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. He could hear nothing and moved away again. “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 housebreakers, 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 that 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 candles 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 in 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 deliberation 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, 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.