‘Where is your secret cellar, Nye?’
He looked at her for a moment, and then replied: ‘You’ll be the ruin of me yet, ma’am. It’s under the floor of my store-room.’
Sir Hugh came back into the room presently. He gave it as his opinion that the Runners were either drunk or half-witted and said that he fancied they would have no more trouble with them. Upon his sister’s inquiring hopefully whether he had contrived to get rid of them, he replied somewhat severely that he had made no such attempt. He had merely defined their duties to them and warned them of the consequences of overstepping the limits of the law.
Both Nye and Miss Thane were dissatisfied, but there was no doubt that the irruption of Sir Hugh into the cellars had done much to damp the Runners’ ardour. His air of unquestionable authority, his knowledge of the law, and the fact of his being acquainted, apparently, with the magistrate in charge at Bow Street made them conscious of a great disinclination to fall foul of him again. Nor could they feel, when they had discussed the point between themselves, that a house which held so rigid a legal precisian was the place in which to look for a hardened criminal. They had failed on two occasions to find the least trace of Ludovic Lavenham; the landlord, who should be most nearly concerned, seemed to look upon their search with indifference; and had it not been for the suspicious circumstance of the abigail’s disappearance, they would have been much inclined to have returned to London. The valet’s words, however, had been explicit. They decided to prosecute a further search for a hidden cellar, and to keep the inn under observation in the hope of surprising Ludovic in an attempt to escape.
While this search, which entailed a patient tapping of the walls and the floor of the other cellars, was in progress, Nye seized the opportunity to visit Ludovic. He returned presently and reported that his lordship wouldn’t stay patient for long; in fact, was already threatening to come out of hiding and deal with the Runners in his own fashion.
‘Really, one cannot blame him,’ said Miss Thane judicially. ‘It is most tiresome of these people to continue to haunt us. It quite puts an end to our adventures.’
‘Yes, it does,’ agreed Eustacie. ‘Besides, I am afraid that Ludovic will catch cold in the cellar.’
‘Very true,’ said Miss Thane. ‘There is nothing for it: since Hugh has been so useless in the matter, we must get rid of the Runners ourselves.’
‘You have not seen them,’ said Eustacie bitterly. ‘They are the kind of men who stay, and stay, and stay.’
‘Yes, they seem to be a dogged couple, I must say. I am afraid it is your abigail who is at the root of their obstinacy.’ She broke off, and suddenly stood up. ‘My love, I believe I have hit upon a notion! Would you – now, would you say I was a strapping wench?’
‘Of certainty I should not say anything of the kind!’ replied Eustacie, indignant at the implication that she could be capable of such discourtesy. ‘You are very tall, bien entendu, but –’
‘Say no more!’ commanded Miss Thane. ‘I have a Plan!’
Ten
In pursuance of her plan, Miss Thane took care to remain out of sight of the two Runners for the rest of the day. She repaired to her own room, and sat there with an agreeable and blood-curdling romance, and from time to time Eustacie came up to report on the proceedings below-stairs.
Mr Stubbs took an early opportunity of subjecting Eustacie to a searching cross-examination, but from this she emerged triumphant. Having established a reputation for excitability, it was easy for her when in difficulties to become incoherent, and consequently (since she at once took refuge in the French tongue) unintelligible. At the end of half an hour’s questioning, Mr Stubbs, and not his victim, felt quite battered.
He and his companion spent a wearing and an unsatisfactory day. The cellar, besides being extremely cold, revealed no secrets, and a locked cupboard which Mr Peabody discovered in a dark corner of the passage leading to the kitchen was responsible for an unpleasant interlude with the landlord. As soon as Mr Peabody discovered the cupboard, which was partly hidden behind a pile of empty cases and baskets, he demanded the key of Nye. When the landlord, after a prolonged search in which Clem joined, announced that he had lost it, the hopes of both Runners rose high, and Mr Stubbs warned Nye that if he did not immediately produce the key, they would break in the door. Nye retorted that if damage were done to his property, he would lodge a complaint in Bow Street. He said so many times, and with such unwonted emphasis, that there was nothing in the cupboard but some spare crockery that both Runners became agog with suspicion, and resembled nothing so much as a couple of terriers at a rat-hole. They pulled all the empty cases away from the cupboard door, so that Miss Nye, coming out of the kitchen with a loaded tray, fell over them, smashing three plates and scattering a dish of cheese-cakes all down the narrow passage. Miss Nye, too deaf to hear Mr Peabody’s profuse apologies, spoke bitterly and at length on the subject of Men in general, and Bow Street Runners in particular, and when Mr Peabody, wit
h an unlucky idea of repairing the damage, collected all the dusty cheese-cakes together on the larger portion of the broken dish and handed them to her, she so far forgot herself as to box his ears.
