The Talisman Ring (27 page)

‘I ain’t a thief! I never meant no harm, Mr Nye, I swear I didn’t! I ain’t took a thing that belongs to the big gentleman, nor wouldn’t!’

‘What were you doing in his bedchamber?’ demanded Nye. ‘You’ve no business inside the house, and well you know it! Came creeping in through a window, that’s what you did, and don’t you dare to deny it! There’s the ladder you used for anyone to see. Feeling in the pockets of Sir Hugh’s coats he was, sir, the young vagabond! What’s that you’ve got in your hand? Give it up this instant!’

The boy made a futile attempt to break away, but Nye seized his right arm and gave it a twist that made him cry out and relinquish the object he had been trying to conceal. It was a quizzing-glass belonging to Sir Hugh Thane.

Nye stared at it for a moment, his countenance slowly reddening with wrath. His grip tightened on the stable-boy’s collar. ‘So that’s it, is it?’ he said. ‘You’ll be sorry for this, Sam Barker!’

Sir Tristram, taking the glass from him, interposed in his quiet way: ‘Let him go, Nye. Now, my lad, if you speak the truth no harm shall come to you. Who told you to steal this?’

The boy cowered as far from Nye as he was able, and said: ‘It were Mr Lavenham’s gentleman, your Honour, and ’deed I didn’t know there was any harm! He come asking me if I’d like to earn twenty guineas for myself, all for finding an eyeglass Mr Lavenham mislaid here. It was the big gentleman as had got it, he said, and if I found it, and no one the wiser, there’d be twenty golden guineas for me. It weren’t like stealing, sir! I ain’t a thief!’

‘Oh, you ain’t, eh?’ said Nye. ‘And if Mr Lavenham mislaid his glass what should stop him coming to ask for it open? Don’t tell me you didn’t think there was any harm in it!’

‘It was Mr Lavenham’s eyeglass. Mr Gregg said if I didn’t ask no questions there’d be no trouble for anyone.’

‘There will be a great deal of trouble for you at least if you do not do precisely what I tell you now,’ said Sir Tristram sternly. ‘If you had your deserts you would be handed over to the Constable. But if you keep your mouth shut I will engage for it that Nye will overlook this fault. Understand me, I want no word of what has occurred to-night to come to Gregg’s ears, or to Mr Lavenham’s. If you are questioned you will tell them that you have had no opportunity to search Sir Hugh’s room. Is that clear?’

The stable-boy, thankful to have escaped the retribution he had thought inevitable, assured him that it was quite clear. He stammered out his gratitude, promised eternal good behaviour, and fled.

Nye drew a long breath. ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but I’d a deal rather be rid of the young good-for-nothing. My own lads bribed! What next will we have, I’d like to know?’

Sir Tristram was looking at the quizzing-glass in his hand. He said slowly: ‘So they didn’t find it! I wonder…’ He broke off, and strode suddenly towards the parlour. He was met by demands to know what had happened, and replied briefly: ‘One of Nye’s stable-hands had been bribed to find the Beau’s quizzing-glass. He found this instead.’

‘But that’s mine!’ said Sir Hugh, regarding it fixedly.

‘I know it.’

‘Do you mean to tell me I’ve had my room ransacked again?’ demanded Sir Hugh.

‘No, I think you’ve merely had your pockets turned out. That’s not important.’

‘Not important!’ ejaculated Sir Hugh, considerably incensed. ‘And what if I’ve been robbed? I suppose that’s not important either! Burn it, I never was in such a house in my life! It’s for ever full of a set of rascals broken out of Newgate, and what with masked assassins, and Bow Street Runners, and young Lavenham here taking it into his head to live in the cellar, I don’t know where I am from one minute to the next. What’s more, you’re as bad as the rest of them, Sally!’

‘You haven’t been robbed,’ said Sir Tristram. ‘What I want to discover is why it is so vital to Basil to regain possession of that glass. Thane, where did you put it? For God’s sake try to remember! I suspect it may be of the utmost importance!’

‘It is still in the inn, then!’ Miss Thane said. ‘Hugh, think, I implore you!’

‘Are you talking about the quizzing-glass you all said was Basil’s?’ inquired Ludovic.

Shield turned. ‘What do you mean, Ludovic? Did you not recognize it?’

‘No, I can’t say that I did,’ answered Ludovic. ‘Not that I’m disputing that it’s his, mind you. I dare say he bought it since my time.’

‘That,’ said Sir Tristram, ‘is precisely what I think he did do. It must be found if we have to turn this whole place upside down to do it!’

‘You needn’t do that,’ said Ludovic calmly. ‘Thane put it on the mantelshelf in the coffee-room. I saw him do it.’

Sir Tristram wheeled about, and went quickly back to the coffee-room, and stretching up his arm ran his hand along the high mantelpiece. The quizzing-glass was just where Sir Hugh had left it. Shield held it in his hand, looking at it so oddly that Nye, who was standing beside him, ventured to ask if anything were amiss.

