap-fallen.

‘You are, for once, quite right,’ said Shield.

Five minutes later he joined Ludovic in the park and dismounted from Clem’s horse. Clem had by this time reached the scene of activity, having walked from the Court, and Ludovic was already in the saddle, looking rather haggard and spent. Sir Tristram gave his bridle into Clem’s hand, and looked shrewdly up at his young cousin. ‘Yes, you are feeling your wound a trifle,’ he remarked. ‘I am not in the least surprised, and not particularly sorry. If you had your deserts for this night’s folly you would be in gaol.’

‘Oh, my wound’s well enough!’ replied Ludovic. ‘Do you want me to say that you were in the right, and there was a trap? Well, then, you were damnably right, even to saying that I’d not find my ring. I haven’t found it. What else?’

‘Nothing else. Go back to Hand Cross, and for God’s sake stay there!’

Ludovic let the reins go, and stretched down his hand. ‘Oh curse you, Tristram, I am sorry, and you’re a devilish good fellow to embroil yourself in my crazy affairs! Thank you for coming to-night!’

Shield gripped his hand for a moment, and said in a softer voice: ‘Don’t be a fool! We will find your ring, Ludovic. I’ll see you to-morrow.’

‘I’ll try and keep out of trouble till then,’ promised Ludovic. He gathered the reins up again, and the irrepressible twinkle crept back into his eyes. ‘By the way, my compliments: a nice shot!’

Shield laughed at that. ‘Was it not? Gregg thought you must have fired it.’

‘Extravagant praise, Tristram: you shouldn’t listen to flattery,’ retorted Ludovic, grinning.

When the adventurers got back to the Red Lion they found both Nye and Miss Thane awaiting them by the coffee-room fire. Relief at seeing Ludovic safe and sound had its natural effect on Nye, and instead of greeting his graceless charge with solicitude he rated him with such severity that Bundy was moved to expostulate. ‘Adone-do, Joe!’ he said. ‘There’s no harm done, and we’ve had a nice little mill. Just you take a look at my eye.’

‘I am looking at it,’ replied Nye. ‘If I ever meet the man as gave it you I’ll shake him by the hand! I wish he’d blacked t’other as well.’

‘You’d have kissed him if he had,’ remarked Ludovic. ‘It was Bob Kettering.’

‘Bob Kettering!’ ejaculated the landlord. ‘Now, what have you been about, sir? If I ever met such a plaguey – where’s Sir Tristram?’

‘Gone home to bed,’ yawned Ludovic. ‘I dare say he’ll be glad to get there; he’s had a full evening, thanks to you, Sally.’

Mr Bundy nodded slowly at Nye. ‘It would do your heart good to see that cove in a turn-up, Joe. Displays to remarkable advantage, he does. Up to all the tricks.’

‘Many’s the time I’ve sparred with Sir Tristram,’ replied Nye crushingly. ‘I don’t doubt he’d be a match for the lot of you, but what I do say, and hold to, is that he hit the wrong man.’

‘I don’t know when I’ve took such a fancy to a cove,’ said Bundy, disregarding this significant remark. ‘He gave the valet one in the bone-box, and a tedious wisty castor to the jaw. What he done to young Kettering I don’t know, but from the sounds of it he threw him a rare cross-buttock.’

At this point Miss Thane interrupted him, demanding to be told the full story of the night’s adventure. It seemed to amuse her, and when Sir Tristram arrived at the Red Lion midway through the following morning, she met him with a pronounced twinkle in her eyes.

He saw it, and a rueful smile stole into his own eyes. He took the hand she held out to him, saying: ‘How do you do? This should be a day of triumph for you.’

She put up her brows. ‘I believe you are quizzing me. Why should it be a day of triumph for me?’

‘My dear ma’am, did you not guess that at last you have succeeded in making me feel grateful towards you?’

‘Odious creature!’ said Miss Thane, without heat. ‘I had a mind to go myself to rescue Ludovic.’

‘You would have been very much in the way, I assure you. How is the boy this morning?’

‘I fancy he has taken no harm. He is a little in the dumps. Tell me, have you any real hope of finding his ring?’

‘I have every hope of clearing his name,’ he replied. ‘His adventure last night will at least serve to convince the Beau that we mean to bring him to book. While no danger threatened, Basil was easily able to behave with calmness and good sense, but I do not think he is of the stuff to remain cool in the face of a very pressing danger.’

‘You think he may betray himself. But one must not forget that last night’s affair must surely have betrayed
you
.’

‘All the better,’ said Shield. ‘The Beau is a little afraid of me.’

‘I imagine he might well be. But he cannot be so stupid that he will not realize what your true purpose in his house must have been.’

‘Certainly,’ he agreed, ‘but his situation is awkward. He will hardly admit to having laid a trap for the man whose heir he is. He will be obliged to pretend to accept my story. Where is Ludovic, by the way?’

‘Eustacie has persuaded him to stay in bed this morning. Five miles to the Dower House, and five miles back again, with an adventure between, was a trifle too much for one little better than an invalid. Do you care to go up? You will find Hugh with him, I think.’