The next thing to do, Miss Nye having retired, seething, to the kitchen, was to break down the door of the cupboard. Mr Stubbs thought that Mr Peabody should perform this office, and Mr Peabody considered Mr. Stubbs, who was of bulkier build, the man for the task. It was not until the argument had been settled that they discovered that the door opened outwards. When Mr Stubbs demanded of Nye why he had not divulged this fact at the outset, Nye replied that he did not wish them to break into that cupboard. He added that they would regret it if they did, a hint that made Mr Stubbs draw an unwieldy pistol from his pocket, and warn the supposed occupant of the cupboard that if he did not instantly give himself up, the lock would be blown out of the door. No answer being forthcoming, Mr Stubbs told his assistant to stand ready to Pounce, and, setting the muzzle of his pistol to the lock, pulled the trigger.
The noise made by the shot was quite deafening, and an ominous sound of breaking glass was heard faintly through its reverberations. Commanding Mr Peabody to cover the cupboard with his own pistol, Mr Stubbs seized the handle of the door and pulled it open, carefully keeping in the lee of it as he did so.
Mr Peabody lowered his gun. The cupboard was quite a shallow one, and contained nothing but shelves bearing glass and crockery. Such specimens as had come within the range of the shot had fared badly, a circumstance which roused Nye to immediate and loud-voiced wrath.
The explosion had been heard in other parts of the house, and even a dim echo of it by Miss Nye. She erupted once more from the kitchen, this time armed with the rolling-pin, at precisely the same moment as Sir Hugh Thane, eyeglass raised, loomed up at the other end of the passage.
‘What the devil’s toward?’ demanded Sir Hugh, with all the irritability of a man rudely awakened from his afternoon sleep.
Mr Stubbs tried to say that it was only a matter of his duty, but as Miss Nye, who had the peculiarly resonant voice of most deaf persons, chose at the same moment to announce that if she were given her choice, she would sooner have a pair of wild bulls in the house than two Runners, his explanation was not heard. Before he could repeat it, Nye had given Sir Hugh a brief and faithful account of the affair, particularly stressing his own part in it. ‘Over and over again I told them there was only some spare crockery in the cupboard, sir, but they wouldn’t listen to me. I hope I’m a patient man, but when it comes to them smashing four of my best glasses, not to mention spoiling a whole dish of cheese-cakes that was meant for your honour’s dinner, it’s more than what I can stand!’
‘It’s my belief,’ said Sir Hugh, looking fixedly at the unfortunate Runners, ‘that they’re drunk. Both of them.’
Mr Stubbs, who had not been offered any liquid refreshment at all, protested almost tearfully.
‘If you’re not drunk,’ said Sir Hugh, with finality, ‘you’re mad. I had my suspicions of it from the start.’
After this painful affair the Runners withdrew to watch the inn from the outside. While one kept an eye on the back door from the post-boy’s room, the other walked up and down in front of the inn. From time to time they met and exchanged places. They were occasionally rewarded by the sight either of Nye or of Clem peeping out of one or other of the doors as though to see whether the coast were clear. These signs of activity were sufficiently heartening to keep them at their posts. But it was miserable work for a raw February day, and had the house under observation been other than an inn, it was unlikely that a sense of duty would have triumphed. However, although Nye, according no more nice treatment to the Runners, might withhold all offers of brandy, he could not refuse to serve them as customers. The only pleasant moments they spent during the remainder of the afternoon were in the cosy tap-room, and even these were somewhat marred by the black looks cast at them by the landlord and the caustic comments he made on the drinking proclivities of law officers.
But when dusk fell they had their reward. It was Mr Stubbs’s turn to sit at the window of the stable-room, and it was consequently he who saw the back door open very gradually, and Eustacie look cautiously out into the yard. He knew it was she, because the candles had been lit inside the house, and she stood full in a beam of light.
Mr Stubbs drew back from the window and watched from behind the curtain. Behind him one post-boy sprawled in a chair by the fire, snoring rhythmically, and two others sat at the table playing cards.
Eustacie, having peered all round through the twilight, turned and beckoned to someone inside the house. Mr Stubbs, breathing heavily, reached for his stout ash-plant, and grasped it in his right hand. With his eyes starting almost out of his head, he saw a tall female figure, muffled from head to foot in a dark cloak, slip out of the house and glide round it towards the front, keeping well in the shadow of the wall. Eustacie softly closed the door; but Mr Stubbs did not wait to see this. In two bounds he had reached the yard, and was creeping after his quarry, taking care, however, to stay well behind until he could summon Mr Peabody to his assistance.