A click behind him made him turn his head. Bundy jerked his thumb expressively at one of the windows, and shut his knife. Having forced back the latch he gently prised the window open with his finger-nails. It swung outwards with a slight groan of its hinges. Bundy picked up his lantern in his left hand, unveiled it, and with his right grasped a fold of the velvet curtain, and drew it aside. The muzzle of Ludovic’s gun almost rested on his shoulder, but there was no need for it. The lantern’s golden beam, travelling round the room, revealed no lurking danger. The room was empty, its chairs primly arranged, its grate laid with sticks ready to be kindled when the master should return.
Bundy took a second look round, and then whispered: ‘Will you go in?’
Ludovic nodded, slid the pistol back into his boot and swung a leg over the window-sill.
‘Easy now!’ Bundy muttered, helping him to hoist himself into the room. ‘Wait till I’m with you!’
Ludovic, alighting in the room, said under his breath: ‘Stay where you are: I’m not sure whether it’s this room I want, or another. Give me the lantern!’
Bundy handed it to him, and he directed its beam on to the wainscoting covering the west wall. Bundy waited in untroubled silence while the golden light travelled backwards and forwards over carved capitals, and fluted pilasters, and the rich intricacies of a frieze composed of cartouches and devices.
It came to rest on one section of the frieze, shifted to another, lingered a moment, and returned again to the first. Ludovic moved forward, counting the divisions between the pilasters. At the third from the window-end of the room he stopped, and held the lantern up close to the wall. He drew his left arm painfully from its sling, and raised it, wincing, to fumble with the carving on the frieze. His tongue clicked impatiently at his own helplessness; he returned his arm to the sling, and stepped back to the window. ‘You’ll have to hold the lantern, Abel.’
Bundy climbed into the room and took the lantern, directing its beam not on to the wainscoting but on to the lock of the door. He looked thoughtfully at it, and said: ‘No key.’
Ludovic frowned a little, but replied: ‘It may be lost. Wait!’ He trod softly over the carpet to the door, and stood listening with his ear to the crack. ‘If I don’t find what I want in the priest’s hole we’ll open that door, and take a look round the rest of the house,’ he said. ‘Hold the light so that I may see the frieze. No, more to the right.’ He put up his hand, and grasped one of the carved devices. ‘I think – no, I’m wrong! It’s not the fourth, but the third! Now watch!’
Bundy saw his long fingers twist the device, and simultaneously heard the scroop of a door sliding back. The sudden noise, slight though it was, sounded abnormally loud in the stillness. He swung the lantern round, and saw that between two of the pilasters on the lower tier the panelling had vanished, disclosing a dark cavity.
‘The lantern, man, give me the lantern!’ Ludovic said, and almost snatched it from him.
He reached the priest’s hole in two strides, and as he bent peering into it, Bundy heard a faint sound, and wheeling about saw a thin line of light appear at one end of the room, gradually widening. Someone was stealthily opening the door.
‘Out, sir! Save yourself !’ he hissed, and pulling his pistol out of his pocket prepared to hold all comers at bay until Ludovic was through the window.
Ludovic heard the warning, and quick as a flash, thrust the lantern into the priest’s hole, and swung round. He said clearly: ‘The window, man! Be off !’ and bending till he was nearly double, slipped backwards into the priest’s hole, and pulled the panel to upon himself.
Wavering candlelight illumined the room, a voice shouted: ‘Stand! Stand!’ and Bundy, hidden behind the window-curtains, saw a thin man with a pistol in his hand rush into the room towards the priest’s hole, and claw fruitlessly at the panel, saying: ‘He’s here, he’s here! I saw him!’
The butler, who was standing on the threshold with a branch of candles in his hand, stared at the wainscoting and said: ‘Where?’
‘Here, behind the panel! I saw it close, I tell you! There’s a priest’s hole; we have him trapped!’
The butler looked a good deal astonished and advancing further into the room said: ‘Since you know so much about this house, Mr Gregg, perhaps you know how to get into this priest’s hole you talk of ?’
The valet shook his head, biting his nails. ‘No, we were too late. Only the master knows the catch to it. We must keep it covered.’
