“If there had been a horse, I am persuaded we should have seen him ride off ventre a terre! ” mourned Miss Thane.
“But where is he going?” stammered Eustacie. “He seems to me suddenly to have become entirely mad!”
“He’s going to London,” replied Ludovic. “Don’t ask me why, for I haven’t a notion!”
“Well!” Eustacie turned quite pink with indignation. “It is too bad! This is our adventure, and he has left us without a word, and, in fact, is trying to take it away from us!”
“Men!” said Miss Thane, with a strong shudder.
Sir Hugh came wandering into the coffee-room at this moment, and asked what had become of Shield. When he heard that he had departed suddenly for London, he looked vaguely surprised, and complained that he seemed to be another of these people who spent their time popping in and out of the inn like jack-in-the-boxes. “It’s very unrestful,” he said severely. “No sooner do we get comfortably settled than either someone breaks into the house or one of you flies off the Lord knows where! There’s no peace at all. I shall go to bed.”
Nye came back just then and announced with a reluctant smile that Sir Tristram had succeeded in boarding the coach, in spite of all the guard’s representations to him that such high-handed proceedings were quite out of order. When asked by Ludovic if he knew what Sir Tristram meant to do, he replied in his stolid way: “I do not, sir, but you may depend upon it he’ll do what’s best. All he said to me was, I was to see you safe into your room. Myself, I’m having a truckle bed set up here, and it’ll be a mighty queer thing if anyone gets into the house without I’ll hear them. Not but what it don’t seem to me likely that anyone will try that game tonight. They’ll be waiting up at the Dower House till tomorrow in the hopes that Sam Barker will have found that plaguey ring of yours, sir.”
Miss Thane sighed. “How abominably flat it will seem to have no one breaking in any more! Really, I do not know how I am to support life once all these exciting happenings are at an end.”
Nye favoured her with a grim little smile. “By what I can make out, they ain’t ended yet, ma’am. We’ll do well to keep an eye lifted for trouble as soon as that Beau learns Barker ain’t found his quizzing-glass. I’ll be glad when I see Sir Tristram back, and that’s a fact. Now, Mr Ludovic, if you’re ready, I’ll help you get to bed. You’ll have to go down to the cellar again tomorrow, and the orders are I’m to see you into it before I unbar the doors in the morning. And what’s more, sir,” he added, forestalling Ludovic’s imminent expostulation, “I’ve orders to knock you out if you don’t go willing.”
This ferocious threat was not, however, put into execution. Ludovic descended into the cellar at an early hour on the following morning, and the rest of the party, with the exception of Sir Hugh, who was only interested in his breakfast, prepared themselves to meet whatever peril should lie in store for them. Eustacie, who thought that she had taken far too small a part in the adventure, was feeling somewhat aggrieved, Ludovic having refused without the least hesitation to lend her one of his pistols. “I never lend my pistols,” he said. “Besides, what do you want it for?”