A torrent of impassioned French smote the Runner’s bemused ears. He stared, quite aghast, at Eustacie, who had changed in a flash from a pleasant-spoken young female into a raging virago. She snatched the jagged fragments of glass from the abigail’s hand, broke into English for one moment to implore Mr Stubbs to look at what the wicked clumsy creature had done, threw the fragments into the grate, shook the abigail, and in French said rapidly: “He means to search the house. Have you taken your clothes out of your room? Answer yes, or no!”
“Oh, yes, miss, indeed I took them to Sir Hugh’s room, like you told me!”
Mr Stubbs began to feel sorry for the hapless abigail, whose sobs grew more and more shattering. This suddenly terrible little Frenchwoman seemed to have what he would call a real spiteful temper. Nothing appeased her; he was not at all surprised to see the abigail so frightened; he wouldn’t put it beyond the young lady to box the poor girl’s ears at any moment.
In the middle of this spirited scene Nye came into the coffee-room with Clem at his heels, and stopped upon the threshold, transfixed by astonishment. For a moment he did not connect Ludovic with the great gawky girl, noisily weeping into her shawl, but before he had time to speak, Eustacie whirled round to face him, and poured forth a string of complaints about her supposed abigail. She desired him to tell her whether she had not sufficient cause to hand the girl over to the Law, and indicated with a sweep of her hand the presence of a Bow Street Runner.
Nye, who had caught the glint of pale-gold hair peeping from under the gawky female’s mob-cap, now observed that her left arm seemed in some odd fashion to be wound up in the voluminous shawl. The puzzled look vanished from his face; he came farther into the room, and joined with Eustacie in reproaching ‘Lucy’ for her carelessness. Mr Stubbs, quite overwhelmed by so much loud and confused talk, withdrew to the other end of the room, and mopped his brow. He gazed at Eustacie in growing consternation, and took a hasty step backward, when she suddenly rounded on him and demanded why he stood there doing nothing, instead of instantly arresting ‘Lucy’.
“Oh come, miss! Come, now!” said Nye soothingly. “It’s not as bad as that! The wench meant no harm. I’ll have Clem take up a pail of water and a scrubbing-brush, or we’ll have the whole house reeking of scent.”
“And in my room!” exclaimed Eustacie. “It is an outrage! It must be at once scrubbed, and I will tell you that it is Lucy herself who shall scrub it, for it is not at all Clem’s fault. Up, you!”
The Runner, seeing ‘Lucy’ driven towards the staircase, heaved a sigh of relief. Mistress and maid vanished from sight; Clem, at a nod from Nye, went away to draw a pail of water; and Nye turned to his unwelcome visitor, and said with a wry smile, and a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder: “Them Frenchies!”
“Unchristian, that’s what I call ’em,” responded Mr Stubbs severely. “I fair compassionate that wench.”
“She’ll be turned off,” said Nye with a resigned shrug. “That will make the third in as many weeks. Miss has the temper of the fiend, as I know. What can I do for you?”
Above, in Miss Thane’s bedchamber, Eustacie, from whom stifled giggles had escaped all the way up the stairs, sank down upon the bed, and with her handkerchief pressed to her mouth, gave way to inextinguishable laughter. Ludovic, twisting the shawl more securely round his arm, said: “Of all the spitfires! I wouldn’t be a maid of yours for any money. Now what’s the matter?!”
“You l-look so rid-ridiculous!” gasped Eustacie, rocking herself to and fro.
Ludovic looked critically at his reflection in the mirror. “A fine, strapping girl,” he said. “But what beats me is how you females ever contrive to dress at all. I couldn’t do up the plaguey hooks and eyes on this gown. That’s why I took the shawl. I don’t care for Sarah’s scent much, do you?”
Indeed, the room reeked of heavy scent. Eustacie raised her head to say unsteadily: “But of course not, a whole bottle of it! It is affreux! Open the window! Those Runners have come for you, Ludovic. What are we to do?”
He had thrust open one of the casements, and was leaning out to breathe the unscented air, but he turned his head at that. “How many of them are there?”
“Two. There is one on guard over the backstairs. I think it is Basil who must have told them to look for you here.”
“I saw the one on the backstairs. If there are no more than two, and Nye can’t fob them off, we’d better lock them up in the cellar, I think. Just until I’ve found my ring,” he added reassuringly, seeing Eustacie’s face of disapproval.