‘It seems to me that there’s someone else as knows,’ remarked the butler austerely. ‘I’m bound to say that I don’t understand what it is you’re playing at, Mr Gregg, with all this mysterious talk about house-breakers, and setting everyone on to keep watch like you have. Who’s behind the panel!’
Gregg answered evasively: ‘How should I know? But I saw a man disappear into the wall. We must get the Parish Constable up here to take him the instant the master gets back and opens the panel.’
‘I presoom you know what you’re about, Mr Gregg,’ said the butler in frigid tones. ‘If I were to pass an opinion I should say that it was more my place than yours to give orders here in the master’s absence. These goings-on are not at all what I have been accustomed to.’
‘Never mind that!’ said Gregg impatiently. ‘Send one of the stable-hands to fetch the Constable!’
‘Stand where you be!’ growled a voice from the window. ‘Drop the gun! I have you covered, and my pop’s liable to go off unaccountable sudden-like.’
The valet wheeled round, saw Mr Bundy, and jerked up his pistol-hand. The two guns cracked almost as one, but in the uncertain light neither bullet found its mark. The butler gave a startled gasp, and nearly let the candle fall, and through the window scrambled a third man, who flung himself upon Bundy from the rear, panting: ‘Ah, would you, then!’
Abel Bundy was not, however, an easy man to overpower. He wrenched himself out of the groom’s hold, and jabbed him scientifically in the face. The groom, a young and enthusiastic man, went staggering back, but recovered, and bored in again.
The butler, seeing that a mill was in progress, set down the branch of candles on the table, and hurried, portly but powerful, to join the fray. Gregg called out: ‘That’s not the man! The other’s here, behind the panelling! This one makes no odds!’
‘This one’s good enough for me!’ said the groom between his teeth.
It was at this moment that Sir Tristram, mounted on Clem’s horse, reached the wicket-gate at the back of the garden. He had heard the pistol-shots as he rode across the park, and had spurred his horse to a gallop. He pulled it up, snorting and trembling, flung himself out of the saddle, and setting his hand on the wicket-gate, vaulted over, and went swiftly round the house to the library window.
An amazing sight met his eyes. Of Ludovic there was no sign, but three other men, apparently inextricably entangled, swayed and struggled over the floor, while Beau Lavenham’s prim valet hovered about the group, saying: ‘Not that one! I want the other!’
Sir Tristram stood for a moment, considering. Then he drew a long-barrelled pistol from his pocket, and with deliberate action cocked it and took careful aim. There was a flash, and a deafening report, and the branch of candles on the table crashed to the ground, plunging the room into darkness.
Sir Tristram, entering the library through the window, heard the valet shriek: ‘My God, he must have got out! No one else could have fired that shot!’
‘Oh, could they not?’ murmured Sir Tristram, with a certain grim satisfaction.
Half in and half out of the window, his form was silhouetted for a moment against the moonlit sky. The valet gave a shout of warning, and Sir Tristram, coolly taking note of his position from the sound of his voice, strode forward. The valet met him bravely enough, launching himself upon the dimly-seen figure, but he was no match for Sir Tristram, who
evaded his clutch, and threw in a body-hit which almost doubled him up. Before he could recover from it Sir Tristram found him again, and dropped him from a terrific right to the jaw. He crashed to the ground and lay still, and Sir Tristram, his eyes growing accustomed to the darkness, turned his attention to Bundy’s captors. For a few seconds, there was some wild fighting. The groom, leaving Bundy to the butler, tried to grapple with Shield, was thrown off, and rattled in again as game as a pebble. There was no room for science; hits went glaringly abroad, furniture was sent flying, and the confused bout ended in Shield throwing his opponent in a swinging fall.
Bundy, who had very soon accounted for the butler, turned to assist his unknown supporter, but found it unnecessary. He was thrust towards the window, and scrambled through it just as the groom struggled to his feet again. Sir Tristram followed him fast, and two minutes later they confronted one another on the park side of the wicket-gate, both of them panting for breath, the knuckles of Shield’s right hand bleeding slightly and Bundy’s left eye rapidly turning from red to purple.
‘Dang me if I know who you may be!’ said Bundy, breathing heavily. ‘But I’m tedious glad to meet a cove so uncommon ready to sport his canvas, that I will say!’
