The Unknown Ajax Read online

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,’ said Hugo. ‘He’d as lief you didn’t: he doesn’t want a fuss made, you see!’

  ‘You would do better to remain where you are, Aurelia!’ said his lordship, his voice a little strained. ‘Depend upon it, he’s done something foolish, which he doesn’t wish us to know! Elvira, I wish you will go back to bed, instead of standing there like a stock!’

  ‘I will not go back to bed!’ declared Mrs Darracott, with startling resolution. ‘If this insulting young man is determined to see my son, he shall see him! I will take you to him myself, sir, and when you have seen that he is precisely where I told you he was – in bed and asleep! – I shall expect an apology from you! An abject apology! Come with me, if you please!’

  ‘Nay, ma’am, I’ll take him!’ offered Hugo hastily.

  ‘Thank you, I prefer to take him myself!’ she said.

  Ottershaw, glancing uncertainly from one face to the other, encountered yet another of the Major’s fulminating looks. This time it was accompanied by an unmistakeable sign to him not to go with Mrs Darracott. He began to feel baffled. He had not expected to find that Major Darracott was in any way entangled in Richmond’s crimes, but he had very soon realized his mistake. He was a good deal shocked, even sorry, for it was abundantly plain that the Major was desperately trying to fob him off. Then, just as he had decided that the Major was recklessly aiding Richmond to escape from his clutch, it seemed as if it was not from him that this large and somewhat clumsy intriguer was trying to conceal something, but from Lady Aurelia, and Mrs Darracott. That had puzzled Ottershaw; the signal that had just been made he found quite incomprehensible, for it almost seemed as if what the Major was trying to conceal could scarcely have anything to do with Richmond. Frowning, he stood listening to the Major’s efforts to get rid of Mrs Darracott. It suddenly occurred to him that perhaps he was only anxious to spare her the shock of witnessing her son’s inevitable exposure. If that were so, Ottershaw was very willing to further the scheme. He said: ‘If you will take me to Mr Darracott’s room, sir, there is no need for Mrs Darracott to come with us.’

  ‘That is for me to decide!’ said Mrs Darracott, flushed and very bright-eyed. ‘I, and no one else, will take you, sir!’

  The Major gave it up. ‘Nay, he’s not in his room!’ he disclosed. ‘He’s downstairs.’ Looking extremely guilty, he said: ‘Seemingly, my grandfather ordered him off to bed, but – well, he came downstairs instead! We’ve been playing piquet.’

  ‘Major Darracott, do you tell me that he has been with you all the evening?’ demanded Ottershaw. ‘Take care how you answer me, sir! I have very good reason to suppose that Mr Richmond Darracott, until less than an hour ago, was not in the house at all!’

  ‘Nay, you can’t have,’ replied the Major. ‘He’s been with me ever since he was sent off to bed – and, what’s more, he’d no thought of leaving the house, for he’s having such a run of luck as I never saw! Pretty well ruined me, the young devil!’

  ‘Well!’ exclaimed Mrs Darracott. ‘I must say, Hugo, I think it was very wrong of you to encourage Richmond to sit up late, when you know how bad it is for him! And as for gambling with him– Well, I shall say nothing now, except that I didn’t think it of you!’ Her voice broke, and tears started to her eyes as she directed a look of wounded reproach at Hugo. He hung his head, looking very like an overgrown schoolboy detected in crime. Mrs Darracott, the top of whose head perhaps reached the middle of his chest, said with cold severity: ‘You will now oblige me by going downstairs again, and desiring Richmond to come to me here immediately!’

  The expression of dismay on Hugo’s face lured Lieutenant Ottershaw into banishing doubt. Certainty betrayed him into abandoning the dogged deliberation which made him formidable; the light of triumph was in his eye as he said, on a challenging note: ‘Well, sir?’