“But no, for if we lock them up we shall be put in prison for it!”
“There is that, of course,” agreed Ludovic. “Still, if only I could clear myself of this murder charge I shouldn’t mind taking the risk. Ten to one we’d get off with a fine.”
They were still arguing the point when Clem appeared with a pail and a scrubbing-brush. They pounced upon him for news, and he was able to tell them that Nye had the situation well in hand, and had already gone far towards convincing the Runners that they had been sent to look for a mare’s nest. At the moment he was regaling them with brandy, after which he had promised to conduct them personally all over the inn. Hearing this, Eustacie was at once struck by the notion of spreading a few pieces of female apparel about Ludovic’s room. She went off to do this, leaving Ludovic with instructions to start scrubbing the floor the instant he heard the Runners ascending the stairs.
By the time Mr Stubbs, fortified by brandy, did come up, Eustacie had returned to Miss Thane’s room, and no sooner did Nye tap on the door, asking whether the officer might come in, than she broke forth again into indignant repinings. Both the Runner and Nye were adjured to come in and judge for themselves whether the smell of the perfume would ever be got rid of. When Nye asked permission for the Runner to search her room, she first stared at him with an expression of outrage on her face, and then flung open the door of the cupboard and said tragically that it needed only this, that a great rough man should pry into her wardrobe. She begged Mr Stubbs not to consider her feelings in the least degree, but to pull all her dresses out, and throw them on the floor if he pleased. Mr Stubbs, acutely uncomfortable, assured her that he had no desire to do anything of the kind. She said that she wished she were back in France, where ladies were treated with civility, and, covering her face with her handkerchief, burst into tears. Ludovic, inexpertly scrubbing the damp patch on the floor, sniffed dolefully over the pail of water, and the Runner, casting a perfunctory glance into the wardrobe and another under the bed, beat a somewhat hasty retreat.
It was not long before Nye returned, this time alone. He found Eustacie peeping out of the window at the receding forms of the two officers, and Ludovic, the mob-cap and shawl already discarded, trying to extricate himself from Miss Thane’s gown. Characteristically, the first words he addressed to Ludovic were of decided reproof. “And who might those clothes belong to, my lord, if I may make so bold as to ask?”
“To Miss Thane, of course. Help me to come out of this curst dress!”
“And that’s a nice thing!” said Nye. “Couldn’t you find nothing else to break but a flask of scent that don’t belong to you? For shame, Mr Ludovic!”
Eustacie came away from the window. “ Enfin, they are gone. Do they believe that my cousin is not here, Nye?”
“That’s more than I can tell you, miss,” replied Nye picking up Miss Thane’s dress from the floor. “Nor I don’t think they’ve gone far. They would have put up here for the night if I hadn’t shown them that I haven’t a bed to spare. It’s my belief they’re off no farther than to the alehouse down the road.”
“Do you mean to tell me those fellows are going to hang around this place?” said Ludovic, himself again in shirt and breeches. “Who set them on?”
Nye shook his head. “They wouldn’t say. The fat one don’t seem to me to set much store by the information. But for all that, I’ll have the cellar made ready for you, sir.”
“Make it ready for the Runners,” said Ludovic briskly. “We’ll have to kidnap them.”
“There’ll be no such foolishness in this house, Mr Ludovic, and so I’ll have you know!”
Some twenty minutes later Miss Thane, accompanied by her brother, came back to the Red Lion, and was at once met by Eustacie, who drew her upstairs to her room, her story tripping off her tongue.
“Runners in the house, and I not here to see them?” exclaimed Miss Thane, suitably impressed. “I declare I am the most ill-used creature alive! How I should have liked to have helped to hoodwink them!”
“Yes, it was very sad for you to be out, but you did help us, Sarah, because Ludovic put on one of your dresses, and pretended to be my maid.”
They had by this time reached Miss Thane’s bedchamber. Eustacie opened the door and Miss Thane took one step into the room and recoiled.
“It’s only the scent,” said Eustacie kindly. “And indeed it is already much fainter than it was. Ludovic thought that it would be a good thing to break the bottle, pretending that it was mine. In that way, you understand, he was able to hide his face, because he made believe to cry, and to be frightened. And I scolded him—oh, a faire croire! ”
“I’m glad,” said Miss Thane. “I suppose it had to be my French perfume?”
