Джорджетт Хейер - The Talisman Ring

“It seems to me you have conducted yourselves like a set of idiots!” said Sir Tristram angrily, and walked into the library.

The candelabra had been picked up from the wreckage on the floor, and the candles, most of them broken off short by their fall, had been relit. The valet’s inanimate form was stretched on a couch, and the young groom, looking bruised and dishevelled but still remarkably pugnacious, was standing in the middle of the room, his serious grey eyes fixed on the wainscoting. He touched his forelock to Sir Tristram, but did not move from his commanding position.

Shield went over to look at the valet, who was breathing stertorously. “Knocked out,” he said. “You’d better carry him up to his bed. Where’s this precious panel you talk of?”

“It’s here, sir,” answered the groom. “I’m a-watching of it. Only let the cove come out, that’s all I ask!”

“I’ll keep an eye on that,” replied Sir Tristram. “You take this fellow’s legs, and help Jenkyns carry him up to his room. Get water and vinegar, and see what you can do to bring him round. Gently, now!”

Under his authoritative instructions the groom and the butler lifted Gregg from the couch, and bore him tenderly from the room. No sooner had they started to mount the stairs than Sir Tristram closed the library door and called softly: “Ludovic! All’s clear: come out!”

“Happen he’s suffocated inside that hole,” remarked Mr Bundy’s fatalistic voice from the window.

“Nonsense, there must be enough air! Where’s the catch that opens the panel?”

Bundy, leaning his head and shoulders in at the window indicated the portion of the frieze where it might be found.

Shield ran his hands over the carving, presently found the device Ludovic had twisted, and turned it. The panel slid back once more, and Shield, picking up the candelabra, went to it, saying sharply: “Ludovic! Are you hurt?”

There was no answer. Sir Tristram bent, so that the candles illumined the cavity, and looked in. It was quite empty.

Sir Tristram put the candelabra down, and once more twisted the device, closing the panel. “He’s not there,” he said.

Mr Bundy betrayed no surprise. “Ah!” he remarked, preparing to climb into the room. “I’d a notion we shouldn’t get out of this so hem easy. As good be nibbled to death by ducks as set out on one of Master Ludovic’s ventures! Where’s he got to, by your reckoning?”

“God knows! He must have slipped out after the candles were knocked over. Don’t come in!”

Bundy obediently stayed where he was. “Just as you say, master. But it ain’t like him to keep out of a fight.”

“He’d be no use in a mill with one arm in a sling,” replied Sir Tristram. “Go and see if he has gone back to where you left your horses. If he’s not there he must be somewhere in the house.”

“Well, I’ll do it,” said Bundy, “but I reckon it’s no manner of use. ’Twouldn’t be natural if young master were to start behaving sensible all on a sudden. You’d be surprised the number of cork-brained scrapes he’s got himself into these two years and more.”

“You’re wrong; I shouldn’t,” retorted Sir Tristram.

“Ah well, he’s a valiant lad, surely!” said Bundy, indulgently, and withdrew.

Sir Tristram stayed where he was, and in a very few minutes Mr Bundy once more appeared at the window and said simply: “He ain’t there.”

“Damn the boy!” said Sir Tristram. “Get away from that window! There’s someone coming!”

Bundy promptly ducked beneath the level of the windowsill just as the door opened, and Gregg staggered in, supported by the butler.

His jaw was much swollen and two front teeth were broken. Sir Tristram put his grazed right hand into his pocket. It was evident that although his head might be swimming, the valet still had some of his wits about him, for no sooner did his bleared gaze fall upon Shield than he turned an even more sickly colour, and catching at a chair-back to steady himself, said in a thick voice: “It’s like that, is it? But I’ll watch. I have the keys of the doors. If he’s there still he won’t get away!”

The groom came into the room and said in his serious young voice: “I’d get him a drop of brandy if I were you, Mr Jenkyns. Regular shook to pieces he is. Now, don’t you fret, Mr Gregg! No one can’t get out while you’ve got them keys.”

