Having got rid of his cousin and of Miss Thane, the Beau turned to Eustacie, and murmured: “Could anything be better? Shall we go into the drawing-room?”
Eustacie assented, wondering how long she would be able to hold him in conversation. She did not feel that she possessed quite Miss Thane’s talent for discursive chatter, and she was far too ingenuous to realize that her enchanting little face was enough to keep the Beau by her side until she herself should be pleased to declare the interview at an end. It did occur to her that he was looking at her with an expression of unusual warmth in his eyes, but beyond deciding that she did not like it, she paid very little heed to it. She sat down by the fire, her soft, dove-coloured skirts billowing about her, and remarked that if her dearest Sarah had a fault it was that she was a trifle too talkative.
“Just a trifle,” agreed the Beau. “Do you really propose to accompany her to town?”
“Oh yes, certainly!” she replied. “But I cannot remain with her for ever, and it is that which makes everything very awkward. I meant to become a governess, but Sarah does not advise it. What do you think I should do?”
“Well,” said the Beau slowly, “you could, of course, engage a lady of birth and propriety to live with you and be your chaperon. Sylvester had left you well provided for, you know.”
“But I do not want a chaperon!” said Eustacie.
“No? There is an alternative.”
“Tell me, then!”
“Marriage,” he said.
She shook her head. “I will not marry Tristram. He is not amusing, and, besides, I do not like him.”
“I am aware,” said the Beau, “but Tristram is not the only man in the world, my little cousin.”
Foreseeing what was coming, Eustacie at once agreed with this pronouncement, and launched out into a eulogy of the Duke she would have married had her grandfather not brought her to England. The fact that she had never laid eyes on this gentleman did not deter her from describing him in detail, and it was fully fifteen minutes before her invention gave out and her cousin was able to interpolate a remark. He observed that since the Duke had gone to the guillotine, her fate, had she married him, would have been a melancholy one.
In this opinion, however, Eustacie could not concur. To have become a widow at the age of eighteen would, she held, have been épatant, and of all things the most romantic. “Moreover,” she added, “it was a very good match. I should have been a duchess, and although Grandpapa says—said—that it is vulgar to care for such things, I do think that I should have liked to have been a duchess.”
“Oh, I agree with you, ma chère! ” he said cordially. “You would have made a charming duchess. But in these revolutionary times one must moderate one’s ideas, you know. Consider, instead, the advantages of becoming a baroness.”
“A baroness?” she faltered, fixing her eyes on his face with an expression of painful intensity. “What do you mean?”
He met her eyes with slightly raised brows, and for a moment stood looking down at her as though he were trying to read her thoughts. “My dear cousin, what in the world have I said to alarm you?” he asked.
Recollecting herself, she answered quickly: “I am not at all alarmed, but I do not understand what you mean. Why should I think about being a baroness?”
He pulled up a chair and sat down on it, rather nearer to her than she liked, and stretching out his hand laid it on one of hers. “I might make you one,” he said.
She sat as straight and as stiff as a wooden puppet, but her cheeks glowed with the indignation that welled up in her. The glance she bent on him was a very fiery one, and she said bluntly: “You are not a baron, you!”
“We don’t know that,” he replied, “but we might find out. In fact, I have already recommended Tristram to do so.”
“You mean that you would like very much to know that Ludovic is dead?”
He smiled. “Let us say rather than I should like very much to know whether he is dead, my dear.”
She repressed the impulse to throw off his hand, and said in a thoughtful voice: “Yes, I suppose you want to be Lord Lavenham. It is very natural.”
He shrugged. “I do not set great store by it, but I should be glad of the title if it could win me the one thing I want.”
This was too much for Eustacie, and she did pull her hand away, exclaiming: “ Voyons, do you think I marry just for a title, me?”
“Oh no, no, no!” he said, smiling. “You would undoubtedly marry for love were it possible, but you have said yourself that your situation is awkward, and, alas, I know that you are not in love with me. I am offering a marriage of expediency, and when one is debarred from a love-match, dear cousin, it is time to give weight to material considerations.”
“True, very true!” she said. “And you have given weight to them, n’est-ce pas? I am an heiress, as you reminded me yesterday.”
