He returned her glance with one of his measuring looks. “I must seem to you a very spiritless creature, Miss Thane.”
She smiled, and shook her head, but would not answer. Her brother, who had been following the conversation with a puzzled frown, suddenly observed that it all sounded very odd to him. “You can’t break into someone’s house!” he objected.
“Yes, I can,” returned Ludovic. “I’m not such a cripple as that!”
“But it’s a criminal offence!” Sir Hugh pointed out.
“If it comes to that it’s a criminal offence to smuggle liquor into the country,” replied Ludovic. “I can tell you, I’m in so deep that it don’t much signify what I do now.”
Sir Hugh sat up. “You’re never the smuggler my sister spoke to me about?”
“I’m a free trader,” said Ludovic, grinning.
“Then just tell me this!” said Thane, his interest in house breaking vanishing before a more important topic. “Can you get me a pipe of the same Chambertin Nye has in his cellar?”
Chapter Eight
It was agreed finally that Ludovic should attempt nothing in the way of housebreaking until his cousin had discovered which day the Beau proposed to go to London. Ludovic, incurably optimistic, considered his ring as good as found already, but Shield, taking a more sober view of the situation, saw pitfalls ahead. If the Beau, like his father before him, were indeed in the habit of using the priest’s hole as a hiding-place for his strong-box, nothing was more likely than his keeping the ring there as well. Almost the only point on which Shield found himself at one with his volatile young cousin was the belief, firmly held by Ludovic, that the Beau, if he ever had the ring, would neither have sold it nor have thrown it away. To sell it would be too dangerous a procedure; to throw away an antique of great value would require more resolution than Sir Tristram believed the Beau possessed. But Sir Tristram could not share Ludovic’s easy-going contempt of the Beau. Ludovic persisted in laughing at his affectations, and thinking him a mere fop of no particular courage or enterprise. Sir Tristram, though he had no opinion of the Beau’s courage, profoundly mistrusted his suavity, and considered him to be a great deal more astute than he seemed.