The Corinthian

by Джорджетт Хейер

  “You do not entertain any doubts of Lady Luttrell’s—er—receiving you as her prospective daughter-in-law?”

  “Oh no! She was always most kind to me! Only I did think that perhaps it would be better if I saw Piers first.”

  Sir Richard, who had so far allowed himself to be borne along resistless on the tide of this adventure, began to perceive that it would shortly be his duty to wait upon Lady Luttrell, and to give her an account of his dealings with Miss Creed. He glanced at that young lady, serenely finishing the last of the raspberries, and reflected, with a wry smile, that the task was not going to be an easy one.

  A servant came in to clear away the dishes presently. Pen at once engaged him in conversation and elicited the news that Sir Jasper Luttrell was away from home.

  “Oh! But not Mr Piers Luttrell?”

  “No, sir, I saw Mr Piers yesterday. Going to Keynsham, he was. I do hear as he has a young gentleman staying with him—a Lunnon gentleman, by all accounts.”

  “Oh!” Pen’s voice sounded rather blank. As soon as the man had gone away, she said: “Did you hear that, sir? It makes it just a little awkward, doesn’t it?”

  “Very awkward,” agreed Sir Richard. “It seems as though we have now to eliminate the gentleman from London.”

  “I wish we could. For I am sure my aunt will guess that I have come home, and if she finds me before I have found Piers, I am utterly undone.”

  “But she will not find you. She will only find me.”

  “Do you think you will be able to fob her off?”

  “Oh, I think so!” Sir Richard said negligently. “After all, she would scarcely expect you to be travelling in my company, would she? I hardly think she will demand to see my nephew.”

  “No, but what if she does?” asked Pen, having no such dependence on her aunt’s forbearing.

  Sir Richard smiled rather sardonically. “I am not, perhaps, the best person in the world of whom to make—ah—impertinent demands.”

  Pen’s eyes lit with sudden laughter. “Oh, I do hope you will talk to her like that, and look at her just so! And if she brings Fred with her, he will be quite overcome, I dare say, to meet you face to face. For you must know that he admires you excessively. He tries to tie his cravat in a Wyndham Fall, even!”

  “That, in itself, I find an impertinence,” said Sir Richard.

  She nodded, and lifted a hand to her own cravat. “What do you think of mine, sir?”

  “I have carefully refrained from thinking about it at all. Do you really wish to know?”

  “But I have arranged it just as you did!”

  “Good God!” said Sir Richard faintly. “My poor deluded child!”

  “You are teasing me! At least it was not ill enough tied to make you rip it off my neck as you did when you first met me!”

  “You will recall that we left the inn in haste this morning,” he explained.

  “I am persuaded that would not have weighed with you. But you put me in mind of a very important matter. You paid my reckoning there.”

  “Don’t let that worry you, I beg.”

  “I am determined to pay everything for myself,” Pen said firmly. “It would be a shocking piece of impropriety if I were to be beholden for money to a stranger.”

  “True. I had not thought of that.”

  She looked up with her sudden bright look of enquiry. “You are laughing at me again!”

  He showed her a perfectly grave countenance. “Laughing? I?”

  “I know very well you are. You may make your mouth prim, but I have noticed several times that you laugh with your eyes.”

  “Do I? I beg your pardon!”

  “Well, you need not, for I like it. I would not have come all this way with you if you had not had such smiling eyes. Isn’t it odd how one knows if one can trust a person, even if he is drunk?”

  “Very odd,” he said.

  She was hunting fruitlessly through her pockets. “Where can I have put my purse? Oh, I think I must have put it in my overcoat!”

  She had flung this garment down on a chair, upon first entering the parlour, and stepped across the room to feel in the capacious pockets.

  “Are you seriously proposing to count a few miserable shillings into my hand?”

  “Yes, indeed I am. Oh, here it is!” She pulled out a leather purse with a ring round its neck, from one pocket, stared at it, and exclaimed: “This is not my purse!”

  Sir Richard looked at it through his glass. “Isn’t it? It is certainly not mine, I assure you.”

  “It is very heavy. I wonder how it can have come into my pocket? Shall I open it?”

  “By all means. Are you quite sure it is not your own?”