“You are also enchanting,” he said, with unwonted feeling.
“ Merci du compliment! I regret infinitely that I do not find you enchanting, too.”
“Ah, you are in love with romance!” he replied. “You imagine to yourself some hero of adventure, but it is a sad truth that in these humdrum days such people no longer exist.”
“You know nothing of the matter: they do exist!” said Eustacie hotly.
“They would make undesirable husbands,” he remarked. “Take poor Ludovic, for instance, whose story has, I believe, a little caught your fancy. You think him a very figure of romance, but you would be disappointed in him if ever you met him, I dare say.”
She blushed, and turned her face away. “I do not wish to talk of Ludovic. I do not think of him at all.”
He looked amused. “My dear, is it as bad as that? I should not—I really should not waste a moment’s thought on him. One is sorry for him, one even liked him, but he was nothing but a rather stupid young man, after all.”
She compressed her lips tightly, as though afraid some unguarded words might escape her. He watched her for a moment, and presently said: “Do you know, you look quite cross, cousin? Now, why?”
She replied, keeping her gaze fixed on a blazing log of wood in the grate: “It does not please me that you should suppose I am in love with someone I have never seen. It is a betise.”
“It would be,” he agreed. “Let us by all means banish Ludovic from our minds, and talk, instead, of ourselves. You want certain things, Eustacie, which I could give you.”
“I do not think it.”
“It is nevertheless true. You would like a house in town, and to lead precisely the life I lead. You could not support the thought of becoming Tristram’s wife, because he would expect you to be happy in Berkshire, rearing his children. Now, I should not expect anything so dull of you. Indeed, I should deprecate it. I do not think the domestic virtues are very strong in me. I should require only of my wife that her taste in dress should do me justice.”
“You propose to me a manage de convenance ” said Eustacie, “and I have made up my mind that that is just what I do not want.”
“I proposed to you what I thought might be acceptable. Forget it! I love you.”
She got up quickly, a vague idea of flight in her mind. He, too, rose, and before she could stop him, put his arms round her. “Eustacie!” he said. “From the moment of first laying eyes on you I have loved you!”
An uncontrollable shudder ran through her. She wrenched herself out of his embrace, and cast him such a glance of repulsion that he stepped back, the smile wiped suddenly from his face.
He looked at her with narrowed eyes, but after a slight pause the ugly gleam vanished, and he was smiling again. He moved away to the other side of the fireplace, and drawled: “It seems that you do not find me so sympathetic as you would have had me believe, cousin. Now, I wonder why you wanted to come here today?”
“I thought you would advise me. I did not suppose that you would try to make love to me. That is quite another thing!”
He lifted an eyebrow at her. “Is it? But I think—yes, I think I have once or twice before informed you of my very earnest desire to marry you.”
“Yes, but I have said already that I will not. It is finished.”
“Perfectly,” he bowed. “Let us talk of something else. There was something I had in mind to ask you, as I remember. What can it have been? Something that intrigued me.” He half closed his eyes, as though in an effort of memory. “Something to do with your flight from the Court ... ah yes, I have it! The mysterious groom! Who was the mysterious groom, Eustacie?”
The question came as a shock to her; her heart seemed to leap in her chest. To gain time she repeated: “The mysterious groom?”
“Yes,” he smiled. “The groom who did not exist. Do tell me!”
“Oh!” she said, with a rather artificial laugh, “that is my very own adventure, and quite a romantic history! I assure you. How did you know of it?”
“In the simplest way imaginable, my dear cousin. My man Gregg fell in with a certain riding-officer at Cowfold yesterday, and from him gleaned this most interesting tale. I am consumed by curiosity. A groom whom you vouched for, and whom Tristram vouched for, and who yet did not exist.”
“Well, truly, I think it was wrong of me to save him from the riding-officer,” confessed Eustacie, with a great air of candour, “but you mist understand that I was under an obligation to him. One pays one’s debts, after all!”
“Such a sentiment does you credit,” said the Beau affably. “What was the debt?”