‘You may not know me,’ said Shield wrathfully, ‘but I know you, you muddling, addle-pated jackass! Where’s Mr Ludovic?’
Bundy, rather pleased than otherwise by this form of address, said mildly: ‘What might you be up in the bows for, master? I misdoubt I don’t know what you’m talking about.’
‘You damned fool, I’m his cousin! Where is he?’
Bundy stared at him, a slow smile dawning on his swollen countenance. ‘His cautious cousin!’ he said. ‘If he hadn’t misled me I should have guessed it, surelye, for by the way you talk you might be the old lord himself ! Lamentable cautious you be! Oh, l-a-amentable!’
‘For two pins I’d give you into custody for a dangerous law-breaker!’ said Shield savagely. ‘Will you answer me, or do I choke it out of you? Where’s my cousin?’
‘Now don’t go wasting time having a set-to with me!’ begged Mr Bundy ‘I don’t say I wouldn’t like a bout with you, but it ain’t the time for it. Mr Ludovic’s got himself into that priest’s hole he was so just about crazy to find.’
‘In the priest’s hole? Then why the devil didn’t he come out when I shot the candles over?’
‘Happen it ain’t so easy to get out as what it is to get in,’ suggested Bundy. ‘What’s more, the cat’s properly in the cream-pot now, for that screeching valet knows where he is, ay, and who he is! He means to watch till his precious master gets home.’
‘He’ll do no watching yet awhile,’ said Sir Tristram. ‘I took very good care to put him to sleep. He’s the only one we have to fear. The butler has never seen my cousin, and I doubt is not in his master’s confidence.’
‘You’m right there,’ corroborated Bundy, ‘he ain’t. But he knows there’s a man in the priest’s hole, because t’other cove told him so.’
‘I can handle him,’ said Shield briefly, and catching his horse’s bridle, set his foot in the stirrup. ‘Stay here, and if I whistle come to the window. I may need you to show me where to find the catch that opens the panel.’ He swung himself into the saddle as he spoke, wheeled the horse, and cantered off towards the gap in the hedge through which Ludovic and Bundy had entered the park.
Mr Bundy, tenderly feeling his contused eye, was shaken by inward mirth for the second time that evening. ‘Lamentable cautious!’ he repeated. ‘Oh ay, l-a-amentable!’
Sir Tristram, breaking through on to the road, turned towards the Dower House, and rode up the neat drive at a canter. Dismounting, he not only pulled the iron bell violently, but also hammered an imperative summons with the knocker on the front door.
In a few minutes the door was cautiously opened on the chain, and the butler, looking pale and shaken, and with a black eye almost equal to Bundy’s, peered out.
‘What the devil’s amiss?’ demanded Sir Tristram. ‘Don’t keep me standing here! Open the door!’
‘Oh, it’s you, sir!’ gasped the butler, much relieved, and making haste to unfasten the chain.
‘Of course it’s I!’ said Sir Tristram, pushing his way past him into the hall. ‘I was on my way home from Hand Cross when I heard unmistakable pistol-shots coming from here. What’s the meaning of it? What are you doing up at this hour?’
‘I’m – I’m very glad you’ve come, sir,’ said the butler, wiping his face. ‘Very glad indeed, sir. I’m so shook up I scarce know what I’m about. It was Gregg’s doing, sir. No, not precisely that neither, but it was Gregg as had his suspicions there was a robbery planned for to-night. He was quite right, sir: we’ve had house-breakers in, and one of them’s hidden in some priest’s hole I never heard of till now. I’ve never been so used in all my life, sir, never!’
‘Priest’s hole! What priest’s hole?’ said Shield. ‘How many house-breakers were there? Have you caught any of them?’
‘No, sir, and there’s Gregg laying like one dead. There was a great many of them. We did what we could, but the candlestick was shot over, and in the dark they got away. It was the one in the panelling Gregg set such store by catching, so I’ve left one of the stable-lads there to keep watch. In the library, sir.’
‘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.
Twelve
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, surelye!’ 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 window-sill just as the door opened, and Gregg staggered in, supported by the butler.
The Talisman Ring Page 23