The Unknown Ajax

seemingly. Well, that’s no concern of yours, of course—except that if he gets a nay-say from his lordship now he’ll be so crazy with disappointment that happen he really will take to smuggling!”

As far as the Sergeant was concerned, that settled it. Descending the stairs behind his superiors, he had absorbed the Major’s ruminations with a steadily growing conviction that Mr. Ottershaw had allowed himself to be properly slumguzzled—which, now he came to think of it, was what he’d thought in the first place, because whoever heard of a high-up young gentleman leading a gang of smugglers? There was no sense to it; but these Riding- officers got so that they took to thinking anyone might be a smuggler. The Sergeant wondered uneasily what dire consequences would befall him, if the terrible old lord came the ugly. It wasn’t his blame that they’d been hunting an elephant in the moon; on the other hand, no one was going to blame Mr. Ottershaw for what was done by a bottleheaded, addlebrained recruit too raw to be trusted with a pop-gun, let alone a carbine. As far as Sergeant Hoole could see, the only hope of bringing themselves home lay in this lumping great Major, who was the only one of these Darracotts who seemed to be kindly disposed. And ten to one, thought the Sergeant bitterly, Mr. Ottershaw would set up his back next.

Reaching the foot of the stairs, after setting a leisurely pace that gave Vincent time to put his grandfather in possession of enough of the truth to prevent his bringing all to ruin by some unwitting blunder, Hugo led the way across the great hall to the corridor that gave access to the morning-room, and to the servants’ quarters beyond it Here Vincent had overtaken his lordship, and rapidly explained the situation to him. As soon as the rest of the party appeared, he said: “Very well, sir: as you wish!” and, turning, grimaced, for the benefit of Lieutenant Ottershaw, and slightly shrugged his shoulders.

Hugo would have much preferred to be rid of Lord Darracott, but since his lordship was obviously determined to take part in the approaching scene he could only make the best of it, and hope Ottershaw was too slightly acquainted with him to think his silence remarkable, or to recognize the stricken look behind the fierceness in his eyes. He said cheerfully, his own eyes twinkling: “We’ve got him in here, this smuggler of yours. It’s a fortunate thing he’s too weak from loss of blood to be dangerous, for it would take a battalion to hold him othergates! He’s a terrible ruffian!”

With these encouraging words, he walked into the room, and held the door wide for his companions. Over his shoulder, he said, with his deep chuckle: “Pluck up, lad! It was all a mistake, and not Ned Ackleton who shot you. It was Excisemen—and here they are!”

Chapter 20

The scene which met the Lieutenant’s suspicious but startled gaze was lurid enough to astonish even Hugo, who had had no time to do more than sketch for his, players the nature of the rôles allotted to them, before he was obliged to leave them. The stage had then been by no means set; but one swift glance round the room now was enough to satisfy him that his subordinates had more than obeyed his rapid instructions: they had surpassed themselves.

Not the most uninformed of observers could have failed to realize that something must have happened to interrupt two persons in the middle of a game of cards, even if the obvious cause of the interruption had been hidden from sight. Richmond was seated at the table in the middle of the room, with his cards stacked and laid face downwards before him; but opposite him a hand had been flung down in such careless haste that two of the cards which composed it had fallen on to the floor. A silver tray, with the stopper of the decanter lying in it, had been placed on the table; and beside Richmond a litter of bank-notes and scraps of paper bore eloquent testimony to the run of luck he must have been enjoying. The candles in the wall-sconces behind him had been lit, but since the branched candelabra, which must presumably have stood on the table, had been seized, and set down on a chair by the sofa, to provide Anthea and Polyphant with more light for their activities, no direct light fell upon his face. Nearly all the available light was, in fact, concentrated round the sofa, on which, supported by Polyphant, standing behind him, reclined Claud, the focal point of the scene.

