The Talisman Ring Read online

  ‘I might be able to make him, but I’ve a cousin here – a cursed, cautious, interfering cousin, who don’t mean me to make the attempt. He thinks it’s too dangerous, and it’s odds he’s persuaded Clem into seeing eye to eye with him.’

  Mr Bundy scratched his nose reflectively. ‘One way and another, you’ve been in a lamentable deal of danger since you growed up,’ he remarked.

  Ludovic grinned. ‘I shall be in some more yet.’

  ‘Happen you will,’ agreed Bundy. ‘There’s some as seem to be born to it, and others as takes uncommon care of their skins. It queers me how folks manage to keep out of trouble. I never did, but I know them as has.’

  ‘Devilish dull dogs, I’ll be bound. There may be trouble at the Dower House to-night, and for all I know there’s been a trap laid for me. Will you take the risk?’

  ‘How I look at it is this way,’ said Bundy painstakingly. ‘It ain’t no manner of use trying to keep out of trouble if so be you’m born to it. For why? Because if you don’t look for trouble, trouble will come a-looking for you – ah, come sneaking up behind to take you unawares, what’s more. Does Joe Nye know what’s in the wind?’

  ‘No. He’s hand-in-glove with my cousin.’

  Mr Bundy looked rather shocked. ‘What, with that dentical, fine gentleman?’

  ‘Lord, no! Not with him! My cousin Shield – my cautious cousin.’

  Mr Bundy stroked his chin. ‘I never knew Joe to be mistook in a man,’ he said. ‘I doubt I’m doing wrong to go against his judgment. Howsever, if you’ve a fancy to go, I’d best come with you, for you’ll go anyways, unless you’ve changed your nature, which don’t seem to me likely. What’s the orders?’

  ‘I want a horse to be saddled and bridled ready for me at midnight,’ answered Ludovic promptly. ‘Everyone should be asleep here by then, and I can slip out. Have a couple of nags waiting down the Warninglid road, as close to this place as you can come without rousing anyone. I’ll join you there. We’ll ride to the Dower House – it’s only a matter of five miles – and once inside the place, the rest should be easy. You may want your pistols, though I’d as soon not make it a shooting affair, and we shall certainly need a lantern.’

  ‘Well, that’s easy enough,’ said Bundy. ‘There’s only one thing as puts me into a bit of a quirk, and that’s how to keep Joe from suspicioning what we’m going to do. Joe’s not one of them as has more hair than wit: there’s a deal of sense in his cockloft.’

  ‘He must not know you’ve been here to-day,’ said Ludovic. ‘You can get away without him seeing you if I make sure all’s clear.’

  ‘Oh ay, I can do that,’ agreed Bundy, ‘but it’s odds they’ll tell him in the stables I’ve been around. I’ve left my nag there.’

  ‘The devil you have! Well, you’d best see Joe if that’s so, but take care you don’t let him guess you’ve had speech with me. You might ask for me. He won’t let you see me, and it’ll look well.’

  In accordance with this plan, Bundy, having been smuggled out of the inn by the back way, ten minutes later entered through the front door a second time. He found Clem in the tap-room, and Clem no sooner laid eyes on him than he said that upon no account must Mr Ludovic know of his presence. He thrust him into Nye’s stuffy little private room and went off to summon the landlord. Mr Bundy sat down by the table and chewed a straw.

  His interview with Nye did not take long, nor, since both men were taciturn by nature, was there much conversation. ‘Where’s young master?’ inquired Bundy over his tankard.

  Nye jerked a thumb upward. ‘Safe enough.’

  ‘I reckoned you’d hide him up,’ nodded Bundy, dismissing the subject.

  ‘Ay.’ The landlord regarded him thoughtfully. ‘He’s ripe for mischief, I can tell you. Maybe you’d best keep out of his way. You’re as bad as Clem for letting him twist you round his finger.’

  ‘Happen you’m right,’ conceded Bundy, retiring into his tankard.

  Sir Tristram did not wait for Ludovic to reappear, and for obvious reasons Nye did not tell him of Bundy’s presence in the inn. He had a great value for Sir Tristram, but he preferred to keep his dealings with free-traders as secret as possible. So Sir Tristram, having extracted a promise from Clem not to assist Ludovic to leave the inn that night, departed secure in the conviction that without support his reckless young cousin could achieve nothing in the way of house-breaking.

  ‘I am afraid we shall have Ludovic like a bear with a sore head,’ prophesied Miss Thane pessimistically.

