Джорджетт Хейер - The Talisman Ring

Ludovic burst out laughing. “Devil a bit! There’s nothing wolfish about him. He’s a mighty pleasant fellow, and I’d have sworn not one to wish anybody harm.”

“Alas, it is true!” said Eustacie sadly. “He is just nothing.”

Sir Tristram’s eyebrows went up a shade. Miss Thane pointed a triumphant finger at him, and said: “Sir Tristram knows better! A wolf, sir?”

He shook his head. “No, I don’t think I should put it quite like that, Miss Thane. He is pleasant enough—a little too pleasant. He purrs like a cat.”

“He does,” agreed Ludovic. “But do you know any ill of him? I don’t.”

“One thing,” replied Shield. “I know that Sylvester mistrusted him.”

“Sylvester!” said Ludovic scornfully.

“Oh, Sylvester was no fool,” answered Shield.

“Good God, he mistrusted scores of people, me amongst them!”

“So little did he mistrust you,” said Shield, putting his hand into his waistcoat-pocket, “that he bade me give you that if ever I should see you again, and tell you not to pledge it.”

Ludovic stared at the great ruby. “Thunder and Turf, did he leave me that!”

“As you see. He asked me just before he died whether I thought your story had been true after all.”

“I dare swear you told him No,” remarked Ludovic, slipping the ring on to his finger.

“I did,” said Shield calmly. “You must remember that I heard that shot not ten minutes after I had parted from you, and I knew what sort of a humour you were in.”

Ludovic shot him a fiery glance. “You thought me capable of murder, in fact!”

“I thought you three-parts drunk,” said Shield. “I also thought you a rash young fool. I still think that. What possessed you to turn smuggler? Have you been sailing off the coast of Sussex all this time?”

“‘Hovering’ is the word,” said Ludovic, with a gleam of mischief. “Free trading seemed to me an occupation eminently suited to an outlaw. Besides, I always liked the sea.”

Sir Tristram said scathingly: “I suppose that was reason enough.”

“Why not? I knew some of the Gentlemen, too, from old days. But I was never off these shores till now. Don’t like ’em: there’s too much creeping done, and the tidesmen are too cursed sharp. I’ve been helping to run cargoes of brandy and rum—under Bergen papers, you know—into Lincolnshire. That’s the place, I can tell you. I’ve been dodging revenue cruisers for the past fifteen months. It’s not a bad life, but the fact of the matter is I wasn’t reared to it. I only came into Sussex to glean what news there might be from Nye.”

“But you will stay, mon cousin, won’t you?” asked Eustacie anxiously.

“He can’t stay,” Shield said. “It was madness to come at all.”

Ludovic lifted his head, and regarded Sylvester’s ring through half-closed eyes. “I shall stay,” he said nonchalantly, “and I shall find out who holds the talisman ring.”

“Ludovic, you may trust me to do all I can to discover it, but you must not be found here!”

“I’m not going to be found here,” replied Ludovic. “You don’t know Joe’s cellars. I do.”

“Go over to Holland, and wait there,” Shield said. “You can do no good here.”

“Oh yes, I can!” said Ludovic, turning his hand so that the jewel caught the light. “Moreover, I’ll be damned if I’ll be elbowed out of my own business!”

“What can you hope to do in hiding that I cannot do openly?” asked Shield. “Why add to your folly by running the risk of being arrested?”

“Because,” said Ludovic, at last raising his eyes from the ruby, “if the Beau has the ring I know where to look for it.”

This announcement produced all the effect upon the ladies which Ludovic could have desired. They gazed at him in surprise and admiration, breathlessly waiting for him to tell them more. Shield, not so easily impressed, said: “If you really know where to look for it you had better tell me, and I’ll do it for you.”

“That’s just the trouble,” replied Ludovic shamelessly. “I’m not at all sure of the place.” He saw Eustacie’s face fall, and added: “Oh, I should know it again if I saw it! The thing is that I’d be mighty hard put to it to direct anyone how to find it. I shall have to go myself.”

“Go where?” demanded Sir Tristram.

“Oh, to the Dower House!” replied Ludovic airily. “There’s a secret panel. You wouldn’t know it.”

“A secret panel?” repeated Miss Thane in an awed voice. “You mean actually a secret panel?”

Ludovic regarded her in some slight concern. “Yes, why not?”

“I thought it too good to be true,” said Miss Thane. “If there is one thing above all others I have wanted all my life to do it is to search for a secret panel! I suppose,” she added hopefully, “it would be too much to expect to find an underground passage leading from the secret panel?”