  “Oh yes, quite!” She moved to the table, tugging at the ring. It was a little hard to pull off, but she managed it after one or two tugs, and shook out into the palm of her hand a diamond necklace that winked and glittered in the light of the candles.

  “Richard!” gasped Miss Creed, startled into forgetting the proprieties again. “Oh, I beg your pardon! But look!”

  “I am looking, and you have no need to beg my pardon. I have been calling you Pen these two days.”

  “Oh, that is another matter, because you are so much older!”

  He looked at her somewhat enigmatically. “Am I? Well, never mind. Do I understand that this gaud does not belong to you?”

  “Good gracious, no! I never saw it before in my life!”

  “Oh!” said Sir Richard. “Well, it is always agreeable to have problems solved. Now we know why your friend Mr Yarde had no fear of the Bow Street Runner.”

  Chapter 6

  Pen let the necklace slip through her fingers on to the table. “You mean that he stole it, and then—and then put it in my pocket? But, sir, this is terrible! Why—why, that Runner will next come after us!”

  “I think it more likely that Mr Yarde will come after us.”

  “Good God!” Pen said, quite pale with dismay. “What are we to do?”

  He smiled rather maliciously. “Didn’t you desire to meet with a real adventure?”

  “Yes, but—Oh, do not be absurd and teasing, I beg of you! What shall we do with the necklace? Couldn’t we throw it away somewhere, or hide it in a ditch?”

  “We could, of course, but it would surely be a trifle unfair to the owner?”

  “I don’t care about that,” confessed Pen. “It would be dreadful to be arrested for thieving, and I know we shall be!”

  “Oh, I trust not!” Sir Richard said. He straightened the necklace, where it lay on the table, and looked down at it with a slight frown creasing his brow. “Yes,” he said meditatively. “I have seen you before. Now, where have I seen you before?”

  “Do please put it away!” begged Pen. “Only think if a servant were to come into the room!”

  He picked it up. “My lamentable memory! Alas, my lamentable memory! Where, oh, where have I seen you?”

  “Dear sir, if Jimmy Yarde finds us, he will very likely cut our throats to get the necklace back!”

  “On the contrary, I have his word for it that he is opposed to all forms of violence.”

  “But when he does not discover it in my pocket, where he placed it—and now I come to think of it, he actually had my coat in his hands—he must guess that we have discovered it!”

  “Very likely he will, but I cannot see what profit there would be in his cutting our throats.” Sir Richard restored the necklace to its leather purse, and dropped it into his pocket. “We have now nothing to do but to await the arrival of Jimmy Yarde. Perhaps—who knows?—we may induce him to divulge the ownership of the necklace. Meanwhile, this parlour is very stuffy, and the night remarkably fine. Do you care to stroll out with me to admire the stars, brat?”

  “I suppose,” said Pen defiantly, “that you think I am very poor-spirited!”

  “Very,” agreed Sir Richard, his eyes glinting under their heavy lids.

  “I am not afraid of anything,” Pen announced.
“Merely, I am shocked?”

  “A waste of time, believe me. Are you coming?”

  “Yes, but it seems to me as though you have put a live coal in your pocket! What if some dishonest person were to steal it from you?”

  “Then we shall be freed from all responsibility. Come along!”

  She followed him out into the warm night. He appeared to have banished all thought of the necklace from his mind. He pointed various constellations out to her, and, drawing her hand through his arm, strolled with her down the street, past the last straggling cottages, into a lane redolent of meadowsweet.

  “I suppose I was poor-spirited,” Pen confided presently. “Shall you feel obliged to denounce poor Jimmy Yarde to the Runner?”

  “I hope,” said Sir Richard dryly, “that Mr Piers Luttrell is a gentleman of resolute character.”

  “Why?”

  “That he may be able to curb your somewhat reckless friendliness.”

  “Well, I haven’t seen him for five years, but it was always I who thought of things to do.”

  “That is what I feared. Where does he live?”

  “Oh, about two miles farther down this road! My home is on the other side of the village. Should you like to see it?”

  “Immensely, but not at the moment. We will now retrace our steps, for it is time that you were in bed.”

  “I shan’t sleep a wink.”

