“Happen it ain’t so easy to get out as what it is to get in,” suggested Bundy. “What’s more, the cat’s properly in the cream pot now, for that screeching valet knows where he is, ay, and who he is! He means to watch till his precious master gets home.”
“He’ll do no watching yet awhile,” said Sir Tristram. “I took very good care to put him to sleep. He’s the only one we have to fear. The butler has never seen my cousin, and I doubt is not in his master’s confidence.”
“You’m right there,” corroborated Bundy, “he ain’t. But he knows there’s a man in the priest’s hole, because ’t’other cove told him so.”
“I can handle him,” said Shield briefly, and catching his horse’s bridle, set his foot in the stirrup. “Stay here, and if I whistle come to the window. I may need you to show me where to find the catch that opens the panel.” He swung himself into the saddle as he spoke, wheeled the horse, and cantered off towards the gap in the hedge through which Ludovic and Bundy had entered the park.
Mr Bundy, tenderly feeling his contused eye, was shaken by inward mirth for the second time that evening. “Lamentable cautious!” he repeated. “Oh ay, l-a-amentable!”
Sir Tristram, breaking through on to the road, turned towards the Dower House, and rode up the neat drive at a canter. Dismounting, he not only pulled the iron bell violently, but also hammered an imperative summons with the knocker on the front door.
In a few minutes the door was cautiously opened on the chain, and the butler, looking pale and shaken, and with a black eye almost equal to Bundy’s, peered out.
“What the devil’s amiss?” demanded Sir Tristram. “Don’t keep me standing here! Open the door!”
“Oh, it’s you, sir!” gasped the butler, much relieved, and making haste to unfasten the chain.
“Of course it’s I!” said Sir Tristram, pushing his way past him into the hall. “I was on my way home from Hand Cross when I heard unmistakable pistol shots coming from here. What’s the meaning of it? What are you doing up at this hour?”
“I’m—I’m very glad you’ve come, sir,” said the butler, wiping his face. “Very glad indeed, sir. I’m so shook up I scarce know what I’m about. It was Gregg’s doing, sir. No, not precisely that neither, but it was Gregg as had his suspicions there was a robbery planned for tonight. He was quite right, sir: we’ve had housebreakers in, and one of them’s hidden in some priest’s hole I never heard of till now. I’ve never been so used in all my life, sir, never!”
“Priest’s hole! What priest’s hole?” said Shield. “How many housebreakers were there? Have you caught any of them?”
“No, sir, and there’s Gregg laying like one dead. There was a great many of them. We did what we could, but the candlestick was shot over, and in the dark they got away. It was the one in the panelling Gregg set such store by catching, so I’ve left one of the stable lads there to keep watch. In the library, sir.”
“It seems to me you have conducted yourselves like a set of idiots!” said Sir Tristram angrily, and walked into the library.
The candelabra had been picked up from the wreckage on the floor, and the candles, most of them broken off short by their fall, had been relit. The valet’s inanimate form was stretched on a couch, and the young groom, looking bruised and dishevelled but still remarkably pugnacious, was standing in the middle of the room, his serious grey eyes fixed on the wainscoting. He touched his forelock to Sir Tristram, but did not move from his commanding position.
Shield went over to look at the valet, who was breathing stertorously. “Knocked out,” he said. “You’d better carry him up to his bed. Where’s this precious panel you talk of?”
“It’s here, sir,” answered the groom. “I’m a-watching of it. Only let the cove come out, that’s all I ask!”
“I’ll keep an eye on that,” replied Sir Tristram. “You take this fellow’s legs, and help Jenkyns carry him up to his room. Get water and vinegar, and see what you can do to bring him round. Gently, now!”
Under his authoritative instructions the groom and the butler lifted Gregg from the couch, and bore him tenderly from the room. No sooner had they started to mount the stairs than Sir Tristram closed the library door and called softly: “Ludovic! All’s clear: come out!”