  But when Ludovic came downstairs to the parlour again, he seemed to be in unimpaired spirits, a circumstance which at first relieved Miss Thane’s mind, and presently filled it with misgiving. She fancied that the sparkle in Ludovic’s angelic blue eyes was more pronounced than usual, and after enduring it for some little while, was impelled to comment upon it, though in an indirect fashion. She said that she feared that Sir Tristram’s decision must be unwelcome to him. She was embroidering a length of silk at the time, but as she spoke she raised her eyes from her task and looked steadily at him.

  ‘Oh well!’ said Ludovic. ‘I’ve been thinking it over, and I dare say he may be in the right of it.’

  Voice and countenance were both quite grave, but Miss Thane was unable to rid herself of the suspicion that he was secretly amused. He met her searching look with the utmost limpidity, and after a moment smiled, and reminded her that it was uncivil to stare.

  She was quite unable to resist his smile, which was indeed a very charming one, but she said in a serious tone: ‘It would be useless if you were to make the attempt alone, you know. You would not do anything foolish, would you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not as mad as that!’ he assured her.

  She lowered her embroidery. ‘And you would not – no, of course you would not! – take Eustacie upon such a venture?’

  ‘Good God, no! I’ll swear it, if you wish.’

  She resumed her stitchery, and as her brother came into the room at that moment said no more. When, later, Ludovic discussed exhaustively the various means by which the Beau’s valet might be induced to disclose what he knew, she concluded that her suspicions had been unfounded; and when, midway through the evening, he sat down to play piquet with Sir Hugh she felt herself able to retire to bed with a quiet mind. She had seen him play piquet before, and she knew that once a green baize cloth was before him, and a pack of cards in his hand, all other considerations were likely to be forgotten. Neither he nor Sir Hugh, she judged, would seek their beds until the small hours, by which time he would be too sleepy, and not sufficiently clear-headed (for it was safe to assume that a good deal of wine would flow during the course of the play) to attempt anything in the way of a solitary adventure. He bade her a preoccupied good night, and she went away without the least misgiving. She was not, however, privileged to see the swift, sidelong look he shot at her as she went through the doorway.

  That was at half-past nine. At ten o’clock Ludovic undertook to mix a bowl of rum punch for Sir Hugh’s delectation. He promised him something quite above the ordinary, and Sir Hugh, after one sip of the hot, potent brew, admitted that it certainly was above the ordinary. Ludovic drank one glass, and thereafter sat in admiration of Sir Hugh’s capacity. When Sir Hugh commented upon his abstinence, he said frankly that a very little of the mixture would suffice to put him under the table. Sir Hugh, rather pleased, said that he fancied he had a harder head than most men. During the next half-hour he proceeded to demonstrate the justice of this claim. The only effect Ludovic’s punch had upon him was to make him unusually sleepy, and when Ludovic, as the clock struck eleven, yawned, and said that he was for bed, he was able to rise from the table with scarcely a stagger, and to pick up his candle without spilling any more wax on to the floor than was perfectly seemly. Ludovic, relieved to discover that at least the brew had made him feel ready for bed at an u
naccustomed hour, conducted him upstairs to his room and saw him safely into it before tiptoeing along the corridor to his own apartment.

  Nye had locked up the inn and gone to bed some time before. Ludovic stirred the logs in his fireplace to a blaze, and sat down to while away half an hour.

  His preparation for the venture took him some time, since his left arm was still almost useless, but he contrived, though painfully, to pull on a pair of top-boots, and to struggle into his great-coat. Having assured himself that his pistols were properly primed, he stowed one into the top of his right boot, and the other into the right-hand pocket of his coat, and putting on a tricorne of the fashion of three years before, stole softly out on to the corridor, candle in hand.

  The stairs creaked under his feet as he crept down them, but it was not this noise which awoke Miss Thane. She was aroused, ironically enough, by the rhythmic and resonant snores proceeding from her brother’s room across the passage. She lay for a few minutes between waking and sleeping, listening to these repulsive sounds, and wondering whether it would be worth while to get up and rouse Sir Hugh, or whether the snoring would recommence the instant he fell asleep again. Just as she had decided that the best thing to do was to draw the bedclothes over her ears, and try to ignore the snoring, a faint sound, as of a bolt being drawn downstairs, jerked her fully awake. She sat up in bed, thought that she could hear the click of a latch, and the next instant was standing on the floor, groping for her dressing-gown.