Sir Tristram shook his head, and carried the prize back into the parlour.

‘You have found it!’ exclaimed Eustacie. ‘But why is it important?’

He put her aside, and sitting down at the table, subjected the quizzing-glass to a minute inspection. The others gathered round him, even Sir Hugh betraying a mild interest.

‘Myself I like ’em made slimmer,’ remarked Ludovic. ‘The shaft’s too thick. Clumsy.’

Sir Tristram said dryly: ‘I think there is a reason.’ He had picked up Sir Hugh’s eyeglass, and through its magnifying lens was looking at the heavily-encrusted circlet at the end of the shaft, through which a ribbon was meant to pass. He put Sir Hugh’s glass down and inserted his thumb-nail into a groove on the circlet.

There was a tiny click; the circle parted, and something fell out of it on to the table, rolled a little way, and lay still.

‘The talisman ring!’ said Sir Tristram.

A sound almost like a sob broke from Ludovic. His hand shot out across the table and snatched up the ring. ‘My ring!’ he whispered. ‘My ring!’

‘Well, upon my soul, that’s a devilish cunning device!’ said Sir Hugh, taking the quizzing-glass out of Shield’s hand. ‘You see, Sally? The ring fitted into the circlet at the end of the shaft.’

‘Yes, dear,’ said Miss Thane. ‘I see it did. When I think how it has been lying where anyone might have found it I feel quite faint with horror.’

Eustacie was looking critically at it. ‘Is that a talisman ring?’ she inquired. ‘I thought it would be quite different! It is nothing but a gold ring with some figures on it!’

‘Careful, Eustacie!’ said Sir Tristram, with a slight smile. ‘You will find that Ludovic regards it as sacrosanct.’

Ludovic raised his eyes from adoration of the ring. ‘By God, I do! There is nothing I can say to you, Tristram, except that I could kiss your feet for what you have done for me!’

‘I beg you won’t, however. I have done very little.’

Miss Thane said: ‘It has been under our very noses. The audacity of it! How could he dare?’

‘Why not?’ said Sir Tristram. ‘Would any of us have suspected it had it not been lost, and then searched for in such a desperate fashion?’

An idea occurred to Miss Thane. She turned her eyes towards her brother, and said in moved tones: ‘So we owe it all to Hugh! My dear, this becomes too much for me. I shall not easily recover from the shock.’

‘And everything – but everything! – we did was quite useless!’ said Eustacie, quite disgusted.

‘I know,’ said Miss Thane, sadly shaking her head. ‘It does not bear thinking of.’

‘I do not know why you should complain,’ remarked Sir Tristram. ‘You have had a great deal of adventure, which is what I understood you both to want.’

‘Yes, that is true,’ acknowledged Eustacie, ‘but some of it was not very comfortable. And I must say that I am not at all pleased that it is you who have found the ring, because you did not want to have an adventure, or to do anything romantic. It seems to me very unfair.’

‘So it is!’ said Miss Thane, much struck by this point of view. ‘It is quite odious, my love, for who could have been more disagreeable, or more discouraging? Really, it would have been better in some ways had we insisted upon his remaining the villain.’

Sir Tristram smiled a little at this, but in rather an abstracted way, and said: ‘It’s very well, but we are not yet out of our difficulties. Let me have the ring, Ludovic. It is true that we have found it, but we did not find it in the Beau’s possession. Oh, don’t look so dubious, my dear boy! I shan’t lose it.’

‘Ah!’ said Miss Thane, nodding wisely. ‘One has to remember, after all, that you are a collector of such things. I don’t blame him, I dare say it is all a Plot.’

‘Sarah, you’re outrageous!’ said Ludovic, handing the ring across the table to his cousin. ‘For God’s sake be careful with it, won’t you, Tristram? What do you mean to do?’

Sir Tristram fitting the ring back into its hiding-place, and closed the circlet with a snap. ‘For the present I’ll keep this. I think our best course –’ He stopped, frowning.

They waited in anxious silence for him to continue, but before he spoke again Nye caught the sound of a coach pulling up in the yard and said apologetically: ‘Beg pardon, sir, but I’ll have to go. That’ll be the night-mail.’

Sir Tristram’s voice arrested as he reached the door. ‘Do you mean it’s the London mail, Joe?’

‘Ay, that’s the one, sir. I want a word with the guard, if you’ll excuse me.’

Sir Tristram’s chair rasped on the oaken floor as he sprang up. ‘Then that’s my best course!’ he said. ‘I’ll board it!’

Nye stared at him. ‘If that’s what you mean to do, you’d best make haste, sir. It don’t take them more than two minutes to change the horses, and they’ll be off the moment that’s done.’

