The Talisman Ring

Chapter Twelve

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, surely!” 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 windowsill 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 Tristram.

“Well, he’s caused us a peck of trouble this night,” said Bundy, “but I’m bound to say he seems an unaccountable 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, surely, 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 windowsill, said: “You don’t call this a tight corner, do you? I was as 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 housebreaker 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 chapfallen.

“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 tonight!”

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 tomorrow.”

“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.”

He nodded, and waited for her by the door, and when she seemed not to be coming, said: “You do not mean to secede from our councils, I hope?”

She smiled. “You are not used to be so civil. Fighting must have a mellowing effect upon you, I think.”

“Have I been uncivil?” he asked, looking at her with disconcerting seriousness.

“Well, perhaps not uncivil,” she conceded. “Just disapproving.”

He followed her out of the room, and as they mounted the stairs, said: “I wish you will rid yourself of this nonsensical notion that I disapprove of you.”

“But do you not?” inquired Miss Thane, turning her head.

He stopped two stairs below her, and stood looking up at her, something not quite a smile at the back of his eyes. “Sometimes,” he said.

They found Ludovic drinking Constantia wine, and arguing with Sir Hugh about the propriety of breaking into other people’s houses to recover one’s own property. Eustacie, seated by the window, upheld the justice of his views, but strongly condemned the insensibility of persons who allowed others to sleep while such adventures were in train. She was rash enough to appeal to her cousin Tristram for support, but as he only replied that he had not till now thought that he had anything to be thankful for with regard to last night’s affair, he joined Miss Thane in her ill-graces.

Ludovic’s immediate desire was to learn from his cousin by what means he now proposed to find the talisman ring, but they had not been discussing the matter for more than five minutes when a chaise was heard approaching at a smart pace down the road. It drew up outside the inn, and Eustacie, peeping over the blind, announced in a shocked voice that its occupant was none other than Beau Lavenham.

“What audacity!” exclaimed Miss Thane.

“Yes, and he is wearing a waistcoat with coquelicot stripes,” said Eustacie.

“What!” ejaculated Ludovic. “Here, where’s my dressing-gown? I must take a look at him!”

“Oh no, you must not!” said Sir Tristram, preventing his attempt to leap out of bed.

“It is too late: he has entered the house. What can he want?”

“Probably to convince us that he was really in London last night,” said Shield. “We’ll go down to him, Eustacie.”

“Je le veux bien! What shall I say to him?”

“Whatever you please, as long as it does not concern Ludovic.” He looked across the room at Miss Thane. “Do you think you can contrive to be as stupid and talkative as you were when he last saw you?”

“Oh, am I allowed to take part?” asked Miss Thane. “Certainly I can be as stupid. To what purpose?”

“Well, I think it is time we frightened Basil a little,” said Sir Tristram. “Since he must now be very sure that Ludovic is in Sussex, we will further inform him that we suspect him of being Plunkett’s real murderer.”

“That’s all very well,” objected Ludovic, “but what do you expect him to do?”

“I haven’t a notion,” said Shield calmly, “but I am reasonably certain that he will do something.”

“Tell me what you wish me to say!” begged Miss Thane.

Beau Lavenham was not kept waiting long in the parlour. In a very few minutes his cousins joined him there. He shot a quick, searching look at them under his lashes, and advanced, all smiles and civility. “My dear Eustacie—Tristram, too! You behold me on my way home from a most tedious, disagreeable sojourn in town. I could not resist the opportunity of paying a morning call upon you. I trust I do not come at an awkward time?”

“But no!” said Eustacie, opening her eyes at him. ‘Why should it be?”

Sir Tristram came over to the fire in a leisurely fashion, and stirred it with his foot. “Oh, so you’ve not yet been home, Basil?” he inquired.

“No, not yet,” replied the Beau. He put up his ornate quizzing-glass, and through it looked at Shield. “Why do you ask me so oddly, my dear fellow? Is anything amiss at the Dower House?”