His aspect was ghastly. From the waist upward he was naked except for the bandages which Anthea, kneeling beside him, had apparently just finished winding round him; as much of his chest as could be seen was smeared with blood; his left arm, which dangled uselessly, its limply crooked fingers brushing the carpet, was horribly covered with bloodstains; his head lolled on his right shoulder; his countenance, thanks to the thoughtfulness of his valet, who had brandished before his eyes the gruesome dishcloth which had been used by John Joseph to stanch the flow of blood from Richmond’s wound, was of a sickly hue; and his breathing was accompanied by a series of faint but alarming moans. The chair which had been dragged up to serve as a stand for the candelabra also accommodated an empty glass, a bottle of smelling-salts, and a bowl containing a revolting reddened water, and the almost empty brandy-decanter stood on the floor within Anthea’s reach, together with a heap of lint and torn-up linen; and the final macabre touch was provided by the rent and blood-boltered garments which no one had apparently found time even to bundle out of sight.

Hugo, realizing that his accomplices, not content with such meagre tokens of bloodshed as his neat work on Richmond’s wound had afforded them, must have collected from the pantry every cloth and rag which had been used there, surveyed the scene with deep appreciation; but the Lieutenant brought up short on the threshold by the sight of so unexpected a shambles, was badly jolted; and the Sergeant, craning his neck to look over his shoulder, was perfectly appalled.

As soon as Hugo opened the door, Anthea exclaimed, without looking round, or pausing in her task of bandaging the sufferer: “At last! What on earth can have kept you so long?” but at his frivolously worded announcement, she cast an exasperated glance at him over her shoulder, saying in the voice of one perilously near the limit of her endurance: “For heaven’s sake, don’t start cutting idiotic jokes! I’ve had enough to bear from Richmond already! There’s nothing funny about what’s happened, and as for all your fine talk about it’s not being serious, either you know nothing whatsoever about it, or you’re as odiously drunk as Richmond—which wouldn’t surprise me in the least!—Do you think that’s tight enough, Polyphant?”

“Nay, I wasn’t joking you! Our Claud was shot by a dragoon, lass!”

“To be sure!” she snapped, inserting a pin carefully into the end of her bandage. “Nothing could be more likely! Don’t put yourself to the trouble of explaining what a dragoon was doing in our wood, for I’ve something better to do than to listen to quite unamusing, ill-timed nonsense!” She brought the point of her pin through several thicknesses of the bandage, and said: “I think that should hold it firmly, Polyphant. You can lay him down now. Oh, dear, how dreadfully white he is! Perhaps my aunt ought to be sent for. Hugo, did you find

Vincent

, is he com—” She broke off abruptly, for she had turned to ask this question, and now perceived Lieutenant Ottershaw. She stared at him, looked towards Hugo, looked again at the Lieutenant “But—Good God, what in heaven’s name—? Hugo, if this is your doing—”

“Now, how could it be my doing?” he expostulated, helping her to rise to her feet.

She pressed a hand to her temple. “Oh, I don’t know, but—No, I suppose it couldn’t be! But after that Banbury story about dragoons in the Home Wood—I beg your pardon, Mr. Ottershaw, but I am so much distracted —Oh, Vincent, thank God you’ve come.’”

Vincent, firmly putting the Lieutenant out of the way, had managed to enter the room. “Now, what is all this about Claud having met with an accident?” he began, breaking off abruptly, however, as he allowed his eyes to travel past Anthea to the sofa. “Good God!” he ejaculated. “Claud—!”

Polyphant, zealously waving the vinaigrette under his master’s nose, said: “He will be better directly, sir, I promise you. He keeps swooning off, but if only we can keep him still and quiet—It’s the loss of blood, sir: I thought we should never be able to—That’s better, sir!—He’s coming round, Mr. Vincent! If someone would pour out a little brandy—just a drop or two!—and we could manage to make him swallow it—”

“Ay, that’ll pull him together!” agreed Hugo, “Eh, he does look poorly! Where’s the brandy?”

For the next few minutes, no one paid the smallest heed either to Ottershaw, or to the Sergeant, except Lord Darracott, who frustrated the Sergeant’s instinctive attempt to retreat from this shocking scene, by thrusting him violently into the room, saying as he did so: “Will you make way for your betters, oaf?” which terrified him into edging his way along the wall to the corner of the room into which Ottershaw had already been manoeuvred. No one had asked the Lieutenant to move as far from the centre of the room as he could, but