The Quiet Gentleman

‘Who will not let you?’

‘Theo – Ulverston – that damned groom of yours!’

‘Indeed! But has a sentry been posted at my door?’

‘No! Not at your door, but at mine!’ Martin said bitterly. ‘Chard is sitting outside my room. The only wonder is that he has not locked me in!’

‘Dear me! How, may I ask, did you contrive to slip past him unnoticed? Or is there also a secret way into your room?’

‘No, there is not! I climbed out of the window. I tell you, I had to see you!’

‘Why, Martin?’

‘They think I tried to kill you!’

‘Have they said so?’

‘Not in so many words, but the questions they have asked me – the way they look at me! I’m not a fool! I know what they think! They say my gun and my shot-belt were found where – where it happened, and that I had rounds of ball in my belt! I had not! It is a damned lie, St Erth! Good God, what should I want with ball when all I went for was an accursed pair of kestrels, and perhaps a pigeon or two?’

‘Did you get the kestrels?’ enquired Gervase.

‘No. I never got a sight of them.’

‘Or a pigeon?’

‘No!’

‘Did you not fire your gun at all?’

‘Yes, at a rabbit,’ Martin muttered. ‘Oh, we have had all that out, never fear! The gun has been fired, and I don’t deny it! I bagged a rabbit, but where it is now I don’t know! I can’t produce it! I never fired at you!’

The Earl’s head lay back against the supporting pillow; from under drooping eyelids he was watching every change in Martin’s face. ‘Martin, why did you run away?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t run away!’ Martin exclaimed.

‘Hush! Not so loud! My valet is sleeping in the next room. Where, then, have you been?’

‘I don’t know!’ He saw his brother’s br

ows lift, and added, in a goaded tone: ‘Ask Chard! He will tell you fast enough! It was some village short of Wisbech where he picked me up: I don’t know its name!’

‘I hope you mean to tell me what he was doing there, for I have not the remotest guess.’

‘I’ll tell you!’ Martin threw at him. ‘He was set on by your friend Ulverston to look for me on the road to King’s Lynn! Ulverston believed I should be found making for the nearest port! God, how I have kept my hands from Ulverston’s throat I don’t know!’

‘Yes, I remember now that Lucy told me that,’ Gervase said thoughtfully.

‘I was trying to get to Stanyon, not to the coast!’ Martin said, taking an impetuous step nearer to the bed.

‘That, also, he foretold,’ murmured Gervase.

Martin recoiled. ‘I might have spared myself the pains of coming to you! You won’t believe me any more than he or Theo do! Very well! Have me arrested for murder!’

‘But I am not dead,’ Gervase said, smiling faintly. ‘What is it that I shan’t believe?’

‘I was kidnapped!’ said Martin belligerently.

Miss Morville, who had been gazing into the fire, apparently divorced from this interchange, raised her head, and looked curiously at him.