“Oh, the most exciting thing!” she replied. “I did not tell you the whole yesterday, because Sarah’s brother is a Justice of the Peace, and one must be careful, but I was captured by smugglers that night, and but for the man I saved I should have been killed. Murdered, you know. Conceive of it!”
“How very, very alarming for you!” said the Beau.
“Yes, it was. There were a great many of them, and they were afraid I should betray them, and they said I must at once be killed. Only this one—the one I said was my groom—took my part, and he would not permit that I should be killed. I think he was the leader, because they listened to him.”
“I never till now heard that chivalry existed amongst smugglers,” remarked the Beau.
“No, but he was not a preux chevalier, you know. He was quite rough, and not at all civil, but he had compassion upon me, and that led to a great quarrel between him and the other men. Then the riding-officers came, and my smuggler threw me up on to my horse and mounted behind me, because he said that the Excisemen must not find me, which, I see, was quite reasonable. Only the Excisemen fired at him, and he was wounded, and Rufus bolted into the Forest. And I did not know what to do, so I went to the Red Lion and asked Nye to help the smuggler, because it seemed to me that I could not give him up after he had saved me from being killed.”
The Beau was listening with his usual air of courteous interest. He said: “What strange, what incredible things do happen, to be sure! Now if I had heard this tale at secondhand, or perhaps read it in a romance, I should have said it was far too improbable to bear the least resemblance to the truth. It shows how easily one may be mistaken. I, for instance, on what I conceived to be my knowledge of Nye’s character, can even now scarcely credit him with so much noble disregard for his own good name. You must possess great influence over him, dear cousin.”
Eustacie felt a little uneasy, but replied carelessly: “Yes, perhaps I have some influence, but I am bound to confess he did not at all like it, and he would not by any means keep the smuggler in his house.”
“Oh, the smuggler has departed, has he?”
“But yes, the very next day! What else?”
“I am sure I do not know. I expect I am very stupid,” he added apologetically, “but there do seem to me to be one or two unexplained points to this adventure. I find myself quite at a loss to understand Tristram’s part in it. How were you able to persuade so stern a pattern of rectitude to support your story, my dear?”
Eustacie began to wish very much that Tristram and Sarah would finish their search and come to her rescue. “Oh, but, you see, when it was explained to him Tristram was grateful to my smuggler for saving me!”
“Oh!” said the Beau, blinking. “Tristram was grateful. Yes, I see. How little one knows of people, after all! It must have gone sadly against the grain with him, I feel. He has not breathed a word of it to me.”
“No, and I think it is very foolish of him,” returned Eustacie. “Tristram does not wish anyone to know of my adventure, because he says I have behaved with impropriety, and it had better immediately be forgotten.”
“Ah, that is much better!” said the Beau approvingly. “I feel that he may well have said that.”
This rejoinder, which seemed to convey a disturbing disbelief in the rest of her story, left Eustacie without a word to say. The Beau, seeing her discomfiture, smiled more broadly, and said: “You know, you have quite forgotten to tell me that your smuggler was one of Sylvester’s bastards.”
Eustacie felt the colour rise in her cheeks, and at once turned it to account, exclaiming in shocked tones: “Cousin!” in
“I beg your pardon!” he said, with exaggerated concern. “I should have said love-children.”
She threw him a reproachful, outraged look, and replied: “Certainly I have not forgotten, but I do not speak of indelicate things, and I am very much emue to think that you could mention it to me.”
He apologized profusely, but with an ironical air which made her feel rather uncomfortable. Luckily an interruption occurred before he could ask any more awkward questions. Miss Thane and Sir Tristram came into the room. Sir Tristram wore an expression of long-suffering, but in Miss Thane’s eyes there peeped an irrepressible twinkle.
The quick, anguished glance thrown at him by Eustacie was enough to warn Shield that all was not well. He gave no sign of having noticed it, however, but waited for Miss Thane to come to the end of her eulogies and thanks. The Beau received these with smiling civility, and when they ceased, turned to his cousin, and said in a languid voice that he had been hearing more of her adventure from Eustacie. Sir Tristram quite unwittingly bore out the character bestowed on him by Eustacie by saying curtly that the sooner the adventure was forgotten the better it would be.