“Something very much amiss, I am afraid,” said Shield. He waited for a moment, saw the flash of eagerness in the Beau’s eyes, and added: “One of your Jacobean chairs has been broken.”

There was a moment’s silence. The Beau let his glass fall, and replied in rather a mechanical voice: “A chair broken? Why, how is that?”

The door opened to admit Miss Thane. Until she had exclaimed at finding the Beau present, greeted him, inquired after his health, the condition of the roads, and the state of the weather in London, there was no opportunity of reverting to the original subject of conversation. But as soon as she paused for breath the Beau turned back to Shield, and said: “You were telling me something about one of my chairs being broken. I fear I don’t—”

“Oh!” exclaimed Miss Thane, “have you not heard, then? Has Sir Tristram not told you of the shocking attempt to rob you last night? I declare I shall not know how to go to bed this evening!”

“No,” said the Beau slowly. “No. He has not told me. Is it possible that my house was broken into?”

“Exactly,” nodded Sir Tristram. “If your servants are to be believed a band of desperate ruffians entered through the library window.”

“Yes,” chimed in Miss Thane, “and only fancy, Mr Lavenham! Sir Tristram had been dining with us here, and was riding back to the Court when he heard shots coming from the Dower House. You may imagine his amazement! I am sure you should be grateful to him, for he instantly rode up to the house. You may depend upon it, it was the noise of his arrival which frightened the wretches into running away.”

The glance the Beau cast at his cousin was scarcely one of gratitude. He had turned rather pale, but he said in quite level tones: “I am indeed grateful. What a fortunate chance that you should have been passing the house just at that moment, Tristram! I suppose none of these rogues was apprehended?”

“I fear not,” replied Shield. “By the time I entered the house there was no sign of them. There had been (as you will see for yourself presently) a prodigious struggle in the library—quite a mill, I understand. I am afraid your fellows were much knocked about. In fact, your butler,” he pursued, stooping to put another log on the fire, “welcomed my advent with profound relief.”

“No doubt!” said the Beau, breathing rather quickly. “I do not doubt it!”

“The poor butler!” said Miss Thane, with a tinkling laugh. “I am sure I do not wonder he should be alarmed! He must feel you to be his preserver, Sir Tristram. He will be doubly glad to exchange his masters!”

The Beau looked at her. “I beg your pardon, ma’am?”

Miss Thane said: “I only meant, since he was about to enter Sir Tristram’s service—”

“You are mistaken, Miss Thane,” Sir Tristram interrupted, frowning at her. “There is no question of my cousin’s butler leaving his service that I know of.”

“Oh, how stupid of me! Only you was saying to Eustacie that you had found Mr Lavenham’s butler, and she asked, do you not remember, whether his memory—”

Eustacie said in a hurry: “I hope so much that nothing has been stolen from your house, Basil. To have—”

“So do I hope it, my dear cousin. But pray let Miss Thane continue!”

Miss Thane, encountering a frown from Eustacie, stammered: “Oh, indeed it was nothing! I would not for the world—I mean, I was mistaken! I confused one thing with another. My brother tells me I am a sad shatterbrain.”

Sir Tristram intervened, saying in his cool way: “I am making no attempt to steal your butler from you, I assure you, Basil.”

“Of course not! The stupidest mistake!” said Miss Thane, all eagerness to atone. “It is not your present butler, Mr Lavenham, but one you was used to employ. I remember perfectly now!” She looked from Sir Tristram to Eustacie and faltered: “Have I said something I ought not? But you did tell Eustacie.”

The Beau was gripping his snuffbox tightly. “Yes? A butler I once employed? Are you thinking of taking him into your service, Tristram?”

“Why, yes, I confess I had some such notion,” admitted Shield. “You have no objection, I trust?”

“Why should I?” said the Beau, with a singularly mirthless smile. “I doubt, though, whether you will find him so useful as you expect.”

“Oh, I dare say I shall not engage him after all,” replied Shield, and made haste to change the subject.

The Beau did not linger. Excusing himself on the score of being obliged to go home to ascertain what losses, if any, he had sustained, he very soon took his leave of the party, and drove away in the direction of Warninglid.

