The Unknown Ajax

by Georgette Heyer

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,’ said Hugo. ‘He’d as lief you didn’t: he doesn’t want a fuss made, you see!’

  ‘You would do better to remain where you are, Aurelia!’ said his lordship, his voice a little strained. ‘Depend upon it, he’s done something foolish, which he doesn’t wish us to know! Elvira, I wish you will go back to bed, instead of standing there like a stock!’

  ‘I will not go back to bed!’ declared Mrs Darracott, with startling resolution. ‘If this insulting young man is determined to see my son, he shall see him! I will take you to him myself, sir, and when you have seen that he is precisely where I told you he was – in bed and asleep! – I shall expect an apology from you! An abject apology! Come with me, if you please!’

  ‘Nay, ma’am, I’ll take him!’ offered Hugo hastily.

  ‘Thank you, I prefer to take him myself!’ she said.

  Ottershaw, glancing uncertainly from one face to the other, encountered yet another of the Major’s fulminating looks. This time it was accompanied by an unmistakeable sign to him not to go with Mrs Darracott. He began to feel baffled. He had not expected to find that Major Darracott was in any way entangled in Richmond’s crimes, but he had very soon realized his mistake. He was a good deal shocked, even sorry, for it was abundantly plain that the Major was desperately trying to fob him off. Then, just as he had decided that the Major was recklessly aiding Richmond to escape from his clutch, it seemed as if it was not from him that this large and somewhat clumsy intriguer was trying to conceal something, but from Lady Aurelia, and Mrs Darracott. That had puzzled Ottershaw; the signal that had just been made he found quite incomprehensible, for it almost seemed as if what the Major was trying to conceal could scarcely have anything to do with Richmond. Frowning, he stood listening to the Major’s efforts to get rid of Mrs Darracott. It suddenly occurred to him that perhaps he was only anxious to spare her the shock of witnessing her son’s inevitable exposure. If that were so, Ottershaw was very willing to further the scheme. He said: ‘If you will take me to Mr Darracott’s room, sir, there is no need for Mrs Darracott to come with us.’

  ‘That is for me to decide!’ said Mrs Darracott, flushed and very bright-eyed. ‘I, and no one else, will take you, sir!’

  The Major gave it up. ‘Nay, he’s not in his room!’ he disclosed. ‘He’s downstairs.’ Looking extremely guilty, he said: ‘Seemingly, my grandfather ordered him off to bed, but – well, he came downstairs instead! We’ve been playing piquet.’

  ‘Major Darracott, do you tell me that he has been with you all the evening?’ demanded Ottershaw. ‘Take care how you answer me, sir! I have very good reason to suppose that Mr Richmond Darracott, until less than an hour ago, was not in the house at all!’

  ‘Nay, you can’t have,’ replied the Major. ‘He’s been with me ever since he was sent off to bed – and, what’s more, he’d no thought of leaving the house, for he’s having such a run of luck as I never saw! Pretty well ruined me, the young devil!’

  ‘Well!’ exclaimed Mrs Darracott. ‘I must say, Hugo, I think it was very wrong of you to encourage Richmond to sit up late, when you know how bad it is for him! And as for gambling with him– Well, I shall say nothing now, except that I didn’t think it of you!’ Her voice broke, and tears started to her eyes as she directed a look of wounded reproach at Hugo. He hung his head, looking very like an overgrown schoolboy detected in crime. Mrs Darracott, the top of whose head perhaps reached the middle of his chest, said with cold severity: ‘You will now oblige me by going downstairs again, and desiring Richmond to come to me here immediately!’

  The expression of dismay on Hugo’s face lured Lieutenant Ottershaw into banishing doubt. Certainty betrayed him into abandoning the dogged deliberation which made him formidable; the light of triumph was in his eye as he said, on a challenging note: ‘Well, sir?’

  ‘Nay, I can’t do that! I mean – I don’t think –’ Hugo stammered, looking wildly round for succour. ‘Well, – well, for one thing – happen he won’t care to leave our Claud!’ His guileless blue eyes, meeting Ottershaw’s in seeming horror, took due note of the fact that that dangerously levelheaded young man had at last allowed himself to be coaxed into an unaccustomed state of cocksure excitement. He said, as one driven from his last defensive position: ‘The fact is – he’s just a bit on the go!’

  ‘Do you mean that Richmond is drunk?’ cried Mrs Darracott. ‘Oh, how could you? I thought you were so kind, and good, and trustworthy!’

