The Talisman Ring

Chapter Eleven

Ludovic, knowing his cousin too well to attempt to argue with him once his mind was made up, said no more in support of his own plan, but left Miss Thane to entertain Shield while he went off to try his powers of persuasion upon the hapless Clem. Quite forgetting that he must not run the risk of being seen by any stranger, he walked into the taproom, saying: “Clem, are you here? I want you!”

Clem was nowhere to be seen, but just as Ludovic was about to go away again, the door on to the road opened, and a thickset man in a suit of fustian walked into the inn. Ludovic took one look at him, and ejaculated: “Abel!”

Mr Bundy shut the door behind him, and nodded. “I had word you was here,” he remarked.

Ludovic cast a quick glance towards the door leading to the kitchen quarters, where he judged Clem to be, and grasped Bundy by one wrist. “Does Nye know you’re here?” he asked softly.

“No,” replied Bundy. “Not yet he don’t, but I’m wishful to have a word with him.”

“You’re going to have a word with me,” said Ludovic. “I don’t want Nye to know you’re here. Come up to my bedchamber!”

“Adone-do, sir!” expostulated Bundy, standing fast. “You know, surely, what I’ve come for. I’ve a dunnamany kegs of brandy waiting to be delivered here so soon as Nye gives the word.”

“He won’t dare give it yet; the house is full. I’ve other work for you to do.”

Bundy looked him over. “Are you joining Dickson on board the Saucy Annie again?” he inquired.

“No; my grandfather’s dead,” said Ludovic.

“He’ll be a loss,” remarked Mr Bundy thoughtfully. “Howsever, if you’re giving up the smuggling lay, I’m tedious glad. What might you be wanting me to do?”

“Come upstairs, and I’ll tell you,” said Ludovic.

As good luck would have it, there was no one in the coffee-room. Ludovic led Bundy through it and up the stairs to the front bedchamber which had once been Miss Thane’s. It still smelled faintly exotic, a circumstance which did not escape Mr Bundy. “I thought there was a wench in it,” he observed.

Ludovic paid no heed to this sapient remark, but having locked the door, just in case Sir Tristram should take it into his head to come up to see him again before he left the inn, thrust Bundy towards a chair, and told him to sit down. “Abel, you know why I took to smuggling, don’t you?” he asked abruptly.

Mr Bundy laid his hat on the floor beside him, and nodded.

“Well, understand this!” said Ludovic. “I didn’t commit that murder.”

“Oh?” said Bundy, not particularly interested. He added after a moment’s reflection: “Happen you’ll have to prove that if you’m wishful to take the old lord’s place.”

“That’s what I mean to do,” replied Ludovic. “And you are going to help me.”

“I’m agreeable,” said Bundy. “They do tell me we shall have that cousin of yourn up at the Court, him they call the Beau. It would be unaccountable bad for the Trade if that come about. He’ll give no aid to the Gentlemen.”

“You won’t have the Beau at the Court if you help me to prove it was he committed the murder I was charged with,” said Ludovic.

Mr Bundy looked rather pleased. “That’s a rare good notion,” he approved. “Have him put away quiet same like he’d be glad to do to you. How will we set about it?”

“I believe him to have in his possession a ring which belongs to me,” Ludovic answered. “I haven’t time to explain it all to you now, but if I can find that ring, I can prove I was innocent of Plunkett’s death. I want a man to help me break into my cousin’s house tonight. You see how it is with me: that damned riding-officer winged me.”

“Ay, I heard he had,” said Bundy. “I told you you shouldn’t ought to have come.” He looked ruminatingly at Ludovic. “I don’t know as I rightly understand what you’m about. Milling kens ain’t my lay. Seems to me you’d have taken Clem along o’ you—if he’d have gone.”

“I might be able to make him, but I’ve a cousin here—a cursed, cautious, interfering cousin, who don’t mean me to make the attempt. He thinks it’s too dangerous, and it’s odds he’s persuaded Clem into seeing eye to eye with him.”

Mr Bundy scratched his nose reflectively. “One way and another, you’ve been in a lamentable deal of danger since you growed up,” he remarked.

Ludovic grinned. “I shall be in some more yet.”

“Happen you will,” agreed Bundy. “There’s some as seem to be born to it, and others as takes uncommon care of their skins. It queers me how folks manage to keep out of trouble. I never did, but I know them as has.”

“Devilish dull dogs, I’ll be bound. There may be trouble at the Dower House tonight, and for all I know there’s been a trap laid for me. Will you take the risk?”

