The Unknown Ajax

“Wonderful, it was!” replied Hugo, shaking his head. “Ay, you missed a high treat! He was no more than half-sprung, mind you, and not very much more than a couple of stone lighter than I am, so I did well, didn’t I?”

That drew a reluctant laugh from Vincent. “My grandfather seems to think so. I’m told the fellow is much fancied as a fighter in these parts, but I collect you’re not yourself a novice?”

“I can box,” Hugo admitted, “but it’s not often I do. I’m too big.”

Everyone was pleased with Hugo’s conduct except the Ackletons, both of whom were popularly held to be planning a hideous revenge, and Claud, who had no doubt on whom such a revenge would be wreaked, and considered that Hugo would have done better to have detained Ned at Darracott Place until he could have been induced to have listened to reason. Claud knew himself to be innocent of the charge brought against him, and great was his indignation when he discovered that his grandfather not only believed in his innocence on no grounds at all, but thought the worse of him for it. In high dudgeon he declared his intention of leaving Darracott Place immediately, and might actually have done so had not his lordship said, crashing his fist down on the table before him, that, by God, he should do no such thing!

“No grandson of mine shall turn tail while I’m in the saddle!” he announced. “I wouldn’t let you shab off, you pudding-headed fribble, if you had given that light-skirt a slip on the shoulder!”

What Lady Aurelia thought about it no one knew, for she never mentioned the matter, and nothing could be learned from her countenance or her demeanour. One or two jibes addressed to her by Lord Darracott were met with such blank stares of incomprehension that even he seemed to be daunted, and Mrs. Darracott confessed to her daughter that she for one doubted whether her ladyship knew anything at all about the affair.

Several days passed before Hugo paid his second nocturnal visit to the Dower House, wet weather making the sky too cloudy for observation. But on the first clear evening he strolled up the path to the wicket-gate into the shrubbery shortly before midnight, a cigar between his teeth. The gate shrieked on its rusty hinges; the beaten track that led to the house was sodden; and the leaves of the bushes were very wet, damping the Major’s coat as he brushed past them.

A slight reconnaissance showed him that the shrubbery was intersected by several paths, once, no doubt, when the hedges were clipped, and gravel strewn underfoot, furnishing the inhabitants of the Dower House with an agreeable promenade on windy days. The hedges had not been trimmed for years, however, and the place had become a wilderness, the various paths so overgrown as sometimes to be difficult to follow. The Major, making his way out of it to the path at the side of the house, thought it would afford an excellent retreat for any ghost finding itself hard-pressed.

The moon was not yet half-full, and its light was a little fitful, clouds occasionally obscuring its face; but it was possible to make out the way, and even to discern objects at some distance. The house showed no light at any window, so it was to be inferred that Spurstow was either in bed and asleep or had put up the shutters in the kitchen-quarters as well as everywhere else in the house. Having walked round the building, Hugo trod across the rank grass that had once been a shaven lawn and took up his position in the shadow of a tree standing on the edge of the carriage-drive.

He had not very long to wait. The wind that fretted the tree-tops was hardly more than a whisper, but the stillness was broken after a short time by the screech of an owl in the woods, followed almost immediately by a long drawn-out wail that rose to a shriek, and died away in a sobbing moan, eerie in the night-silence. The next instant a vague, misty figure appeared round the angle of the house, and flitted into the shrubbery.

The Major, unperturbed by these manifestations, threw away the butt of his cigar, and strode towards the shrubbery. A hasty movement behind him made him check, and turn quickly, searching with narrowed eyes the deep shadows cast by the bushes by the gates. Someone, who had been concealed by these, started forward. The Major saw the moonlight gleam on the barrel of a pistol, and, a moment later, recognized Lieutenant Ottershaw. Ottershaw, paying no heed to him, began to run across the grass, with the obvious intention of plunging into the shrubbery, but two long strides brought the Major between him and his goal, and obliged him to check.

