The Unknown Ajax (37 page)

Vincent, perceiving more clearly than anyone the absolute nature of his lordship’s belief, remarked to Hugo, with something of a snap: “It is devoutly to be hoped there’s no truth in your suspicion, coz, for I shudder to think of what the consequences might be if Richmond were to tumble off the pedestal our misguided progenitor built for him to sit on!” Hugo nodded.

“I tried to give him a hint, you know. I might as well have spared my breath.” “Eh, you shouldn’t have done that!” Hugo said.

“Oh, have no fear! I seem to have made a slip-slop of the whole affair, but I am not quite chuckleheaded! I gave him no hint of the particular mischief I had in mind,” replied Vincent, with a short laugh. “I collect, by the way, that you’ve promised Richmond that cornetcy. I trust it may give him something other to think of than smuggling—if he does think of smuggling!” “That’s what I trust, too,” said Hugo. “I told him he should have it if he kept out of mischief, and I’m hopeful we’ll have no more need to fatch ourselves, for there’s no question at all about it: he was thrown into such transports he could hardly speak!” “I am aware. You have certainly become his beau ideal!”

“Nay, there’s no hope of that,” said Hugo despondently. “I’ll never be able to take the shine out of you, for I’m no top-sawyer, and I’m sick every time I go to sea.” Vincent laughed, but a faint flush stained his cheeks, and he said sharply: “Good God, do you think I care? Not the snap of my fingers!”

Having had ample time to become acquainted with his demon of jealousy, Hugo heaved a profound sigh of relief, and said: “Eh, I’m glad to hear you say that! The way you’re never happy but what you have the lad at your heels, let alone the pleasure it is to you to listen to his chatter, I thought you’d be reet miserable!”

This response succeeded as well as any could; but although Vincent smiled in genuine amusement, he was still furious with himself for that instant’s self-betrayal, and his temper, already exacerbated, was not improved. He had never felt more than tolerance for Richmond, and the boy’s admiration had amused rather than gratified him. Had he arrived at Darracott Place to find that Richmond had outgrown his youthful hero-worship it would not have troubled him in the least; but when he saw Richmond’s eyes turn away from his towards Hugo, and realized that, instead of following his lead, Richmond had drawn a little aloof from him, he fell a prey to a jealousy which none knew better than he to be irrational. Between this bitter envy of his brother and cousin whose financial circumstances rendered them independent of Lord Darracott; resentment that his own, very different, circumstances made it necessary for him to serve his grandfather’s caprice; and dislike of the usurper whose arrival on the scene had led to a great many disagreeable results, he was so much chafed that to keep his temper under control imposed a severe strain upon him. Pride, quite as much as prudence, demanded that he should preserve an attitude of languid indifference, but so coldly civil was his manner to Hugo that that usually immovable giant was considerably surprised when, two evenings later, he came quickly into the billiard room, and said, in a voice from which all affectation had vanished: “Hugo, where’s Richmond? Have you seen him?”

Claud, startled into miscueing, exclaimed indignantly: “Damn you, Vincent, what the devil do you mean by bursting in here when you know dashed well we’re playing? Anyone would take you for a cawker instead of the Go you think you are! Look what you’ve made me do!” Vincent paid not the smallest heed to him; his frowning eyes remained fixed on the Major’s face; he said: “He’s not in his room.”

The Major met that hard, anxious stare without any sign of emotion. He returned it, in fact, with a blankness that might well have led Vincent to suppose that he was wholly lacking in comprehension. After a moment, he said calmly: “Nay, it’s too early.” “It’s eleven o’clock.”

“As late as that?” Hugo seemed to consider this, but shook his head. “No, I don’t think it. Not while everyone’s still up.”

“Then where is he?”

Claud, who had been listening to this exchange with gathering wrath, demanded, in the voice of one goaded beyond endurance: “Who the devil cares where he is? Dash it, have you got a drop in the eye? Bouncing in when I’m in the middle of a break, just to ask Hugo where young Richmond is! If you want him, rub off, and find him for yourself! I don’t want him, and Hugo don’t want him either, and, what’s more, we don’t want you!” “Oh, be quiet!” snapped Vincent impatiently.

“Well, if that don’t beat the Dutch!” gasped Claud.