Ludovic, hearing their voices, strolled across the passage from his own room, and said with a grin: “Sarah, are you savage with me for having spilled your scent? I will buy you some more one day.”
“Thank you, Ludovic!” said Miss Thane with feeling. “And this is the gown you chose to wear, is it? Yes, I see. After all, I never cared for it above the ordinary.”
“It got split a trifle across the shoulders,” explained Ludovic.
“Yes, I noticed that,” agreed Miss Thane. “But what is a mere gown compared with a man’s life?”
Eustacie greeted this sentiment with great approval, and said that she knew Sarah would feel like that.
“Of course,” said Miss Thane. “And I have been thinking, moreover, that we do not consider Ludovic enough. Look at this large, airy apartment of mine, for instance, and only consider the stuffy little back chamber he is obliged to sleep in! I will change with you, my dear Ludovic.”
Ludovic declined this handsome offer without the least hesitation. “I don’t like the smell of the scent,” he said frankly.
Miss Thane, overcome by her emotions, tottered to a chair and covered her eyes with her hand. In a voice of considerable feeling she gave Ludovic to understand that since he had saturated the carpet in her room with scent, he and not she should sleep in that exotic atmosphere.
The rest of the day was enlivened by alarms and discursions. The Runners had, as Nye suspected, withdrawn merely to the alehouse a mile down the road, and both of them revisited the Red Lion at separate times, entering it in the most unobtrusive, not to say stealthy, manner possible, and explaining their presence in unexpected corners of the house by saying that they were looking for the landlord. The excuses they put forward for these visits, though not convincing, were accepted by Nye with obliging complaisance. Secure in the knowledge that Ludovic was hidden in his secret cellar, he gave the Runners all the facilities they could desire to prowl unaccompanied about the house. The only person to be dissatisfied with this arrangement was the quarry himself who, in spite of the amenities afforded by a brazier and a couple of candles, complained that the cellar was cold, dark, and devilish uncomfortable. His plan of remaining above-stairs in readiness to retreat to the cellar upon the arrival of a Runner was frustrated by the tiresome conduct of these gentlemen, who seemed to spend the entire afternoon prowling around the house. Twice Eustacie was startled by an inquiring face at the parlour window, and three times did Clem report that one of the officers was round the back of the house by the stables, hobnobbing with the ostler and the postboys. Even Sir Hugh became aware of an alien presence in the inn, and complained when he came down to dinner that a strange fellow had poked his head into his bedchamber while he was pulling off his boots.
“A demmed, rascally-looking fellow with a red nose,” he said. “Nye ought to be more careful whom he lets into the place. Came creeping up the passage and peered into my room without so much as a ‘by your leave’.”
“Did he say anything to you?” asked Miss Thane anxiously.
“No,” replied Sir Hugh. He added fair-mindedly: “I don’t say he wouldn’t have, but I threw a boot at him.”
“Threw a boot at him?” cried Eustacie, her eyes sparkling.
“Yes, why not? I don’t like people prowling about, and I won’t have them poking their red noses into my room,” said Sir Hugh.
“Hugh, you will have to know, so that you may be on your guard,” said Miss Thane. “That was a Bow Street Runner.”
“Well, he’s got no right to come prying into my room,” replied Sir Hugh, helping himself from a dish of beans. “Where’s young Lavenham?”
“In the cellar. He—”
Sir Hugh laid down his knife and fork. “What’s he found there? Is he bringing it up?”
“No. He is in the cellar because the Runners are looking for him.”
Sir Hugh frowned. “It seems to me,” he remarked somewhat austerely, “that there’s something queer going on in this place. I won’t have anything to do with it.”
“Very proper, my dear,” approved his sister. “But do contrive to remember that you know nothing of Ludovic Lavenham! I fear that these Runners may try to get information from you.”
“Oh, they may, may they?” said Sir Hugh, his eye kindling a little. “Well, if that red-nosed fellow is a Runner, which I doubt, I’ll have some information to give him on the extent of his duty. They’re getting mighty out of hand, those Runners. I shall speak to old Sampson Wright about ’em.”
“Certainly, Hugh; I hope you will, but do, pray, promise me that you won’t divulge Ludovic’s presence here to them!”
