The Talisman Ring

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, surely, 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 tonight. He was quite right, sir: we’ve had housebreakers 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 housebreakers 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!”