  An oil lamp burned low on the table by the bed. She turned up the wick, and picking up the lamp, went softly out on to the passage.

  The house was in pitch darkness, and only Sir Hugh’s snores broke the silence, but Miss Thane was convinced that there had been other and very stealthy sounds. Her first thought was that someone had entered the house, presumably in search of Ludovic, and she was about to steal along the passage to rouse Nye, when another explanation of the faint sounds occurred to her. She went quickly to Ludovic’s room and scratched on the door-panel. There was no answer, and without the slightest hesitation she turned the handle and looked in.

  One glance at the unruffled bed was enough to send her flying along the passage to wake Nye. This was easily done, and within two minutes of an urgent, low-voiced call to him through the keyhole, he was beside her on the passage, with a pair of breeches dragged on over his night-shirt, and his night-cap still on his head. When he heard that Ludovic was not in his room he stared at Miss Thane with a pucker between his brows, and said slowly: ‘He wouldn’t do it – not alone!’

  ‘Where’s Clem?’ demanded Miss Thane under her breath.

  He shook his head. ‘No, no, Clem was of my own mind over this. You must have been mistook, ma’am. He wouldn’t set out to walk that distance, and he can’t saddle a horse with his arm in a sling.’ He broke off suddenly, and his eyes narrowed. ‘By God, you’re right, ma’am!’ he said. ‘He must have seen Abel! That accounts for him being so uncommon cheerful, drat the boy! Get you back to your room if you please, ma’am. I’ll have Clem saddle me a horse while I get some clothes on, and be off after them.’

  Miss Thane had been thinking. ‘Wait, Nye, I’ve a better notion. Send Clem to inform Sir Tristram. You’ll not catch that wretched boy in time to stop him entering the Dower House, and once he has stepped into whatever trap may have been set for him, Sir Tristram’s perhaps the one person who might be able to get him out of it.’

  Nye paused. After a moment’s reflection he said reluctantly: ‘Ay, that’s true enough. And Clem’s a smaller man than what I am, and will ride faster. It’s you who have the head, ma’am.’

  While Clem was flinging on his clothes, and Nye was in the stable saddling a horse, and Miss Thane was sitting on the edge of her bed wondering whether there was anything more she could do to avert disaster from Ludovic, the object of all this confusion was striding down the lane leading to Warninglid, quite oblivious of the possibility of pursuit. The moon, hidden from time to time behind drifting clouds, gave enough light to enable him to see his way, and in a little while showed him two horses, drawn up in the lee of a hedge of hornbeam.

  Abel greeted him with a grunt, and offered him a flask produced from the depths of his pocket. ‘Play off your dust afore we start,’ he recommended.

  ‘No, I must keep a clear head,’ replied Ludovic. ‘So must you, what’s more. I don’t want you disguised.’

  ‘You’ve never seen me with the malt above the water – not to notice,’ said Mr Bundy, refreshing himself with a nip.

  ‘I’ve seen you as drunk as a wheelbarrow,’ retorted Ludovic, taking the flask away from him and putting it in his own pocket. ‘It makes you devilish quick on the pull, and taking the fat with the lean, I think we won’t do any shooting unless we’re forced. My cautious cousin’s against it, and I admit there’s a deal in what he says. I don’t want to be saddled with any more corpses. Give me a leg-up, will you?’

  Bundy complied with this request, and asked what he was to do if it came to a fight.

  ‘Use your fists,’ answered Ludovic. ‘Mind you, I dare say there’ll be no fighting.’

  ‘Just as well if there ain’t,’ said Bundy, hoisting himself into the saddle. ‘A hem set-out it will be if you get yourself into a mill with only one arm! I doubt I done wrong to come with you.’

  This was said not in any complaining spirit but as a mere statement of fact. Ludovic, accustomed to Mr Bundy’s processes of thought, agreed, and said that there was a strong likelihood of them ending the night’s adventure in the County Gaol.

  They set off down the lane at an easy trot, and since Clem had chosen the shorter but rougher way to the Court that led through the Forest, they were not disturbed by any sound of pursuit. As they rode, Ludovic favoured his companion with a brief explanation of what they were to do at the Dower House. Bundy listened in silence, and at the end merely expressed his regret that he was not to be given an opportunity of darkening Beau Lavenham’s daylights for him. His animosity towards the Beau seemed to be groundless but profound, his main grudge against him being that he stood a good chance of stepping into Sylvester’s shoes. When he spoke of Sylvester he betrayed something as nearly approaching enthusiasm as it was possible for a man of his phlegmatic temperament to feel. ‘He was a rare one, the old lord,’ he said simply.

