The Talisman Ring Read online

  ‘I am quite sure he did,’ said Miss Thane. ‘Now you see, do you not, how easy it was for him? It needed no planning at all. He had only to lie in wait for the man in the spinney, to leave a handkerchief of yours beside the body, and to steal the ring. Afterwards he had nothing to do but enact the rôle of champion. I perceive that he must have a very subtle brain.’ She closed her eyes, and said in a seer-like voice: ‘He is, I am sure, a sinister person.’

  ‘The Beau?’ said Ludovic. ‘No, he isn’t!’

  Miss Thane frowned. ‘Nonsense, he must be!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Eustacie regretfully, ‘but truly he is not.’

  Miss Thane opened her eyes again. ‘You put me out. What then is he like?’

  ‘He is very civil,’ said Eustacie. ‘He has manners of the most polished.’

  Miss Thane readjusted her ideas. ‘I will allow him to be smooth-spoken. I think he smiles.’

  ‘Yes, he does,’ admitted Eustacie.

  Miss Thane gave a shudder. ‘His smile hides a wolfish soul!’ she announced.

  Ludovic burst out laughing. ‘Devil a bit! There’s nothing wolfish about him. He’s a mighty pleasant fellow, and I’d have sworn not one to wish anybody harm.’

  ‘Alas, it is true!’ said Eustacie sadly. ‘He is just nothing.’

  Sir Tristram’s eyebrows went up a shade. Miss Thane pointed a triumphant finger at him, and said: ‘Sir Tristram knows better! A wolf, sir?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think I should put it quite like that, Miss Thane. He is pleasant enough – a little too pleasant. He purrs like a cat.’

  ‘He does,’ agreed Ludovic. ‘But do you know any ill of him? I don’t.’

  ‘One thing,’ replied Shield. ‘I know that Sylvester mistrusted him.’

  ‘Sylvester!’ said Ludovic scornfully.

  ‘Oh, Sylvester was no fool,’ answered Shield.

  ‘Good God, he mistrusted scores of people, me amongst them!’

  ‘So little did he mistrust you,’ said Shield, putting his hand into his waistcoat-pocket, ‘that he bade me give you that if ever I should see you again, and tell you not to pledge it.’

  Ludovic stared at the great ruby. ‘Thunder and Turf, did he leave me that ?’

  ‘As you see. He asked me just before he died whether I thought your story had been true after all.’

  ‘I dare swear you told him No,’ remarked Ludovic, slipping the ring on to his finger.

  ‘I did,’ said Shield calmly. ‘You remember that I heard that shot not ten minutes after I had parted from you, and I knew what sort of a humour you were in.’

  Ludovic shot him a fiery glance. ‘You thought me capable of murder, in fact!’

  ‘I thought you three-parts drunk,’ said Shield. ‘I also thought you a rash young fool. I still think that. What possessed you to turn smuggler? Have you been sailing off the coast of Sussex all this time?’

  ‘“Hovering” is the word,’ said Ludovic, with a gleam of mischief. ‘Free-trading seemed to me an occupation eminently suited to an outlaw. Besides, I always liked the sea.’

  Sir Tristram said scathingly: ‘I suppose that was reason enough.’

  ‘Why not? I knew some of the Gentlemen, too, from old days. But I was never off these shores till now. Don’t like ’em: there’s too much creeping done, and the tidesmen are too cursed sharp. I’ve been helping to run cargoes of brandy and rum – under Bergen papers, you know – into Lincolnshire. That’s the place, I can tell you. I’ve been dodging revenue cruisers for the past fifteen months. It’s not a bad life, but the fact of the matter is I wasn’t reared to it. I only came into Sussex to glean what news there might be from Nye.’

  ‘But you will stay, mon cousin, won’t you?’ asked Eustacie anxiously.

  ‘He can’t stay,’ Shield said. ‘It was madness to come at all.’

  Ludovic lifted his head, and regarded Sylvester’s ring through half-closed eyes. ‘I shall stay,’ he said nonchalantly, ‘and I shall find out who holds the talisman ring.’

  ‘Ludovic, you may trust me to do all I can to discover it, but you must not be found here!’

  ‘I’m not going to be found here,’ replied Ludovic. ‘You don’t know Joe’s cellars. I do.’

  ‘Go over to Holland, and wait there,’ Shield said. ‘You can do no good here.’

  ‘Oh yes, I can!’ sad Ludovic, turning his hand so that the jewel caught the light. ‘Moreover, I’ll be damned if I’ll be elbowed out of my own business!’

  ‘What can you hope to do in hiding that I cannot do openly?’ asked Shield. ‘Why add to your folly by running the risk of being arrested?’

  ‘Because,’ said Ludovic, at last raising his eyes from the ruby, ‘if the Beau has the ring I know where to look for it.’

  Six

  This announcement produced all the effect upon the ladies which Ludovic could have desired. They gazed at him in surprise and admiration, breathlessly waiting for him to tell them more. Shield, not so easily impressed, said: ‘If you really know where to look for it you had better tell me, and I’ll do it for you.’

  ‘That’s just the trouble,’ replied Ludovic shamelessly. ‘I’m not at all sure of the place.’ He saw Eustacie’s face fall, and added: ‘Oh, I should know it again if I saw it! The thing is that I’d be mighty hard put to it to direct anyone how to find it. I shall have to go myself.’

  ‘Go where?’ demanded Sir Tristram.

  ‘Oh, to the Dower House!’ replied Ludovic airily. ‘There’s a secret panel. You wouldn’t know it.’

  ‘A secret panel?’ repeated Miss Thane in an awed voice. ‘You mean actually a secret panel?’

  Ludovic regarded her in some slight concern. ‘Yes, why not?’

  ‘I thought it too good to be true,’ said Miss Thane. ‘If there is one thing above all others I have wanted all my life to do it is to search for a secret panel! I suppose,’ she added hopefully, ‘it would be too much to expect to find an underground passage leading from the secret panel?’

  Eustacie clasped her hands ecstatically. ‘But yes, of course! An underground passage –’

  ‘With bats and dead men’s bones,’ shuddered Miss Thane.

  French common sense asserted itself. Eustacie frowned. ‘Not bats, no. That is not reasonable. But certainly some bones, chained to the wall.’

  ‘And damp – it must be damp!’

  ‘Not damp; cobwebs,’ put in Ludovic. ‘Huge ones, which cling to you like –’

  ‘Ghostly fingers!’ supplied Miss Thane.

  ‘Oh, Ludovic, there is a passage?’ breathed Eustacie.

  He laughed. ‘Lord, no! It’s just a priest’s hole, that’s all.’

  ‘How wretched!’ said Miss Thane, quite disgusted. ‘It makes me lose all heart.’

  ‘If there is not a passage we must do without one,’ decreed Eustacie stoutly. ‘One must be practical. Tout même, it is a pity there is not a passage. I thought it would lead from the Court to the Dower House. It would have been magnifique! We might have found treasure!’

  ‘That is precisely what I was thinking,’ agreed Miss Thane. ‘An old iron chest, full of jewels.’

  Sir Tristram broke in on these fancies with a somewhat withering comment. ‘Since we are not searching for treasure, and no passage exists save in your imaginations, this discussion is singularly unprofitable,’ he said. ‘Where is the panel, Ludovic?’

  ‘There you have the matter in a nutshell,’ confessed Ludovic. ‘I know my uncle used to use it as a strong-room, and I remember Sylvester showing it to me when I was a lad, but what I can’t for the life of me recall is which room it’s in.’

  ‘That,’ said Sir Tristram, ‘is, to say the least of it, unfortunate, since the Dower House is panelled almost throughout.’

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