The Talisman Ring

‘I saw the one on the backstairs. If there are no more than two, and Nye can’t fob them off, we’d better lock them up in the cellar, I think. Just until I’ve found my ring,’ he added reassuringly, seeing Eustacie’s face of disapproval.

‘But no, for if we lock them up we shall be put in prison for it!’

‘There is that, of course,’ agreed Ludovic. ‘Still, if only I should clear myself of this murder charge I shouldn’t mind taking the risk. Ten to one we’d get off with a fine.’

They were still arguing the point when Clem appeared with a pail and a scrubbing-brush. They pounced upon him for news, and he was able to tell them that Nye had the situation well in hand, and had already gone far towards convincing the Runners that they had been sent to look for a mare’s nest. At the moment he was regaling them with brandy, after which he had promised to conduct them personally all over the inn. Hearing this, Eustacie was at once struck by the notion of spreading a few pieces of female apparel about Ludovic’s room. She went off to do this, leaving Ludovic with instructions to start scrubbing the floor the instant he heard the Runners ascending the stairs.

By the time Mr Stubbs, fortified by brandy, did come up, Eustacie had returned to Miss Thane’s room, and no sooner did Nye tap on the door, asking whether the officer might come in, than she broke forth again into indignant repinings. Both the Runner and Nye were adjured to come in and judge for themselves whether the smell of the perfume would ever be got rid of. When Nye asked permission for the Runner to search the room, she first stared at him with an expression of outrage on her face, and then flung open the door of the cupboard and said tragically that it needed only this, that a great rough man should pry into her wardrobe. She begged Mr Stubbs not to consider her feelings in the least degree, but to pull all her dresses out, and throw them on the floor if he pleased. Mr Stubbs, acutely uncomfortable, assured her that he had no desire to do anything of the kind. She said that she wished she were back in France, where ladies were treated with civility, and, covering her face with her handkerchief, burst into tears. Ludovic, inexpertly scrubbing the damp patch on the floor, sniffed dolefully over the pail of water, and the Runner, casting a perfunctory glance into the wardrobe and another under the bed, beat a somewhat hasty retreat.

It was not long before Nye returned, this time alone. He found Eustacie peeping out of the window at the receding forms of the two officers, and Ludovic, the mob-cap and shawl already discarded, trying to extricate himself from Miss Thane’s gown. Characteristically, the first words he addressed to Ludovic were of decided reproof. ‘And who might those clothes belong to, my lord, if I may make so bold as to ask?’

‘To Miss Thane, of course. Help me to come out of this curst dress!’

‘And that’s a nice thing!’ said Nye. ‘Couldn’t you find nothing else to break but a flask of scent that don’t belong to you? For shame, Mr Ludovic!’

Eustacie came away from the window. ‘Enfin, they are gone. Do they believe that my cousin is not here, Nye?’

‘That’s more than I can tell you, miss,’ replied Nye, picking up Miss Thane’s dress from the floor. ‘Nor I don’t think they’ve gone far. They would have put up here for the night if I hadn’t shown them that I haven’t a bed to spare. It’s my belief they’re off no farther than to the ale-house down the road.’

‘Do you mean to tell me those fellows are going to hang around this place?’ said Ludovic, himself again in shirt and breeches. ‘Who set them on?’

Nye shook his head. ‘They wouldn’t say. The fat one don’t seem to me to set much store by the information. But for all that, I’ll have the cellar made ready for you, sir.’

‘Make it ready for the Runners,’ said Ludovic briskly. ‘We’ll have to kidnap them.’

‘There’ll be no such foolishness in this house, Mr Ludovic, and so I’ll have you know!’

Some twenty minutes later Miss Thane, accompanied by her brother, came back to the Red Lion, and was at once met by Eustacie, who drew her upstairs to her room, her story tripping off her tongue.

‘Runners in the house, and I not here to see them?’ exclaimed Miss Thane, suitably impressed. ‘I declare I am the most ill-used creature alive! How I should have liked to have helped to hoodwink them!’

‘Yes, it was very sad for you to be out, but you did help us, Sarah, because Ludovic put on one of your dresses, and pretended to be my maid.’

They had by this time reached Miss Thane’s bedchamber. Eustacie opened the door and Miss Thane took one step into the room and recoiled.

‘It’s only the scent,’ said Eustacie kindly. ‘And indeed it is already much fainter that it was. Ludovic thought that it would be a good thing to break the bottle, pretending that it was mine. In that way, you understand, he was able to hide his face, because he made believe to cry, and to be frightened. And I scolded him – oh, à faire croire !’

‘I’m glad,’ said Miss Thane. ‘I suppose it had to be my French perfume?’

Ludovic, hearing their voices, strolled across the passage from his own room, and said with a grin: ‘Sarah, are you savage with me for having spilled your scent? I will buy you some more one day.’

‘Thank you, Ludovic!’ said Miss Thane with feeling. ‘And this is the gown you chose to wear, is it? Yes, I see. After all, I never cared for it above the ordinary.’

‘It got split a trifle across the shoulders,’ explained Ludovic.

‘Yes, I noticed that,’ agreed Miss Thane. ‘But what is a mere gown compared with a man’s life?’

Eustacie greeted this sentiment with great approval, and said that she knew Sarah would feel like that.

‘Of course,’ said Miss Thane. ‘And I have been thinking, moreover, that we do not consider Ludovic enough. Look at this large, airy apartment of mine, for instance, and only consider the stuffy little back chamber he is obliged to sleep in! I will change with you, my dear Ludovic.’

Ludovic declined this handsome offer without the least hesitation. ‘I don’t like the smell of the scent,’ he said frankly.

Miss Thane, overcome by her emotions, tottered to a chair and covered her eyes with her hand. In a voice of considerable feeling she gave Ludovic to understand that since he had saturated the carpet in her room with scent, he and not she should sleep in that exotic atmosphere.

The rest of the day was enlivened by alarms and discussions. The Runners had, as Nye suspected, withdrawn merely to the ale-house a mile down the road, and both of them revisited the Red Lion at separate times, entering it in the most unobtrusive, not to say stealthy, manner possible, and explaining their presence in unexpected corners of the house by saying that they were looking for the landlord. The excuses they put forward for these visits, though not convincing, were accepted by Nye with obliging complaisance. Secure in the knowledge that Ludovic was hidden in his secret cellar, he gave the Runners all the facilities they could desire to prowl unaccompanied about the house. The only person to be dissatisfied with this arrangement was the quarry himself who, in spite of the amenities afforded by a brazier and a couple of candles, complained that the cellar was cold, dark, and devilish uncomfortable. His plan of remaining above-stairs in readiness to retreat to the cellar upon the arrival of a Runner was frustrated by the tiresome conduct of these gentlemen, who seemed to spend the entire afternoon prowling around the house. Twice Eustacie was startled by an inquiring face at the parlour-window, and three times did Clem report that one of the officers was round the back of the house by the stables, hobnobbing with the ostler and the post-boys. Even Sir Hugh became aware of an alien presence in the inn, and complained when he came down to dinner that a strange fellow had poked his head into his bedchamber while he was pulling off his boots.

‘A demmed, rascally-looking fellow with a red nose,’ he said. ‘Nye ought to be more careful whom he lets into the place. Came creeping up the passage and peered into my room without so much as a “by your leave.”’