The Unknown Ajax

transformation was briefly explained to her, whereupon she instantly threw herself into the obviously necessary task of persuading Claud to immolate himself. Without allowing him an opportunity to speak, she thanked him with so much warmth as to make it extremely hard for him to disabuse her mind of its apparent conviction that he had consented. By the time she had marvelled at his nobility, prophesied the reverence with which he would for ever afterwards be regarded by them all, and declared her positive belief in his ability to carry the thing off to admiration, Claud had become so far reconciled to the scheme as to raise no further objection to it.

Polyphant, who had come into his own with the necessity of arraying Richmond in his borrowed plumage, then called upon the Major to assist him in the task of getting him into Claud’s coat. It was plain that he was revelling in the affair, but only he knew the cause of his elation; and none could have guessed that while his nimble fingers coped with shoestrings, buttons, and neckcloth, his mind was filled with the vision of himself triumphant beyond his wildest dreams over the odious Crimplesham. Crimplesham might never learn just what had taken place on this fateful evening, but Crimplesham would know, like everyone else, that there had been very strange goings- on from which he had been rigorously excluded, with such insignificant persons as the footmen, while his rival had been in the thick of it, the trusted confidant of even his own master. And if Crimplesham tried to discover what had happened, Polyphant had every intention of proving himself worthy of the trust reposed in him by replying that his lips were sealed, which would undoubtedly infuriate Crimplesham very much indeed.

“Now, sir!” he said, with the authority of one who knew himself to be an expert, “if you will be so obliging as to do precisely what I shall request you to do, I trust I shall be able to manage to put Mr. Richmond into both waistcoat and coat—you will observe that I have placed one within the other—without causing him to feel too much discomfort, and without disturbing your handiwork, sir. From you, Mr. Richmond, I wish for no assistance at all. Do not attempt, I most earnestly implore you, to shrug your sound shoulder into the garment! You will please to leave it entirely to me. Fortunately, you are of slighter build than Mr. Claud: indeed, we must hope that the Riding-officer is not a person of ton (if you will pardon the jest!), and so will not think your coat sadly ill-fitting, must we not?”

Talking chattily all the time, he began to ease Richmond into the coat. Claud, watching him with a jaundiced eye, expressed his conviction that he was going about it in quite the wrong way; but the Major meekly obeyed such instructions as he was given; and by the time Chollacombe came into the room the difficult feat had been performed with a competence that drew a Well-done! from the Major. Polyphant bowed his acknowledgment, saying that he would now slip upstairs to collect one of Mr. Claud’s black silk socks. “For it occurs to me, sir, that a few snips with the scissors will make it a tolerable mask, and we must not forget, must we, that Mr. Richmond’s face was blackened? So you will pardon me if I now absent myself for a very few moments!”

He then departed, sped on his way by a bitter recommendation from his master to ruin a few more of his garments while he was about it.

The Major picked up his own coat, and had just shrugged himself into it when Anthea, whose hearing was very acute, caught the sound of hoof-beats, and said sharply: “Listen! Hugo, they’re coming!”

“Well, we could have done with another few minutes, but happen we’ll make shift without them,” he responded calmly. “Vincent, go up to the drawing-room before they start knocking on the door—or, if his lordship’s come down to the library, join him there! You’ve been writing letters—anything you choose!—and you’ve not been next or nigh the rest of us. Keep Ottershaw brangling with the old gentleman: that oughtn’t to be difficult! I must see Claud bandaged up, and the scene well set, and then I’ll part, but make me tell you why I want to speak privately to you! Quick, man! Here they are!” He fairly thrust Vincent from the room, and turned to Chollacombe. “Not in too much of a hurry to open the door to them!” he warned him. “You’re not expecting any such visitors, so you may look as surprised as you please, but take

care

you look affronted too! Treat them just as you would any vulgar person who came here asking impertinent questions—not that I think they’ll ask you any. All I want of you is that you shall bear it in mind that Mr. Claud has met with an accident, which is no business of any Exciseman, and that Mr. Richmond and I have been playing cards here all the evening. Don’t take them straight to his lordship: shut them into the Green Saloon, and say you’ll inform his lordship! Mr. Vincent will take care he don’t refuse to see them. Once you’ve taken them to the drawing-room, don’t show yourself again!”