“I’m a Justice of the Peace,” said Sir Hugh, “and I won’t have any hand in cheating the Law. If they were to ask me I should tell them the truth.”
Eustacie, pale with alarm, gripped the edge of the table, and said: “But you must not! you shall not!”
Sir Hugh cast an indulgent glance towards her. “They won’t ask me,” he said simply.
It seemed improbable that the Runners’ zeal would lead them to haunt the vicinity of the Red Lion after dark, so as soon as the windows were bolted and the blinds drawn, Ludovic emerged from his underground retreat and joined the rest of the party in the parlour. Some expectation was felt of receiving a visit from Sir Tristram, and at a little after eight o’clock he walked into the inn, having taken advantage of the moonlight to drive over from the Court.
He was met by demands to know whether he had met any men lurking outside the house. He had not, but the anxious question at once aroused his suspicions, and he asked what had been going forward during his absence. When he heard that information had been laid against Ludovic in Bow Street, he did not say anything at all for some moments, thus disappointing Eustacie, who had hoped to startle him into an expression at least of surprise. When he did speak, it was not in admiration of the stratagem which had hoodwinked the Runners, but in a serious voice, and with his eyes on his cousin. “If you won’t go to Holland, will you at least leave Sussex, Ludovic?”
“Devil a bit! There’s no danger. The Runners think they’re on a wild-goose chase.” He observed a tightening of Shield’s lips, a certain considering look in the eyes which rested on himself, and sat up with a jerk. “Tristram, if you try to kidnap me, I swear I’ll shoot you!”
Sir Tristram laughed at that, but shook his head. “I won’t promise not to kidnap you, but I will promise to get your gun first.”
“It never leaves me,” grinned Ludovic.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” retorted Shield. “If there’s an attempt made on you, you’ll shoot, and there’ll be a charge of real murder to fight.”
Eustacie said sharply: “An attempt on him? Do you mean on his life?”
“Yes, I do,” replied Shield. “We may not be certain that the Beau killed Plunkett, but we can have no doubt that it is he who has brought the Runners down on Ludovic now. He would like the Law to remove Ludovic from his path, but if the Runners fail, I think he may make the attempt himself. Have you ever considered how easy of access this place is?”
Eustacie cast an involuntary glance over her shoulder. “N-no,” she faltered. “Is—is it easy? Perhaps you had better go after all, Ludovic. I do not want you to be killed!”
“Ah, fiddlesticks,” Ludovic said impatiently. “The Beau don’t even know I’m here. He may suspect it, but there’s not a soul has seen me outside ourselves, and Nye, and Clem.”
“You are forgetting the Excise officer,” interpolated his cousin.
“What odds? I’ll admit it was he who put the notion into Basil’s head, but it’s no more than a notion, and when Basil hears the Runners found no trace of me, he’ll think himself mistaken, after all. Nye’s of the opinion they don’t set much store by the information laid.”
“It’s plain they set very little store by it, since they didn’t send their best men down to investigate it, but they are likely to take a more serious view of the matter when they discover that Eustacie has no abigail with her.”
“Ludovic,” said Miss Thane in a meditative voice, “thinks it would be a good thing to capture the Runners and bestow them in the cellar.”
“A famous plan!” said Sir Tristram sardonically.
“Yes, but me, I do not agree,” said Eustacie, frowning.
“You surprise me.”
“Just a moment! “ interposed Thane, who all this time had been sitting at a small table by the fire, easting his dice, right hand against left. “You can’t imprison law officers in the cellar. For one thing, it’s a criminal offence, and for another there’s a deal of precious liquor in the cellar. I don’t like that red-nosed fellow; I think he ought to be got rid of. What’s more, I’ve had a score against Sampson Wright for a long time, and I don’t mind putting a spoke in his wheel. But I won’t have his Runners kidnapped.”
“Well!” said his sister. “I think you are most unreasonable, Hugh, I must say. After all, it was you who threw a boot at the Runner.”
“That’s a very different thing,” replied Thane. “There’s nothing to be said against throwing a boot at a fellow who comes nosing into one’s room. But kidnapping’s another matter.”
“Oh well!” said Ludovic airily. “Ten to one we shan’t see any more of them. I dare say they will go back to London on tomorrow’s coach.”
