The Unknown Ajax Read online

  ‘Then where is he?’

  Claud, who had been listening to this exchange with gathering wrath, demanded, in the voice of one goaded beyond endurance: ‘Who the devil cares where he is? Dash it, have you got a drop in the eye? Bouncing in when I’m in the middle of a break, just to ask Hugo where young Richmond is! If you want him, rub off, and find him for yourself! I don’t want him, and Hugo don’t want him either, and, what’s more, we don’t want you!’

  ‘Oh, be quiet!’ snapped Vincent impatiently.

  ‘Well, if that don’t beat the Dutch!’ gasped Claud.

  ‘Nay, keep your tongue, lad, will you?’ Hugo interposed. ‘I’ve not seen Richmond since we left the dining-room. I thought he went up to the drawing-room with you.’

  ‘Yes, he did. He took up a book, when we began to play whist, but went off to bed very early. I don’t know what the time may have been: it was considerably before Chollacombe brought in the tea-tray – possibly half-past nine, or thereabouts. I thought nothing of it: he’d been yawning his head off, and my aunt kept on urging him to go to bed. I can’t say I paid much heed, beyond wishing that he would go, instead of insisting that he wasn’t tired, for I found the pair of them extremely distracting. In fact, I was on the point of suggesting that he should either stop yawning or do what he was told, when my grandfather took the words out of my mouth, and ordered him off to bed.’

  He paused, knitting his brows. His incensed brother exclaimed: ‘No! Ordered him off to bed, did he? Never heard such an interesting story in my life – wouldn’t have missed it for a fortune! Well, if I were you, I’d go off to bed too, because if you’re not top-heavy you’re in pretty queer stirrups, take my word for it! Very likely you’ll have thrown out a rash by tomorrow.’

  ‘Damn the young dry-boots!’ Vincent said suddenly, ignoring the interruption. ‘I’ll teach him to make a bleater of me!’

  ‘You think it was a hoax?’

  ‘Not at the time, but I do now. Rather more up to snuff than I knew, my little cousin Richmond! If he’d made an excuse to retire, I should have been suspicious, and he knew that. I asked him yesterday if he was in mischief – it’s wonderful, the harm I do every time I try to do good!’

  Hugo was slightly frowning. ‘It doesn’t fit,’ he said. ‘Not at that hour! He couldn’t be as crazy! Eh, Vincent, think of the risk he’d be running! Are you sure he wasn’t in his room when you went to find him?’

  ‘I am very sure he wasn’t. His door was locked, and I must have wakened him, had he been asleep, but there wasn’t a sound to be heard within the room. Why should Richmond hesitate to answer me?’

  ‘Well, I can tell you that!’ said Claud. ‘What’s more, I wish I’d locked this door!’

  Hugo laid down his cue, and strode over to one of the windows, and flung back the heavy curtain. ‘Cloudy. Looks like rain,’ he said. ‘He told me that he sometimes takes his boat out at night, fishing. You know more than I do about sea-fishing: would he be likely to do so tonight?’

  ‘God knows!’ replied Vincent, shrugging. ‘I shouldn’t, myself, because it doesn’t amuse me to get soaked to the skin. Nor should I choose to go sailing when the light is uncertain. But I’m not Richmond. Does he sail at night? I wonder why he never told me?’

  ‘He might have been afraid you’d put a stop to it.’

  ‘I should have supposed there was more fear that you would, but that didn’t prevent his telling you.’

  ‘He told me when I asked him why he always locked his door. I didn’t believe him, but it might have been true.’

  ‘It might, but – Hugo, I don’t like the sound of it! What the devil is the confounded brat up to?’

  ‘I’m damned if I know!’ said Hugo.