“Happen he’s suffocated inside that hole,” remarked Mr Bundy’s fatalistic voice from the window.
“Nonsense, there must be enough air! Where’s the catch that opens the panel?”
Bundy, leaning his head and shoulders in at the window indicated the portion of the frieze where it might be found.
Shield ran his hands over the carving, presently found the device Ludovic had twisted, and turned it. The panel slid back once more, and Shield, picking up the candelabra, went to it, saying sharply: “Ludovic! Are you hurt?”
There was no answer. Sir Tristram bent, so that the candles illumined the cavity, and looked in. It was quite empty.
Chapter Twelve
Sir Tristram put the candelabra down, and once more twisted the device, closing the panel. “He’s not there,” he said.
Mr Bundy betrayed no surprise. “Ah!” he remarked, preparing to climb into the room. “I’d a notion we shouldn’t get out of this so hem easy. As good be nibbled to death by ducks as set out on one of Master Ludovic’s ventures! Where’s he got to, by your reckoning?”
“God knows! He must have slipped out after the candles were knocked over. Don’t come in!”
Bundy obediently stayed where he was. “Just as you say, master. But it ain’t like him to keep out of a fight.”
“He’d be no use in a mill with one arm in a sling,” replied Sir Tristram. “Go and see if he has gone back to where you left your horses. If he’s not there he must be somewhere in the house.”
“Well, I’ll do it,” said Bundy, “but I reckon it’s no manner of use. ’Twouldn’t be natural if young master were to start behaving sensible all on a sudden. You’d be surprised the number of cork-brained scrapes he’s got himself into these two years and more.”
“You’re wrong; I shouldn’t,” retorted Sir Tristram.
“Ah well, he’s a valiant lad, surely!” said Bundy, indulgently, and withdrew.
Sir Tristram stayed where he was, and in a very few minutes Mr Bundy once more appeared at the window and said simply: “He ain’t there.”
“Damn the boy!” said Sir Tristram. “Get away from that window! There’s someone coming!”
Bundy promptly ducked beneath the level of the windowsill just as the door opened, and Gregg staggered in, supported by the butler.
His jaw was much swollen and two front teeth were broken. Sir Tristram put his grazed right hand into his pocket. It was evident that although his head might be swimming, the valet still had some of his wits about him, for no sooner did his bleared gaze fall upon Shield than he turned an even more sickly colour, and catching at a chair- back to steady himself, said in a thick voice: “It’s like that, is it? But I’ll watch. I have the keys of the doors. If he’s there still he won’t get away!”
The groom came into the room and said in his serious young voice: “I’d get him a drop of brandy if I were you, Mr Jenkyns. Regular shook to pieces he is. Now, don’t you fret, Mr Gregg! No one can’t get out while you’ve got them keys.”
The butler, who thought that a drop of brandy would do him good also, said graciously that he believed the “lad was right, and went away to fetch the decanter. The groom, coming up behind the valet, said solicitously: “You shouldn’t ought to have come down, Mr Gregg,” and knocked him out with one nicely-delivered blow under the ear. The unfortunate valet collapsed on to the floor, and the groom, looking down at him with a smouldering expression of wrath in his pleasant grey eyes, said grimly: “Maybe that’ll be a lesson to you, you cribbage-faced tooth-drawer, you!”
Before Sir Tristram, considerably astonished by this unexpected turn events had taken, had time to speak, the butler, hearing the sound of Gregg’s fall, came hurrying back into the room. The groom at once turned to meet him, saying: “Blessed if he ain’t swooned off again, Mr Jenkyns! Done to a cow’s thumb, he is!”
“Carry the poor fellow up to his room again, and this time keep him there!” commanded Sir Tristram, recovering from his surprise.
“Just what I was a-going to do, sir,” said the groom. “Now, Mr Jenkyns, if you’ll take his legs we’ll soon have him in his bed!”