Eustacie clasped her hands ecstatically. “But yes, of course! An underground passage—”

“With bats and dead men’s bones,” shuddered Miss Thane.

French common sense asserted itself. Eustacie frowned. “Not bats, no. That is not reasonable. But certainly some bones, chained to the wall.”

“And damp—it must be damp!”

“Not damp; cobwebs,” put in Ludovic. “Huge ones, which cling to you like—”

“Ghostly fingers!” supplied Miss Thane.

“Oh, Ludovic, there is a passage?” breathed Eustacie.

He laughed. “Lord, no! It’s just a priest’s hole, that’s all.”

“How wretched!” said Miss Thane, quite disgusted. “It makes me lose all heart.”

“If there is not a passage we must do without one,” decreed Eustacie stoutly. “One must be practical. Tout même, it is a pity there is not a passage. I thought it would lead from the Court to the Dower House. It would have been magnifique! We might have found treasure!”

“That is precisely what I was thinking,” agreed Miss Thane. “An old iron chest, full of jewels.”

Sir Tristram broke in on these fancies with a somewhat withering comment. “Since we are not searching for treasure, and no passage exists save in your imaginations, this discussion is singularly unprofitable,” he said. “Where is the panel, Ludovic?”

“There you have the matter in a nutshell,” confessed Ludovic. “I know my uncle used to use it as a strong-room, and I remember Sylvester showing it to me when I was a lad, but what I can’t for the life of me recall is which room it’s in.”

“That,” said Sir Tristram, “is, to say the least of it, unfortunate, since the Dower House is panelled almost throughout.”

“I think it’s either in the library or the dining-room,” said Ludovic. “There are two tiers of pillars with a lot of fluted pilasters and carvings. I dare say I shall recognize it when I see it. You twist one of the bosses on the frieze between the tiers, and one of the square panels below slides back.”

“How do you propose to see it?” asked Shield. “The Beau is at the Dower House now, and means to stay there.”

“Well, I shall have to break in at night,” replied Ludovic.

“A very proper resolve,” approved Miss Thane, before Sir Tristram could condemn it. “But something a trifle disturbing has occurred to me: are you sure that your cousin would have kept the ring?”

“Yes, for he would not dare to sell it,” replied Ludovic at once.

“He would not perhaps have thrown it away?”

Ludovic shook his head. “Not he. He knows its worth,” he answered simply.

“Oh well, in that case, all we have to do is to find the panel!” said Miss Thane.

Sir Tristram looked at her across Ludovic’s bed. “We?” he said.

“Certainly,” replied Sarah. “Eustacie told me I might share the adventure.”

“You are surely not proposing to remain here!”

“Sir,” said Miss Thane. “I shall remain here until we have cleared Ludovic’s fair name.”

“But, of course!” said Eustacie, opening her eyes very wide. “What else?”

Sir Tristram told her in a few brief words. When it was made plain to him that both ladies meant to play important parts in Ludovic’s affair, and that neither of them would so much as listen to the notion of retiring, the one to London, the other to Bath, he said roundly that he would have nothing to do with so crazy an escapade. Eustacie at once replied with the utmost cordiality that he might retire from it with her goodwill, but Ludovic objected that since his left arm would be useless for some little time, he would need Tristram to help him with his housebreaking.

“Do you imagine that I am going to break into Basil’s house?” demanded Sir Tristram.

“Why not?” said Ludovic.

“Not only that,” said Miss Thane thoughtfully, “but we might need you if there is to be any fighting. My brother tells me you have a Right.”

“If,” said Sir Tristram forcibly, “you would all of you rid yourselves of the notion that you are living within the pages of one of Mrs Radcliffe’s romances, I should be grateful! Do you realize that tongues are already wagging up at the Court over Eustacie’s ill-judged, unnecessary, and foolish flight? I dare swear the news of it has even now reached Basil’s ears. If she remains here, what am I to tell him?”

“Let me think,” said Miss Thane.

“Don’t put yourself to that trouble!” said Sir Tristram, with asperity. “Eustacie must go to my mother in Bath.”

“I have it!” said Miss Thane, paying no heed to him. “I knew Eustacie in Paris some years ago. Finding myself in the vicinity of her home, I sent to inform her of my arrival, whereupon the dear creature, misliking the Bath scheme, formed the idea of putting herself under my protection. Unfortunately, you, Sir Tristram, knowing nothing of me, and being possessed of a tyrannical disposition—I beg your pardon?”