Had Mr Stubbs followed his own inclination, he would not have waited for the morrow’s coach but would have boarded the night mail, deeming a night on the road preferable to one spent at the alehouse. But his companion, a grave person with a painstaking sense of duty and an earnest desire to prove himself worthy of his office, held to the opinion that their search had not been sufficiently thorough.
“What we’ve done is, we’ve Lulled them,” he said, slowly nodding his head. “Properly Lulled them, that’s what we’ve done. We didn’t find no trace of any desperate criminal, and they know we didn’t find no trace. So what happens?”
“Well, what does happen?” said Mr Stubbs, lowering his tankard.
“They’re Lulled, that’s what happens.”
“You said that before,” remarked Mr Stubbs, with slight asperity.
“Ah, but what do we do now we’ve got them Lulled?” demanded his companion. “We makes a Pounce, and takes this Ludovic Lavenham unawares.”
Mr Stubbs turned it over in his mind. “I won’t say you’re wrong, William,” he pronounced cautiously. “Nor I’ve no objection, provided we do take him unawares. It’s a queer thing, but I can’t get out of my mind what that French hussy told me about this Loodervic being so handy with his pops. It makes things awkward. I won’t say no more than that. Awkward.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” said the zealous Mr Peabody, “and the conclusion I’ve come to, Jerry, is that she made it up out of her head just for to scare you.”
For a moment Mr Stubbs pondered this. Then he said somewhat severely: “She should ha’ known better.” He took a pull at his ale, and wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, added: “Mind you, I’ve had my doubts about it all along. Sixteen candles is what she said. Now, I put it to you, William, is that a likely story?”
Mr Peabody gave it as his opinion that it was a most unlikely story. They discussed the question for a little while, Mr Stubbs contending that had Eustacie spoken of six candles, he might have believed her, and Mr Peabody, a more practical man, distrusting the entire story on the grounds that there was no sense in firing at candles at all.
They had, by these divergent paths, arrived at the same comfortable conclusion when their privacy was disturbed by the arrival of a visitor, who turned to be none other than Gregg, Beau Lavenham’s discreet valet. He came into the taproom with a prim little bow and a tight-lipped smile, and ordered a brandy with hot water and lemon. Until this had been procured for him, he stayed by the bar, only glancing once out of the corners of his eyes at the two Runners snugly ensconced in the ingle-nook by the fire. When his glass had been handed to him, however, he walked over to the fireplace, drew up a chair close to the high-backed settle, and bade the Runners good evening.
They returned this civil greeting without showing any marked degree of cordiality. They were aware that he was the man to whom they were indebted for what information they had, but although they would be grateful for any further information that he might be able to give them, they had a prejudice against informers as a race, and saw no reason to make an exception in this one’s favour. Accordingly, when Gregg leaned forward in his chair, and said in a keen but subdued voice: “Well?” it was in chilly accents that Mr Stubbs replied: “It ain’t well. We’ve been fetched down for nothing, that’s what.”
“So you didn’t find him!” said Gregg, frowning.
“Nor him, nor any sign of him. Which I will say didn’t surprise me.”
“But he was there, for all that,” said Gregg, tapping his front teeth with one finger-nail. “I am sure he was there. You looked everywhere?”
“There now!” said Mr Stubbs, with scathing irony. “If you haven’t put me in mind of it! Dang me, if I didn’t forget to look inside of one of the coal-boxes!”
Gregg, perceiving that he had offended, smiled and made a deprecating movement with his hand. “It is an old house, and full of nooks and hidden cupboards. You are sure—I expect you are sure—that he had no opportunity to seek safety in the cellars?”
“Yes,” replied Mr Stubbs. “I am sure. By the time I was in by the front door, Mr Peabody here was in by the back. And not so much of a sniff of any criminal did we get. What’s more, we had very nice treatment from the landlord, very nice indeed we had. There are plenty as would have behaved different, but Mr Nye, he made no bones at all. ‘It’s not what I like,’ he says, ‘but I don’t blame you, nor I’m not one to stand in the way of an officer what is only executing his dooty.’”
The valet’s light eyes flickered from one stolid face to the other. “He had him hidden. When I went he was not hidden. The tapster would not let me set foot outside the tap-room. They did not wish me to go anywhere inside the house. It was most marked.”