“Nay, lad, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Hugo said placidly.

“Did you see?” Ottershaw shot at him. “After that ghastly—that damned scream—someone in a sheet! Well, I’m going to discover who it is!”

“I saw,” Hugo said. “But happen you’d best take care what you’re about. You can’t go ghost-hunting in a private garden, you know.”

“That was no ghost!” Ottershaw said violently. ‘“You know that, sir! I watched you: you never so much as jumped when that scream sounded! If you’d believed it was a ghost—”

“Oh, no! I didn’t, of course.”

“No! And why did you come here if it wasn’t to discover who’s playing tricks to keep people away from this place? I don’t believe you’re in it, but—”

“In what?” interposed Hugo.

The Lieutenant hesitated. “In what I know to be an attempt to drive me off!” he answered rather defiantly. “I’ve had my suspicions of this house ever since I came here, and I’m as sure as any man may be that it’s one of the smugglers’ chief storehouses!”

“No I’m not in anything like that,” said Hugo.

“No, sir, I never supposed you could be. But—”

“If I were you, I’d put up that pistol, Mr. Ottershaw,” said Hugo. “Were you meaning to challenge the ghost with it? You’d catch cold if you did, you know. It’s no crime that I ever heard of to caper about rigged up as a boggard.”

The Lieutenant did restore the pistol to its holster, but he was angry, and said very stiffly: “Very well, sir! But I will tell you plainly that I believe that—apparition!—to have been none other than Mr. Richmond Darracott!”

“Ay, so do I,” agreed Hugo.

Ottershaw peered up at his face, trying in the uncertain light to read its expression. He sounded a little nonplussed. “You think that?”

“Why, yes!” Hugo said. “I think he’s trying to make a May-game of you, and, if you want to know, I also think there’s little he’d like better than for you to hold him up. Eh, lad, don’t be so daft! It would be all over the county before the cat could lick her ear! Your commander wouldn’t thank you for making a laughing-stock of yourself, and if you were to interfere with Richmond the dust you’d raise would be nothing to the dust his lordship would kick up!”

“Oh, I’m well aware of that!” replied Ottershaw bitterly. “I look for nothing but obstruction from that quarter! I may say—from any member of your family, sir! I’d risk being made a laughing-stock if I could catch Richmond Darracott at his tricks ,as I might have done, but for you!”

“Now, what good would that do you?” asked the Major. “I daresay you’d like to give him a sharp lesson not to get up to this kind of bobbery at your expense, but you’d regret it if you did. You’d be better advised to pay no heed to him: he’d soon tire of the sport if you laughed at him—and got your men to do the same!”

“So you think he does it for sport, do you, sir?”

“Of course I do!” said the Major. “It’s just the sort of thing a mischievous lad would do—particularly if he thought you were a trifle over-zealous.”

Ottershaw was silent for a moment. Then he said curtly: “I’ll say goodnight to you, sir. I should not have spoken so freely, perhaps, but since I have done so there can be little point in concealing what I make no doubt you have guessed: I believe Mr. Richmond Darracott to be hand-in-glove with these pernicious smugglers! I have no wish—it is not the wish of the Board of Customs—to incur the ill-will of persons of Lord Darracott’s consequence, but I shall take leave to warn you that no such consideration would deter me—or, I should add, would be expected to deter me!—in the performance of what I might consider to be my duty!”

“Very proper,” approved the Major, a note of amusement in his voice. “But, if you don’t despise a word of advice from one who’s older than you, and maybe more experienced, you’ll make very sure you’re right in your suspicions before you go tail over top into action. It’s one thing, to sympathize with smuggling, but quite another to be engaged in the trade, if that’s what you’re suggesting. You’ve been having the devil of a time of it here, and seemingly it’s made you think that everyone who don’t help you must be mixed up in the business himself. You’ll end with windmills in your head that road—if you haven’t ’em already!—let alone finding yourself in bad loaf with that Board of yours.”