The Unknown Ajax Read online

  His aspect was ghastly. From the waist upward he was naked, except for the bandages which Anthea, kneeling beside him, had apparently just finished winding round him; as much of his chest as could be seen was smeared with blood; his left arm, which dangled uselessly, its limply crooked fingers brushing the carpet, was horribly covered with bloodstains; his head lolled on his right shoulder; his countenance, thanks to the thoughtfulness of his valet, who had brandished before his eyes the gruesome dishclout which had been used by John Joseph to stanch the flow of blood from Richmond’s wound, was of a sickly hue; and his breathing was accompanied by a series of faint but alarming moans. The chair which had been dragged up to serve as a stand for the candelabra also accommodated an empty glass, a bottle of smelling-salts, and a bowl containing a revolting collection of used swabs. A larger bowl, half-full of reddened water, and the almost empty brandy-decanter stood on the floor within Anthea’s reach, together with a heap of lint and torn-up linen; and the final macabre touch was provided by the rent and blood-boltered garments which no one had apparently found time even to bundle out of sight.

  Hugo, realizing that his accomplices, not content with such meagre tokens of bloodshed as his neat work on Richmond’s wound had afforded them, must have collected from the pantry every cloth and rag which had been used there, surveyed the scene with deep appreciation; but the Lieutenant, brought up short on the threshold by the sight of so unexpected a shambles, was badly jolted; and the Sergeant, craning his neck to look over his shoulder, was perfectly appalled.

  As soon as Hugo opened the door, Anthea exclaimed, without looking round, or pausing in her task of bandaging the sufferer: ‘At last! What on earth can have kept you so long?’ but at his frivolously worded announcement, she cast an exasperated glance at him over her shoulder, saying in the voice of one perilously near the limit of her endurance: ‘For heaven’s sake, don’t start cutting idiotic jokes! I’ve had enough to bear from Richmond already! There’s nothing funny about what’s happened, and as for all your fine talk about it’s not being serious, either you know nothing whatsoever about it, or you’re as odiously drunk as Richmond – which wouldn’t surprise me in the least! – Do you think that’s tight enough, Polyphant?’

  ‘Nay, I wasn’t joking you! Our Claud was shot by a dragoon, lass!’

  ‘To be sure!’ she snapped, inserting a pin carefully into the end of her bandage. ‘Nothing could be more likely! Don’t put yourself to the trouble of explaining what a dragoon was doing in our wood, for I’ve something better to do than to listen to quite unamusing, ill-timed nonsense!’ She brought the point of her pin through several thicknesses of the bandage, and said: ‘I think that should hold it firmly, Polyphant. You can lay him down now. Oh, dear, how dreadfully white he is! Perhaps my aunt ought to be sent for – Hugo, did you find Vincent? is he com –’ She broke off abruptly, for she had turned to ask this question, and now perceived Lieutenant Ottershaw. She stared at him, looked towards Hugo, looked again at the Lieutenant. ‘But– Good God, what in heaven’s name – ? Hugo, if this is your doing –’

  ‘Now, how could it be my doing?’ he expostulated, helping her to rise to her feet.

  She pressed a hand to her temple. ‘Oh, I don’t know, but– No, I suppose it couldn’t be! But after that Banbury story about dragoons in the Home Wood – I beg your pardon, Mr Ottershaw, but I am so much distracted– Oh, Vincent, thank God you’ve come!’

  Vincent, firmly putting the Lieutenant out of the way, had managed to enter the room. ‘Now, what is all this about Claud having met with an accident?’ he began, breaking off abruptly, however, as he allowed his eyes to travel past Anthea to the sofa. ‘Good God!’ he ejaculated. ‘Claud – !’