  ‘In that case, Major Darracott, I will go to him!’ said Ottershaw. ‘You are sure, no doubt, that Mr Richmond Darracott is drunk, and not wounded?’

  ‘No, no, he’s not –’ Hugo checked himself suddenly, an arrested look on his face. ‘Now, wait a minute!’ he said. ‘Wounded, did you say?’

  ‘The Lieutenant, coz,’ interposed Vincent, ‘was good enough to inform us, before you came upstairs, that Richmond had been shot by one of the men under his command, not an hour since. He appears – perhaps fortunately! – to have been misinformed, but I am strongly of the opinion that an enquiry into the incident is called for.’

  The Sergeant stared woodenly before him. ‘Upon being commanded to halt, in the name of the King, the pris – gentle – the individual in question, instead of obeying –’

  ‘Shot?’ interrupted Hugo. He turned his eyes towards Ottershaw. ‘In the wood, up yonder was it?’

  ‘Yes, sir, in the wood, up yonder! He was challenged –’

  ‘Were there – two men posted in the wood?’ asked Hugo, in a very odd voice.

  The Lieutenant stared at him, suspicious and puzzled. ‘Yes, sir, two dragoons! They –’

  ‘And was – Mr Richmond Darracott – wearing a mask, by any chance?’ enquired Hugo, a look of unholy awe in his eyes.

  ‘His face was blackened, sir!’

  ‘Well, happen it may have looked like that,’ said Hugo, very unsteadily, ‘but it was only – a sock, with a c-couple of holes c-cut in it!’

  At this point his command over himself deserted him, and, to the utter bewilderment both of Ottershaw and of Sergeant Hoole, he went off into a roar of laughter. Feeling much the same sensations as a man might have felt who, believing the ice to be solid, suddenly found it cracking all round his feet, Ottershaw saw the Major helpless in the grip of his mirth: slapping his thigh; trying to speak, and failing to utter more than two unintelligible words before becoming overpowered again; mopping his eyes; and finally collapsing into a large armchair, as though too weak with laughter to remain on his feet.

  Watching this masterly performance with every sign of hauteur, Vincent said, as soon as his cousin’s paroxysms began to abate: ‘I think, my dear Mama, that, if Richmond’s condition in any way approaches Hugo’s, you would perhaps be well advised – and my aunt too! – not to come down to the morning-room.’

  She replied at once: ‘You need be under no apprehension: I have the greatest dislike of inebriety! Unless you should find your brother in a worse case than I consider probable, I have no intention of coming – or, if I can prevail upon her to listen to me, of allowing your aunt to do so either!’

  ‘Your good sense, Mama, is always to be relied upon!’ he said, with his glinting smile, and graceful bow. His glance flickered to his grandfather’s face, set like a mask, its harsh lines deeply graven, the fierce eyes fixed in a rather dreadful stare on Hugo. Vincent could only hope that the silence which had fallen upon him would not strike the Lieutenant as strangely unlike him.

  The Lieutenant’s attention was concentrated on Hugo, who managed to utter, in choked but remorseful accents: ‘Ee, I’m sorry! Nay, it’s no laughing matter, but – oh, Lord, it’s better nor like! far, far better nor like!’ He gave a final wipe to eyes that so much rubbing had artistically reddened, and looked at Ottershaw. He gave a gasp, and said imploringly: ‘Don’t look at me like that, lad, or you’ll start me off again! You co
me with me, and I’ll sh-show you – what you’ve done!’ He got up, now grinning broadly. ‘Happen you’d better come too, Vincent, but there’s no need for anyone else!’ He saw Lord Darracott rise stiffly to his feet, and said: ‘Nay, stay where you are, sir! Richmond will be fit to murder me if he knows I let it out to you that he’s had a cup too much!’

  ‘I am coming!’ said his lordship gratingly, and, with a repelling gesture, stalked towards the door.

  ‘Yes, and so am I!’ declared Mrs Darracott.

  ‘One moment, Elvira!’ interposed Lady Aurelia, firmly grasping her wrist.

  ‘Phew!’ breathed Hugo, as he left the drawing-room in the wake of the Sergeant, and closed the door behind him. ‘It’s to be hoped your mother will be able to hold her, Vincent!’

  ‘My mother is no stupider than the rest of us, I assure you. Is he badly castaway?’

