“No, I must keep a clear head,” replied Ludovic. “So must you, what’s more. I don’t want you disguised.”
“You’ve never seen me with the malt above the water—not to notice,” said Mr Bundy, refreshing himself with a nip.
“I’ve seen you as drunk as a wheelbarrow,” retorted Ludovic, taking the flask away from him and putting it in his own pocket. “It makes you devilish quick on the pull, and taking the fat with the lean, I think we won’t do any shooting unless we’re forced. My cautious cousin’s against it, and I admit there’s a deal in what he says. I don’t want to be saddled with any more corpses. Give me a leg-up, will you?”
Bundy complied with this request, and asked what he was to do if it came to a fight.
“Use your fists,” answered Ludovic. “Mind you, I dare say there’ll be no fighting.”
“Just as well if there ain’t,” said Bundy, hoisting himself into the saddle. “A hem set-out it will be if you get yourself into a mill with only one arm! I doubt I done wrong to come with you.”
This was said not in any complaining spirit but as a mere statement of fact. Ludovic, accustomed to Mr Bundy’s processes of thought, agreed, and said that there was a strong likelihood of them ending the night’s adventure in the County Gaol.
They set off down the lane at an easy trot, and since Clem had chosen the shorter but rougher way to the Court that led through the Forest, they were not disturbed by any sound of pursuit. As they rode, Ludovic favoured his companion with a brief explanation of what they were to do at the Dower House. Bundy listened in silence, and at the end merely expressed his regret that he was not to be given an opportunity of darkening Beau Lavenham’s daylights for him. His animosity towards the Beau seemed to be groundless but profound, his main grudge against him being that he stood a good chance of stepping into Sylvester’s shoes. When he spoke of Sylvester he betrayed something as nearly approaching enthusiasm as it was possible for a man of his phlegmatic temperament to feel. “He was a rare one, the old lord,” he said simply.
When they arrived within sight of the Dower House they reined in their horses and dismounted. The house stood a little way back from the lane, in a piece of ground cut like a wedge out of the park belonging to the Court. After a brief consultation they led their horses through a gap in the straggling hedge, and tethered them inside the park. Bundy set about the task of lighting the lantern he had brought while Ludovic went off to reconnoitre.
When he had circumnavigated the house he returned to Bundy’s side to find that that worthy, having covered his lantern with a muffler, was seated placidly beside it on a tree-stump.