The Talisman Ring (25 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sir Hugh swore, and got up. The noise of his fall seemed to have penetrated to the rooms above, for a door was opened, footsteps were heard flying along the passage toward his bedchamber, and Eustacie’s voice sounded, begging the landlord to wake up and come at once.

‘It’s only I!’ called Sir Hugh, tenderly massaging his grazed shin-bone. ‘Don’t start screeching, for the lord’s sake! Bring me a light!’

Another door opened; Miss Thane’s voice said: ‘What was that? I thought I heard a crash!’

‘I dare say you did,’ returned her brother. ‘I fell over a demmed stool. Send that scoundrel Nye down here. I’ve a bone to pick with him.’

‘Good gracious, Hugh!’ exclaimed Miss Thane venturing half-way down the stairs, and holding up a candle. ‘What in the world are you doing there? You do not know what a fright you put me into!’

‘Never mind that,’ said Sir Hugh testily. ‘What I want is a light.’

‘My dear, you sound very cross,’ said Miss Thane, coming down the remainder of the stairs, and setting her candlestick on the table. ‘Why are you here?’ She caught sight of the curtain half-drawn back from the windows, and the casement swinging wide, and said quickly: ‘Who opened that window?’

‘Just what I want to ask Nye,’ replied Sir Hugh. ‘The moon awoke me, and I chanced to look out of my own window and saw this one open. I came down, and I’d no sooner got to the bottom of the stairs than a demmed fellow in a loo-mask knocked the candle out of my hand and tried to hit me on the head. No, it’s no use looking round for him: he’s gone, thanks to Nye leaving stools strewn about all over the floor.’

Eustacie, who had come downstairs with Nye, gave a sob of fright, and stared at Miss Thane. ‘He did come!’ she said. ‘Ludovic!’ She turned on the word, and fled upstairs, calling: ‘Ludovic, Ludovic, are you safe?’

Sir Hugh looked after her in somewhat irritated surprise. ‘French!’ he said. ‘All alike! What the devil does she want to fly into a pucker for?’

Nye had gone over to the window and was leaning out. He turned and said: ‘The shutter’s been wrenched off its hinge, and a pane of glass cut out clean as a whistle. That’s where he must have put his hand in to open the window. You didn’t get a sight of his face, sir?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ replied Sir Hugh, stooping to pick up the dagger at his feet. ‘I keep telling you he wore a mask. A loo-mask! If there’s one thing above others that I hate it’s a lot of demmed theatrical nonsense! What was the fellow playing at? Highwaymen?’

‘Perhaps,’ suggested Miss Thane tactfully, ‘he did not wish to run the risk of being recognized.’

‘I dare say he didn’t, and it’s my belief,’ said Sir Hugh, bending a severe frown upon her, ‘that you know who he was, Sally. It has seemed to me all along that there’s a deal going on here which is devilish unusual.’

‘Yes, dear,’ said Miss Thane, with becoming meekness. ‘I think your masked man was Ludovic’s wicked cousin come to murder him with that horrid-looking knife you have in your hand.’

‘There ain’t a doubt of it!’ growled Nye. ‘Look what’s here, ma’am!’ He went down on his knees as he spoke and picked from under the table a scrap of lace, such as might have been ripped from a cravat, and an ornate gold quizzing-glass on a length of torn ribbon. ‘Have you ever seen that before?’

Sir Hugh took the glass from him, and inspected it disparagingly. ‘No, I haven’t,’ he said, ‘and what’s more, I don’t like it. It’s too heavily chased.’

Miss Thane nodded. ‘Of course I’ve seen it. But I was sure without that evidence. He must be feeling desperate indeed to have taken this risk!’

At this moment Eustacie came downstairs again, with Ludovic behind her. Ludovic, in a dressing-gown as exotic as Thane’s, looked amused, and rather sleepy, and dangled a pistol in his right hand. His eyes alighted first on the dagger, which Thane had laid on the table, and he put up his brows with a rueful expression of incredulity, and said: ‘What, was that pretty thing meant to be plunged into my heart? Well, well! What have you got there, Thane?’

‘Do you recognize it?’ said Miss Thane. ‘It is your cousin’s quizzing-glass.’

Ludovic glanced at it casually, but picked up the dagger. ‘Oh, is it? No, I can’t say I recognize it, but I dare say you’re right. To think of the Beau daring to come and tackle me with nothing better than this mediaeval weapon! It’s a damned impertinence, upon my soul it is!’