“You are too harsh, my dear Tristram,” said the Beau. “But we know how kind-hearted you are under your—er—severity.”
“Indeed!” said Shield, looking most forbidding.
“Yes, yes, I have heard all about Eustacie’s smuggler, and how you helped to protect him from the riding-officers. I have been much moved. A—a connection of Sylvester, I believe?”
Sir Tristram replied coolly: “Just so. I thought there would be less noise made over the affair if he were allowed to escape.”
“I expect you were right, my dear fellow. How quick of you to recognize one of Sylvester’s—ah, I must not offend Eustacie’s sensibilities again!—one of Sylvester’s relations.”
Sir Tristram was not in the least put out by this. He said: “Oh, I knew him at once! So would you have done. You remember Jem Sunning, don’t you?”
“Jem Sunning!” There was just the faintest suggestion of chagrin in the Beau’s voice. “Is that who it was? I thought he went to America.”
“So did I. Apparently he found free trading more to his taste, however. Eustacie, if you are ready to return to Hand Cross, I shall do myself the honour of escorting your carriage.”
Bearing in mind her avowed dislike of him, Eustacie thought it proper to demur at this suggestion, and some time was wasted in argument. Miss Thane enacted the role of peacemaker, and finally the whole party took their leave of the Beau, and set off for Hand Cross.
When he had handed the ladies into their chaise, and seen it drive off with Sir Tristram riding beside it, the Beau walked slowly back to the house, and made his way to the library. His face wore an expression of pensive abstraction, and he did not immediately occupy himself in any way. He wandered instead to the window and looked out over the neat beds of his formal garden. His gaze seemed to question the clipped hedges; his eyebrows were a little raised; his hand went as though unconsciously to his quizzing-glass, and began to play with it, sliding it up and down the silk ribbon that was knotted through the chased ring at the end of the shaft. At this idle employment he was found a few minutes later by his valet, a discreet, colourless person of self effacing manners and unequalled skill in all details concerning a gentleman’s toilet. He came into the room with his usual hushed tread, and laid a folded journal on the table with a finicking care that seemed to indicate the handling of some precious and brittle object.
The Beau, recognizing these stealthy sounds, spoke without turning his head. “Ah, Gregg! That riding-officer.”
The valet folded his hands meekly and stood with slightly bowed head. “Yes, sir?”
“He described mademoiselle’s groom to you, I think?”
“Imperfectly, sir. He was struck by a resemblance to the late lord, but I could not discover that this lay in anything but the nose.” He coughed, and added apologetically: “That may be seen in Sussex—occasionally, sir.”
The Beau made no response. Gregg waited, his eyes lowered. After a short interval the Beau said slowly: “A young man, I think?”
“I was informed so, sir.”
The Beau bit the rim of his quizzing-glass meditatively. “How old by your reckoning would Jem Sunning be at this present?”
The valet’s eyes lifted, and for a moment stared in surprise at the back of his master’s powdered head. He replied after a moment’s reflection: “I regret, sir, I am unable to answer with any degree of certainty. I should suppose him to be somewhere in the region of one—or two-and-thirty.”
“My memory is very imperfect,” sighed the Beau, “but I think he was always used to be dark, was he not?”
“Yes, sir.” The valet gave another of his deprecating coughs. “It is generally said amongst the country people, sir, that my lord gave his own colouring to his descendants.”
“Yes,” agreed the Beau. “Yes, I have heard that. In fact, I think I can call only one exception to mind.” He turned, and came away from the window to stand in front of the fire. “I cannot but feel that it would be interesting to know whether mademoiselle’s groom conformed to the rule—or not.”
“The riding-officer, sir,” said Gregg, in an expressionless voice, “spoke of a fair young man.”
“Ah!” said the Beau gently. “A fair young man! Well, that is very odd, to be sure.”
“Yes, sir. A trifle unusual, I believe.”
The Beau’s gaze dwelled thoughtfully upon a portrait hanging on the opposite wall. “I think, Gregg, that we sometimes purchase our brandy from Joseph Nye?”
“We have very often done so, sir.”