“How I look at it is this way,” said Bundy painstakingly. “It ain’t no manner of use trying to keep out of trouble if so be you’m born to it. For why? Because if you don’t look for trouble, trouble will come a-looking for you—ah, come sneaking up behind to take you unawares, what’s more. Does Joe Nye know what’s in the wind?”

“No. He’s hand-in-glove with my cousin.”

Mr Bundy looked rather shocked. “What, with that dentical, fine gentleman?”

“Lord, no! Not with him! My cousin Shield—my cautious cousin.”

Mr Bundy stroked his chin. “I never knew Joe to be mistook in a man,” he said. “I doubt I’m doing wrong to go against his judgment. Howsever, if you’ve a fancy to go, I’d best come with you, for you’ll go anyways, unless you’ve changed your nature, which don’t seem to me likely. What’s the orders?”

“I want a horse to be saddled and bridled ready for me at midnight,” answered Ludovic promptly. “Everyone should be asleep here by then, and I can slip out. Have a couple of nags waiting down the Warninglid road, as close to this place as you can come without rousing anyone. I’ll join you there. We’ll ride to the Dower House—it’s only a matter of five miles—and once inside the place, the rest should be easy. You may want your pistols, though I’d as soon not make it a shooting affair, and we shall certainly need a lantern.”

“Well, that’s easy enough,” said Bundy. “There’s only one thing as puts me into a bit of a quirk, and that’s how to keep Joe from suspicioning what we’m going to do. Joe’s not one of them as has more hair than wit: there’s a deal of sense in his cockloft.”

“He must not know you’ve been here today,” said Ludovic. “You can get away without him seeing you if I make sure all’s clear.”

“Oh ay, I can do that,” agreed Bundy, “but it’s odds they’ll tell him in the stables I’ve been around. I’ve left my nag there.”

“The devil you have! Well, you’d best see Joe if that’s so, but take care you don’t let him guess you’ve had speech with me. You might ask for me. He won’t let you see me, and it’ll look well.”

In accordance with this plan, Bundy, having been smuggled out of the inn by the back way, ten minutes later entered through the front door a second time. He found Clem in the taproom, and Clem no sooner laid eyes on him than he said that upon no account must Mr Ludovic know of his presence. He thrust him into Nye’s stuffy little private room and went off to summon the landlord. Mr Bundy sat down by the table and chewed a straw.

His interview with Nye did not take long, nor, since both men were taciturn by nature, was there much conversation. “Where’s young master?” inquired Bundy over his tankard.

Nye jerked a thumb upward. “Safe enough.”

“I reckoned you’d hide him up,” nodded Bundy, dismissing the subject.

“Ay.” The landlord regarded him thoughtfully. “He’s ripe for mischief, I can tell you. Maybe you’d best keep out of his way. You’re as bad as Clem for letting him twist you round his finger.”

“Happen you’m right,” conceded Bundy, retiring into his tankard.

Sir Tristram did not wait for Ludovic to reappear, and for obvious reasons Nye did not tell him of Bundy’s presence in the inn. He had a great value for Sir Tristram, but he preferred to keep his dealings with free traders as secret as possible. So Sir Tristram, having extracted a promise from Clem not to assist Ludovic to leave the inn that night, departed, secure in the conviction that without support his reckless young cousin could achieve nothing in the way of house-breaking.

“I am afraid we shall have Ludovic like a bear with a sore head,” prophesied Miss Thane pessimistically.

But when Ludovic came downstairs to the parlour again, he seemed to be in unimpaired spirits, a circumstance which at first relieved Miss Thane’s mind, and presently filled it with misgiving. She fancied that the sparkle in Ludovic’s angelic blue eyes was more pronounced than usual, and after enduring it for some while, was impelled to comment upon it, though in an indirect fashion. She said that she feared that Sir Tristram’s decision must be unwelcome to him. She was embroidering a length of silk at the time, but as she spoke she raised her eyes from her task and looked steadily at him.

“Oh well!” said Ludovic. “I’ve been thinking it over, and I dare say he may be in the right of it.”

Voice and countenance were both quite grave, but Miss Thane was unable to rid herself of the suspicion that he was secretly amused. He met her searching look with the utmost limpidity, and after a moment smiled, and reminded her that it was uncivil to stare.

She was quite unable to resist his smile, which was indeed a very charming one, but she said in a serious tone: “It would be useless if you were to make the attempt alone, you know. You would not do anything so foolish, would you?”

“Oh, I’m not as mad as that!” he assured her.

She lowered her embroidery. “And you would not—no, of course you would not!—take Eustacie upon such a venture?”

