“He’s safe enough,” replied Shield. “What the devil happened? Who set upon you?”
“I never seen them before to my knowledge,” Nye said, rubbing his cramped limbs. “Lord, to think of them taking me unawares! Me! They come in, as I thought, off the Brighton stage. There was no one in the tap-room but myself at the time, and I hadn’t no more than turned my back to get a couple of mugs down from the shelf when something hit me on the head, and when I woke up, here I was like you saw with Clem beside me! I’ve got a lump on the back of my head like a hen’s egg.”
“Good God, Nye, the oldest trick in the world, and you must needs fall a victim to it!” said Sir Tristram scornfully.
“I know it, sir: there ain’t no call for you to tell me. Fair bamboozled I was.”
“This sort of thing,” said Sir Hugh, cutting the cord that bound Clem’s arms, “is past a jest! Were you knocked on the head too?”
Clem, however, had escaped this particular violence. He was a good deal shaken and bruised, but his assailants had overpowered him without being obliged to stun him. He recounted that he had heard someone calling for the drawer, and had gone at once to the taproom. He had seen only one man, standing in quite an innocent-seeming fashion by the bar, but no sooner had he entered the room than a heavy coat had been thrown over his head by someone hidden behind the door, and before he could disentangle himself from its folds both men were upon him and he was speedily gagged and trussed up like the landlord.
Having released the captives Sir Tristram’s next concern was to discover what the intruders had done in the inn. This was soon seen. They had visited every bedchamber, wrenched drawers out of the chests, and turned their contents on to the floor, ripped the clothes out of the wardrobes, burst open the locks of Sir Hugh’s cloakbags, and tossed out their contents higgledy-piggledy.
Sir Hugh, when he beheld the havoc amongst his possessions, was rendered quite speechless. His sister, staring about her said: “But it is mad! This can have been no search for Ludovic! One would imagine they must have been common housebreakers, but there is my trinket-box broken open and my trinkets in a heap on my dressing-table. Have you lost anything, Hugh? I think I have not.”
“Have I—” Sir Hugh choked. “How the devil can I know whether I’ve lost anything in this confusion?”
Shield was looking frowningly round the disordered room.