  Polyphant, zealously waving the vinaigrette under his master’s nose, said: ‘He will be better directly, sir, I promise you. He keeps swooning off, but if only we can keep him still and quiet– It’s the loss of blood, sir: I thought we should never be able to– That’s better, sir!– He’s coming round, Mr Vincent! If someone would pour out a little brandy – just a drop or two! – and we could manage to make him swallow it –’

  ‘Ay, that’ll pull him together!’ agreed Hugo. ‘Eh, he does look poorly! Where’s the brandy?’

  For the next few minutes, no one paid the smallest heed either to Ottershaw, or to the Sergeant, except Lord Darracott, who frustrated the Sergeant’s instinctive attempt to retreat from this shocking scene, by thrusting him violently into the room, saying as he did so: ‘Will you make way for your betters, oaf?’ which terrified him into edging his way along the wall to the corner of the room into which Ottershaw had already been manoeuvred. No one had asked the Lieutenant to move as far from the centre of the room as he could, but Claud’s revival spurred his anxious relatives into so much activity that he was obliged to retire into the corner to get out of the way. For all the notice that was bestowed upon him, while the rival merits of brandy and hartshorn were hotly argued, a sling was made to hold up Claud’s left arm, his temples were dabbed with lavender-water, his right hand chafed, his brow fanned, and brandy held to his unwilling lips, he might as well have been invisible; and if he had not been a very dogged young man he would have yielded to the Sergeant’s whispered suggestion that they should both of them slip away quiet-like, without any loss of time.

  To the surprise and the relief of his fellow-conspirators, who had feared he might prove the weak link in their chain, Claud, perhaps because he found himself for the first time in his life the star round which the other members of the family revolved, came artistically to his senses, and, seizing the cue afforded by Lord Darracott’s demanding to be told how the devil he had come to be shot, at once took command of the scene, in a manner that won even his brother’s admiration. Punctuating his utterances with winces, stifled groans, and dramatic pauses during which he stiffened into rigidity, with his eyes closed, and his lower lip clenched between his teeth, he disclosed that he had been set upon by two Bedlamites, both of whom had jumped out from behind a bush, roaring at him like a couple of ferocious wild beasts, and one of whom had fired at him. ‘Knew at once!’ he said, shuddering at the memory. ‘Ackletons!’

  The Sergeant cast a doubtful glance at Lieutenant Ottershaw, for, in his opinion, this had a false ring. His men, as he frequently informed them, put him forcibly in mind of many things, ranging from gapeseeds, hedge-birds, slush-buckets, and sheep-biters, to beetles, tailless dogs, and dead herrings, but none of them, least of all the two raw dragoons in question, had ever reminded him of a ferocious wild beast. Field-mice, yes, he thought, remembering the sad loss of steel in those posted to watch the Dower House; but if the young gentleman had detected any resemblance to ferocious wild beasts in his assailants, the Sergeant was prepared to take his Bible oath they had not been the bacon-brained knock-in-the-cradles he had posted (much against his will) within the grounds of Darracott Place.

  But Sergeant Hoole had never, until this disastrous evening, set eyes on Mr Claud Darracott. Lieutenant Ottershaw had beheld that Pink of the Ton picking his delicate way across the cobbles in Rye, clad in astonishing but unquestionably modish raiment, and holding a quizzing-glass up to his eye with one fragile white hand, and it did not strike him as remarkable that this Bartholomew baby should liken two over-zealous dragoons to wild beasts.

  ‘Did you recognize them, Claud?’ Vincent asked.

  Claud feebly shook his head, as it rested on one of the sofa-cushions, and instantly contracted his features in an expression of acute anguish, drawing a hissing breath, and ejaculating: ‘O God! – No, how could I? Too dark to recognize anyone at that distance. Besides, – only saw them for a minute. Dash it! – you don’t suppose I stopped to ask ’em for their visiting-cards, do you? Knew it was the Ackletons. Couldn’t have been anyone else!’

  ‘As I apprehend the matter, it might well have been somebody else,’ said Vincent.

  Claud opened his eyes, and regarded him with d