  ‘Nay, I can’t do that! I mean – I don’t think –’ Hugo stammered, looking wildly round for succour. ‘Well, – well, for one thing – happen he won’t care to leave our Claud!’ His guileless blue eyes, meeting Ottershaw’s in seeming horror, took due note of the fact that that dangerously levelheaded young man had at last allowed himself to be coaxed into an unaccustomed state of cocksure excitement. He said, as one driven from his last defensive position: ‘The fact is – he’s just a bit on the go!’

  ‘Do you mean that Richmond is drunk?’ cried Mrs Darracott. ‘Oh, how could you? I thought you were so kind, and good, and trustworthy!’

  ‘In that case, Major Darracott, I will go to him!’ said Ottershaw. ‘You are sure, no doubt, that Mr Richmond Darracott is drunk, and not wounded?’

  ‘No, no, he’s not –’ Hugo checked himself suddenly, an arrested look on his face. ‘Now, wait a minute!’ he said. ‘Wounded, did you say?’

  ‘The Lieutenant, coz,’ interposed Vincent, ‘was good enough to inform us, before you came upstairs, that Richmond had been shot by one of the men under his command, not an hour since. He appears – perhaps fortunately! – to have been misinformed, but I am strongly of the opinion that an enquiry into the incident is called for.’

  The Sergeant stared woodenly before him. ‘Upon being commanded to halt, in the name of the King, the pris – gentle – the individual in question, instead of obeying –’

  ‘Shot?’ interrupted Hugo. He turned his eyes towards Ottershaw. ‘In the wood, up yonder was it?’

  ‘Yes, sir, in the wood, up yonder! He was challenged –’

  ‘Were there – two men posted in the wood?’ asked Hugo, in a very odd voice.

  The Lieutenant stared at him, suspicious and puzzled. ‘Yes, sir, two dragoons! They –’

  ‘And was – Mr Richmond Darracott – wearing a mask, by any chance?’ enquired Hugo, a look of unholy awe in his eyes.

  ‘His face was blackened, sir!’

  ‘Well, happen it may have looked like that,’ said Hugo, very unsteadily, ‘but it was only – a sock, with a c-couple of holes c-cut in it!’

  At this point his command over himself deserted him, and, to the utter bewilderment both of Ottershaw and of Sergeant Hoole, he went off into a roar of laughter. Feeling much the same sensations as a man might have felt who, believing the ice to be solid, suddenly found it cracking all round his feet, Ottershaw saw the Major helpless in the grip of his mirth: slapping his thigh; trying to speak, and failing to utter more than two unintelligible words before becoming overpowered again; mopping his eyes; and finally collapsing into a large armchair, as though too weak with laughter to remain on his feet.

  Watching this masterly performance with every sign of hauteur, Vincent said, as soon as his cousin’s paroxysms began to abate: ‘I think, my dear Mama, that, if Richmond’s condition in any way approaches Hugo’s, you would perhaps be well advised – and my aunt too! – not to come down to the morning-room.’

  She replied at once: ‘You need be under no apprehension: I have the greatest dislike of inebriety! Unless you should find your brother in a worse case than I consider probable, I have no intention of coming – or, if I can prevail upon her to listen to me, of allowing your aunt to do so either!’

  ‘Your good sense, Mama, is always to be relied upon!’ he said, with his glinting smile, and graceful bow. His glance flickered to his grandfather’s face, set like a mask, its harsh lines deeply graven, the fierce eyes fixed in a rather dreadful stare on Hugo. Vincent could only hope that the silence which had fallen upon him would not strike the Lieutenant as strangely unlike him.

  The Lieutenant’s attention was concentrated on Hugo, who managed to utter, in choked but remorseful accents: ‘Ee, I’m sorry! Nay, it’s no laughing matter, but – oh, Lord, it’s better nor like! far, far better nor like!’ He gave a final wipe to eyes that so much rubbing had artistically reddened, and looked at Ottershaw. He gave a gasp, and said imploringly: ‘Don’t look at me like that, lad, or you’ll start me off again! You co