‘Go and tell them to wait!’ ordered Sir Tristram. ‘I have but to get my hat and coat.’

‘They won’t wait, sir!’ expostulated Nye. ‘They’ve got their time to keep, and you’ve no ticket!’

‘Never mind that! Hurry, man!’ said Sir Tristram, thrusting him before him out of the room.

‘But what are you going to do?’ cried Eustacie, running after them.

‘I’ve no time to waste in explaining that now!’ replied Sir Tristram, already half-way up the stairs.

Miss Thane, following in a more leisurely fashion with Ludovic, said darkly: ‘I said it was a Plot. It’s my belief he is absconding.’ She discovered that her butt was already out of hearing, and added: ‘There! How provoking! That remark was quite wasted. Who would have supposed that the wretched creature would be taken with such a frenzy?’

Sir Tristram reappeared again at this moment, his coat over his arm, his hat in his hand. As he ran down the stairs, he said: ‘I hope to return to-morrow if all goes well. For God’s sake take care of yourself, Ludovic!’

He was across the coffee-room and out of the door almost before they could fetch their breath. Miss Thane, blinking, said: ‘If only we had a horse ready saddled!’

‘Why? Isn’t the mail enough for him?’ inquired Ludovic.

‘If there had been a horse, I am persuaded we should have seen him ride off
ventre à terre
!’ mourned Miss Thane.

‘But where is he going?’ stammered Eustacie. ‘He seems to me suddenly to have become entirely mad!’

‘He’s going to London,’ replied Ludovic. ‘Don’t ask me why, for I haven’t a notion!’

‘Well!’ Eustacie turned quite pink with indignation. ‘It is too bad! This is
our
adventure, and he has left us without a word, and, in fact, is trying to take it away from us!’

‘Men!’ said Miss Thane, with a strong shudder.

Sir Hugh came wandering into the coffee-room at this moment, and asked what had become of Shield. When he heard that he had departed suddenly for London, he looked vaguely surprised, and complained that he seemed to be another of these people who spent their time popping in and out of the inn like jack-in-the-boxes. ‘It’s very unrestful,’ he said severely. ‘No sooner do we get comfortably settled than either someone breaks into the house or one of you flies off to Lord knows where! There’s no peace at all. I shall go to bed.’

Nye came back just then and announced with a reluctant smile that Sir Tristram had succeeded in boarding the coach, in spite of all the guard’s representations to him that such high-handed proceedings were quite out of order. When asked by Ludovic if he knew what Sir Tristram meant to do, he replied in his stolid way: ‘I do not sir, but you may depend upon it he’ll do what’s best. All he said to me was, I was to see you safe into your room. Myself, I’m having a truckle-bed set up here, and it’ll be a mighty queer thing if anyone gets into the house without I’ll hear them. Not but what it don’t seem to me likely that anyone will try that game to-night. They’ll be waiting up at the Dower House till to-morrow in the hopes that Sam Barker will have found that plaguey ring of yours, sir.’

Miss Thane sighed. ‘How abominably flat it will seem to have no one breaking in any more! Really, I do not know how I am to support life once all these exciting happenings are at an end.’

Nye favoured her with a grim little smile. ‘By what I can make out, they ain’t ended yet, ma’am. We’ll do well to keep an eye lifted for trouble as soon as that Beau learns Barker ain’t found his quizzing-glass. I’ll be glad when I see Sir Tristram back, and that’s a fact. Now, Mr Ludovic, if you’re ready, I’ll help you get to bed. You’ll have to go down to the cellar again to-morrow, and the orders are I’m to see you into it before I unbar the doors in the morning. And what’s more sir,’ he added, forestalling Ludovic’s imminent expostulation, ‘I’ve orders to knock you out if you don’t go willing.’

This ferocious threat was not, however, put into execution. Ludovic descended into the cellar at an early hour on the following morning, and the rest of the party, with the exception of Sir Hugh, who was only interested in his breakfast, prepared themselves to meet whatever peril should lie in store for them. Eustacie, who thought that she had taken far too small a part in the adventure, was feeling somewhat aggrieved, Ludovic having refused without the least hesitation to lend her one of his pistols. ‘I never lend my pistols,’ he said. ‘Besides, what do you want it for?’

‘But to fire, of course!’ replied Eustacie impatiently.

‘Good God! What at?’

‘Why, at anybody who tries to come into the house!’ she said, opening her eyes in surprise at his stupidity. ‘And if you would let Sarah have one too, she could help me. After all, we may find ourselves in great danger, you know.’

‘You won’t find yourselves in half such danger as you would if I let you have my pistols,’ said Ludovic, with brutal candour.

This unfeeling response sent Eustacie off in a dudgeon to Miss Thane. Here at least she was sure of finding a sympathetic listener. Nor did Miss Thane disappoint her. She professed herself to be quite at a loss to understand the selfishness of men, and when she learned that Eustacie had planned for her also to fire upon possible desperadoes, she said that she could almost wish that she had not been told of the scheme, since it made her feel quite disheartened to think of it falling to the ground.