  ‘Well, he was in fairly prime and plummy order when I came away,’ confessed Hugo. ‘I wish you will make a push to head his lordship off! I’d as lief not get the boy into trouble.’

  ‘I’ll try, but it’s unlikely I shall succeed,’ Vincent replied.

  As he ran lightly downstairs, after his grandfather, Hugo laid a restraining hand on the Lieutenant’s shoulder, saying ‘Wait! Give him a chance to divert the old gentleman! It’ll be the better for you if you do, I can tell you. Eh, lad, I can’t but laugh about it, but this is a bad business!’

  The Sergeant silently agreed with him. It had seemed at one moment as though Lieutenant Ottershaw’s conviction was about to be proved, but the Major’s laughter had killed that hope stone-dead. No man, in Sergeant Hoole’s opinion, who stood on the brink of exposure as an aider and abettor of criminals could go off into a fit of laughter like that: it stood to reason he couldn’t, any more than he could talk to his cousin, like he’d just done, as though it didn’t matter a rush who might be listening. Which was a sure sign it didn’t, thought the Sergeant, hoping that this jingle-brained Riding-officer he’d been sent to assist wasn’t going to make bad worse, and that the haughty young gentleman would succeed in keeping his lordship away.

  Lieutenant Ottershaw had not so entirely abandoned hope as the Sergeant, but his state was the more to be pitied, since he did not know what to think, and much less what to do. Until the arrival of Major Darracott upon the scene, everything had gone according to his expectation, with Richmond’s family on the defensive; incredulous, belligerent, trying to overawe him, but powerless to divert him from his stern purpose. He had known himself to be master of that situation, for although it might be difficult to handle, it was perfectly straightforward. But within a very few minutes of the Major’s entrance it had undergone a bewildering change, always eluding his grasp. He had an uneasy feeling that he had been lured away from the road into a maze; yet he could not, trying to think it over, see at what point he had lost his way; or reasonably blame the Major for that loss. The Major had certainly attempted by every means he could think of to evade the necessity of producing Richmond, but his efforts had been extremely clumsy, causing him to flounder from one position to another, and finally to capitulate. Or so it had seemed, until the moment of his discomfiture, when, instead of being dejected, he had burst into a roar of laughter. Ottershaw, already puzzled by the contradictory nature of his antics, had suffered a shock from which he had not yet recovered. He needed time in which to regain his balance, and to think the whole episode over coolly and carefully; and he felt that he was being rushed. But again it was impossible to blame the Major. Not that leisurely giant but himself had been the one to insist that he should instantly be taken to Richmond. His brain was in a turmoil, with a nagging, unwelcome thought constantly recurring: if Richmond really was drunk, and not wounded, there was nothing in the least contradictory in the Major’s behaviour. He had all the time been trying to shield Richmond from his mother and his grandfather, not from the avenging hand of the law. This explanation of conduct which had seemed extraordinary was so simple, and so instantly unravelled every knot in the tangled skein, that the Lieutenant was obliged to cling doggedly to the only certainty remaining: Richmond had been wounded, and no matter what the Major did he could not conceal the damning evidence against him.

  The Lieutenant said abruptly, as he began to descend the stairs beside Major Darracott: ‘It will perhaps save time, sir, if I inform you that I have seen with my own eyes the blood on the steps leading to one of the side-doors into this house.’

  His eyes were fixed on the Major’s profile, on the watch for the tiniest sign of dismay. The Major grinned. ‘I don’t know about the steps, but you ought to see the pantry!’ he replied. The grin faded, and he shook his head. ‘Nay, it’s all very well, but you’ve made a rare mess of it, lad! The Lord only knows what the afterclap may be now, for there’s more to it than you’ve any idea of – or I either, think on, at the start of it. I tried my best to tip you the wink, but not a bit of heed would you pay to me!’ He turned his head, to look down at the Lieutenant, saying, with a quizzical smile: ‘You know, lad, I’d have something to say to any subaltern of mine who charged tail over top into a quagmire the way you do! Happen we might have hushed it up, between the pair of us, if I could have brought you to your bearing. Eh, I don’t know, though, for it’s a reet scaddle, and how to button it up is beyond me!’ He sighed ruefully. ‘I could have kept his lordship from finding our Richmond as drunk as a drum, at any hand, if you hadn’t insisted on seeing him, you dafthead! You may say it’s my blame for letting him get shot in the neck, but the fact is I was dipping rather deep myself. Well, I daresay you know how it is, when you’re playing cards! you don’t pay any heed to aught else. It’s my belief it was as much excitement as brandy that made him top-heavy, too,’ he added reflectively, ‘but it’s likely to be the devil of a task to persuade his lordship to believe that. And that’s what worries me most, because it’s taken the lad the Lord knows how long to coax my grandfather to let him have his way, and join the army, and if he flies into one of his passions there’s no saying that he won’t take back his consent, for it went clean against the pluck with him to give it.’