The butler, who thought that a drop of brandy would do him good also, said graciously that he believed the “lad was right, and went away to fetch the decanter. The groom, coming up behind the valet, said solicitously: “You shouldn’t ought to have come down, Mr Gregg,” and knocked him out with one nicely-delivered blow under the ear. The unfortunate valet collapsed on to the floor, and the groom, looking down at him with a smouldering expression of wrath in his pleasant grey eyes, said grimly: “Maybe that’ll be a lesson to you, you cribbage-faced tooth-drawer, you!”

Before Sir Tristram, considerably astonished by this unexpected turn events had taken, had time to speak, the butler, hearing the sound of Gregg’s fall, came hurrying back into the room. The groom at once turned to meet him, saying: “Blessed if he ain’t swooned off again, Mr Jenkyns! Done to a cow’s thumb, he is!”

“Carry the poor fellow up to his room again, and this time keep him there!” commanded Sir Tristram, recovering from his surprise.

“Just what I was a-going to do, sir,” said the groom. “Now, Mr Jenkyns, if you’ll take his legs we’ll soon have him in his bed!”

“Ah, I warned him not to get up!” said the butler, shaking his head.

The groom thrust a hand into Gregg’s pocket and extracted the keys from it, “I’m thinking your Honour had best keep these,” he said, and held them out to Sir Tristram.

The butler, puffing as he bent to raise Gregg, agreed that Sir Tristram was certainly the man to take charge of the keys. For a second time the valet was borne off upstairs. Mr Bundy, reappearing at the window, like a jack-in-the-box, remarked phlegmatically: “It looks to me like young master’s met a friend. Who’s that young cove?”

“I fancy he must be Jim Kettering’s boy,” replied Tristram.

“Well, he’s caused us a peck of trouble this night,” said Bundy, “but I’m bound to say he seems an unaccountable nice lad! Handy with his fives he is.”

At this moment Ludovic strolled into the room. “Well, of all the shambles!” he remarked, glancing around. “I’d give a monkey to see the Beau’s face when he comes home! What brought you here, Tristram?”

“Clem fetched me,” replied Shield. “How did you get out of the priest’s hole, and what the devil have you been doing all this while?”

“There’s another way out of the hole,” explained Ludovic. “I thought there might be. It leads up to Basil’s bedchamber. It seemed to me I might as well hunt for the ring since you had the affair so well in hand down here. Then I heard Bob Kettering’s voice, and gave him a whistle—”

“Gave him a whistle?” echoed Sir Tristram. “With the whole household looking for you, you whistled!”

“Yes, why not? I knew he’d recognize it. It’s a signal we used when we were boys. Bob hadn’t a notion he’d been set on to hunt for me. Lord, we used to go bird’s nesting together!”

“I thought you’d met a friend,” nodded Bundy. “Did you happen to find that ring o’ yourn?”

Ludovic’s face clouded over. “No. Bob helped me to ransack Basil’s room, but it’s not there, and it wasn’t in the priest’s hole.”

“Did young Kettering chance to remember that he is in Basil’s service?” inquired Sir Tristram.

Ludovic looked at him. “Yes, but this was for me, my dear fellow!”

Sir Tristram smiled faintly. “I suppose he is as shameless as you are. Do you feel that you have done enough damage for one night, or is there anything else you’d care to set your hand to before you go?”

“Damage!” said Ludovic. “If that don’t beat everything! Who smashed all this furniture, I should like to know? I didn’t!”

The groom came back into the library as he spoke, and said urgently: “Mr Ludo, you’d best go while you may. We’ll have Jenkyns down again afore we know where we are!”

“Have you ever thought to go into the prize-ring, young fellow,” interrupted Bundy, who was leaning in at the window with his arms folded on the sill, after the fashion of one who was prepared to remain there indefinitely. “You’ve a sizeable bunch of fives, and you display none so bad.”