‘Well, I do think we ought to be armed,’ said Eustacie wistfully. ‘It is true that I do not know much about guns but one has only to point them and pull the trigger, after all.’

‘Exactly,’ agreed Miss Thane. ‘I dare say we should have accounted for any number of desperate ruffians. It is wretched indeed! We shall be forced to rely upon our wits.’

But the morning passed quietly, the only excitement being provided by Gregg, who came to the inn with the ostensible object of inquiring whether Nye could let his master have a pipe of burgundy. He left his horse in the yard, and was thus able to exchange a word with Barker, who, with the fear of transportation before him, faithfully obeyed Sir Tristram’s instructions, and said that he had had no chance yet to search for the quizzing-glass.

In the afternoon Sir Hugh, following his usual custom, went upstairs to enjoy a peaceful sleep. Miss Thane and Eustacie watched the Brighton mail arrive, but since it did not set Sir Tristram down at the Red Lion, their interest in it swiftly waned. They had begun to question whether they were to experience any adventures whatsoever when, to their amazement, Beau Lavenham’s chaise passed the parlour window, drew up outside the coffee-room door, and set down the Beau himself.

He alighted unhurriedly, took care to remove a speck of dust from his sleeve, and in the calmest way imaginable walked into the inn.

‘Well,’ said Miss Thane, ‘I think this passes the bounds of reasonable effrontery! Do you suppose that he has come to pay us a ceremonious visit?’

Apparently this was his purpose, for in a few minutes Nye ushered him into the parlour. He came in with his usual smile, and bowed with all his usual flourish. ‘Such a happiness to find you still here!’ he said. ‘Your very obedient, ma’am!’

‘If you should be needing aught, ma’am, you have only to call,’ said Nye, with slow deliberation.

‘Oh yes, indeed! Pray do not wait!’ said Miss Thane, slipping into her rôle of empty-headed femininity. ‘I will certainly call you if I need anything. How delightful it is to see you, Mr Lavenham! Here you find us yawning over our stitchery, quite enchanted to be receiving company. You must know that we have made all our plans for departure, and mean to set forward for London almost immediately. I am so glad to have the opportunity of taking leave of you! So very obliging you were in permitting me to visit your beautiful house! I am for ever talking of it!’

‘My house was honoured, ma’am. Do I understand that your brother has at last recovered from his sad indisposition? It must have been an unconscionably bad cold to have kept him in this dull inn for many days.’

‘Yes, indeed, quite the worst he has ever had,’ agreed Miss Thane. ‘But he has not found it dull, I assure you.’

‘No?’ said the Beau gently.

‘Indeed, no! You must understand that he is a great judge of wine. A well-stocked cellar will reconcile him to the hardest lot. It is quite absurd!’

‘Ah, yes!’ said the Beau. ‘Nye has a great deal in his cellars, I apprehend – more perhaps than he will admit.’

‘That is true,’ remarked Eustacie, with considerable relish. ‘Grandpère was used to say that he would defy anyone to find what Nye preferred to keep hidden.’

‘I fear he must have been speaking with a little exaggeration,’ said the Beau. ‘I trust Nye will never find himself compelled to submit to a search being made for his secret cellar. Such things are very well while no one knows of their existence, but once the news of them gets about it becomes a simple matter to discover them.’

Miss Thane, listening to this speech with an air of the most guileless interest, exclaimed: ‘How odd that you should say that! I must tell you that my brother said at the very outset that he was convinced Nye must possess some hidden store!’

‘I felicitate you, ma’am, upon being blessed with a brother of such remarkable perspicacity,’ said the Beau in a mellifluous voice. He turned towards his cousin. ‘My dear Eustacie, I wonder if I may crave the indulgence of a few moments’ private speech with you? Miss Thane will readily understand that between cousins –’

Miss Thane interrupted him at this point, with an affected little cry. ‘Oh, Mr Lavenham, no, indeed! It is not to be thought of! You must know that I am this dear child’s chaperon – is it not ridiculous? – and such a thing would not do at all!’

He looked at her with narrowed eyes, and after a moment, said: ‘I do not recollect, ma’am, that these scruples weighed with you so heavily when you visited my house not so long since.’

Miss Thane looked distressed, and replied: ‘It is very true. Your reproach is just, sir. I’m such a sad shatterbrain that I forgot my duties in admiration of your library.’

He raised his brows in polite scepticism. Eustacie said: ‘I do not have secrets from mademoiselle. Why do you wish to see me alone?
Je n’en vois pas la nécessité!
’

‘Well,’ said the Beau, ‘if I may speak without reserve, my dear cousin, I desired to drop a word of warning in your ear.’