“Good God, no! I’ll swear it, if you wish.”

She resumed her stitchery, and as her brother came into the room at that moment said no more. When, later, Ludovic discussed exhaustively the various means by which the Beau’s valet might be induced to disclose what he knew, she concluded that her suspicions had been unfounded; and when, midway through the evening, he sat down to play piquet with Sir Hugh she felt herself able to retire to bed with a quiet mind. She had seen him play piquet before, and she knew that once a green baize cloth was before him, and a pack of cards in his hand, all other considerations were likely to be forgotten. Neither he nor Sir Hugh, she judged, would seek their beds until the small hours, by which time he would be too sleepy, and not sufficiently clear-headed (for it was safe to assume that a good deal of wine would flow during the course of the play) to attempt anything in the way of a solitary adventure. He bade her a preoccupied good night, and she went away without the least misgiving. She was not, however, privileged to see the swift, sidelong look he shot at her as she went through the doorway.

That was at half past nine. At ten o’clock Ludovic undertook to mix a bowl of rum punch for Sir Hugh’s delectation. He promised him something quite above the ordinary, and Sir Hugh, after one sip of the hot, potent brew, admitted that it certainly was above the ordinary. Ludovic drank one glass, and thereafter sat in admiration of Sir Hugh’s capacity. When Sir Hugh commented upon his abstinence, he said frankly that a very little of the mixture would suffice to put him under the table. Sir Hugh, rather pleased, said that he fancied he had a harder head than most men. During the next half-hour he proceeded to demonstrate the justice of this claim. The only effect Ludovic’s punch had upon him was to make him unusually sleepy, and when Ludovic, as the clock struck eleven, yawned, and said that he was for bed, he was able to rise from the table with scarcely a stagger, and to pick up his candle without spilling any more wax on to the floor than was perfectly seemly. Ludovic, relieved to discover that at least the brew had made him feel ready for bed at an unaccustomed hour, conducted him upstairs to his room and saw him safely into it before tiptoeing along the corridor to his own apartment.

Nye had locked up the inn and gone to bed some time before. Ludovic stirred the logs in his fireplace to a blaze, and sat down to while away half an hour.

His preparations for the venture took him some time, since his left arm was still almost useless, but he contrived, though painfully, to pull on a pair of top-boots, and to struggle into his greatcoat. Having assured himself that his pistols were properly primed, he stowed one into the top of his right boot, and the other into the right-hand pocket of his coat, and putting on a tricorne of the fashion of three years before, stole softly out on to the corridor, candle in hand.

The stairs creaked under his feet as he crept down them, but it was not this noise which awoke Miss Thane. She was aroused, ironically enough, by the rhythmic and resonant snores proceeding from her brother’s room across the passage. She lay for a few minutes between waking and sleeping, listening to these repulsive sounds, and wondering whether it would be worth while to get up and rouse Sir Hugh, or whether the snoring would recommence the instant he fell asleep again. Just as she had decided that the best thing to do was to draw the bedclothes over her ears, and try to ignore the snoring, a faint sound, as of a bolt being drawn downstairs, jerked her fully awake. She sat up in bed, thought that she could hear the click of a latch, and the next instant was standing on the floor, groping for her dressing-gown.

An oil lamp burned low on the table by the bed. She turned up the wick, and picking up the lamp, went softly out on to the passage.

The house was in pitch darkness, and only Sir Hugh’s snores broke the silence, but Miss Thane was convinced that there had been other and very stealthy sounds. Her first thought was that someone had entered the house, presumably in search of Ludovic, and she was about to steal along the passage to rouse Nye, when another explanation of the faint sounds occurred to her. She went quickly to Ludovic’s room and scratched on, the door panel. There was no answer, and without the slightest hesitation she turned the handle and looked in.

One glance at the unruffled bed was enough to send her flying along the passage to wake Nye. This was easily done, and within two minutes of an urgent, low-voiced call to him through the keyhole, he was beside her on the passage, with a pair of breeches dragged on over his night-shirt, and his night-cap still on his head. When he heard that Ludovic was not in his room he stared at Miss Thane with a pucker between his brows, and said slowly: “He wouldn’t do it—not alone!”

“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 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 tonight.”

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 flower-bed, and laid his ear to the glass. 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 windowsill.

“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. He could hear nothing and moved away again. “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 housebreakers, 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 that 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 candles 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.

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 in 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 deliberation 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, surely, 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 tonight. He was quite right, sir: we’ve had housebreakers 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 housebreakers 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.