“We will purchase some more,” said the Beau, polishing his eyeglass on his sleeve. “Attend to it, Gregg.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That is all,” said the Beau.
The valet bowed and walked towards the door. As he reached it the Beau said softly: “I should not like you to display any vulgar curiosity at the Red Lion, Gregg.”
“No, sir. You may rely on me.”
“Oh, I do, Gregg, I do!” said the Beau, and picking up the journal from the table, sat down with it in a winged armchair by the fire.
The valet lingered for a moment. “If I may venture to say something, sir?” he suggested meekly.
“By all means, Gregg.”
“The lady who accompanied Sir Tristram into this room, sir. I understand she was desirous of inspecting the panelling?”
The Beau raised his eyes from the journal. “Well?”
“Just so, sir. It would, of course, explain conduct which seemed to Thomson and myself a trifle odd. I beg pardon, I’m sure.”
“In what way odd?”
“Well, sir, it appeared to Thomson and myself that Sir Tristram and the lady were inspecting the woodwork very closely,” said the valet. “The lady went so far as to stand upon a chair to inspect the frieze, and Sir Tristram, when I entered the room, seemed to me (but I might be mistaken) to be sounding the lower panels.”
The Beau lowered the journal. “Did he?” he said slowly. “Did he, indeed? Well, well!”
Gregg bowed himself out. It was a few minutes before the Beau picked up his journal again. His eyes stared across the room at a certain portion of the wainscoting; and there was for once no trace of a smile upon his thin lips.
Meanwhile Miss Thane, seated beside Eustacie in the chaise, had nothing to report but failure. She said that her fingers were sore from pulling and pressing wooden bosses, and that her nervous system was shattered for ever. No fewer than three interruptions had occurred during the short time she and Sir Tristram had had at their disposal. First had come the housekeeper with a bowl of flowers to set upon the table, and a tongue only too ready to wag. She had hardly been got rid of when the door opened again, this time to admit the butler, who had come in to make up the fire. “And what he must have thought, I dare not imagine!” said Miss Thane. “I was standing upon a chair at that precise moment, trying to move a wooden pear well above my reach.”
Eustacie gave a giggle. “What did you do?”
“Most unfortunately,” said Miss Thane, “my back was turned to the door, and I had not heard it open. I am bound to confess, however, that your cousin Tristram showed great presence of mind, for he immediately told me to look closely at the carving, and to observe most particularly the top chamfer of the cross-rail.”
“One must admit that Tristram is not stupid,” said Eustacie fair-mindedly.
“No,” agreed Miss Thane, casting a glance out of the window at the straight figure riding beside the chaise, “not stupid, but (I am sorry to say) both autocratic and dictatorial. His remarks to me once the butler had left the room were quite unappreciative and not a little unfeeling, while his way of handing me down from the chair left much to be desired.”
“He does not like females,” explained Eustacie.
Miss Thane’s eyes returned to the contemplation of Sir Tristram’s stern profile. “Ah!” she said. “That would account for it, of course. Well, we did what we could to make my standing upon a chair seem a natural proceeding—but I doubt the butler thinks us a pair of lunatics—and being once more alone, and Sir Tristram having spoken his mind to me on the subject of female folly, we returned to our search. It affords me some satisfaction to reflect that it was Sir Tristram, and not I, who was engaged in sounding the panels when a most odiously soft-footed individual stole in to place a snuff-jar upon the desk. At least, it afforded me the opportunity to show that I, too, have some presence of mind. I begged your cousin to admire the spearhead finish.”
“I think that you are very clever!” said Eustacie approvingly. “I should not have known that there was a—a spearhead finish.”
“There wasn’t,” said Miss Thane. “In fact, the mere mention of a spearhead finish in connection with those panels was a solecism which caused a spasm to cross Sir Tristram’s features. When the snuff-bearer had taken himself off he was obliging enough to inform me that before he accompanied me on another such search he would give me a few simple lessons in what to look for in wood panelling of that particular kind. By that time I had undergone so many frights that my spirit was quite in abeyance, and I not only thanked him meekly, but I even acquiesced in his decision to abandon the quest. Yes, I know it was wretchedly weak of me,” she added, in answer to a look of reproach from Eustacie, “but to tell you the truth, I think the task is wellnigh hopeless. Ludovic must remember more precisely where the panel is.”