“That don’t surprise me,” said Mr Stubbs. He put his empty tankard down and regarded the valet narrowly. “What’s your interest in this Loodervic Lavenham? What makes you so unaccountable anxious to have him laid by the heels?”
The valet folded his lips closely, but after a moment replied: “Well, you see, Mr Stubbs, that is my business. I have my reasons.”
The Runner eyed him with growing disfavour. “Lookee!” he pronounced. “When I go ferreting for news of a desprit criminal, that’s dooty. When you does the same thing, Mr Gregg, it looks to me uncommon like Spitefulness, and Spitefulness is what I don’t hold with, and never shall.”
“That’s right,” agreed Mr Peabody.
The valet smiled again, but unpleasantly, and said in his silky way: “Why, you may say so if you choose, Mr Stubbs. And I hope I may ask whom you saw at the Red Lion?”
“I didn’t see no desprit criminal,” answered Mr Stubbs. “It’s my belief there ain’t no desprit criminal. Is it likely the place would house such with a Justice of the Peace putting up there?”
“You went into the little back bedchamber? They let you go there?”
“I went into two back bedchambers, one which is the landlord’s and the other which the young French lady’s maid has.”
The valet’s eyelids were quickly raised. “Her maid? Did you see her maid?”
“Ay, poor wench, I saw her right enough, and I heard Miss a-scolding of her all for breaking a bottle.”
“What was she like?” demanded Gregg, leaning forward again.
Mr Stubbs looked at him with a shade of uneasiness in his eyes. “Why, I didn’t get much sight of her face, she being crying into her shawl fit to break her heart.”
“Ah, so you didn’t see her face!” said Gregg. “Perhaps she was a tall girl—a very tall girl?”
Mr Stubbs had been engaged in filling a long clay pipe, but he laid it down, and said slowly: “Ay, she was a rare, strapping wench. She had yaller hair, by what I could see of it.”
Gregg sat back in his chair and set his finger-tips together, and over them surveyed the Runners with a peculiar glint in his eyes. “So that was it!” he said. “Well, well!”
“What do you mean, ‘that was it’?” said Mr Stubbs.
“Only that you have seen Ludovic Lavenham; yes, and let him slip through your fingers too, I dare say.”
Mr Peabody, observing his colleague’s evident discomfiture, came gallantly to the rescue. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “What we’ve done is, we’ve Lulled him—if so be it is him, which we ain’t proved yet. What we have to do now is to make a Pounce, and that, Mr Gregg, is what we decided to do without any help of yourn.”
“You had better have made your pounce when you had him under your hand,” said the valet dryly. “It is said in these parts that there are cellars below the ones you may see at the Red Lion; cellars which only Nye and Clem know the way into.”
“If that’s true, we shall find them,” said Mr Stubbs, with resolution.
“I hope you may,” responded Gregg. “But take my advice, and go armed! The man you are after is indeed desperate, and I fancy he will not be without his pistols.”
The Runners exchanged glances. “I did hear tell of him being handy with his pops,” remarked Mr Stubbs in a casual voice.
“They say he never misses,” said Gregg, lowering his eyes demurely. “If I were in your shoes, I should think it as well to shoot him before he could shoot me.”
“Yes, I dare say,” said Mr Stubbs bitterly, “but we ain’t allowed to go a-shooting of coves.”
“But if you told—both of you—how he shot first, and would have escaped, it would surely be overlooked?” suggested Gregg gently.
It was left to Mr Peabody to sum up the situation, but this he did not do until the valet had gone. Then he said to his troubled companion: “You know what this looks like to me, Jerry? It looks to me like as if there’s someone unaccountable anxious to have this Ludovic Lavenham put away quick—ah, and quiet, too!”
Mr Stubbs shook his head gloomily, and after a long silence, said: “We got to do our dooty, William.”
Their duty took them up the road to the Red Lion very early next morning. Their plan of surprising the household was frustrated by Nye, who had taken the precaution of setting Clem on the watch. By the time the Runners had reached the inn Ludovic had been roused, and hauled, protesting, to the cellar, and his room swept bare of all trace of him. The Runners were not gratified by the least sign of surprise in Nye, who greeted them with no more than the natural annoyance of a landlord knocked up at an unseasonable hour. In the taproom Clem was prosaically engaged in scrubbing the floor; he turned a blank, inquiring face towards the Runners, and with the stolid air of one who has work to do, returned to his task.