Kettering grinned rather deprecatingly, and said in an apologetic tone to Sir Tristram: “I didn’t know it was Mr Ludo, sir. Nor I didn’t know it was you neither. I’m proud, surely, to have had a turn-up with you, even if it were in the dark.”

“Well, it’s more than I’d care to do,” remarked Ludovic. “To hell with you, Bob! Don’t keep on pushing me to the window! I’ll go all in good time, but I’ve mislaid that damn lantern.”

Sir Tristram grasped him by his sound shoulder, and propelled him to the window. “Take him away, Bundy. Kettering can find the lantern when you’ve gone. If you don’t go you’ll find yourself in difficulties again, and I warn you I won’t get you out of any more tight corners.”

Ludovic, astride the windowsill, said: “You don’t call this a tight corner, do you? I was as safe as be damned!”

“Just about, you were,” growled Bundy, trying to haul him through the window, “playing your silly rat-in-the-wall tricks, with a whole pack of gurt fools fighting who was to find you first! And you saying you wasn’t going to take no risks! Now, come out of it, master!”

“I can’t help it if you disobey my orders!” said Ludovic indignantly. “Didn’t I tell you to save yourself? Instead of doing anything of the kind you blazed off your pistol (and a damned bad shot it must have been) and started a mill, so that my cousin had to make a wreck of the place to bring you off! What’s more, that’s not the sort of thing he likes. He’s a cautious man—aren’t you, Tristram?”

“I am,” replied Sir Tristram, thrusting him through the window into Bundy’s arms, “but my love of caution isn’t going to stop me knocking you on the head and carrying you away if you don’t go immediately. Wait for me by your horses. I shan’t be many moments.”

He saw Ludovic go off under Bundy’s escort, and turned back to Kettering. His level gaze seemed to measure the younger man. He said: “I take it you can keep your mouth shut?”

The groom nodded. “Ay, sir, I can that. Me to help trap Mr Ludo! Begging your pardon, sir, but it do fair rile me to think of it!”

“Well, if you get turned off for this night’s work come to me,” said Sir Tristram. “Now where’s that butler?” He went out into the hall, and called to Jenkyns, who presently came hurrying down the stairs. “Here are your keys,” said Sir Tristram, holding them out to him. “Now let me out!”

The butler took the keys, but said in a blank voice: “Are—are you going now, sir?”

“Certainly, I am going,” replied Shield, with one of his coldest glances. “Do you imagine that I propose to remain here all night to keep watch for a housebreaker who, if he ever entered the priest’s hole (which I take leave to doubt), must have escaped half an hour ago?”

“No, sir. Oh no, sir!” said the butler very chapfallen.

“You are, for once, quite right,” said Shield.

Five minutes’ later he joined Ludovic in the park and dismounted from Clem’s horse. Clem had by this time reached the scene of activity, having walked from the Court, and Ludovic was already in the saddle, looking rather haggard and spent. Sir Tristram gave his bridle into Clem’s hand, and looked shrewdly up at his young cousin. “Yes, you are feeling your wound a trifle,” he remarked. “I am not in the least surprised, and not particularly sorry. If you had your deserts for this night’s folly you would be in gaol.”

“Oh, my wound’s well enough!” replied Ludovic. “Do you want me to say that you were in the right, and there was a trap? Well, then, you were damnably right, even to saying that I’d not find my ring. I haven’t found it. What else?”

“Nothing else. Go back to Hand Cross, and for God’s sake stay there!”

Ludovic let the reins go, and stretched down his hand. “Oh curse you, Tristram, I am sorry, and you’re a devilish good fellow to embroil yourself in my crazy affairs! Thank you for coming tonight!”

Shield gripped his hand for a moment, and said in a softer voice: “Don’t be a fool! We will find your ring, Ludovic. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I’ll try and keep out of trouble till then,” promised Ludovic. He gathered the reins up again, and the irrepressible twinkle crept back into his eyes. “By the way, my compliments: a nice shot!”