“But you know very well that he cannot!”
“Then he must go and look for it himself,” said Miss Thane firmly.
Eustacie was inclined to be indignant, but the chaise had by this time drawn up outside the Red Lion, and she was forced to postpone her recriminations until a more convenient occasion. Shield, dismounting lightly from his horse, himself opened the door and let down the steps for the ladies to descend. Having handed them out of the chaise, he gave his horse into the charge of one of the ostlers and followed them into the inn. Here they were met by Nye, who informed them in the voice of one who had done his best to avert disaster but failed, that they would find Ludovic in Sir Hugh Thane’s room.
“In my brother’s room?” exclaimed Miss Thane. “What in the world is he doing there?”
“He’s playing cards, ma’am,” replied Nye grimly.
“But how came he to go into my brother’s room at all?” demanded Miss Thane. “We left him in bed!”
“You did, ma’am, but you hadn’t been gone above five minutes before his lordship started ringing the bell for Clem. Nothing else would do for him but to get up and dress, and me not being by Clem helped him. That’s how it always was: what Mr Ludovic took it into his head to do, Clem would help him to, no matter what.”
Eustacie turned to her cousin. “You should not have brought his clothes!”
“Nonsense!” said Shield. “Ludovic must leave his bed sooner or later. He’ll take no hurt.”
“That is all very well,” said Miss Thane, “but even though he might get up, I can see no reason for him to go into Hugh’s room. I have a great value for Hugh, but I cannot feel that he is the man to keep a momentous secret. Nye, you should have intervened.”
Nye smiled somewhat wryly. “It’s plain you don’t know his lordship, ma’am. No sooner was he dressed than what must he do but walk out of his room just to see how his legs would carry him. While he was showing Clem how well he could manage, Sir Hugh (who’d been pulling his bell fit to break it, according to what he told me) put his head out of his room to shout for Clem. By what I can make out from Clem, Sir Hugh and Mr Ludovic got into conversation right away, Sir Hugh not seeming to be surprised at finding another gentleman in the house, and Mr Ludovic, of course, as friendly as you please, ‘Oh, are you Sir Hugh Thane?’ he says. ‘My name’s Lavenham—’ oh yes, ma’am, he came out with that quite brazen! That’s Mr Ludovic all over. ‘Well,’ says Sir Hugh, ‘I can’t say I call your face to mind at the moment, but if you know me I’m devilish glad of it, for I’ve had more than enough of my own company. Do you play piquet?’ Well, that was quite sufficient for Mr Ludovic, and before Clem rightly knew what was happening, he’d been sent off downstairs to fetch up a couple of packs of cards and a bottle of wine. By the time I was back in the house there was no doing anything, ma’am, for they was both in Sir Hugh’s room, as thick as thieves, as the saying is.”
The ladies looked at one another in consternation. “I had better go upstairs and see what is happening,” said Miss Thane resignedly.
It was, however, just as Nye had described. Lord Lavenham and Sir Hugh Thane, both attired in dressing-gowns, were seated on opposite sides of a small table drawn close to the fire in Sir Hugh’s bedchamber playing piquet. A glass of wine was at each gentleman’s elbow, and so absorbed were they in the game that neither paid the least heed to the opening of the door, or, in fact, became aware of Miss Thane’s presence until she stepped right up to the table. Sir Hugh glanced up then, and said in an abstracted voice: “Oh, there you are, Sally!” and turned his attention to the cards again.
Miss Thane laid her hand on Ludovic’s shoulder to prevent his rising, but remarked significantly: “What if I had been the Beau, or an Exciseman?”
“Oh, I’m well prepared!” Ludovic assured her, and in the twinkling of an eye had whisked a small, silver-mounted pistol from his pocket.
“Good God, I hope you don’t mean to fire on sight!” said Miss Thane.
Sir Hugh put up his glass to look at the pistol. “That’s a nice little gun,” he observed.
Ludovic handed it to him. “Yes, it’s one of Manton’s. I’ve a pair of his duelling pistols, too—beautiful pieces of work!”