“Nay, keep your tongue, lad, will you?” Hugo interposed. “I’ve not seen Richmond since we left the dining-room. I thought he went up to the drawing-room with you.” “Yes, he did. He took up a book, when we began to play whist, but went off to bed very early, I don’t know what the time may have been: it was considerably before Chollacombe brought in the tea-tray—possibly half-past nine, or thereabouts. I thought nothing of it: he’d been yawning his head off, and my aunt kept on urging him to go to bed. I can’t say I paid much heed, beyond wishing that he would go, instead of insisting that he wasn’t tired, for I found the pair of them extremely distracting. In fact, I was on the point of suggesting that he should either stop yawning or do what he was told, when my grandfather took the words out of my mouth, and ordered him off to bed.”

He paused, knitting his brows. His incensed brother exclaimed: “No! Ordered him off to bed, did he? Never heard such an interesting story in my life—wouldn’t have missed it for a fortune! Well, if I were you, I’d go off to bed too, because if you’re not top-heavy you’re in pretty queer stirrups, take my word for it! Very likely you’ll have thrown out a rash by tomorrow.”

“Damn the young dry-boots!” Vincent said suddenly, ignoring the interruption. “I’ll teach him to make a bleater of me!”

“You think it was a hoax?”

“Not at the time, but I do now. Rather more up to snuff than I knew, my little cousin Richmond! If he’d made an excuse to retire, I should have been suspicious, and he knew that I asked him yesterday if he was in mischief—it’s wonderful, the harm I do every time I try to do good!”

Hugo was slightly frowning. “It doesn’t fit,” he said. “Not at that hour! He couldn’t be as crazy! Eh, Vincent, think of the risk he’d be running! Are you sure he wasn’t in his room when you went to find him?”

“I am very sure he wasn’t. His door was locked, and I must have wakened him, had he been asleep, but there wasn’t a sound to be heard within the room. Why should Richmond hesitate to answer me?”

“Well, I can tell you that!” said Claud. “What’s more, I wish I’d locked this door!” Hugo laid down his cue, and strode over to one of the windows, and flung back the heavy curtain. “Cloudy. Looks like rain,” he said. “He told me that he sometimes takes his boat out at night, fishing. You know more than I do about sea-fishing: would he be likely to do so tonight?”

“God knows!” replied Vincent, shrugging. “I shouldn’t myself, because it doesn’t amuse me to get soaked to the skin. Nor should I choose to go sailing when the light is uncertain. But I’m not Richmond. Does he sail at night? I wonder why he never told me?” “He might have been afraid you’d put a stop to it.”

“I should have supposed there was more fear that you would, but that didn’t prevent his telling you.”

“He told me when I asked him why he always locked his door. I didn’t believe him, but it might have been true.”

“It might, but—Hugo, I don’t like the sound of it! What the devil is the confounded brat up to?”

“I’m damned if I know!” said Hugo.

“Well, if ever I met a more bufflehead pair of silly gudgeons—!” exclaimed Claud disgustedly. “Dash it, if young Richmond’s gone out, it’s as plain as a pikestaff what he’s up to! And I must say it’s coming to something if he can’t slip off for a bit of fun and gig without you two trying to nose out what game he’s flying at, and raising all this dust! Anyone would think, to listen to you, that he’d gone off to rob the Mail!” He found that he was being stared at by both his auditors, and added with considerable asperity: “And don’t stand there goggling at me as if you’d never heard of a young club having a petticoat-affair, because that’s doing it a dashed sight too brown!”

“Good God, I wonder if you could be right?” said Vincent. He looked at Hugo. “I didn’t think—but it might be so, I suppose.”

Hugo shook his head. “No. There’s not a sign of it. He’s not that road yet. You’d know it, if he’d started in the petticoat-line.”

“Dashed if I can make out what’s the matter with you both!” said Claud. “Why can’t you leave the wretched boy alone? He won’t come to any harm! Why should he?” “Hugo thinks he’s in a string with a gang of smugglers,” said Vincent curtly. “What?” gasped Claud. “Thinks Richmond—No, dash it! Of all the crack-brained notions I ever heard—! You don’t believe that, Vincent!”

“I don’t know what I believe!” said Vincent, jerking the curtain across the window again, in a way that betrayed his disquiet. “I do know one thing, and that’s that I’ll have the truth out of Richmond when he comes in!”

“Well, if you mean to ask him if he’s joined a gang of smugglers, I hope he draws your cork! I call it a dashed insult! You can’t go about saying things like that just because he’s gone out on the spree!”