‘Depend upon it, he hoped to murder you while you slept, and so make no noise about it,’ said Miss Thane. ‘And do you know, for all I jested with Sir Tristram over it, I never really thought that he would come!’

Sir Hugh looked at Ludovic and said: ‘I wish you would be serious. Do you tell me it was really your cousin here to-night?’

‘Oh, devil a doubt!’ answered Ludovic, testing the dagger’s sharpness with one slender forefinger.

‘A cousin of yours masquerading about in a loo-mask?’

‘Was he?’ said Ludovic, interested. ‘Lord yes, that’s Basil all over! He’d run no risk of being recognized.’

‘And you think he came here to murder you in your bed?’ demanded Sir Hugh.

For answer, Ludovic held up the dagger.

Sir Hugh looked at it in profound silence, and then said weightily, ‘I’ll tell you what it is, Lavenham, he’s a demmed scoundrel. I never heard of such a thing!’

Eustacie, who had sunk into a chair, raised a very white face from her hands, and said in a low, fierce voice: ‘Yes, and if he does not go to the scaffold I myself will kill him! I will make a sacred vow to kill him!’

‘No, don’t do that!’ said Sir Hugh, regarding her with misgiving. ‘You can’t go about England killing people, whatever you may do in your own country.’

‘Yes, I can, and I will,’ retorted Eustacie. ‘To fight a duel, that is one thing! Even to try to take what belongs to Ludovic I can pardon! But to try to stab Ludovic in the dark, while he sleeps,
voyons
, that is an infamy of the most vile!’

‘There’s a great deal in what you say,’ acknowledged Sir Hugh, ‘but to my mind what you need is a sip of brandy. You’ll feel the better for it.’

‘I do not need a sip of brandy!’ snapped Eustacie.

‘Well, if you don’t, I do,’ said Sir Hugh frankly. ‘I’ve been getting steadily colder ever since I came down to this demmed draughty coffee-room.’

Miss Thane, taking Eustacie’s hand, patted it reassuringly, and suggested that they should go back to bed. Eustacie, who felt that at any moment the Beau might return to make a second attempt, at first refused to listen to such a notion, but upon Nye’s saying grimly that she need have no fears for Ludovic’s safety, since he proposed to spend the rest of the night in the coffee-room, she consented to go upstairs with Miss Thane, having first adjured Nye and Sir Hugh on no account to let Ludovic out of their sight until they saw him securely bolted into his bedchamber.

Sir Hugh was quite ready to promise anything, but his rational mind had little expectation of further adventures that night, and as soon as the two women had disappeared round the bend in the staircase, he reached up a long arm, and placing the Beau’s quizzing-glass on the mantelshelf above his head, said: ‘Well, now that they’ve gone, we can make ourselves comfortable. Go and get the brandy, Nye, and bring a glass for yourself.’

There were no more alarms during the rest of the night, but next morning Nye, and Miss Thane, and Eustacie met in consultation, and agreed that, however distasteful to him it might be, Ludovic must at least during the day be confined to the cellar. Nye, uncomfortably aware that there were no less than three doors into the Red Lion which must of necessity be kept unlocked and any number of windows through which a man might enter unobserved, flatly refused the responsibility of housing Ludovic if he persisted in roaming at large about the inn. The boldness of the attempt made in the night convinced him that the Beau would not easily relinquish his purpose of disposing of Ludovic, and he could not but realize that for such a purpose no place could be more convenient than a public inn. The month being February, there were very few private chaises on the Brighton road, but from time to time one would pass, and very likely pull up at the Red Lion for its occupants to refresh themselves in the coffee-room. In addition to this genteel custom there was a fairly constant, if thin, flow of country people drifting in and out of the tap-room, so that it would be quite an easy matter for a stranger to step into the inn while the landlord and Clem were busy with their customers.

As might have been expected, Ludovic, when this decision was made known to him, objected with the utmost violence to his proposed incarceration. Not all Nye’s promises of every arrangement for his comfort being made could reconcile him to the scheme. Comfort, he said roundly, could not exist in a dark cellar smelling of every kind of liquor and crowded with pipes, barrels, spiders, and very likely rats.

Sir Hugh, wandering into the parlour in the middle of this speech, and imperfectly understanding its significance, said that, for his part, he had no objection to the smell of good liquor; in fact, quite liked it, a remark which made Ludovic retort: ‘You may like the smell of liquor, but how would you like to be shut up in a wine-cellar the whole day long?’

‘It depends on the wine,’ said Sir Hugh, after giving this question due consideration.

