The Moonless Night (20 page)

“Not to my knowledge. He was seldom there,” was his unhelpful reply.

“What did you mean then?”

“Ask him. I’ve driven enough spokes into the poor devil’s wheel for one night. Do you figure he’s had time to finish his search yet? I’m getting mighty tired.”

It hardly seemed to matter if Benson should be discovered, since Sanford knew exactly what he was doing, anyway.

“Well, have a glass of wine and give him five minutes more,” Sanford decided, and poured two glasses from the decanter on the table, handing one to Marie.

“To success!” he proposed, and they both drank to this ambiguous toast, with a little pointless conversation. Then Sanford said good night and went upstairs, to find his door innocently closed. There was no sign of Benson. With a wicked gleam in his lazy eyes, he stepped along the hall to Benson’s room and tapped on the door. “She’s waiting for you in the saloon,” he said.

Benson returned below, to hear that Sanford knew exactly what they were up to, which accounted for the lack of success in finding the tube or message. She was eager to drop hint as to Benson’s being attached, but his mind was not on the subject, and she had no chance to introduce it. They decided together, really Benson convinced her, that Sanford had only been working on his own to intercept the message devised by some other party trying to mastermind the escape.

But when David returned, his hair wet and his boots soaked, for the rain had at last come down, he threw them into doubt. He had to hear how he had missed out on all the excitement, of course, then had a discovery of his own to alarm them.

“My night wasn’t completely wasted anyway, for you’ll never guess who was visiting Monet! Rear Admiral Rawlins, in a plain dark jacket, not his uniform.”

“What on earth would he be doing there?” Marie asked, feeling an angry thrust that yet another gentleman had fallen under the trollop’s spell.

“Making right up to Sanford’s girl,” David explained. “Sitting on the sofa together, close as inkle-weavers, with their heads together laughing and talking.”

“You don’t mean he was making love to her!” Benson asked.

“Couldn’t hear what he was saying, but Rawlins didn’t have to run up any flags for anyone to read the gist of it. Billing and cooing—Lord, what a sight! That old man and Madame.”

“This is outrageous!” Benson said, jumping to his feet.

“Known all along what she is,” David pointed out.

“Wouldn’t I love to drop Sanford the hint, though.”

“No!” Benson said, the word a sharp command.

“Just razz him a little is all I mean,” David countered.

“No, David, in our business personal feelings have no place. You have misunderstood the matter, no doubt. Rawlins has become suspicious of Madame, and is following his own investigations. The likeliest way of discovering anything from a woman of her kidney is by lovemaking. He was only trying to find out what she’s up to. Naturally the navy is suspicious of French persons who came to the town just at the time Napoleon was brought here. I wouldn’t want Sanford to know what Rawlins is up to.”

“But you said Sanford is doing nothing but trying to stop anyone from rescuing Napoleon,” Marie reminded him.

“Lord, where did you get such an idea! Sanford is Cicero!” David shouted. He had been absent during the period when Sanford had been whitewashed.

“He is a dark horse,” Benson decided. “He may be fairly innocent, or he may be playing some deep game. We’ll just keep an eye on him. There is a reward of one hundred thousand pounds for whomever frees Bonaparte, you recall, and it may be that he is trying to stop anyone else from doing it in order to claim the reward himself.”

“But he’s rich as Croesus,” Marie pointed out. “He wouldn’t take such risks for money.”

“He admires Napoleon. He may be doing it to secure the reward money for Napoleon. And one hundred thousand pounds is a considerable prize. Even to Sanford it would be something. What a lot of art-works he could buy for that sum,” Benson said.

“What a lot of mortgages he could snap up,” Marie added with a speaking look at Benson, who smiled warmly to show her he understood.

“Oh, by the way,” David said suddenly, “I expect something ought to be done about Sanford’s groom.”

“How did you know about his being French?” Marie asked, for during their multi-faceted discussion this point had been neglected entirely.

“French? Is he, by God! I never knew that,” David exclaimed. “He spoke English as well as anyone when he showed me the Arab stallion’s points.”

“What did you mean then?” Marie asked.