Sir Hugh subjected the pistol to a careful inspection. “Myself I don’t care for silver sights. Apt to dazzle the eye.” He sighted along the pistol. “Nice balance, but too short in the barrel. No accuracy over twelve yards.”
Ludovic’s eye gleamed. “Do you think so? I’ll engage to culp a wafer at twenty!”
“With this gun?” said Sir Hugh incredulously.
“With that gun.”
“I’ll lay you a pony you don’t.”
“Done!” said Ludovic promptly.
“And where,” inquired Miss Thane, “do you propose to hold this contest?”
“Oh, in the yard!” said Ludovic, receiving the pistol back from Sir Hugh.
“That, of course, will be very nice,” said Miss Thane politely. “The ostlers will thus be able to see you. I forbid you to encourage him, Hugh. Let us admit that he is a crack shot, and be done with it.”
“Well, I am a crack shot,” said Ludovic, smiling most disarmingly up at her.
“Talking of crack shots,” said Sir Hugh, “what was the name of the fellow who put out all the candles in the big chandelier at Mrs Archer’s once? There were fifteen of them, and he never missed one!”
“Fifteen?” said Ludovic. “Sixteen!”
“Fifteen was what I was told. He did it for a wager.”
“That’s true enough, but I tell you there were sixteen candles!”
Sir Hugh shook his head. “You’ve got that wrong. Fifteen.”
“Damn it, I ought to know!” said Ludovic. “I did it!”
“You did it?” Sir Hugh regarded him with renewed interest. “You mean to tell me you are the man who shot the wicks off fifteen candles at Mrs Archer’s?”
“I shot the wicks off sixteen candles!” said Ludovic.
“Well, all I can say is that it was devilish fine shooting,” said Sir Hugh. “But are you sure you have the figure right? I rather fancy fifteen was the number.”
“Where’s Tristram?” demanded Ludovic of Miss Thane. “He was there! Sixteen candles I shot. I used my Mantons, and Jerry Matthews loaded for me.”
“I don’t know him,” remarked Sir Hugh. “Would he be a son of old Frederick Matthews?”
Miss Thane at this point withdrew to summon Sir Tristram. When she returned with him she found that the question of Mr Jerry Matthew’s parentage had led inexplicably to an argument on the precise nature of a certain bet entered in the book at White’s three years before. The argument was broken off as soon as Sir Tristram entered the room, for Ludovic at once commanded him to say whether he had put out fifteen or sixteen candles at Mrs Archer’s house.
“I don’t remember,” replied Sir Tristram. “All I remember is that you shattered a big mirror to smithereens and brought the Watch in on us.”
Sir Hugh, who was looking fixedly at Sir Tristram, said suddenly, and with a pleased air: “Shield! That’s who you are! Recognized you at once. What’s more, I know where I saw you last.”
Sir Tristram shook hands with him. “At Mendoza’s fight with Warr last year,” he said, without hesitation. “I recall that you were on the roof of the coach next to my curricle.”
“That’s it!” said Thane. “A grand turn-up! Did you see Dan’s last fight with Humphries? A couple of years ago that would be, or maybe three.”
“I saw him beat Humphries twice, and I was at the Fitzgerald turn-up in ‘91.”
“You were? Then tell me this—Was Fitzgerald shy, or was he not?”
“Not shy, no. Rather glaringly abroad once or twice, I thought.”
“He was, was he? I’m glad to know that, because—”
“If you are going to talk about prizefights, I’ll leave you,” interposed Miss Thane.
“No, don’t do that,” said Ludovic. “I’m not interested in prizefights. By-the-by, did you find that panel?”
This casual reference to her morning’s labour made Miss Thane reply tartly: “No, Ludovic, we did not find that panel.”
“I didn’t think you would,” he said.
Miss Thane appeared to struggle with emotions. Her brother, showing a faint interest in what he had caught of the conversation, said sympathetically: “Lost something?”
“No, dear,” replied Sarah, with awful calm. “It is Lord Lavenham who has lost a talisman ring. I told you all about it three days ago. He lost it at play one night at the Cocoa-Tree.”
