“Shot—but missed!” said Shield. “Yet I have watched Ludovic shoot the pips out of a playing-card at twenty yards.”

“Oh, admitted, Tristram, admitted, but on that particular night I think Ludovic was not entirely sober, was he?”

Eustacie struck her hands together impatiently. “But tell me, one of you! What did he do, my cousin Ludovic?”

The Beau tossed back the ruffles from his hand, and dipped his finger and thumb in his snuffbox. “Well, Tristram,” he said with his glinting smile. “You know more about it than I do. Are you going to tell her?”

“It is not an edifying story,” Shield said. “Why do you want to hear it?”

“Because I think perhaps my cousin Ludovic is of this family the most romantic person!” replied Eustacie.

“Oh, romantic!” said Sir Tristram, turning away with a shrug of the shoulder.

The Beau fobbed his snuffbox. “Romantic?” he said meditatively. “No, I do not think Ludovic was romantic. A little rash, perhaps. He was a gamester—whence the disasters which befell him. He lost a very large sum of money one night at the Cocoa-Tree to a man who lived at Furze House, not two miles from here.”

“No one lives at Furze House,” interrupted Eustacie.

“Not now,” agreed the Beau. “Three years ago Sir Matthew Plunkett lived there. But Sir Matthew—three years ago—was shot in the Longshaw Spinney, and his widow removed from the neighbourhood.”

“Did my cousin Ludovic shoot him?”

“That, my dear Eustacie, is a matter of opinion. You will get one answer from Tristram, and another from me.”

“But why?” she demanded. “Not just because he had lost money to him! That, after all, is not such a great matter—unless perhaps he was quite ruined?”

“Oh, by no means! He did lose a large sum to him, however, and Sir Matthew, being a person of—let us say indifferent—breeding—was ill-mannered enough to demand a pledge in security before he would continue playing. Of course, one should never play with Cits, but poor dear Ludovic was always so headstrong. The game was piquet, and both were in their cups. Ludovic took from his finger a certain ring, and gave it to Sir Matthew as a pledge—to be redeemed, naturally. It was a talisman ring of great antiquity which had come to Ludovic through his mother, who was the last of a much older house than ours.”

Eustacie stopped him. “Please, I do not know what is a talisman ring.”

“Just a golden ring with figures engraved upon it. This of Ludovic’s was, as I have said, very old. The characters on it were supposed to be magical. It should, according to ancient belief, have protected him from any harm. More important, it was an heirloom. I don’t know its precise value. Tristram, you are a judge of such things—you must make him show you his collection, Eustacie—what was the value of the ring?”

“I don’t know,” answered Shield curtly. “It was very old—perhaps priceless.”

“Such a rash creature, poor Ludovic!” sighed the Beau. “I believe there was no stopping him—was there, Tristram?”

“No.”

Eustacie turned towards Shield. “But were you there, then?”

“Yes, I was there.”

“But no one, not even Tristram, could manage Ludovic in his wilder moods,” explained the Beau. “He pledged the ring, and continued to lose. Sir Matthew, with what one cannot but feel to have been a lamentable want of taste, left the Cocoa-Tree with the ring upon his finger. To redeem it Ludovic was forced to go to the Jews—ah, that means moneylenders, my dear!”

“There was nothing new in that,” said Shield. “Ludovic had been in the Jews’ hands since he came down from Oxford—and before.”

“Like so many of us,” murmured the Beau.

“And did he get the money from the Jews?” asked Eustacie.

“Oh yes,” replied the Beau, “but the matter was not so easily settled. When Ludovic called upon Plunkett to redeem the ring our ingenious friend pretended that the bargain had been quite misunderstood, that he had in fact staked his guineas against the ring, and won it outright. He would not give it up, nor could anyone but Tristram be found who had been sober enough to vouch for the truth of Ludovic’s version of the affair.”

Eustacie’s eyes flashed. “I am not at all surprised that Ludovic killed this canaille! He was without honour!”

The Beau played with his quizzing-glass. “People who collect objects of rarity, my dear Eustacie, will often, so I believe, go to quite unheard-of lengths to acquire the prize they covet.”

“But you!” said Eustacie, looking fiercely at Sir Tristram. “You knew the truth!”

“Unfortunately,” replied Sir Tristram, “Plunkett did not wait for my ruling. He retired into the country—to Furze House, in fact—and somewhat unwisely refused to see Ludovic.”

“Did Grandpère know of this?” Eustacie asked.

