The Talisman Ring

Miss Thane had been thinking. ‘Wait, Nye, I’ve a better notion. Send Clem to inform Sir Tristram. You’ll not catch that wretched boy in time to stop him entering the Dower House, and once he has stepped into whatever trap may have been set for him, Sir Tristram’s perhaps the one person who might be able to get him out of it.’

Nye paused. After a moment’s reflection he said reluctantly: ‘Ay, that’s true enough. And Clem’s a smaller man than what I am, and will ride faster. It’s you who have the head, ma’am.’

While Clem was flinging on his clothes, and Nye was in the stable saddling a horse, and Miss Thane was sitting on the edge of her bed wondering whether there was anything more she could do to avert disaster from Ludovic, the object of all this confusion was striding down the lane leading to Warninglid, quite oblivious of the possibility of pursuit. The moon, hidden from time to time behind drifting clouds, gave enough light to enable him to see his way, and in a little while showed him two horses, drawn up in the lee of a hedge of hornbeam.

Abel greeted him with a grunt, and offered him a flask produced from the depths of his pocket. ‘Play off your dust afore we start,’ he recommended.

‘No, I must keep a clear head,’ replied Ludovic. ‘So must you, what’s more. I don’t want you disguised.’

‘You’ve never seen me with the malt above the water – not to notice,’ said Mr Bundy, refreshing himself with a nip.

‘I’ve seen you as drunk as a wheelbarrow,’ retorted Ludovic, taking the flask away from him and putting it in his own pocket. ‘It makes you devilish quick on the pull, and taking the fat with the lean, I think we won’t do any shooting unless we’re forced. My cautious cousin’s against it, and I admit there’s a deal in what he says. I don’t want to be saddled with any more corpses. Give me a leg-up, will you?’

Bundy complied with this request, and asked what he was to do if it came to a fight.

‘Use your fists,’ answered Ludovic. ‘Mind you, I dare say there’ll be no fighting.’

‘Just as well if there ain’t,’ said Bundy, hoisting himself into the saddle. ‘A hem set-out it will be if you get yourself into a mill with only one arm! I doubt I done wrong to come with you.’

This was said not in any complaining spirit but as a mere statement of fact. Ludovic, accustomed to Mr Bundy’s processes of thought, agreed, and said that there was a strong likelihood of them ending the night’s adventure in the County Gaol.

They set off down the lane at an easy trot, and since Clem had chosen the shorter but rougher way to the Court that led through the Forest, they were not disturbed by any sound of pursuit. As they rode, Ludovic favoured his companion with a brief explanation of what they were to do at the Dower House. Bundy listened in silence, and at the end merely expressed his regret that he was not to be given an opportunity of darkening Beau Lavenham’s daylights for him. His animosity towards the Beau seemed to be groundless but profound, his main grudge against him being that he stood a good chance of stepping into Sylvester’s shoes. When he spoke of Sylvester he betrayed something as nearly approaching enthusiasm as it was possible for a man of his phlegmatic temperament to feel. ‘He was a rare one, the old lord,’ he said simply.

When they arrived within sight of the Dower House they reined in their horses and dismounted. The house stood a little way back from the lane, in a piece of ground cut like a wedge out of the park belonging to the Court. After a brief consultation they led their horses through a gap in the straggling hedge, and tethered them inside the park. Bundy set about the task of lighting the lantern he had brought while Ludovic went off to reconnoitre.

When he had circumnavigated the house he returned to Bundy’s side to find that that worthy, having covered his lantern with a muffler, was seated placidly beside it on a tree-stump.

‘There’s no light showing in any window that I can see,’ reported Ludovic. ‘Now, the Beau told my cautious cousin that the bolt was off one of the library casements, and as that’s the room I fancy I want, we’ll risk a trap and try to get in by that window.’ He drew the pistol from his boot as he spoke, and said: ‘If there is a trap this is our best safeguard. In these parts they believe I can’t miss, and it makes ’em wary of tackling me. If they mean to capture me they’ll try to take me unawares.’

‘Well,’ said Bundy judicially, ‘I’m bound to say I disremember when I’ve seen you miss your target.’

Ludovic gave a short laugh. ‘I missed an owl once, the fool that I was!’

Bundy looked at him with disapproval. ‘What would you want to go shooting owls for, anyways?’

‘Drunk,’ said Ludovic briefly. ‘Now, get this into your head, Abel! If we walk into a trap it’s one laid for me, not for you, and I’ll save myself. Get yourself out of it, and don’t trouble your he

ad over me. All I want you to do is to help me to get into the house.’

Mr Bundy arose from the tree-stump and picked up the lantern, vouchsafing no reply.

‘Understand?’ said Ludovic, a ring of authority in his voice.

‘Oh ay!’ said Bundy. ‘But there! When I see trouble I’m tedious likely to get to in-fighting with it. If you take my advice, which I never known you do yet, you’ll turn up that coat-collar of yourn, and pull your hat over your face. You don’t want no one to reckernize you.’

Ludovic followed this sage counsel, but remarked that he had little expectation of being known. ‘The valet would know me, if he’s there, but the butler is since my time.’

‘Maybe,’ said Bundy. ‘But I’ll tell you to your head what I’ve said a-many times behind your back, Master Ludovic, which is that you’ve got a bowsprit that’s the spit and image of the old lord’s.’

‘Damn this curst family nose!’ said Ludovic. ‘It’ll ruin me yet.’

‘That’s what I’m thinking,’ agreed Bundy. ‘However, there’s no sense in dwelling on what can’t be helped. If you’re ready to start milling this ken we’d best start without wasting any more time. And if you keep in mind that though maybe there ain’t enough light for anyone to know you by, there’s enough and to spare to make you a hem easy target for any cove as might be sitting inside the house with a gun, I dare say you’ll come off safe yet.’

‘It’s odds there’s no one there at all,’ returned Ludovic. ‘But you needn’t fear me: I’m taking no risks to-night.’

This remark seemed to tickle Bundy’s sense of humour. He went off without warning into a paroxysm of silent laughter, which made his eyes water and his whole frame shake like a jelly. Ludovic paid not the least heed to this seizure, but led the way to a wicket-gate at the back of the house, which gave on to the park from the shrubbery.

Traversing the shrubbery they made their way round to the front of the house, taking care not to tread upon the gravel path. Under the tall casement windows there were flowerbeds, in which a few snowdrops thrust up their heads. Ludovic counted the windows, made up his mind which room must be the library, and indicated it to Bundy with a jerk of his head. Bundy stepped across the path on to the flowerbed, and laid his ear to the grass. He could detect no sound within the room, nor any light behind the drawn curtains, and after a few moments of intent listening he put down his muffled lantern and produced a serviceable knife from his pocket. While he worked on the window Ludovic stood beside him, on the look-out for a possible ambush in the garden. His hat cast a deep shadow over his face, but the moonlight caught the silver mountings on his pistol, and made them gleam. The garden was planted with too many trees and shrubs to make it possible for him to be sure that no one was in hiding there, but he could discover no movement in any of the shadows, and was more than ever inclined to discount his cousin Tristram’s forebodings.