  ‘Going into the army!’ exclaimed the Lieutenant, thunderstruck.

  ‘Seventh Hussars,’ said Hugo. ‘He’s been mad after a cavalry regiment pretty well since he was breeched, seemingly. Well, that’s no concern of yours, of course – except that if he gets a nay-say from his lordship now he’ll be so crazy with disappointment that happen he really will take to smuggling!’

  As far as the Sergeant was concerned, that settled it. Descending the stairs behind his superiors, he had absorbed the Major’s ruminations with a steadily growing conviction that Mr Ottershaw had allowed himself to be properly slumguzzled – which, now he came to think of it, was what he’d thought in the first place, because whoever heard of a high-up young gentleman leading a gang of smugglers? There was no sense to it; but these Riding-officers got so that they took to thinking anyone might be a smuggler. The Sergeant wondered uneasily what dire consequences would befall him, if the terrible old lord came the ugly. It wasn’t his blame that they’d been hunting an elephant in the moon; on the other hand, no one was going to blame Mr Ottershaw for what was done by a bottleheaded, addle-brained recruit too raw to be trusted with a pop-gun, let alone a carbine. As far as Sergeant Hoole could see, the only hope of bringing themselves home lay in this lumping great Major, who was the only one of these Darracotts who seemed to be kindly disposed. And ten to one, thought the Sergeant bitterly, Mr Ottershaw would set up his back next.

  Reaching the foot of the stairs, after setting a leisurely pace that gave Vincent time to put his grandfather in possession of enough of the truth to prevent his bringing all to ruin by some unwitting blunder, Hugo led the way across the great hall to the corridor that gave access to the morning-room, and to the servants’ quarters beyond it. Here Vincent had overtaken his lordship, and rapidly explained the situation to him. As soon as the rest of th
e party appeared, he said: ‘Very well, sir: as you wish!’ and, turning, grimaced, for the benefit of Lieutenant Ottershaw, and slightly shrugged his shoulders.

  Hugo would have much preferred to be rid of Lord Darracott, but since his lordship was obviously determined to take part in the approaching scene he could only make the best of it, and hope that Ottershaw was too slightly acquainted with him to think his silence remarkable, or to recognize the stricken look behind the fierceness in his eyes. He said cheerfully, his own eyes twinkling: ‘We’ve got him in here, this smuggler of yours. It’s a fortunate thing he’s too weak from loss of blood to be dangerous, for it would take a battalion to hold him othergates! He’s a terrible ruffian!’

  With these encouraging words, he walked into the room, and held the door wide for his companions. Over his shoulder, he said, with his deep chuckle: ‘Pluck up, lad! It was all a mistake, and not Ned Ackleton who shot you. It was Excisemen – and here they are!’

  Twenty

  The scene which met the Lieutenant’s suspicious but startled gaze was lurid enough to astonish even Hugo, who had had no time to do more than sketch for his players the nature of the rôles allotted to them, before he was obliged to leave them. The stage had then been by no means set; but one swift glance round the room now was enough to satisfy him that his subordinates had more than obeyed his rapid instructions: they had surpassed themselves.

  Not the most uninformed of observers could have failed to realize that something must have happened to interrupt two persons in the middle of a game of cards, even if the obvious cause of the interruption had been hidden from sight. Richmond was seated at the table in the middle of the room, with his cards stacked and laid face downwards before him; but opposite him a hand had been flung down in such careless haste that two of the cards which composed it had fallen on to the floor. A silver tray, with the stopper of the decanter lying in it, had been placed on the table; and beside Richmond a litter of bank-notes and scraps of paper bore eloquent testimony to the run of luck he must have been enjoying. The candles in the wall-sconces behind him had been lit, but since the branched candelabra, which must presumably have stood on the table, had been seized, and set down on a chair by the sofa, to provide Anthea and Polyphant with more light for their activities, no direct light fell upon his face. Nearly all the available light was, in fact, concentrated round the sofa, on which, supported by Polyphant, standing behind him, reclined Claud, the focal point of the scene.