“He’s been knocked out cold. Was lying on the stable floor when I came in. I roused up John Groom to see to him, but I ought to tell Sanford, maybe.”

“I wonder what could have happened to him!” Benson asked innocently. Marie looked at him with an approving smile. He had checked not only Sanford’s room, but upon finding it empty of the message, had also gone to the stable and frisked the groom. How clever he was! He thought of everything. But neither was Sanford completely stupid, she acknowledged grudgingly. He had hidden the message, somewhere well enough that it went undiscovered.

David went to the door and told the butler to notify Sanford his groom was unconscious, then walked back into the saloon. “So, what did you do with your night, Benson, if you wasn’t at the Point and wasn’t at Madame’s?”

“I was searching
Seadog
for the gold. You half convinced me, David, that Sanford was our man, and I thought he might have the money there, but found nothing.”

“Yes, but your mount wouldn’t have been gone from the stable if you were only there,” Marie said.

“What a clever pair you Boltwoods are!” he laughed fondly. “You don’t miss a trick. The fact of the matter is, I have heard some few rumors about Sanford’s servants. That groom of his is not the only Frenchman in his retinue. His valet likewise is French, and the pair of them spend a good deal of time in Plymouth, scraping acquaintance with the roughnecks that inhabit the wharf—the French element, I refer to. However, I could discover nothing against them.”

David nodded. “So we still haven’t got a lead on the gold. Have to keep after that.”

“We’ll never find it,” Benson said. “I think we waste our time and energy searching for it.”

This defeatist attitude disappointed both the Boltwoods.

David even thought the master was not confiding in him to the extent the equal partnership called for. He was beginning to take the notion the pupil had outpaced the teacher, and he must get cracking and find the gold himself. He was pretty certain he knew where to look for it, too. If the officer in command at the naval station had such high suspicions of Madame Monet that he was trying to court her into confidence, it was pretty clear she was sitting on the gold. He would have to stifle all his repugnance for the woman, and try his hand at making up to her himself. He was more than willing to take on this task for the good of the country.

Chapter 13

It was late that night before the household settled down. There was the unconscious groom to be attended to. He had suffered such a cruel blow that Miss Biddy’s help was required to rouse him. He had a purple welt on his temple, which she half hoped would grow into a concussion. His ramblings, all in French, led her to believe he was delirious, but Sanford informed her through clenched jaws that he was making perfectly good sense to him.

“What happened to him?” she asked, her hand shaking with the excitement of being roused from sleep to tend a patient.

“He ran into a beam in the stable in the dark,” he told her.

“A very nasty blow,” she tch’d tch’d, but it proved not to be too nasty for her curative powers.

“Extremely hard hit,” Sanford agreed, with just a flicker of a glance to Marie, who was still down and in attendance. Benson and David had retired to the latter’s room to discuss plans.

It did seem a harder blow than was necessary to knock the poor man out for three seconds to search him. But then the proper force must be hard to determine. Marie harbored no thought that there had been intent to do real harm. She began to see that there was a good deal of violence in Mr. Benson’s job—almost more than a sensitive man like himself would like handling. She wondered for the first time why he did it. For altruistic purposes of course, but still to so discommode himself that he lost even his own patrimony bordered on the foolishly altruistic.

“That beam just at the corner of the first stall hangs too low,” Biddy ran on, unaware of any undertones in the talk. “I’ve mentioned having it raised before. I’ll speak to Henry about it again. How awful that a servant of one of our guests should be so severely wounded.”

And here was another thing to give a little pause. Mr. Benson, who disliked to inconvenience Lord Sanford to the extent of mentioning the mortgage, had hit his servant a blow strong enough to leave him unconscious for half an hour, without even mentioning going to the man’s help. He had sat with herself chatting while a man he had knocked out stone cold lay untended. He might have seen the man was attended to in some secret way, by his own groom, for instance, who was surely not in the dark regarding his master’s work.