No sooner had he left the inn than Eustacie cast herself upon Miss Thane’s bosom, announcing that she forgave her for her unfeeling conduct of the night before. “You did it so very well, Sarah! He was bouleversé, and I think frightened.”

“He was certainly frightened,” agreed Miss Thane. “He forgot to smile. What do you suppose he will do, Sir Tristram?”

“I hope he may make an attempt to find Cleghorn and buy his silence. If he does he will have delivered himself into our hands. But don’t let Ludovic stir from the house! I’ll warn Nye to be careful whom he lets into the inn.”

“I can feel my flesh creeping already,” said Miss Thane, with a shudder. “It has suddenly occurred to me that that very unpleasant person thinks Ludovic is occupying the back bedchamber.”

Eustacie gave a gasp. “Oh, Sarah, you do not think he will come to murder Ludovic, do you?”

“I shouldn’t be at all surprised,” said Miss Thane. “And I am occupying the back bedchamber! I just mention it, you know.”

“So you are!” Eustacie’s face cleared. “But it is of all things the most fortunate! It could not be better, enfin!”

“That,” said Miss Thane, with strong feeling, “is a matter of opinion! I can see where it could be much better.”

“But no, Sarah! If Basil comes to murder Ludovic in the night he will find not Ludovic, but you!”

“Yes, that was what I was thinking,” said Miss Thane.

“Well, but it would be a good thing, Sarah!”

“A good thing for whom?” demanded Miss Thane with asperity.

“For Ludovic, of course! You do not mind doing just that little thing to help him, do you? You said that you wanted to have an adventure!”

“I may have said that I wanted to have an adventure,” replied Miss Thane, “but I never said that I wanted to be murdered in my bed!”

“But I find that you are absurd, Sarah! Of course he would not murder you!”

“Unless, of course, he regarded it as a good opportunity to rid the world of a chattering female,” said Sir Tristram, with a gravity wholly belied by the twinkle in his eyes. “That is a risk, however, which we shall have to run.”

Miss Thane looked at him. “You did say ‘we’, didn’t you?” she said in a failing voice.

He laughed. “Yes, I said it. But in all seriousness, Miss Thane, I do not think there will be any risk. If you are afraid, share Eustacie’s bed.”

“No,” said Miss Thane, with the air of one going to the stake. “I prefer that my blood should be upon your heads.”

She spoke in jest, and certainly did not give the matter another thought, but the exchange had made an impression on Eustacie’s mind, and for the rest of the day she could scarcely bear to let Ludovic out of her sight. When Sir Tristram had gone, and Miss Thane proposed they should take their usual morning walk, she refused with such resolution that Miss Thane forbore to press the matter, but went out with her brother, leaving Eustacie keeping guard over Ludovic like a cat with one kitten.

As the day drew towards evening Eustacie’s fears became more pronounced. When the candles were lit and the blinds drawn, she persisted in hearing footsteps, and fancying some stranger to have got into the inn. She confided in Miss Thane that she was sure there was someone in the house, hiding, and insisted, in spite of his protestations that no one could have entered without his knowledge, upon Nye’s searching every nook and cranny. The house was an old and rambling one, and the boards creaked a good deal. Miss Thane, when Eustacie held up her finger for the fifth time, enjoining silence that she might listen for a fancied noise, said roundly: “A little more, and I shall be quite unable to sleep a wink all night. Now what’s amiss?”

Eustacie, drawing the curtains more closely across window, said: “There was just a crack. Someone might look in and see Ludovic. I think it will be better if I pin the curtains together.”

Sir Hugh, who was engaged upon his nightly game of piquet with Ludovic, became aware of her restlessness, and turned to look at her. “Ah!” he said. “So you don’t like the moonshine either! It’s a queer thing, but if ever I have a bad dream you may depend upon it the moon’s up. There’s another thing, too: if ever it gets into my room it wakes me. I’m glad to meet someone else who feels the same.”