  ‘Well, if ever I met a more buffleheaded pair of silly gudgeons – !’ exclaimed Claud disgustedly. ‘Dash it, if young Richmond’s gone out, it’s as plain as a pikestaff what he’s up to! And I must say it’s coming to something if he can’t slip off for a bit of fun and gig without you two trying to nose out what game he’s flying at, and raising all this dust! Anyone would think, to listen to you, that he’d gone off to rob the Mail!’ He found that he was being stared at by both his auditors, and added with considerable asperity: ‘And don’t stand there goggling at me as if you’d never heard of a young chub having a petticoat-affair, because that’s doing it a dashed sight too brown!’

  ‘Good God, I wonder if you could be right?’ said Vincent. He looked at Hugo. ‘I didn’t think – but it might be so, I suppose.’

  Hugo shook his head. ‘No. There’s not a sign of it. He’s not that road yet. You’d know it, if he’d started in the petticoat-line.’

  ‘Dashed if I can make out what’s the matter with you both!’ said Claud. ‘Why can’t you leave the wretched boy alone? He won’t come to any harm! Why should he?’

  ‘Hugo thinks he’s in a string with a gang of smugglers,’ said Vincent curtly.

  ‘What?’ gasped Claud. ‘Thinks Richmond– No, dash it! Of all the crack-brained notions I ever heard – ! You don’t believe that, Vincent!’

  ‘I don’t know what I believe!’ said Vincent, jerking the curtain across the window again, in a way that betrayed his disquiet. ‘I do know one thing, and that’s that I’ll have the truth out of Richmond when he comes in!’

  ‘Well, if you mean to ask him if he’s joined a gang of smugglers, I hope he draws your cork! I call it a dashed insult! You can’t go about saying things like that just because he’s gone out on the spree!’

  ‘There’s more to it than that,’ Hugo said. ‘Ottershaw’s watching him like a cat at a mouse-hole, and he’d not do that if he hadn’t good reason to suspect him. He’s got no proof yet, or we’d know it, but – eh, I wish the lad would come in!’

  Claud’s eyes started almost from their sockets. ‘Are you talking about that Riding-officer I found you gabbing to at Rye? Suspects Richmond? You can’t mean that!’

  ‘Ay, but I do mean it,’ replied Hugo grimly. ‘There’s little would suit him better than to catch the lad redhanded – make no mistake about that!’

  ‘He wouldn’t dare! No, no! Dash it, Hugo – a Darracott of Darracott?’

  ‘That won’t weigh with him, if Richmond walks into a trap he’s set. Plague take the lad! I warned him that Ottershaw’s not the clodhead he thinks him, but he’s as pot-sure as he’s meedless!’ He checked himself, and said, after a moment. ‘Well, talking will pay no toll!’

  ‘Just so!’ said Vincent. ‘Perhaps you’ll tell me what will pay toll!’

  ‘Ask me that when I know where the lad is! There’s only one thing I can think of to do at this present: I’ll walk up to the Dower House – ghost-catching! Happen I might get some kind of a kenning – and if I find the place is being watched, at the least we’ll know they’ve not got wind of the lad yet, for it’s there that they look for him!’ He glanced at Vincent. ‘If I’m asked for here, you’ll have to cut some kind of a wheedle for me: we don’t want to raise a breeze! What are they doing, upstairs? Have my aunts gone to bed yet?’

  ‘They hadn’t, when I left the room, though my Aunt Elvira was about to go. She said something about a sore throat, and feeling a cold coming on, so no doubt she’ll have retired by now. Anthea went off to find Mrs Flitwick – something about a posset she knows how to brew! – so it’s more than likely she’s in the kitchen-quarters. Does she know?’

  ‘No, and I don’t mean she shall! Fob her off, if she should come in here! I take it his lordship’s still up?’

  ‘Since he and my mother were engaged in playing over again every hand about which they had – er – disagreed, you may take it that they will both be up for some time to come,’ replied Vincent sardonically.

  ‘Well, if that’s what they’re doing, they won’t be heeding aught else. I’ll be off,’ Hugo said, turning to pick up his coat.

  Even as he spok