“Well, and what might you be wanting at this hour of the morning?” asked Nye testily.
“What we want is a word with that abigail we saw yesterday,” said Mr Stubbs.
“Do you mean Mamzelle’s Lucy?” said Nye.
“Ah, that’s the one I mean,” nodded Mr Stubbs.
“Well, if you want a word with her, you’d best get on the Brighton stage. She ain’t here any longer.”
Mr Stubbs gave him a very penetrating look, and said deeply: “You’re quite sure of that, are you, Mr Nye?”
“Of course I’m sure! I told you yesterday how it would be. Miss turned her off. What do you want with her? She was a rare silly wench, and not so well-favoured neither.”
“You know what I want with her,” said Mr Stubbs. “You’re harbouring a dangerous criminal, Mr Nye, and that wench was him!”
This pronouncement, so far from striking terror into the landlord, seemed to afford him the maximum amount of amusement. After staring at the Runners in a bemused way for several minutes, he allowed a smile to spread slowly over his face. The smile led to a chuckle, the chuckle to a veritable paroxysm of laughter. The landlord, wiping his eyes with the corner of his apron, bade Clem share the joke, and as soon as it had been explained to him, Clem did share it. In fact, he continued to snigger behind his hand for much longer than the Runners thought necessary.
When Nye was able to stop laughing he begged Mr Stubbs to tell him what had put such a notion into his head, and when Mr Stubbs, hoping that this card at least might prove to be a trump, said that he had received information, he at first looked at him very hard, and then said: “Information, eh? Then I’ll be bound I know who gave you that same information ! It was a scrawny fellow with a white face and the nastiest pair of daylights you ever saw! A fellow of the name of Gregg: that’s who it was!”
Mr Stubbs was a trifle disconcerted, and said guardedly: “I don’t say it was, and I don’t say it wasn’t.”
“Lord love you, you needn’t tell me!” said Nye, satisfied that his shot had gone home. “He’s had a spite against me since I don’t know when, while as for his master, if a stranger was to stop for half a day in this place, he’d go mad thinking it was Mr Ludovic come home to stop him taking what don’t belong to him. You’ve been properly roasted, that’s what you’ve been.”
“I don’t know about that,” replied Mr Stubbs. “All I know is it’s very highly suspicious that that abigail ain’t here no more, and what I want to see, Mr Nye, is those cellars of yourn.”
“Well, I’ve got something better to do than to take you down to my cellars,” said Nye. “If you want to see ’em, you go and see ’em. I don’t mind.”
An hour later, when Sir Hugh came down to breakfast, a pleasing idea dawned in Nye’s brain, and as he set a dish of ham and eggs before his patron, he told him that the Runners were in the house again. Sir Hugh, more interested in his breakfast than in the processes of the Law, merely replied that as long as they kept from poking their noses into his room, he had no objection to their presence.
“Oh, they won’t do that, sir! “ said Nye, pouring him out a cup of coffee. “They’re down in the cellar.”
Sir Hugh was inspecting a red sirloin, and said in a preoccupied voice: “In the cellar, are they?” Suddenly he let his eyeglass fall, and swung round in his chair to look at the landlord. “What’s that you say? In the cellar?”
“Yes, sir. They’ve been there the best part of an hour now—off and on.”
Sir Hugh was a man not easily moved, but this piece of intelligence roused him most effectively from his habitual placidity. “Are you telling me you’ve let that red-nosed scoundrel loose in the cellars?” he demanded.
“Well, sir, seeing as he’s an officer of the Law, and with a warrant, I didn’t hardly like to gainsay him,” said Nye apologetically.
“Warrant be damned!” said Sir Hugh. “There’s a pipe of Chambertin down there which I bought from you! What the devil are you about, man?”
“I thought you wouldn’t be pleased, sir, but there! what can I do? They’ve got it into their heads there’s a secret cellar. They’re hunting for it. Clem tells me it’s something shocking the way they’re pulling the kegs about.”
“Pulling the—” Words failed Sir Hugh. He rose, flinging down his napkin, and strolled from the parlour towards the taproom and the cellar stairs.