“Have no fear, sir!” said Chollacombe. “I trust I know how to depress the pretensions of such persons who know no better than to hammer on the door of a gentleman’s residence in that ill- mannered fashion!”

The knocker had certainly been somewhat violently plied, and the effect of this solecism on Chollacombe was all that the Major could have desired. At one moment a very shaken old man, he stiffened at the next into the personification of outraged dignity, and, with a slow and stately tread, left the room, and proceeded down the broad passage that led through an archway into the central hall.

Hugo shut the door, and cast a swift, measuring look at Richmond, seated at the table, and resting his left arm on it. Richmond was very pale, but his eyes were alert, and he met his cousin’s searching glance with a confident smile. “I shall do!” he said.

“Ay, you’ll do, you scamp! Give him some more brandy, love!” said the Major, picking up the bowl of reddened water, and setting it down on the floor beside the sofa.

“I shall be foxed if I drink any more,” Richmond warned him.

“I want you to be foxed, lad—just about half-sprung! Not so drunk that you’ll say what you shouldn’t, but drunk enough to look as if you might be. That’ll be reason enough why you should stay sprawling in your chair.” He turned his head as the door opened, and for an instant it seemed to Anthea that he stiffened. But it was only Polyphant who entered the room, with his tripping gait, and delicately dropped a maltreated sock beside the horrid pile of Richmond’s clothing. The Major said: “I’m more obliged to you than I can say, Polyphant. The moment the coast is clear, off with you! I don’t want you to get tangled up in this business, so stand out now—and thank you!”

“Sir!” said Polyphant, exalted by the realization that his moment was upon him, “any other command you may see fit to give me I shall obey with alacrity, but never, never shall it be said that a Polyphant deserted his master in his hour of need, or flinched in the face of danger!”

“Well, if that’s how you feel, you can dashed well move that disgusting bowl out of my sight!” said his master tartly.

Chapter 19

It was not quite fifteen minutes later that the Major entered the drawing-room; and he knew before he opened the door that the task of prolonging the interview between his grandfather and Lieutenant Ottershaw had imposed no very severe strain upon Vincent’s ingenuity. It even seemed improbable that he had found it necessary to take any steps at all to achieve his aim, for his lordship had plainly taken instant umbrage when informed that the Lieutenant had come armed with a warrant, and was in fine fighting fettle.

The scene was not quite what the Major had hoped it might be. It included two persons with whom he could well have dispensed: Lady Aurelia was still seated at the card-table; and Mrs. Darracott, attired in a dressing-gown, was standing beside her chair, her pretty countenance flushed, and her expression one of strong indignation. Lord Darracott was also seated at the card-table, his chair pushed back a little from it, and one leg crossed over the other. Before him, very stiff, stood the Lieutenant; standing in front of the fireplace was Vincent; and a stalwart Sergeant of dragoons had taken up a discreet position in the background. His mien was one of stern stolidity, but although his appearance was formidable to the uninitiated the Major was not uninitiated, and one glance was enough to inform him that Sergeant Hoole, while doggedly determined to do his duty, was very far from sharing the Lieutenant’s conviction that he had as good a right to force his way into a nobleman’s house as into a common person’s humbler dwelling.

The Sergeant was indeed wishing himself otherwhere. At no time (as the Major well knew) did he relish being placed at the orders of the Board of Customs; and when it came to being obliged to accompany a mere Riding-officer into the presence of a fierce old gentleman who reminded him forcibly of his own Colonel, he disliked it very much indeed, for it was quite evident to him, if not to Lieutenant Ottershaw (who was not by any means his notion of an officer), that the old lord was not one with whom it was at all safe to