Lord Sanford, on the other hand, who treated the family with something approaching contempt, showed a real concern for his servant. He spoke to the man in French, but any well-reared young lady spoke enough of the language to follow the gist of it. He asked the man, Belhomme was his name, how he felt, and told him to stay in bed the next day. He showed very proper feelings throughout, and when Biddy was wrapped up in her chore, she ventured a little apology on behalf of Mr. Benson. It was of course no secret to either of them who had done this.

“I’m sure he didn’t mean to hit him so hard,” she said in a low tone.

“You have no idea what he’s like. Be very careful of him, Miss Boltwood,” he answered, also in a low tone, but with strong feeling.

It was impossible to say more. Biddy called her to help with the plaster, and when it was done, Sanford thanked them both and went with the servant to see him got into bed. “I hope the poor man doesn’t suffer a concussion,” Biddy said as she packed up her stores. “What a hard knock he suffered. I never saw such a welt.”

It was with a heavy heart that Marie went up to her bed. The hour was well advanced, and as she had had a trying night, she was fagged enough to sleep without interruption. She was dreaming of being on an island not bigger than six feet square, with dozens of yachts all around it trying to lure her off into perilous waters when a dark form slipped silently past her door, down the stairs, out the front door and around to the garrison, where he carefully lit a lamp and went down the two flights of stairs into the empty room that housed the winch and chain. He checked the mechanism silently, wondering how best to sabotage it without leaving any traces, then he turned to the heavy chest, pulled out the unused spare chain and began extricating leather bags full of sovereigns that were concealed beneath it. They were no longer safe in this spot, but he knew where they would be pretty safe, and he took them there before returning silently to the sleeping house and to bed.

There was a strained atmosphere over the breakfast table when Sanford announced blandly that he meant to sail his yacht to Sinclair’s dock that morning.

“It will be no use to anyone there,” Sir Henry told him, scowling from under his beetle brows. All pleas to Sinclair to prohibit the move had been in vain.

Sanford did no more than look. The reason was too well known to require restating. “Would you like to come with me to try her out, David?”

David said he thought not, thank you, in his coldest voice.

“You, Miss Boltwood?” he continued his invitation to Marie.

She had not anticipated the invitation, and thus had not sought instructions from Mr. Benson. “How long will you be gone?” Biddy asked. “We were to make up the menu for the ball this morning you remember, Marie.”

“It will take a while,” Sanford answered. “Mr. Sinclair has offered to show me over his place. I won’t be back for lunch.”

“You’d better not go then,” Biddy said to her niece, not without regret. But then there could be no courting done aboard a windy, lurching schooner, she thought.

Marie felt definitely piqued to be done out of the trip. She liked sailing, would have liked very much to try out Sanford’s yacht, but there was more disappointment than that in her feelings. She felt a strong inclination to prove a point; to make Lord Sanford see that she, Marie Boltwood, could be as attractive and entertaining as an aging French hussy, and as she was a good sailor, she had never found the sea impossible of romance.

“I am not busy this morning, Sanford,” Sir Henry spoke up, to everyone’s surprise. “I’ll run along with you. I would like to see
Seadog
in action.” Despite their bouts of altercation, the host and Bathurst's godson continued on intermittent terms of amiability.

“Excellent,” Sanford said. He made no offer to Benson to accompany them. However, as Benson fared so ill on a ship it was not necessarily an intentional slight.

While Biddy and Marie worked over the menu, deciding between lobster patties and oysters on the half shell, and finally going whole hog and having both, along with a wax basket of prawns, Benson said he would finish up his scientific drawing of the winch mechanism.

“I’ll toddle along with you,” David offered.

“Maybe you should go up to the telescope with your book of signals,” Benson suggested. David had had more than enough of sitting up on the hill like a demmed sheep, while more exciting things occurred elsewhere, and said no, he’d given the guard the book, and he’d go along with Benson, as there were certain matters he wished to discuss.

Benson was not happy for his company, but could hardly forbid him access to his own home, and the two went off together. The drawing proved to be next to finished; Benson did no more than check it against the winch itself before putting it away. He then looked around the room, empty but for the heavy chest storing the spare chain. “Maybe we should just check out the spare,” David said, noticing that Mr. Benson regarded the chest from time to time.