“No grandson of mine shall turn tail while I’m in the saddle!” he announced. “I wouldn’t let you shab off, you pudding-headed fribble, if you had given that light-skirt a slip on the shoulder!”

What Lady Aurelia thought about it no one knew, for she never mentioned the matter, and nothing could be learned from her countenance or her demeanour. One or two jibes addressed to her by Lord Darracott were met with such blank stares of incomprehension that even he seemed to be daunted, and Mrs. Darracott confessed to her daughter that she for one doubted whether her ladyship knew anything at all about the affair.

Several days passed before Hugo paid his second nocturnal visit to the Dower House, wet weather making the sky too cloudy for observation. But on the first clear evening he strolled up the path to the wicket-gate into the shrubbery shortly before midnight, a cigar between his teeth. The gate shrieked on its rusty hinges; the beaten track that led to the house was sodden; and the leaves of the bushes were very wet, damping the Major’s coat as he brushed past them.

A slight reconnaissance showed him that the shrubbery was intersected by several paths, once, no doubt, when the hedges were clipped, and gravel strewn underfoot, furnishing the inhabitants of the Dower House with an agreeable promenade on windy days. The hedges had not been trimmed for years, however, and the place had become a wilderness, the various paths so overgrown as sometimes to be difficult to follow. The Major, making his way out of it to the path at the side of the house, thought it would afford an excellent retreat for any ghost finding itself hard-pressed.

The moon was not yet half-full, and its light was a little fitful, clouds occasionally obscuring its face; but it was possible to make out the way, and even to discern objects at some distance. The house showed no light at any window, so it was to be inferred that Spurstow was either in bed and asleep or had put up the shutters in the kitchen-quarters as well as everywhere else in the house. Having walked round the building, Hugo trod across the rank grass that had once been a shaven lawn and took up his position in the shadow of a tree standing on the edge of the carriage-drive.

He had not very long to wait. The wind that fretted the tree-tops was hardly more than a whisper, but the stillness was broken after a short time by the screech of an owl in the woods, followed almost immediately by a long drawn-out wail that rose to a shriek, and died away in a sobbing moan, eerie in the night-silence. The next instant a vague, misty figure appeared round the angle of the house, and flitted into the shrubbery.

The Major, unperturbed by these manifestations, threw away the butt of his cigar, and strode towards the shrubbery. A hasty movement behind him made him check, and turn quickly, searching with narrowed eyes the deep shadows cast by the bushes by the gates. Someone, who had been concealed by these, started forward. The Major saw the moonlight gleam on the barrel of a pistol, and, a moment later, recognized Lieutenant Ottershaw. Ottershaw, paying no heed to him, began to run across the grass, with the obvious intention of plunging into the shrubbery, but two long strides brought the Major between him and his goal, and obliged him to check.

“Nay, lad, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Hugo said placidly.

“Did you see?” Ottershaw shot at him. “After that ghastly—that damned scream—someone in a sheet! Well, I’m going to discover who it is!”

“I saw,” Hugo said. “But happen you’d best take care what you’re about. You can’t go ghost-hunting in a private garden, you know.”

“That was no ghost!” Ottershaw said violently. ‘“You know that, sir! I watched you: you never so much as jumped when that scream sounded! If you’d believed it was a ghost—”

“Oh, no! I didn’t, of course.”

“No! And why did you come here if it wasn’t to discover who’s playing tricks to keep people away from this place? I don’t believe you’re in it, but—”

“In what?” interposed Hugo.

The Lieutenant hesitated. “In what I know to be an attempt to drive me off!” he answered rather defiantly. “I’ve had my suspicions of this house ever since I came here, and I’m as sure as any man may be that it’s one of the smugglers’ chief storehouses!”

“No I’m not in anything like that,” said Hugo.

“No, sir, I never supposed you could be. But—”

“If I were you, I’d put up that pistol, Mr. Ottershaw,” said Hugo. “Were you meaning to challenge the ghost with it? You’d catch cold if you did, you know. It’s no crime that I ever heard of to caper about rigged up as a boggard.”

The Lieutenant did restore the pistol to its holster, but he was angry, and said very stiffly: “Very well, sir! But I will tell you plainly that I believe that—apparition!—to have been none other than Mr. Richmond Darracott!”

“Ay, so do I,” agreed Hugo.

Ottershaw peered up at his face, trying in the uncertain light to read its expression. He sounded a little nonplussed. “You think that?”

“Why, yes!” Hugo said. “I think he’s trying to make a May-game of you, and, if you want to know, I also think there’s little he’d like better than for you to hold him up. Eh, lad, don’t be so daft! It would be all over the county before the cat could lick her ear! Your commander wouldn’t thank you for making a laughing-stock of yourself, and if you were to interfere with Richmond the dust you’d raise would be nothing to the dust his lordship would kick up!”

“Oh, I’m well aware of that!” replied Ottershaw bitterly. “I look for nothing but obstruction from that quarter! I may say—from any member of your family, sir! I’d risk being made a laughing-stock if I could catch Richmond Darracott at his tricks ,as I might have done, but for you!”

“Now, what good would that do you?” asked the Major. “I daresay you’d like to give him a sharp lesson not to get up to this kind of bobbery at your expense, but you’d regret it if you did. You’d be better advised to pay no heed to him: he’d soon tire of the sport if you laughed at him—and got your men to do the same!”

“So you think he does it for sport, do you, sir?”

“Of course I do!” said the Major. “It’s just the sort of thing a mischievous lad would do—particularly if he thought you were a trifle over-zealous.”