In the end the combined arguments and entreaties of the two ladies prevailed with Ludovic, and he consented to repair to his underground retreat, Eustacie offering to share his imprisonment, and Sir Hugh, appealed to by his sister, promising to visit him for a game of piquet during the afternoon. ‘Though why you should want to go and sit in the cellar if you don’t like the smell of liquor I can’t make out,’ he said.

This unfortunate remark, pounced on immediately by Ludovic to support his own view of the matter, called forth a severe rebuke from Miss Thane. She tried to explain the exigencies of Ludovic’s situation to Sir Hugh, but after listening incredulously to her for a few minutes, he said with a resigned shake of his head that it all sounded like a lot of nonsense to him, and that if any more people came poking and prying into the inn they would have him to deal with.

‘Very likely,’ said Miss Thane, displaying admirable patience, ‘but if you did not happen to see Beau Lavenham enter the house he might well kill Ludovic before you knew anything about it.’

‘If that fellow calls here to-day I want a word with him,’ said Sir Hugh, his brow darkening. ‘I’ve a strong notion I’ve caught another demmed cold, thanks to him getting me up out of bed in the small hours.’

‘I may have only one sound arm,’ interrupted Ludovic, ‘but if you think I can’t defend myself, you much mistake the matter, Sally.’

‘I am quite sure you can defend yourself, my dear boy, but I want your cousin’s corpse on my hands as little as I want yours.’

Sir Hugh was never at his best in the early morning, nor did a disturbed night, crowned by liberal potations, help to dispel a certain sleepy vagueness that clung to him, but these significant words roused him sufficiently to make him say with decision that he had borne with a great deal of irregularity at the Red Lion, what with Bow Street Runners bobbing in and out the house, people living in cellars, and scoundrels breaking in through the windows, but that his tolerance would on no account extend to corpses littering the premises.

‘Mind Sally!’ he said. ‘The first corpse I find means that we go back to London, wine or no wine!’

‘In that case,’ said Miss Thane, ‘Ludovic must certainly go down to the cellar. The man we want now, of course, is Sir Tristram. I wonder if he means to visit us to-day, or whether we should send for him?’

‘Send for him?’ repeated Sir Hugh. ‘Why, he practically lives here!’

Ludovic, descending into the cellar, announced that he proposed to spend the morning making up his loss of sleep, and taking Miss Thane aside, told her to take Eustacie upstairs, and, if possible, for a walk. ‘It’s not fit for her down here,’ he said. ‘Don’t let her worry about me! She’s a trifle done up by all this romance.’

She laughed, promised to do what she could to keep Eustacie from fretting, and departed to suggest to her that they should presently go for a walk in the direction of Warninglid, in the hopes of encountering Sir Tristram.

At about eleven o’clock the weather, which had been inclement, began to improve, and by midday a hint of sunshine behind the clouds tempted Eustacie to put on her hat and cloak and go with Sir Hugh and his sister upon their usual constitutional. While Ludovic was in the cellar she could feel her mind at rest, and since he would not permit her to join him there, even a staid walk down the lane was preferable to sitting in the inn parlour with nothing to do and no one to talk to.

The sun came through the clouds in good earnest shortly after they left the Red Lion and made walking pleasant. They stepped out briskly, the two ladies discussing the night’s adventure and trying to decide what were best to be done next, and Sir Hugh interpolating remarks which were occasionally apt and were more often inappropriate. Half-way to Warninglid they were compelled to abandon their scheme of meeting Sir Tristram and to turn back to retrace their footsteps, but they had not gone very far when he overtook them, hacking a fine bay hunter which instantly attracted and held Sir Hugh’s attention.

He dismounted as soon as he drew abreast of the walking party, and looked pleased at the encounter. Eustacie, barely allowing him to exchange greetings with the Thanes, poured into his ears the full history of the night’s adventure, while Sir Hugh commented upon the hunter’s points. The account of masked men, daggers, and broken shutters was punctuated by such irrelevant phrases as a sweet-goer, a beautiful-stepper, and Sir Tristram had to exert all his powers of concentration to prevent himself from becoming hopelessly confused. Miss Thane took no part in the recital, but derived considerable amusement from watching Shield’s face while he tried to resolve two conversations into their component parts.

‘– like his knee-action – came to murder Ludovic – had a thoroughbred hack like him once – he had a dagger – kept on throwing out a splint – tried to stun Sir Hugh – took his fences as well standing as flying – wore a mask – had a slight curve in his crest!’ announced Eustacie and Thane in chorus.