Fifteen minutes later Miss Thane, entering the room, was mildly surprised to find her brother’s chair empty, and inquired of Nye what had become of him.
“It was on account of them Runners, ma’am,” said Nye.
“What! are they here again?” exclaimed Miss Thane.
“Ay, they’re here, ma’am, a-hunting for the way into my hidden cellar. Oh, Mr Ludovic’s safe enough! But on account of my mentioning to Sir Hugh how them Runners was disturbing the wine downstairs, he got up, leaving his breakfast like you see, and went off in a rare taking to see what was happening.”
Miss Thane cast one glance at Nye’s wooden countenance, and said: “You were certainly born to be hanged, Nye. What was happening?”
“Well, ma’am, by what I heard in the taproom they had pulled my kegs about a thought roughly, and what with that and Sir Hugh getting it into his head they was wishful to tap the Nantes brandy, there was a trifle of a to-do. Clem tells me it was rare to hear Sir Hugh handle them. By what I understand, he’s laid it on them not to move my kegs by so much as an inch, and what he told them about wilful damage frightened them fair silly—that and the high tone he took with them.”
“They didn’t ask him what he knew of Lord Lavenham, did they?” said Miss Thane anxiously.
“They didn’t have no chance to ask him, ma’am. He told them they might look for all the criminals they chose, so long as they didn’t tamper with the liquor, nor go nosing round his bedchamber.”
“But, Nye, what if they find your hidden cellar?” said Miss Thane.
He smiled dourly. “They won’t do that—not while they keep to the open cellars. In fact, while Sir Hugh was telling them what their duty was, and what it wasn’t, I was able to take Mr Ludovic his breakfast.”
“Where is your secret cellar, Nye?”
He looked at her for a moment, and then replied: “You’ll be the ruin of me yet, ma’am. It’s under the floor of my storeroom.”
Sir Hugh came back into the room presently. He gave it as his opinion that the Runners were either drunk or half-witted, and said that he fancied they would have no more trouble with them. Upon his sister’s inquiring hopefully whether he had contrived to get rid of them, he replied somewhat severely that he had made no such attempt. He had merely defined their duties to them and warned them of the consequences of overstepping the limits of the law.
Both Nye and Miss Thane were dissatisfied, but there was no doubt that the irruption of Sir Hugh into the cellars had done much to damp the Runners’ ardour. His air of unquestionable authority, his knowledge of the law, and the fact of his being acquainted, apparently, with the magistrate in charge at Bow Street made them conscious of a great disinclination to fall foul of him again. Nor could they feel, when they had discussed the point between themselves, that a house which held so rigid a legal precisian was the place in which to look for a hardened criminal. They had failed on two occasions to find the least trace of Ludovic Lavenham; the landlord, who should be most nearly concerned, seemed to look upon their search with indifference; and had it not been for the suspicious circumstance of the abigail’s disappearance, they would have been much inclined to have returned to London. The valet’s words, however, had been explicit. They decided to prosecute a further search for a hidden cellar, and to keep the inn under observation in the hope of surprising Ludovic in an attempt to escape.
While this search, which entailed a patient tapping of the walls and floor of the other cellars, was in progress, Nye seized the opportunity to visit Ludovic. He returned presently and reported that his lordship wouldn’t stay patient for long; in fact, was already threatening to come out of hiding and deal with the Runners in his own fashion.
“Really, one cannot blame him,” said Miss Thane judicially. “It is most tiresome of these people to continue to haunt us. It quite puts an end to our adventures.”
“Yes, it does,” agreed Eustacie. “Besides, I am afraid that Ludovic will catch cold in the cellar.”
“Very true,” said Miss Thane. “There is nothing for it: since Hugh has been so useless in the matter, we must get rid of the Runners ourselves.”
“ You have not seen them,” said Eustacie bitterly. “They are the kind of men who stay, and stay, and stay.”
“Yes, they seem to be a dogged couple, I must say. I am afraid it is your abigail who is at the root of their obstinacy.” She broke off, and suddenly stood up. “My love, I believe I have hit upon a notion! Would you—now, would you say I was a strapping wench?”
“Of a certainty I should not say anything of the kind!” replied Eustacie, indignant at the implication that she could be capable of such discourtesy. “You are very tall, bien entendu, but—”
“Say no more!” commanded Miss Thane. “I have a Plan!”