The Talisman Ring

“There now!” said Mr Stubbs, with scathing irony. “If you haven’t put me in mind of it! Dang me, if I didn’t forget to look inside of one of the coal-boxes!”

Gregg, perceiving that he had offended, smiled and made a deprecating movement with his hand. “It is an old house, and full of nooks and hidden cupboards. You are sure—I expect you are sure—that he had no opportunity to seek safety in the cellars?”

“Yes,” replied Mr Stubbs. “I am sure. By the time I was in by the front door, Mr Peabody here was in by the back. And not so much of a sniff of any criminal did we get. What’s more, we had very nice treatment from the landlord, very nice indeed we had. There are plenty as would have behaved different, but Mr Nye, he made no bones at all. ‘It’s not what I like,’ he says, ‘but I don’t blame you, nor I’m not one to stand in the way of an officer what is only executing his dooty.’”

The valet’s light eyes flickered from one stolid face to the other. “He had him hidden. When I went he was not hidden. The tapster would not let me set foot outside the tap-room. They did not wish me to go anywhere inside the house. It was most marked.”

“That don’t surprise me,” said Mr Stubbs. He put his empty tankard down and regarded the valet narrowly. “What’s your interest in this Loodervic Lavenham? What makes you so unaccountable anxious to have him laid by the heels?”

The valet folded his lips closely, but after a moment replied: “Well, you see, Mr Stubbs, that is my business. I have my reasons.”

The Runner eyed him with growing disfavour. “Lookee!” he pronounced. “When I go ferreting for news of a desprit criminal, that’s dooty. When you does the same thing, Mr Gregg, it looks to me uncommon like Spitefulness, and Spitefulness is what I don’t hold with, and never shall.”

“That’s right,” agreed Mr Peabody.

The valet smiled again, but unpleasantly, and said in his silky way: “Why, you may say so if you choose, Mr Stubbs. And I hope I may ask whom you saw at the Red Lion?”

“I didn’t see no desprit criminal,” answered Mr Stubbs. “It’s my belief there ain’t no desprit criminal. Is it likely the place would house such with a Justice of the Peace putting up there?”

“You went into the little back bedchamber? They let you go there?”

“I went into two back bedchambers, one which is the landlord’s and the other which the young French lady’s maid has.”

The valet’s eyelids were quickly raised. “Her maid? Did you see her maid?”

“Ay, poor wench, I saw her right enough, and I heard Miss a-scolding of her all for breaking a bottle.”

“What was she like?” demanded Gregg, leaning forward again.

Mr Stubbs looked at him with a shade of uneasiness in his eyes. “Why, I didn’t get much sight of her face, she being crying into her shawl fit to break her heart.”

“Ah, so you didn’t see her face!” said Gregg. “Perhaps she was a tall girl—a very tall girl?”

Mr Stubbs had been engaged in filling a long clay pipe, but he laid it down, and said slowly: “Ay, she was a rare, strapping wench. She had yaller hair, by what I could see of it.”

Gregg sat back in his chair and set his finger-tips together, and over them surveyed the Runners with a peculiar glint in his eyes. “So that was it!” he said. “Well, well!”

“What do you mean, ‘that was it’?” said Mr Stubbs.

“Only that you have seen Ludovic Lavenham; yes, and let him slip through your fingers too, I dare say.”

Mr Peabody, observing his colleague’s evident discomfiture, came gallantly to the rescue. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “What we’ve done is, we’ve Lulled him—if so be it is him, which we ain’t proved yet. What we have to do now is to make a Pounce, and that, Mr Gregg, is what we decided to do without any help of yourn.”

“You had better have made your pounce when you had him under your hand,” said the valet dryly. “It is said in these parts that there are cellars below the ones you may see at the Red Lion; cellars which only Nye and Clem know the way into.”

“If that’s true, we shall find them,” said Mr Stubbs, with resolution.

“I hope you may,” responded Gregg. “But take my advice, and go armed! The man you are after is indeed desperate, and I fancy he will not be without his pistols.”

The Runners exchanged glances. “I did hear tell of him being handy with his pops,” remarked Mr Stubbs in a casual voice.

“They say he never misses,” said Gregg, lowering his eyes demurely. “If I were in your shoes, I should think it as well to shoot him before he could shoot me.”

“Yes, I dare say,” said Mr Stubbs bitterly, “but we ain’t allowed to go a-shooting of coves.”

“But if you told—both of you—how he shot first, and would have escaped, it would surely be overlooked?” suggested Gregg gently.

It was left to Mr Peabody to sum up the situation, but this he did not do until the valet had gone. Then he said to his troubled companion: “You know what this looks like to me, Jerry? It looks to me like as if there’s someone unaccountable anxious to have this Ludovic Lavenham put away quick—ah, and quiet, too!”