“Dear me, no!” said the Beau. “Sylvester and Ludovic were so rarely on amicable terms. And then there was that little matter of Ludovic’s indebtedness to the Jews. One can hardly blame Ludovic for not taking Sylvester into his confidence. However, Ludovic came home to this house, bringing Tristram, with the intention of confronting Plunkett with the one—er—reliable witness to the affair. But Plunkett was singularly elusive—not unnaturally, of course. When Ludovic called at Furze House he was never at home. One must admit that Ludovic was not precisely the man to accept such treatment patiently. And he was drinking rather heavily at that time, too. Discovering that Plunkett was to dine at a house in Slaugham upon the very day that he had been refused admittance to Furze House for the third time, he conceived the plan of waylaying him upon his return home, and forcing him to accept bills in exchange for the ring. Only Tristram, finding him gone from here, guessed what he would be at, and followed him.”

“The boy was three parts drunk!” said Sir Tristram over his shoulder.

“I have no doubt he was in a very dangerous humour,” agreed the Beau. “It has always been a source of wonderment to me how you persuaded him to relinquish his purpose and return home.”

“I promised to see Plunkett in his stead,” replied Shield. “Like a fool I let him take the path through the spinney.”

“My dear fellow, no one could have expected you to have foreseen that Plunkett would return by that path,” said the Beau gently.

“On the contrary, if he came from Slaugham it was the most natural way for him to take,” retorted Shield. :’And we knew he was riding, not driving.”

“So what happened?” breathed Eustacie.

It was Shield who answered her. “Ludovic rode back through the Longshaw Spinney, while I went on towards Furze House. Not ten minutes after we had parted I heard a shot fired in the distance. At the time I made nothing of it: it might have been a poacher. Next morning Plunkett’s body was discovered in the spinney with a shot through the heart, and a crumpled handkerchief of Ludovic’s lying beside it.”

“And the ring?” Eustacie said quickly.

“The ring was gone,” said Shield. “There was money in Plunkett’s pockets, and a diamond pin in his cravat, but of the talisman ring no sign.”

“And it has never been seen since,” added the Beau.

“By us, no!” said Sir Tristram.

“Yes, yes, I know that you think Ludovic has it,” said the Beau, “but Ludovic swore he did not meet Plunkett that night, and I for one do not think that Ludovic was a liar. He admitted freely that he carried a pistol in his pocket, he even admitted that he had fired it—at an owl.”

“Why should he not shoot this Plunkett?” demanded Eustacie. “He deserved to be shot! I am very glad that he was shot!”

“Possibly,” said Sir Tristram in his driest tone, “but in England, whatever it may be in France, murder is a capital offence.”

“But they did not hang him just for killing such a one as this Plunkett?” said Eustacie, shocked.

“No, because we got him out of the country before he could be arrested,” Shield answered.

The Beau lifted his hand. “Sylvester and you got him out of the country,” he corrected. “I had no hand in that, if you please.”

“Had he stayed to face a trial nothing could have saved his neck.”

“There I beg to differ from you, my dear Tristram,” said the Beau calmly. “Had he been permitted to face his trial the truth might have been found out. When you—and Sylvester, of course—smuggled him out of the country you made him appear a murderer confessed.”

Sir Tristram was spared the necessity of answering by the entrance of Sylvester’s valet, who came to summon him to his great-uncle’s presence again. He went at once, a circumstance which provoked the Beau to murmur as the door closed behind him: “It is really most gratifying to see Tristram so complaisant.”

Eustacie paid no heed to this, but said: “Where is my cousin Ludovic now?”

“No one knows, my dear. He has vanished.”

“And you do not do anything to help him, any of you!” she said indignantly.

“Well, dear cousin, it is a little difficult, is it not?” replied the Beau. “After that well-meaning but fatal piece of meddling, what could one do?”

“I think,” said Eustacie with a darkling brow, “that Tristram did not like my cousin Ludovic.”

The Beau laughed. “How clever of you, my dear!”

She looked at him. “What did you mean when you said he must show me his collection?” she asked directly.

He raised his brows in exaggerated surprise. “Why, what should I mean? Merely that he has quite a notable collection. I am not a judge, but I have sometimes felt that I should like to see that collection myself.”

“Will he not let you, then?”

“Oh, but with the greatest goodwill in the world!” said the Beau, smiling. “But one has to remember that collectors do not always show one quite all their treasures, you know!”