Ottershaw was silent for a moment. Then he said curtly: “I’ll say goodnight to you, sir. I should not have spoken so freely, perhaps, but since I have done so there can be little point in concealing what I make no doubt you have guessed: I believe Mr. Richmond Darracott to be hand-in-glove with these pernicious smugglers! I have no wish—it is not the wish of the Board of Customs—to incur the ill-will of persons of Lord Darracott’s consequence, but I shall take leave to warn you that no such consideration would deter me—or, I should add, would be expected to deter me!—in the performance of what I might consider to be my duty!”

“Very proper,” approved the Major, a note of amusement in his voice. “But, if you don’t despise a word of advice from one who’s older than you, and maybe more experienced, you’ll make very sure you’re right in your suspicions before you go tail over top into action. It’s one thing, to sympathize with smuggling, but quite another to be engaged in the trade, if that’s what you’re suggesting. You’ve been having the devil of a time of it here, and seemingly it’s made you think that everyone who don’t help you must be mixed up in the business himself. You’ll end with windmills in your head that road—if you haven’t ’em already!—let alone finding yourself in bad loaf with that Board of yours.”

“Is that a threat, sir?” demanded Ottershaw, standing very erect.

“Nay, it’s a friendly warning,” replied Hugo. “Don’t you make a pigeon of yourself! Goodnight!”

The Lieutenant clicked his heels together, bowed, and strode off. Hugo watched him go, and then began to retrace his own footsteps. When he reached the wicket-gate, he studied it thoughtfully for a moment. It would have been no difficult feat to have vaulted over it, but having satisfied himself on this head he merely opened it, and walked through, impervious to its protesting shriek.

He had left his bedroom candle and his tinder-box on a table by the side-door through which he had left the house, and after kindling a light, and bolting the door, he made his way up one of the secondary staircases with which Darracott Place was lavishly provided. This one, served the wing in which his own and Richmond’s bedchambers were situated; and when he reached the head of it he went without hesitation to Richmond’s door, and knocked on it. Eliciting no response, he turned the handle, only to find that the door was locked. He knocked again, this time imperatively, and was rewarded by hearing Richmond call out: “Who is it?”

“Hugo. I want to speak to you,” he replied.

There was the sound of an impatient exclamation, followed by the rattle of curtain-rings along a rod, and a creak which indicated that Richmond had got out of bed. The key turned in the well-oiled lock, and the door was pulled open.

“What the devil do you want?” Richmond said crossly. “I thought you knew I hate to be disturbed at night!”

“I do,” said Hugo. “It had me in a bit of a puzzle to understand why, too. Nay, don’t stand there holding the door! I’m coming in, and it’s not a bit of use scowling at me. You can get back into bed, and we’re going to have a talk, you and I.”

“At this hour?” Richmond ejaculated. “I’ll be damned if I do!”

“I don’t know about that, but I do know that I’ll toss you into bed if you don’t do as you’re bid,” responded Hugo, wresting the door from his hold and shutting it. He held up the candlestick, and looked round. The room was a large one, with a four-poster bed standing out into it. A glance showed Hugo that the curtains had been thrust back from one side, and the bedclothes flung off. Not far from it, a chair stood, with a coat thrown carelessly on to it. Hugo’s gaze alighted on this, and travelled to where a pair of breeches and a shirt lay untidily on the floor. “You did undress in a hurry, didn’t you?” he said.

Richmond, climbing into bed again, linked his hands behind his head, and said, with a yawn: “I wish you will say what you want, and go away! I shan’t get a wink of sleep now: I never can, if I’m wakened.”

Hugo set his candle down on the table beside the bed, and lightly clasped the other which stood there. He said, smiling: “Nay, lad, I don’t think you were asleep: your candle’s still warm.”

“I suppose I had just dropped off. That’s worse! O God, you sit on the bed?”

Hugo paid no heed to this complaint (for which there was some justification, as his weight bore the springs down ominously), but said: “Richmond, my lad, you’ve not been to sleep at all, and those clothes you’ve just stripped off weren’t the ones you were wearing at dinner, so let’s have no more humbug! Not half an hour ago you were playing hide-and-seek over at the Dower House! And from the hasty way you got between sheets I think you’d a shrewd notion you’d be receiving a visit from me.”

Richmond’s eyes gleamed under his down-dropped lids. “Oh, have you seen the ghost, cousin?”

“No.”

Richmond chuckled. “Didn’t I hoax you? I made sure I should! What made you suspect—Oh, I suppose it was what Claud said!”

“You didn’t hoax anyone, and it wasn’t me you were trying to hoax, was it?”

“Of course it was! I saw you set out, and guessed what you meant to do, so I followed you. Didn’t you think I made a good ghost? I think I did!”

“Nay, you didn’t follow me. You were there before me,” replied Hugo. “You came round the corner of the house, and you couldn’t have crossed the path between the shrubbery and the house unbeknownst to me.”

“But I could get into the garden from the shrubbery, and keep under cover there until the house shut me from your view.”

“Ay, you could have done that,” agreed Hugo. “Did Spurstow tell you that I visited the place before, on the same errand?”

Richmond laughed. “Of course!”

“And that Ottershaw was watching the house himself?”

“No, is he?”

“Come, lad, you knew that!”

“How should I know it?” Richmond countered.

“Probably because Spurstow told you, and if it wasn’t he I’ve a notion you’ve other sources of information. Between the pair of you, you’ve scared Ottershaw’s men, but when you set out to scare him you made a back-cast, Richmond: he wasn’t scared, and he wasn’t deceived. If I hadn’t stopped him he might well have caught you.”