“There’s more to it than that,” Hugo said. “Ottershaw’s watching him like a cat at a mouse-hole, and he’d not do that if he hadn’t good reason to suspect him. He’s got no proof yet, or we’d know it, but—eh, I wish the lad would come in!”

Claud

’s eyes started almost from their sockets. “Are you talking about that Riding-officer I found you gabbing to at Rye? Suspects Richmond? You can’t mean that!”

“Ay, but I do mean it,” replied Hugo grimly. “There’s little would suit him better than to catch the lad red-handed—make no mistake about that!”

“He wouldn’t dare! No, no! Dash it, Hugo—a Darracott of Darracott?” “That won’t weigh with him, if Richmond walks into a trap he’s set. Plague take the lad! I warned him that Ottershaw’s not the clodhead he thinks him, but he’s as pot-sure as he’s meedless!” He checked himself, and said, after a moment. “Well, talking will pay no toll!” “Just so!” said Vincent. “Perhaps you’ll tell me what will pay toll!”

“Ask me that when I know where the lad is! There’s only one thing I can think of to do at this present: I’ll walk up to the Dower House—ghost-catching! Happen I might get some kind of a keening—and if I find the place is being watched, at the least we’ll know they’ve not got wind of the lad yet, for it’s there that they look for him!” He glanced at Vincent. “If I’m asked for here, you’ll have to cut some kind of a wheedle for me: we don’t want to raise a breeze! What are they doing, upstairs? Have my aunts gone to bed yet?”

“They hadn’t, when I left the room, though my Aunt Elvira was about to go. She said something about a sore throat, and feeling a cold coming on, so no doubt she’ll have retired by now. Anthea went off to find Mrs. Flitwick—something about a posset she knows how to brew!—so it’s more than likely she’s in the kitchen-quarters. Does she know?” “No, and I don’t mean she shall! Fob her off, if she should come in here! I take it his lordship’s still up?” “Since he and my mother were engaged in playing over again every hand about which they had—er—disagreed, you may take it that they will both be up for some time to come,” replied Vincent sardonically.

“Well, if that’s what they’re doing, they won’t be heeding aught else. I’ll be off,” Hugo said, turning to pick up his coat.

Even as he spoke, the door opened, and Anthea came hurriedly into the room, her face as white as paper. “Hugo!” she uttered breathlessly. “Please come—please come quickly! I—I need you!”

Two strides brought him to her. He saw that she was trembling, and grasped her shoulders. “Steady, lass! What is it? Nay, there’s no need to tear your cousins! Out with it, now! Is it Richmond?”

She nodded, and said, trying to command her voice: “He’s hurt—bleeding dreadfully! John Joseph says—not fatally, but I don’t know! They were cutting his coat, when I came running to find you—”

“Who were?” he interrupted.

“John Joseph, and Polyphant. Chollacombe is there too, and Mrs. Flitwick. We—she and I—went to the pantry, you see, and that’s how—John Joseph had carried him there. He w-wasn’t conscious, and his face—his face was black, Hugo! At first, I—I couldn’t think who it was! He had on a smock—”

“Oh, my God—!” exclaimed Vincent. “It’s true, then! Now what do you propose we should do, cousin?”

“Find out how badly the lad’s hurt!” Hugo answered. “Come, love! No vapours! We’re not grassed yet!”

“No—oh, no!” she said, Following him from the room. “I won’t fail! It was only the shock of—Hugo, he—he must have been smuggling! I c-can’t believe it! Richmond!” “Keep mum for that just now, love!” he replied. “Happen we’ll bring him about.” He was striding down the broad corridor that led from the hall to the kitchen-quarters, and she had almost to run to keep up with him. “We must, Hugo, we must! John Joseph says you’ll know how to do it. He’s washed the soot from Richmond’s face, and Mrs. Flitwick bundled that dreadful smock up, and took it away under her apron, to burn it immediately. They were so good, Hugo! They did everything—even Polyphant!”

They had reached the door leading to the kitchen-wing, and as Hugo thrust it open, Vincent, hard on his heels, demanded: “How many of the servants know about this? Is the entire household attending to Richmond?”

“No, only those three—and Chollacombe, I think,”

He uttered an impatient exclamation under his breath, but by this time Hugo had entered the pantry, and Anthea, squeezing her way in, between his massive form and the door-post, paid no heed.