No one thought it worth while to explain Eustacie’s real motive to him, so after recounting various incidents illustrative of the baneful effect of the moon upon human beings, he returned to his game, and speedily became oblivious of Eustacie’s fidgets.

Since Eustacie could not bring herself to go up to bed leaving Ludovic, quite heedless of danger, below-stairs, the piquet came to an early end, and the whole party went up to bed soon after ten o’clock. Having assured herself that the windows in Ludovic’s room were securely fastened and his pistols loaded and under his pillow, Eustacie at last consented, though reluctantly, to seek her own couch. Ludovic took her in his sound arm, and kissed her, and laughed at her fears. She said seriously: “But I am afraid. I love you so much that it seems to me very probable that you will be taken away from me. Promise me that you will lock your door and draw the bolts!”

He laid his cheek against her hair. “I’ll promise anything, sweetheart. Don’t trouble your pretty head over me! I’m not worth it.”

“To me, you are.”

“I wish I had two arms!” he sighed. “Do you know that you are marrying a ne’er-do-well?”

“Certainly I know it. It is just what I always wanted,” she replied.

Miss Thane came along the passage at this moment and put an end to their tête-à-tête. She quite agreed with Eustacie that Ludovic must lock his door. She had every intention, she said, of locking her own. She bore Eustacie off to her room, stayed with her till she was safely tucked up in bed, turned the lamp down, made up the fire, and went away wondering whether there really might be something to fear, or whether they had allowed their fancy to run riot. This problem kept her awake for some time, but after a couple of hours spent in straining her ears to catch the sound of a footfall she did at last fall asleep, lulled by the monotonous rise and fall of her brother’s snores, drifting to her ears from across the passage.

At one o’clock these ceased abruptly. The moon had reached a point in the heavens from which its rays were able to find out a chink between the blinds over Sir Hugh’s window. A sliver of silver light stole across his face. Its baleful influence was instantly felt. Sir Hugh awoke.

He knew at once what had roused him, and with a muttered curse, got up out of bed and stalked over to the window. A tug at the blind failed to put matters right, and Sir Hugh, blinking with sleep, perceived that a fold of the chintz had been caught in the hinge when the casement was shut. “Damned carelessness!” he said severely, and opened the window to release the blind.

There was a smart wind blowing; a sudden gust tore the casement out of his slack hold, and flung it wide. He leaned out to pull it to again, and as he did so noticed that one of the windows in the coffee-room directly beneath his bedchamber was also standing wide. It seemed to him unusual and undesirable that windows should be left open all night, and after regarding it for a moment or two with slightly somnolent disapproval, he drew in his head, turned up the wick of the lamp that stood by his bed, and lit a candle at its flame. Yawning, he groped his way into his dressing-gown, and then, picking up the candlestick and treading softly for fear of waking the rest of the household, sallied forth to rectify Nye’s omission.

He went carefully down the steep stairs, shading the flame of the candle from the draught. As he reached the bend in the staircase, and rounded it, he caught the glow of a light, suddenly extinguished, and knew there was someone in the coffee-room.

Sir Hugh might be of a naturally indolent disposition, but he had a rooted objection to fellows nefariously creeping about the house. He reached the bottom of the stairs with most surprising celerity, and, holding up the candle, looked keenly round the room.

A figure loomed up for an instant out of the darkness; he had a glimpse of a man with a mask over his face, and a dagger in his hand, and the next moment the candle was struck from his hold.

Sir Hugh launched himself forward, grappling with the unknown marauder. His right hand encountered something that felt like a neckcloth, and grasped it, just as the hilt of the dagger crashed down upon his shoulder, missing his head by a hair’s breadth. Before the unknown could strike again he had grabbed at the dagger hand, and found it, twisting it unmercifully. The dagger fell; and Sir Hugh’s grip slackened a little. The masked man, putting forth every ounce of strength, tore himself free, and made a dart for the window. Sir Hugh plunged after him, tripped over a stool, and came down on his hands and knees with a crash. The intruder was visible for a brief moment in the shaft of moonlight; before Sir Hugh could pick himself up he had vanished through the window.