“I do remember you telling me some rigmarole or another,” admitted Thane. “If you want my advice, Lavenham, you won’t play at the Cocoa-Tree. I met a Captain Sharp there myself once. Hazard it was, and the dice kept running devilish high. I’d my suspicions of them from the start, and sure enough they were up-hills.”
“Oh, the play was fair enough,” said Ludovic indifferently.
“What I’m telling you is that it wasn’t,” said Sir Hugh, patient but obstinate. “I split the dice myself, and found ’em loaded.”
“I wasn’t talking about that. My game was piquet. Never played hazard at the Cocoa-Tree in my life. I used to play at Almack’s, and Brooks’s, of course.”
“Very high going at Brooks’s,” said Thane, with a reflective shake of the head.
Sarah, seeing that a discussion of the play at the various gaming clubs in London was in a fair way to being begun, intervened before Ludovic could say anything more. She reminded him severely that they had more important things to discuss than gaming, and added with a good deal of feeling that her efforts on his behalf had not only been fruitless, but quite possibly disastrous as well. “Your cousin,” she said, “has heard about Eustacie’s groom, and there is no doubt that he feels suspicious. Luckily, Sir Tristram had the presence of mind to tell him that the groom was—Whom did you say he was, Sir Tristram?”
“Jem Sunning,” replied Shield. “You remember him, Ludovic?”
“Yes, but I thought he went to America.”
“He did,” said Shield. “That was why I chose him. But I’m not sure that the Beau believed me. It is more imperative than ever that you should get to some place of safety. If you won’t go to Holland—”
“Well, I won’t,” said Ludovic flatly.
Sir Hugh came unexpectedly to his support. “Holland?” he said. “I shouldn’t go to Holland if I were you. I didn’t like it at all. Rome, now! That’s the place—though they have a demmed sight too many pictures there, too,” he added gloomily.
“I am going to stay here,” said Ludovic. “If the worst comes to the worst, there’s always the cellar.”
“Just what I was thinking myself!” said Thane approvingly. “I’ve a strong notion there’s more in that cellar than we’ve discovered. Why, I didn’t get hold of this Canary till yesterday!”
No one paid the slightest heed to this interruption. Sir Tristram said: “Very well, if you are determined, Ludovic, I don’t propose to waste time in trying to persuade you. Are you serious in thinking that the ring may be behind that panel?”
“Of course I’m serious! It’s the very place for it. Where else would he be likely to put it?”
“If I help you to get into the house, can you find the panel?”
“I can try,” said Ludovic hopefully.
“Yes, no doubt,” returned Shield, “but I have assisted in one aimless search for it, and I’ve no desire to repeat the experience.”
“Once I’m in the house you can leave it to me,” said Ludovic. “I’m bound to recognize the panelling when I see it.”
“I hope you may,” replied Shield. “The Beau spoke of going to town one day this week, and that should be our opportunity.”
Miss Thane coughed. “And how—the question just occurs to me, you know—shall you get into the Dower House, sir?”
“We can break in through a window,” answered Ludovic. “There’s no difficulty about that.”
She cast a demure glance up at Shield. “I am afraid you will never get Sir Tristram to agree to do anything so rash,” she said.
He returned her glance with one of his measuring looks. “I must seem to you a very spiritless creature, Miss Thane.”
She smiled, and shook her head, but would not answer. Her brother, who had been following the conversation with a puzzled frown, suddenly observed that it all sounded very odd to him. “You can’t break into someone’s house!” he objected.
“Yes, I can,” returned Ludovic. “I’m not such a cripple as that!”
“But it’s a criminal offence!” Sir Hugh pointed out.
“If it comes to that it’s a criminal offence to smuggle liquor into the country,” replied Ludovic. “I can tell you, I’m in so deep that it don’t much signify what I do now.”
Sir Hugh sat up. “You’re never the smuggler my sister spoke to me about?”
“I’m a free trader,” said Ludovic, grinning.
“Then just tell me this!” said Thane, his interest in house breaking vanishing before a more important topic. “Can you get me a pipe of the same Chambertin Nye has in his cellar?”