The Talisman Ring

‘Ay, that’s the one, sir. I want a word with the guard, if you’ll excuse me.’

Sir Tristram’s chair rasped on the oaken floor as he sprang up. ‘Then that’s my best course!’ he said. ‘I’ll board it!’

Nye stared at him. ‘If that’s what you mean to do, you’d best make haste, sir. It don’t take them more than two minutes to change the horses, and they’ll be off the moment that’s done.’

‘Go and tell them to wait!’ ordered Sir Tristram. ‘I have but to get my hat and coat.’

?

?They won’t wait, sir!’ expostulated Nye. ‘They’ve got their time to keep, and you’ve no ticket!’

‘Never mind that! Hurry, man!’ said Sir Tristram, thrusting him before him out of the room.

‘But what are you going to do?’ cried Eustacie, running after them.

‘I’ve no time to waste in explaining that now!’ replied Sir Tristram, already half-way up the stairs.

Miss Thane, following in a more leisurely fashion with Ludovic, said darkly: ‘I said it was a Plot. It’s my belief he is absconding.’ She discovered that her butt was already out of hearing, and added: ‘There! How provoking! That remark was quite wasted. Who would have supposed that the wretched creature would be taken with such a frenzy?’

Sir Tristram reappeared again at this moment, his coat over his arm, his hat in his hand. As he ran down the stairs, he said: ‘I hope to return to-morrow if all goes well. For God’s sake take care of yourself, Ludovic!’

He was across the coffee-room and out of the door almost before they could fetch their breath. Miss Thane, blinking, said: ‘If only we had a horse ready saddled!’

‘Why? Isn’t the mail enough for him?’ inquired Ludovic.

‘If there had been a horse, I am persuaded we should have seen him ride off ventre à terre !’ mourned Miss Thane.

‘But where is he going?’ stammered Eustacie. ‘He seems to me suddenly to have become entirely mad!’

‘He’s going to London,’ replied Ludovic. ‘Don’t ask me why, for I haven’t a notion!’

‘Well!’ Eustacie turned quite pink with indignation. ‘It is too bad! This is our adventure, and he has left us without a word, and, in fact, is trying to take it away from us!’

‘Men!’ said Miss Thane, with a strong shudder.

Sir Hugh came wandering into the coffee-room at this moment, and asked what had become of Shield. When he heard that he had departed suddenly for London, he looked vaguely surprised, and complained that he seemed to be another of these people who spent their time popping in and out of the inn like jack-in-the-boxes. ‘It’s very unrestful,’ he said severely. ‘No sooner do we get comfortably settled than either someone breaks into the house or one of you flies off to Lord knows where! There’s no peace at all. I shall go to bed.’

Nye came back just then and announced with a reluctant smile that Sir Tristram had succeeded in boarding the coach, in spite of all the guard’s representations to him that such high-handed proceedings were quite out of order. When asked by Ludovic if he knew what Sir Tristram meant to do, he replied in his stolid way: ‘I do not sir, but you may depend upon it he’ll do what’s best. All he said to me was, I was to see you safe into your room. Myself, I’m having a truckle-bed set up here, and it’ll be a mighty queer thing if anyone gets into the house without I’ll hear them. Not but what it don’t seem to me likely that anyone will try that game to-night. They’ll be waiting up at the Dower House till to-morrow in the hopes that Sam Barker will have found that plaguey ring of yours, sir.’

Miss Thane sighed. ‘How abominably flat it will seem to have no one breaking in any more! Really, I do not know how I am to support life once all these exciting happenings are at an end.’

Nye favoured her with a grim little smile. ‘By what I can make out, they ain’t ended yet, ma’am. We’ll do well to keep an eye lifted for trouble as soon as that Beau learns Barker ain’t found his quizzing-glass. I’ll be glad when I see Sir Tristram back, and that’s a fact. Now, Mr Ludovic, if you’re ready, I’ll help you get to bed. You’ll have to go down to the cellar again to-morrow, and the orders are I’m to see you into it before I unbar the doors in the morning. And what’s more sir,’ he added, forestalling Ludovic’s imminent expostulation, ‘I’ve orders to knock you out if you don’t go willing.’

This ferocious threat was not, however, put into execution. Ludovic descended into the cellar at an early hour on the following morning, and the rest of the party, with the exception of Sir Hugh, who was only interested in his breakfast, prepared themselves to meet whatever peril should lie in store for them. Eustacie, who thought that she had taken far too small a part in the adventure, was feeling somewhat aggrieved, Ludovic having refused without the least hesitation to lend her one of his pistols. ‘I never lend my pistols,’ he said. ‘Besides, what do you want it for?’

‘But to fire, of course!’ replied Eustacie impatiently.

‘Good God! What at?’

‘Why, at anybody who tries to come into the house!’ she said, opening her eyes in surprise at his stupidity. ‘And if you would let Sarah have one too, she could help me. After all, we may find ourselves in great danger, you know.’

‘You won’t find yourselves in half such danger as you would if I let you have my pistols,’ said Ludovic, with brutal candour.

This unfeeling response sent Eustacie off in a dudgeon to Miss Thane. Here at least she was sure of finding a sympathetic listener. Nor did Miss Thane disappoint her. She professed herself to be quite at a loss to understand the selfishness of men, and when she learned that Eustacie had planned for her also to fire upon possible desperadoes, she said that she could almost wish that she had not been told of the scheme, since it made her feel quite disheartened to think of it falling to the ground.

‘Well, I do think we ought to be armed,’ said Eustacie wistfully. ‘It is true that I do not know much about guns but one has only to point them and pull the trigger, after all.’

‘Exactly,’ agreed Miss Thane. ‘I dare say we should have accounted for any number of desperate ruffians. It is wretched indeed! We shall be forced to rely upon our wits.’