  When they arrived within sight of the Dower House they reined in their horses and dismounted. The house stood a little way back from the lane, in a piece of ground cut like a wedge out of the park belonging to the Court. After a brief consultation they led their horses through a gap in the straggling hedge, and tethered them inside the park. Bundy set about the task of lighting the lantern he had brought while Ludovic went off to reconnoitre.

  When he had circumnavigated the house he returned to Bundy’s side to find that that worthy, having covered his lantern with a muffler, was seated placidly beside it on a tree-stump.

  ‘There’s no light showing in any window that I can see,’ reported Ludovic. ‘Now, the Beau told my cautious cousin that the bolt was off one of the library casements, and as that’s the room I fancy I want, we’ll risk a trap and try to get in by that window.’ He drew the pistol from his boot as he spoke, and said: ‘If there is a trap this is our best safeguard. In these parts they believe I can’t miss, and it makes ’em wary of tackling me. If they mean to capture me they’ll try to take me unawares.’

  ‘Well,’ said Bundy judicially, ‘I’m bound to say I disremember when I’ve seen you miss your target.’

  Ludovic gave a short laugh. ‘I missed an owl once, the fool that I was!’

  Bundy looked at him with disapproval. ‘What would you want to go shooting owls for, anyways?’

  ‘Drunk,’ said Ludovic briefly. ‘Now, get this into your head, Abel! If we walk into a trap it’s one laid for me, not for you, and I’ll save myself. Get yourself out of it, and don’t trouble your he
ad over me. All I want you to do is to help me to get into the house.’

  Mr Bundy arose from the tree-stump and picked up the lantern, vouchsafing no reply.

  ‘Understand?’ said Ludovic, a ring of authority in his voice.

  ‘Oh ay!’ said Bundy. ‘But there! When I see trouble I’m tedious likely to get to in-fighting with it. If you take my advice, which I never known you do yet, you’ll turn up that coat-collar of yourn, and pull your hat over your face. You don’t want no one to reckernize you.’

  Ludovic followed this sage counsel, but remarked that he had little expectation of being known. ‘The valet would know me, if he’s there, but the butler is since my time.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Bundy. ‘But I’ll tell you to your head what I’ve said a-many times behind your back, Master Ludovic, which is that you’ve got a bowsprit that’s the spit and image of the old lord’s.’

  ‘Damn this curst family nose!’ said Ludovic. ‘It’ll ruin me yet.’

  ‘That’s what I’m thinking,’ agreed Bundy. ‘However, there’s no sense in dwelling on what can’t be helped. If you’re ready to start milling this ken we’d best start without wasting any more time. And if you keep in mind that though maybe there ain’t enough light for anyone to know you by, there’s enough and to spare to make you a hem easy target for any cove as might be sitting inside the house with a gun, I dare say you’ll come off safe yet.’

  ‘It’s odds there’s no one there at all,’ returned Ludovic. ‘But you needn’t fear me: I’m taking no risks to-night.’

  This remark seemed to tickle Bundy’s sense of humour. He went off without warning into a paroxysm of silent laughter, which made his eyes water and his whole frame shake like a jelly. Ludovic paid not the least heed to this seizure, but led the way to a wicket-gate at the back of the house, which gave on to the park from the shrubbery.

  Traversing the shrubbery they made their way round to the front of the house, taking care not to tread upon the gravel path. Under the tall casement windows there were flowerbeds, in which a few snowdrops thrust up their heads. Ludovic counted the windows, made up his mind which room must be the library, and indicated it to Bundy with a jerk of his head. Bundy stepped across the path on to the flowerbed, and laid his ear to the grass. He could detect no sound within the room, nor any light behind the drawn curtains, and after a few moments of intent listening he put down his muffled lantern and produced a serviceable knife from his pocket. While he worked on the window Ludovic stood beside him, on the look-out for a possible ambush in the garden. His hat cast a deep shadow over his face, but the moonlight caught the silver mountings on his pistol, and made them gleam. The garden was planted with too many trees and shrubs to make it possible for him to be sure that no one was in hiding there, but he could discover no movement in any of the shadows, and was more than ever inclined to discount his cousin Tristram’s forebodings.