for it.”
Chapter Six
This announcement produced all the effect upon the ladies which Ludovic could have desired. They gazed at him in surprise and admiration, breathlessly waiting for him to tell them more. Shield, not so easily impressed, said: “If you really know where to look for it you had better tell me, and I’ll do it for you.”
“That’s just the trouble,” replied Ludovic shamelessly. “I’m not at all sure of the place.” He saw Eustacie’s face fall, and added: “Oh, I should know it again if I saw it! The thing is that I’d be mighty hard put to it to direct anyone how to find it. I shall have to go myself.”
“Go where?” demanded Sir Tristram.
“Oh, to the Dower House!” replied Ludovic airily. “There’s a secret panel. You wouldn’t know it.”
“A secret panel?” repeated Miss Thane in an awed voice. “You mean actually a secret panel?”
Ludovic regarded her in some slight concern. “Yes, why not?”
“I thought it too good to be true,” said Miss Thane. “If there is one thing above all others I have wanted all my life to do it is to search for a secret panel! I suppose,” she added hopefully, “it would be too much to expect to find an underground passage leading from the secret panel?”
Eustacie clasped her hands ecstatically. “But yes, of course! An underground passage—”
“With bats and dead men’s bones,” shuddered Miss Thane.
French common sense asserted itself. Eustacie frowned. “Not bats, no. That is not reasonable. But certainly some bones, chained to the wall.”
“And damp—it must be damp!”
“Not damp; cobwebs,” put in Ludovic. “Huge ones, which cling to you like—”
“Ghostly fingers!” supplied Miss Thane.
“Oh, Ludovic, there is a passage?” breathed Eustacie.
He laughed. “Lord, no! It’s just a priest’s hole, that’s all.”
“How wretched!” said Miss Thane, quite disgusted. “It makes me lose all heart.”
“If there is not a passage we must do without one,” decreed Eustacie stoutly. “One must be practical.
“That is precisely what I was thinking,” agreed Miss Thane. “An old iron chest, full of jewels.”
Sir Tristram broke in on these fancies with a somewhat withering comment. “Since we are not searching for treasure, and no passage exists save in your imaginations, this discussion is singularly unprofitable,” he said. “Where is the panel, Ludovic?”
“There you have the matter in a nutshell,” confessed Ludovic. “I know my uncle used to use it as a strong- room, and I remember Sylvester showing it to me when I was a lad, but what I can’t for the life of me recall is which room it’s in.”
“That,” said Sir Tristram, “is, to say the least of it, unfortunate, since the Dower House is panelled almost throughout.”
“I think it’s either in the library or the dining-room,” said Ludovic. “There are two tiers of pillars with a lot of fluted pilasters and carvings. I dare say I shall recognize it when I see it. You twist one of the bosses on the frieze between the tiers, and one of the square panels below slides back.”
“How do you propose to see it?” asked Shield. “The Beau is at the Dower House now, and means to stay there.”
“Well, I shall have to break in at night,” replied Ludovic.
“A very proper resolve,” approved Miss Thane, before Sir Tristram could condemn it. “But something a trifle disturbing has occurred to me: are you sure that your cousin would have kept the ring?”
“Yes, for he would not dare to sell it,” replied Ludovic at once.
“He would not perhaps have thrown it away?”
Ludovic shook his head. “Not he. He knows its worth,” he answered simply.
“Oh well, in that case, all we have to do is to find the panel!” said Miss Thane.
Sir Tristram looked at her across Ludovic’s bed. “We?” he said.
“Certainly,” replied Sarah. “Eustacie told me I might share the adventure.”
“You are surely not proposing to remain here!”
“Sir,” said Miss Thane. “I shall remain here until we have cleared Ludovic’s fair name.”
“But, of course!” said Eustacie, opening her eyes very wide. “What else?”
Sir Tristram told her in a few brief words. When it was made plain to him that both ladies meant to play important parts in Ludovic’s affair, and that neither of them would so much as listen to the notion of retiring, the one to London, the other to Bath, he said roundly that he would have nothing to do with so crazy an escapade. Eustacie at once replied with the utmost cordiality that he might retire from it with her goodwill, but Ludovic objected that since his left arm would be useless for some little time, he would need Tristram to help him with his housebreaking.
“Do you imagine that I am going to break into Basil’s house?” demanded Sir Tristram.
“Why not?” said Ludovic.
“Not only that,” said Miss Thane thoughtfully, “but we might need you if there is to be any fighting. My brother tells me you have a Right.”
“If,” said Sir Tristram forcibly, “you would all of you rid yourselves of the notion that you are living within the pages of one of Mrs Radcliffe’s romances, I should be grateful! Do you realize that tongues are already wagging up at the Court over Eustacie’s ill-judged, unnecessary, and foolish flight? I dare swear the news of it has even now reached Basil’s ears. If she remains here, what am I to tell him?”
“Let me think,” said Miss Thane.
“Don’t put yourself to that trouble!” said Sir Tristram, with asperity. “Eustacie must go to my mother in Bath.”
“I have it!” said Miss Thane, paying no heed to him. “I knew Eustacie in Paris some years ago. Finding myself in the vicinity of her home, I sent to inform her of my arrival, whereupon the dear creature, misliking the Bath scheme, formed the idea of putting herself under my protection. Unfortunately, you, Sir Tristram, knowing nothing of me, and being possessed of a tyrannical disposition—I beg your pardon?”
“I did not speak,” replied Sir Tristram, eyeing her frostily.
Miss Thane met his look with one of limpid innocence. “Oh, I quite thought you did!”
“I choked,” explained Sir Tristram. “Pray continue! You had reached my tyrannical disposition.”
“Precisely,” nodded Sarah. “You refused to accede to Eustacie’s request, thus leaving her no alternative to instant flight. But now that you have seen me, you realize that I am a respectable female, altogether a proper person to have the charge of a young lady, and you relent.”
The corners of his mouth twitched slightly. “Do I?” he said.
“Certainly. We arrange that Eustacie shall stay with me in London on a visit. All is in train for our departure when my brother, finding his cold to be no better, declares himself to be unable to risk the dangers of travel in this inclement weather. Which reminds me,” she added, rising from her chair, “that I had better go and inform Hugh that his cold is worse.”
A little while later, coming down from Sir Hugh’s bedchamber, she found Sir Tristram waiting in the coffee- room. He looked up as she rounded the bend in the stairs, and said sardonically: “I trust you were able to convince your brother, ma’am?”
“It was unnecessary,” she returned. “Nye has taken him up a bottle of Old Constantia. He thinks it would be foolhardy to brave the journey to London until he is perfectly recovered.”
“I thought he held strong views on the subject of smuggled liquor?” remarked Sir Tristram.
“He does,” replied Miss Thane, not in the least abashed. “Very strong views.” She went to the fire and seated herself on one of the high-backed settles placed on either side of it. A gesture invited Sir Tristram to occupy the other. “I think those two children will make a match of it, do not you?”
“Ludovic cannot ask any woman to be his wife as matters now stand,” he responded, frowning into the fire.
“Then we must certainly establish his innocence,” said Miss Thane.