  “I trust that you are mistaken, my good child—in fact, I am reasonably certain that you are.”

  “And to add to everything,” said Pen, unheeding, “Piers has got a horrid man staying with him! I don’t know what is to be done.”

  “In the morning,” said Sir Richard soothingly, “we will attend to all these difficulties.”

  “In the morning, very likely, Aunt Almeria will have discovered me.”

  On this gloomy reflection, they retraced their steps to the inn. Its shuttered windows cast golden gleams out into the quiet street, several of them standing open to let in the cool night air. Just as they were about to pass one of them on their way to the inn door, a voice spoke inside the room, and to her astonishment, Sir Richard suddenly gripped Pen’s arm, and brought her to a dead halt. She started to enquire the reason for this sudden stop, but his hand across her mouth choked back the words.

  The voice from within the house said with a slight stammer: “You c-can’t come up to C-Crome Hall, I tell you! It’s b-bad enough as it is. G-Good God, man, if anyone were to see me sneaking off to meet you here they’d p-precious soon smell a rat!”

  A more robust voice answered: “Maybe I’ve been smelling rats myself, my young buck. Who was it foisted a partner on to me, eh? Were the pair of ye meaning to cheat Horace Trimble? Were ye, my bonny boy?”

  “You fool, you let yourself be b-bubbled!” the stammerer said furiously. “Then you c-come here—enough to ruin everything! I tell you I d-daren’t say! And don’t come up to C-Crome Hall again, damn you! I’ll m-meet you tomorrow, in the spinney down the road. “Sblood, he can’t have g-gone far! Why don’t you go to B-Bristol if he didn’t b-break back to London? Instead of c-coming here to insult me!”

  “I insult you! By the powers, that’s rich!” A full-throated laugh followed the words, and the sound of a chair being dashed back on a wooden floor.

  “Damn your impudence! You’ve b-bungled everything, and now you c-come blustering to me! You were to arrange everything! I was to l-leave all to you! Finely you’ve arranged it! And n-now you expect m-me to set all to rights!”

  “Softly, my buck! softly! You’re crowing mighty loud, but I did my part of the business all right and tight. It was the man you were so set on that bubbled me, and that makes me think, d’ye hear? It makes me think mighty hard. Maybe you’d better think too—and if you’ve a notion in your head that Horace Trimble’s a green ’un, get rid of it! See?”

  “Hush, for G-God’s sake! You d-don’t know who may be listening! I’ll m-meet you to-morrow, at eleven, if I c-can shake off y-young Luttrell. We must think what’s to be done!”

  A door opened and was hastily shut again. Sir Richard pulled Pen back into the shadows beyond the window, and, a moment later, a slight, cloaked figure came out of the inn, and strode swiftly away into the darkness.

  The warning pressure on Pen’s arm held her silent, although she was by this time agog with excitement. Sir Richard waited until the dwindling sound of footsteps had died in the distance, and then strolled on with Pen’s hand still tucked in his arm, past the open window to the inn-door. Not until they stood in their own parlour again did Pen allow herself to speak, but as soon as the door was shut behind them, she exclaimed: “What did it mean? He spoke of “Young Luttrell”—did you hear him? It must be the man who is staying with him! But who was the other man, and what were they talking about?”

  Sir Richard did not appear to be attending very closely. He was standing by the table, a frown between his eyes, and his mouth rather grim. Suddenly his gaze shifted to Pen’s face, but what he said seemed to her incomprehensible. “Of course!” he muttered softly. “So that was it!”

  “Oh, do tell me!” begged Pen. “What was it, and why did you stop when you heard the stammering-man speak? Do you—is it possible that you know him?”

  “Very well indeed,” replied Sir Richard.

  “Good heavens! And it is he who is visiting Piers! Dear sir, does it seem to you that everything is becoming a trifle awkward?”

  “Extremely so,” said Sir Richard.

  “Well, that is what I thought,” said Pen. “First we are saddled with a stolen necklace, and now we discover that a friend of yours is staying with Piers!”

  “Oh no, we do not!” said Sir Richard. “That young gentleman is no friend of mine! Nor, I fancy, is his presence in this neighbourhood unconnected with that necklace. If I do not mistake, Pen, we have become enmeshed in a plot from which it will take all my ingenuity to extricate us.”

