‘Just what I was thinking myself !’ said Thane approvingly. ‘I’ve a strong notion there’s more in that cellar
than we’ve discovered. Why, I didn’t get hold of this Canary till yesterday!’
No one paid the slightest heed to this interruption. Sir Tristram said: ‘Very well, if you are determined, Ludovic, I don’t propose to waste time in trying to persuade you. Are you serious in thinking that the ring may be behind that panel?’
‘Of course I’m serious! It’s the very place for it. Where else would he be likely to put it?’
‘If I help you to get into the house, can you find the panel?’
‘I can try,’ said Ludovic hopefully.
‘Yes, no doubt,’ returned Shield, ‘but I have assisted in one aimless search for it, and I’ve no desire to repeat the experience.’
‘Once I’m in the house you can leave it to me,’ said Ludovic. ‘I’m bound to recognize the panelling when I see it.’
‘I hope you may,’ replied Shield. ‘The Beau spoke of going to town one day this week, and that should be our opportunity.’
Miss Thane coughed. ‘And how – the question just occurs to me, you know – shall you get into the Dower House, sir?’
‘We can break in through a window,’ answered Ludovic. ‘There’s no difficulty about that.’
She cast a demure glance up at Shield. ‘I am afraid you will never get Sir Tristram to agree to do anything so rash,’ she said.
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 never 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?’
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.
The circumstance of the Beau’s butler and valet having seen part at least of the search for the secret panel Sir Tristram found disturbing. That the Beau was already suspicious of Eustacie’s supposed groom was apparent; Sir Tristram believed that if he got wind of his cousins’ odd behaviour in his library he would be quite capable of putting two and two together and not only connecting Ludovic with the episode but realizing that he himself had at last fallen under suspicion. And if the Beau suspected that Ludovic, who knew the position of the priest’s hole, had come into Sussex to find his ring he would surely be very unlikely to leave it where it would certainly be looked for.
Some part of these forebodings Shield confided to Miss Thane, enjoining her to do all that lay in her power to keep Ludovic hidden from all eyes but their own.
‘Well, I will do my best,’ replied Sarah, ‘but it is not an easy task, Sir Tristram.’
‘I know it is not an easy task,’ he said impatiently, ‘but it is the only way in which you can assist us – which I understand you to be desirous of doing.’
She could not forbear giving him a look of reproach. ‘You must be forgetting what assistance I rendered you at the Dower House,’ she said.
‘No,’ replied Sir Tristram, at his dryest. ‘I was not forgetting that.’
Miss Thane rested her chin in her hand, pensively surveying him. ‘Will you tell me something, Sir Tristram?’
‘Perhaps. What is it?’