The Unknown Ajax Read online

  ‘Now, what good would that do you?’ asked the Major. ‘I daresay you’d like to give him a sharp lesson not to get up to this kind of bobbery at your expense, but you’d regret it if you did. You’d be better advised to pay no heed to him: he’d soon tire of the sport if you laughed at him – and got your men to do the same!’

  ‘So you think he does it for sport, do you, sir?’

  ‘Of course I do!’ said the Major. ‘It’s just the sort of thing a mischievous lad would do – particularly if he thought you were a trifle over-zealous.’

  Ottershaw was silent for a moment. Then he said curtly: ‘I’ll say goodnight to you, sir. I should not have spoken so freely, perhaps, but since I have done so there can be little point in concealing what I make no doubt you have guessed: I believe Mr Richmond Darracott to be hand-in-glove with these pernicious smugglers! I have no wish – it is not the wish of the Board of Customs – to incur the ill-will of persons of Lord Darracott’s consequence, but I shall take leave to warn you that no such consideration would deter me – or, I should add, would be expected to deter me! – in the performance of what I might consider to be my duty!’

  ‘Very proper,’ approved the Major, a note of amusement in his voice. ‘But, if you don’t despise a word of advice from one who’s older than you, and maybe more experienced, you’ll make very sure you’re right in your suspicions before you go tail over top into action. It’s one thing to sympathize with smuggling, but quite another to be engaged in the trade, if that’s what you’re suggesting. You’ve been having the devil of a time of it here, and seemingly it’s made you think that everyone who don’t help you must be mixed up in the business himself. You’ll end with windmills in your head that road – if you haven’t ’em already! – let alone finding yourself in bad loaf with that Board of yours.’

  ‘Is that a threat, sir?’ demanded Ottershaw, standing very erect.

  ‘Nay, it’s a friendly warning,’ replied Hugo. ‘Don’t you make a pigeon of yourself! Goodnight!’

  The Lieutenant clicked his heels together, bowed, and strode off. Hugo watched him go, and then began to retrace his own footsteps. When he reached the wicket-gate, he studied it thoughtfully for a moment. It would have been no difficult feat to have vaulted over it, but having satisfied himself on this head he merely opened it, and walked through, impervious to its protesting shriek.

  He had left his bedroom candle and his tinder-box on a table by the side-door through which he had left the house, and after kindling a light, and bolting the door, he made his way up one of the secondary staircases with which Darracott Place was lavishly provided. This one served the wing in which his own and Richmond’s bedchambers were situated; and when he reached the head of it he went without hesitation to Richmond’s door, and knocked on it. Eliciting no response, he turned the handle, only to find that the door was locked. He knocked again, this time imperatively, and was rewarded by hearing Richmond call out: ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Hugo. I want to speak to you,’ he replied.

  There was the sound of an impatient exclamation, followed by the rattle of curtain-rings along a rod, and a creak which indicated that Richmond had got out of bed. The key turned in the well-oiled lock, and the door was pulled open.

  ‘What the devil do you want?’ Richmond said crossly. ‘I thought you knew I hate to be disturbed at night!’

  ‘I do,’ said Hugo. ‘It had me in a bit of a puzzle to understand why, too. Nay, don’t stand there holding the door! I’m coming in, and it’s not a bit of use scowling at me. You can get back into bed, for we’re going to have a talk, you and I.’

  ‘At this hour?’ Richmond ejaculated. ‘I’ll be damned if I do!’

  ‘I don’t know about that, but I do know that I’ll toss you into bed if you don’t do as you’re bid,’ responded Hugo, wresting the door from his hold and shutting it. He held up the candlestick, and looked round. The room was a large one, with a four-poster bed standing out into it. A glance showed Hugo that the curtains had been thrust back from one side, and the bedclothes flung off. Not far from it, a chair stood, with a coat thrown carelessly on to it. Hugo’s gaze alighted on this, and travelled to where a pair of breeches and a shirt lay untidily on the floor. ‘You did undress in a hurry, didn’t you?’ he said.

  Richmond, climbing into bed again, linked his hands behind his head, and said, with a yawn: ‘I wish you will say what you want, and go away! I shan’t get a wink of sleep now: I never can, if I’m wakened.’

  Hugo set his candle down on the table beside the bed, and lightly clasped the other which stood there. He said, smiling: ‘Nay, lad, I don’t think you were asleep: your candle’s still warm.’

  ‘I suppose I had just dropped off. That’s worse! O God, must you sit on the bed?’

  Hugo paid no heed to this complaint, but said: ‘Richmond, my lad, you’ve not been to sleep at all, and those clothes you’ve just stripped off weren’t the ones you were wearing at dinner, so let’s have no more humbug! Not half an hour ago you were playing hide-and-seek over at the Dower House! And from the hasty way you got between sheets I think you’d a shrewd notion you’d be receiving a visit from me.’

  Richmond’s eyes gleamed under his down-dropped lids. ‘Oh, have you seen the ghost, cousin?’

  ‘No.’

  Richmond chuckled. ‘Didn’t I hoax you? I made sure I should! What made you suspect– Oh, I suppose it was what Claud said!’

  ‘You didn’t hoax anyone, and it wasn’t me you were trying to hoax, was it?’

  ‘Of course it was! I saw you set out, and guessed what you meant to do, so I followed you. Didn’t you think I made a good ghost? I think I did!’

  ‘Nay, you didn’t follow me. You were there before me,’ replied Hugo. ‘You came round the corner of the house, and you couldn’t have crossed the path between the shrubbery and the house unbeknownst to me.’

  ‘But I could get into the house from the shrubbery, and keep under cover there until the house shut me from your view.’

  ‘Ay, you could have done that,’ agreed Hugo. ‘Did Spurstow tell you that I visited the place before, on the same errand?’

  Richmond laughed. ‘Of course!’

  ‘And that Ottershaw was watching the house himself?’

  ‘No, is he?’

  ‘Come, lad, you knew that!’

  ‘How should I know it?’ Richmond countered.

  ‘Probably because Spurstow told you; and if it wasn’t he I’ve a notion you’ve other sources of information. Between the pair of you, you’ve scared Ottershaw’s men, but when you set out to scare him you made a back-cast, Richmond: he wasn’t scared, and he wasn’t deceived. If I hadn’t stopped him he might well have caught you.’

  ‘Not he! Much good would it have done him if he had, too!’

  ‘So I told him,’ said Hugo. ‘It would have done him no good, but it would have done you no good either.’

  ‘Why, is there a law against bamboozling Excisemen?’ asked Richmond, opening his eyes wider.

  Hugo looked rather gravely down at him. ‘For what purpose?’

  ‘Oh, just kicking up a lark!’

  ‘Is that why you did it?’

  ‘Yes, of course: why else should I do it?’ Richmond said impatiently.

  ‘That’s what I don’t know, lad, but I think you’re too old to be kicking up that sort of a lark.’

  The impish gleam had faded from Richmond’s dark eyes; the look he shot at Hugo was one of smouldering resentment. ‘Maybe! What the devil else have I to do? In any event, what concern is it of yours? I wish you will go away!’

  ‘Happen I will, when you stop trying to stall me off, and give me a plain answer,’ Hugo replied, a little sternly. ‘I’ve a notion you’re in dangerous mischief. If I’m right, you’re likely to find yourself floored at all points, for Ottershaw’s not the clodhead you think him. Don’t pl