  “I have ingenuity too,” said Miss Creed, affronted.

  “Not a scrap,” responded Sir Richard calmly.

  She swallowed this, saying in a small voice: “Very well, if I haven’t, I haven’t, but I wish you will explain.”

  “I feel sure you do,” said Sir Richard: “But the truth is that I cannot. Not only does it appear to me to be a matter of uncommon delicacy, but it is also for the moment—a little obscure.”

  She sighed. “It does not seem fair, because it was I who found the necklace, after all! Who is the stammering-man? You may just as well tell me that, because Piers will, you know.”

  “Certainly. The stammering-man is the Honourable Beverley Brandon.”

  “Oh! I don’t know him,” said Pen, rather disappointed.

  “You are to be congratulated.”

  “Is he an enemy of yours?”

  “An enemy! No!”

  “Well, you seem to dislike him very cordially.”

  “That does not make him my enemy. To be exact, he is the younger brother of the lady to whom I was to have been betrothed.”

  Pen looked aghast. “Good God, sir, can he have come in search of you?”

  “No, nothing of that kind. Indeed, Pen, I can’t tell you more, for the rest is conjecture.” He met her disappointed look, and smiled down at her, gently pinching her chin. “Poor Pen! Forgive me!”

  A little colour stole up to the roots of her hair. “I do not mean to tease you. I expect you will tell me all about it when—when it isn’t conjecture.”

  “I expect I shall,” he agreed. “But that will not be tonight, so be off with you to bed, child!”

  She went, but was back again a few minutes later, round-eyed and breathless. “Richard! He has found us! I have seen him! I am certain it was he!”

  “Who?” he asked.

  “Jimmy Yarde, of course! It was so hot in my room that I drew back the curtains to open the window, and the moon was so bright that I stood looking out for a minute. And there he was, directly below me! I could not mistake. And the worst is that I fea
r he saw me, for he drew back at once into the shadow of the house!”

  “Did he indeed?” There was a gleam in Sir Richard’s eye. “Well, he is here sooner than I expected. A resourceful gentleman, Mr Jimmy Yarde!”

  “But what are we going to do? I am not in the least afraid, but I should like to be told what you wish me to do!”

  “That is very easily done. I wish you to exchange bedchambers with me. Show yourself again at the window of your own room, if you like, but on no account pull back the blinds in mine. I have a very earnest desire to meet Mr Jimmy Yarde.”

  Her dimples peeped. “I see! like the fairy-story! “Oh, Grandma, what big teeth you have!” What an adventure we are having! But you will take care, won’t you, sir?”

  “I will.”

  “And you will tell me all about it afterwards?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “If you don’t,” said Pen, with deep feeling, “it will be the most unjust thing imaginable!”

  He laughed, and, seeing that there was no more to be got out of him, she went away again.

  An hour later, the candlelight vanished from the upper room with the open casements and the undrawn blinds, but it was two hours before Mr Yarde’s head appeared above the window-sill, and not a light shone in the village.

  The moon, sailing across a sky of deepest sapphire, cast a bar of silver across the floor of the chamber, but left the four-poster bed in shadow. The ascent, by way of the porch-roof, a stout drain-pipe, and a gnarled branch of wistaria, had been easy, but Mr Yarde paused before swinging a leg over the sill. His eye, trying to penetrate the darkness, encountered a drab driving-coat, hanging over the back of a chair placed full in the shaft of moonlight. He knew that coat, and a tiny sigh escaped him. He hoisted himself up, and noiselessly slid into the room. He had left his shoes below, and his stockinged-feet made no sound on the floor, as he crept across it.

  But there was no heavy leather sack-purse in the pocket of the driving-coat.

  He was disappointed, but he had been prepared for disappointment. He stole out of the moonlight to the bedside, listening to the sound of quiet breathing. No tremor disturbed its regularity, and after listening to it for a few minutes, he bent, and began cautiously to slide his hand under the dimly-seen pillow. The other, his right, grasped a muffler, which could be readily clapped over a mouth opened to utter a startled cry.