The Talisman Ring

A click behind him made him turn his head. Bundy jerked his thumb expressively at one of the windows, and shut his knife. Having forced back the latch he gently prised the window open with his finger-nails. It swung outwards with a slight groan of its hinges. Bundy picked up his lantern in his left hand, unveiled it, and with his right grasped a fold of the velvet curtain, and drew it aside. The muzzle of Ludovic’s gun almost rested on his shoulder, but there was no need for it. The lantern’s golden beam, travelling round the room, revealed no lurking danger. The room was empty, its chairs primly arranged, its grate laid with sticks ready to be kindled when the master should return.

Bundy took a second look round, and then whispered: ‘Will you go in?’

Ludovic nodded, slid the pistol back into his boot and swung a leg over the window-sill.

‘Easy now!’ Bundy muttered, helping him to hoist himself into the room. ‘Wait till I’m with you!’

Ludovic, alighting in the room, said under his breath: ‘Stay where you are: I’m not sure whether it’s this room I want, or another. Give me the lantern!’

Bundy handed it to him, and he directed its beam on to the wainscoting covering the west wall. Bundy waited in untroubled silence while the golden light travelled backwards and forwards over carved capitals, and fluted pilasters, and the rich intricacies of a frieze composed of cartouches and devices.

It came to rest on one section of the frieze, shifted to another, lingered a moment, and returned again to the first. Ludovic moved forward, counting the divisions between the pilasters. At the third from the window-end of the room he stopped, and held the lantern up close to the wall. He drew his left arm painfully from its sling, and raised it, wincing, to fumble with the carving on the frieze. His tongue clicked impatiently at his own helplessness; he returned his arm to the sling, and stepped back to the window. ‘You’ll have to hold the lantern, Abel.’

Bundy climbed into the room and took the lantern, directing its beam not on to the wainscoting but on to the lock of the door. He looked thoughtfully at it, and said: ‘No key.’

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. ‘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 house-breakers, 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 the 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 candle 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 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!’