The Quiet Gentleman

and carried it to the bed. 'Let me put this behind you, my lord,' she said. 'It will be better for you not to support yourself on your elbow.'

He thanked her, and leaned back, with a sigh of relief. She glanced at Martin, and said composedly: 'Your brother is still weak, and should not be talking at this hour. Pray do not prolong your visit!'

'I've no wish to do him any harm—though I daresay you won't believe that!'

She did not answer, but sat down beside the fire. He scowled at her, but she returned his look with one of her wide, direct stares. Flushing, he turned from her to his half-brother.

'Tell me!' said the Earl. 'Why do you choose to enter my room by a secret stair rather than by the door?'

'Choose! They will not let me come near you!'

'Who will not let you?'

'Theo—Ulverston—that damned groom of yours!'

'Indeed! But has a sentry been posted at my door?'

'No! Not at your door, but at mine!' Martin said bitterly. 'Chard is sitting outside my room. The only wonder is that he has not locked me in!'

'Dear me! How, may I ask, did you contrive to slip past him unnoticed? Or is there also a secret way into your room?'

'No, there is not! I climbed out of the window. I tell you, I had to see you!'

'Why, Martin?'

'They think I tried to kill you!'

'Have they said so?'

'Not in so many words, but the questions they have asked me—the way they look at me! I'm not a fool! I know what they think! They say my gun and my shot-belt were found where—where it happened, and that I had rounds of ball in my belt! I had not! It is a damned lie, St. Erth! Good God, what should I want with ball when all I went for was an accursed pair of kestrels, and perhaps a pigeon or two?'

'Did you get the kestrels?' enquired Gervase.

'No. I never got a sight of them.'

'Or a pigeon?'

'No!'

'Did you not fire your gun at all?'

'Yes, at a rabbit,' Martin muttered. 'Oh, we have had all that out, never fear I The gun has been fired, and I don't deny it! I bagged a rabbit, but where it is now I don't know! I can't produce it! I never fired at you!'

The Earl's head lay back against the supporting pillow; from under drooping eyelids he was watching every change in Martin's face. 'Martin, why did you run away?' he asked.

'I didn't run away!' Martin exclaimed.

'Hush! Not so loud! My valet is sleeping in the next room. Where, then, have you been?'

'I don't know!' He saw his brother's brows lift, and added, in a goaded tone: 'Ask Chard! He will tell you fast enough! It was some village short of Wisbech where he picked me up: I don't know its name!'

'I hope you mean to tell me what he was doing there, for I have not the remotest guess.'

'I'll tell you!' Martin threw at him. 'He was set on by your friend Ulverston to look for me on the road to King's Lynn! Ulverston believed I should be found making for the nearest port! God, how I have kept my hands from Ulverston's throat I don't know!'

'Yes, I remember now that Lucy told me that,' Gervase said thoughtfully.

'I was trying to get to Stanyon, not to the coast!' Martin said, taking an impetuous step nearer to the bed.

'That, also, he foretold,' murmured Gervase.

Martin recoiled. 'I might have spared myself the pains of coming to you! You won't believe me any more than he or Theo do! Very well! Have me arrested for murder!'

'But I am not dead,' Gervase said, smiling faintly. 'What is it that I shan't believe?'

'I was kidnapped!' said Martin belligerently.

Miss Morville, who had been gazing into the fire, apparently divorced from this interchange, raised her head, and looked curiously at him.

'Now tell me you don't believe me! I expect that!'

'Not at all. Where, when, and how?'

Martin cast him a sullen glance. 'I don't know when—except that it was not long after I had shot the rabbit, and I've no notion when that may have been, except that it can't have been a great while before you were fired at. I'd had no sport; I thought I might as well try for a brace of wood-pigeons, but you know what they are! There's no getting them, unless you lie-up, once they've been alarmed! I crouched down behind a thicket, to wait. I suppose someone stalked me: I don't know! All I know is that I was struck a stunning blow from behind. I do know that, but nothing more, until I came to myself, and how much later that was I've no notion!'

There was a short silence. 'And your spaniel?' said the Earl.

'Not with me,' Martin answered, colouring. He raised his eyes. 'He had a thorn into his foot, and was dead lame! I would not take him. Ask Hickling if that's not true! Oh, yes! I know what you are thinking! Hickling would tell any lie to oblige me, would he not?'

'I don't know. Would he?'

'I daresay! This is the truth!'

'Very well: go on!'

'I tell you, I don't know what happened! I didn't come to myself till I was being taken off somewhere, in a cart, or something. I couldn't see: I was trussed up, and gagged, and there was a sack over my head—not that I cared, for my head was aching fit to split, and I cared for nothing, then, except being jolted so much that I think I went off into another swoon. I don't remember that, but I do remember feeling devilish bad. And then I wasn't in a vehicle, but lying on the ground somewhere. It might have been a cow-byre: it smelled like it, but I couldn't see, or move, and I don't know. I don't even know how long I was there: hours and hours, I think! I suppose I slept part of the time. I must have, because I woke up with a start when someone began to haul me up. And then there was more of that curst jolting, and being hauled out of the cart again, and rolling down and down and down!'

'Rolling down where?' asked the Earl.

'It was a sand-pit, but I didn't know that at the time.'

'Oh! And who rescued you from the sand-pit?'

'No one. I managed to get free. If I hadn't, I might be there now, for it was miles from anywhere, and disused, I think.'

'But how did you contrive to free yourself then, when you had been unable to do so before?' asked Miss Morville, quite mystified.

'I suppose the cord must have frayed,' Martin said, hesitatingly. 'Or perhaps it worked loose—no, that wasn't it, because when I found I could move my arms at last, I strained and strained, and the cord broke, so I think it must have frayed, or was weak in one place. Look!' He thrust his sleeve up, and showed a bruised and chafed forearm.

'I will give you some arnica for it, if you would like it,' said Miss Morville kindly.

He swung round to face her. 'I don't want it! You think it's all lies, don't you?'

'Oh, no! Only one should never allow oneself to be carried away by exciting stories, and I am bound to observe that it would not be so very difficult to inflict such a bruise with one's own hands. I daresay it all happened exactly as you have described, but one can readily understand why it was that Theo and Lord Ulverston would not believe you.'

'I am much obliged to you! Why don't you say you think I'm a murderer, and be done with it?'

'Martin,' interrupted Gervase, 'why were you stunned, kept in durance vile, and finally rolled into a sand- pit?'

'Good God, if I knew that—! I suppose some desperate fellow meant to rob me!'

'And were you robbed?' asked Gervase.