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!”

“Happen he’s suffocated inside that hole,” remarked Mr Bundy’s fatalistic voice from the window.

“Nonsense, there must be enough air! Where’s the catch that opens the panel?”

Bundy, leaning his head and shoulders in at the window indicated the portion of the frieze where it might be found.

Shield ran his hands over the carving, presently found the device Ludovic had twisted, and turned it. The panel slid back once more, and Shield, picking up the candelabra, went to it, saying sharply: “Ludovic! Are you hurt?”

There was no answer. Sir Tristram bent, so that the candles illumined the cavity, and looked in. It was quite empty.

Chapter Twelve

Sir Tristram put the candelabra down, and once more twisted the device, closing the panel. “He’s not there,” he said.

Mr Bundy betrayed no surprise. “Ah!” he remarked, preparing to climb into the room. “I’d a notion we shouldn’t get out of this so hem easy. As good be nibbled to death by ducks as set out on one of Master Ludovic’s ventures! Where’s he got to, by your reckoning?”

“God knows! He must have slipped out after the candles were knocked over. Don’t come in!”

Bundy obediently stayed where he was. “Just as you say, master. But it ain’t like him to keep out of a fight.”

“He’d be no use in a mill with one arm in a sling,” replied Sir Tristram. “Go and see if he has gone back to where you left your horses. If he’s not there he must be somewhere in the house.”

“Well, I’ll do it,” said Bundy, “but I reckon it’s no manner of use. ’Twouldn’t be natural if young master were to start behaving sensible all on a sudden. You’d be surprised the number of cork-brained scrapes he’s got himself into these two years and more.”

“You’re wrong; I shouldn’t,” retorted Sir Tristram.

“Ah well, he’s a valiant lad, surely!” said Bundy, indulgently, and withdrew.

Sir Tristram stayed where he was, and in a very few minutes Mr Bundy once more appeared at the window and said simply: “He ain’t there.”

“Damn the boy!” said Sir Tristram. “Get away from that window! There’s someone coming!”

Bundy promptly ducked beneath the level of the windowsill just as the door opened, and Gregg staggered in, supported by the butler.

His jaw was much swollen and two front teeth were broken. Sir Tristram put his grazed right hand into his pocket. It was evident that although his head might be swimming, the valet still had some of his wits about him, for no sooner did his bleared gaze fall upon Shield than he turned an even more sickly colour, and catching at a chair-back to steady himself, said in a thick voice: “It’s like that, is it? But I’ll watch. I have the keys of the doors. If he’s there still he won’t get away!”

The groom came into the room and said in his serious young voice: “I’d get him a drop of brandy if I were you, Mr Jenkyns. Regular shook to pieces he is. Now, don’t you fret, Mr Gregg! No one can’t get out while you’ve got them keys.”

The butler, who thought that a drop of brandy would do him good also, said graciously that he believed the “lad was right, and went away to fetch the decanter. The groom, coming up behind the valet, said solicitously: “You shouldn’t ought to have come down, Mr Gregg,” and knocked him out with one nicely-delivered blow under the ear. The unfortunate valet collapsed on to the floor, and the groom, looking down at him with a smouldering expression of wrath in his pleasant grey eyes, said grimly: “Maybe that’ll be a lesson to you, you cribbage-faced tooth-drawer, you!”

Before Sir Tristram, considerably astonished by this unexpected turn events had taken, had time to speak, the butler, hearing the sound of Gregg’s fall, came hurrying back into the room. The groom at once turned to meet him, saying: “Blessed if he ain’t swooned off again, Mr Jenkyns! Done to a cow’s thumb, he is!”

“Carry the poor fellow up to his room again, and this time keep him there!” commanded Sir Tristram, recovering from his surprise.

“Just what I was a-going to do, sir,” said the groom. “Now, Mr Jenkyns, if you’ll take his legs we’ll soon have him in his bed!”

“Ah, I warned him not to get up!” said the butler, shaking his head.

The groom thrust a hand into Gregg’s pocket and extracted the keys from it, “I’m thinking your Honour had best keep these,” he said, and held them out to Sir Tristram.

The butler, puffing as he bent to raise Gregg, agreed that Sir Tristram was certainly the man to take charge of the keys. For a second time the valet was borne off upstairs. Mr Bundy, reappearing at the window, like a jack-in-the-box, remarked phlegmatically: “It looks to me like young master’s met a friend. Who’s that young cove?”

“I fancy he must be Jim Kettering’s boy,” replied Tristram.

“Well, he’s caused us a peck of trouble this night,” said Bundy, “but I’m bound to say he seems an unaccountable nice lad! Handy with his fives he is.”

At this moment Ludovic strolled into the room. “Well, of all the shambles!” he remarked, glancing around. “I’d give a monkey to see the Beau’s face when he comes home! What brought you here, Tristram?”

“Clem fetched me,” replied Shield. “How did you get out of the priest’s hole, and what the devil have you been doing all this while?”

“There’s another way out of the hole,” explained Ludovic. “I thought there might be. It leads up to Basil’s bedchamber. It seemed to me I might as well hunt for the ring since you had the affair so well in hand down here. Then I heard Bob Kettering’s voice, and gave him a whistle—”

“Gave him a whistle?” echoed Sir Tristram. “With the whole household looking for you, you whistled!”

“Yes, why not? I knew he’d recognize it. It’s a signal we used when we were boys. Bob hadn’t a notion he’d been set on to hunt for me. Lord, we used to go bird’s nesting together!”

“I thought you’d met a friend,” nodded Bundy. “Did you happen to find that ring o’ yourn?”

Ludovic’s face clouded over. “No. Bob helped me to ransack Basil’s room, but it’s not there, and it wasn’t in the priest’s hole.”

“Did young Kettering chance to remember that he is in Basil’s service?” inquired Sir Tristram.

Ludovic looked at him. “Yes, but this was for me, my dear fellow!”

Sir Tristram smiled faintly. “I suppose he is as shameless as you are. Do you feel that you have done enough damage for one night, or is there anything else you’d care to set your hand to before you go?”

“Damage!” said Ludovic. “If that don’t beat everything! Who smashed all this furniture, I should like to know? I didn’t!”

The groom came back into the library as he spoke, and said urgently: “Mr Ludo, you’d best go while you may. We’ll have Jenkyns down again afore we know where we are!”