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 bed-chamber 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 prize-fights, I’ll leave you,’ interposed Miss Thane.
‘No, don’t do that,’ said Ludovic. ‘I’m not interested in prize-fights. 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 never 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?’
Eight
It was agreed finally that Ludovic should attempt nothing in the way of housebreaking until his cousin had discovered which day the Beau proposed to go to London. Ludovic, incurably optimistic, considered his ring as good as found already, but Shield, taking a more sober view of the situation, saw pitfalls ahead. If the Beau, like his father before him, were indeed in the habit of using the priest’s hole as a hiding-place for his strong-box, nothing was more likely than his keeping the ring there as well. Almost the only point on which Shield found himself at one with his volatile young cousin was the belief, firmly held by Ludovic, that the Beau, if he ever had the ring, would neither have sold it nor have thrown it away. To sell it would be too dangerous a procedure; to throw away an antique of great value would require more resolution than Sir Tristram believed the Beau possessed. But Sir Tristram could not share Ludovic’s easy-going contempt of the Beau. Ludovic persisted in laughing at his affectations, and thinking him a mere fop of no particular courage or enterprise. Sir Tristram, though he had no opinion of the Beau’s courage, profoundly mistrusted his suavity, and considered him to be a great deal more astute than he seemed.
The circumstance of the Beau’s butler and valet having seen part at least of the search for the secret panel Sir Tristram found disturbing. That the Beau was already suspicious of Eustacie’s supposed groom was apparent; Sir Tristram believed that if he got wind of his cousins’ odd behaviour in his library he would be quite capable of putting two and two together and not only connecting Ludovic with the episode but realizing that he himself had at last fallen under suspicion. And if the Beau suspected that Ludovic, who knew the position of the priest’s hole, had come into Sussex to find his ring he would surely be very unlikely to leave it where it would certainly be looked for.
Some part of these forebodings Shield confided to Miss Thane, enjoining her to do all that lay in her power to keep Ludovic hidden from all eyes but their own.
‘Well, I will do my best,’ replied Sarah, ‘but it is not an easy task, Sir Tristram.’
‘I know it is not an easy task,’ he said impatiently, ‘but it is the only way in which you can assist us – which I understand you to be desirous of doing.’
She could not forbear giving him a look of reproach. ‘You must be forgetting what assistance I rendered you at the Dower House,’ she said.
‘No,’ replied Sir Tristram, at his dryest. ‘I was not forgetting that.’
Miss Thane rested her chin in her hand, pensively surveying him. ‘Will you tell me something, Sir Tristram?’
‘Perhaps. What is it?’
‘What induced you ever to contemplate marriage with your cousin?’
He looked startled, and not too well pleased. ‘I can hardly suppose, ma’am, that my private affairs can be of interest to you,’ he said.
‘Some people,’ remarked Miss Thane wisely, ‘would take that for a set-down.’
Their eyes met; Sir Tristram smiled reluctantly. ‘You do not seem to be of their number, ma’am.’
‘I am very thick-skinned,’ explained Sarah. ‘You see, I have not had the benefit of a correct upbringing.’
‘Have you always lived with your brother?’ he inquired.
‘Since I left school, sir.’
‘I suppose that accounts for it,’ he said, half to himself.
‘Accounts for what?’ asked Miss Thane suspiciously.
‘Your – unusual quality, ma’am.’
‘I hope that is a compliment,’ said Miss Thane, not without misgiving.
‘I am not very apt at compliments!’ he retorted.
Her eyes twinkled appreciatively. ‘Yes, I deserved that. Very well, Sir Tristram, but you have not answered my question. Why did you take it into your head to marry your cousin?’
‘You have been misinformed, ma’am. The idea was taken into my great-uncle’s head, not mine.’
She raised her brows. ‘Had you no voice in the matter then? Now, from what I have seen of you, I find that very hard to believe.’
‘Do you imagine that I wanted to marry Eustacie for the sake of her money?’ he demanded.
‘No,’ replied Miss Thane calmly. ‘I do not imagine anything of the kind.’
His momentary flash of anger died down; he said, less harshly: ‘Being the last of my name, ma’am, I conceive it to be my duty to marry. The alliance proposed to me by my great-uncle was one of convenience, and as such agreeable to me. Owing to the precarious circumstances to which the upheaval in France has reduced her paternal relatives, her grandfather’s death leaves Eustacie alone in the world, a contingency he sought to provide against by this match. I promised Sylvester upon his death-bed that I would marry Eustacie. That is all the story.’
‘How do you propose to salve your conscience?’ asked Miss Thane.
‘My conscience is not likely to trouble me in this instance,’ he answered. ‘Eustacie does not wish to marry me, and it would take more than a promise made to Sylvester to make me pursue a suit which she has declared to be distasteful to her. Moreover, had events turned out otherwise, Sylvester would have given her to Ludovic, not to me.’
‘Oh, that is famous!’ said Miss Thane. ‘We can now promote her betrothal to him with clear consciences. But it is vexing for you to be obliged to look about you for another lady eligible for the post you require her to fill. Are you set on marrying a young female?’
‘I am not set on marrying anyone, and I beg th
at you –’
‘Well, that should make it easier,’ said Miss Thane. ‘Very young ladies are apt to be romantic, and that would never do.’
‘I certainly do not look for romance in marriage, but pray do not let my affairs –’
‘It must be someone past the age of being hopeful of getting a husband,’ pursued Miss Thane, sinking her chin in her hand again.
‘Thank you!’ said Sir Tristram.
‘Not handsome – I do not think we can expect her to be more than passable,’ decided Miss Thane. ‘Good birth would of course be an essential?’
‘Really, Miss Thane, this conversation –’
‘Luckily,’ she said, ‘there are any number of plain females of good birth but small fortune to be found in town. You may meet a few at the subscription balls at Almack’s but I dare say I could find you a dozen to choose from whose Mamas have long since ceased to take them to the “Marriage Market.” After a certain number of seasons they have to yield place to younger sisters, you know.’
‘You are too kind, ma’am!’
‘Not at all; I shall be delighted to help you,’ Miss Thane assured him. ‘I have just the sort of female that would suit you in my mind’s eye. A good, affectionate girl, with no pretensions to beauty, and a grateful disposition. She must be past the age of wanting to go to parties, and she must not expect you to make pretty speeches to her. I wonder – Would you object to her having a slight – a very slight squint in one eye?’
‘Yes, I should,’ said Sir Tristram. ‘Nor have I the smallest desire to –’
Miss Thane sighed. ‘Well, that is a pity. I had thought of the very person for you.’
‘Let me beg you not to waste your time thinking of another! The matter is not urgent.’
She shook her head. ‘I cannot agree with you. After all, when one approaches middle age –’
‘Middle – Has anyone ever boxed your ears, Miss Thane?’
‘No, never,’ said Miss Thane, looking blandly up at him.
‘You have been undeservedly fortunate,’ said Sir Tristram grimly. ‘We will, if you please, leave the subject of my marriage. I do not anticipate an immediate entry into wedlock.’