The Unknown Ajax

by Джорджетт Хейер

  “Beautiful, sir!” said Polyphant, carefully snipping off the dangling end of the plaster. “A really prime piece of work, if I may be permitted to say so!”

  “We’ll hope it may hold, anyhow. If it doesn’t, we shall all of us end in Newgate!”

  “That,” said Vincent acidly, “is extremely likely unless we are able to think what next is to be done! If you can drag your mind away from this damned young scoundrel’s wound, perhaps you’ll apply it to that problem, for it is quite beyond my poor capabilities to solve!”

  “Then happen you’ll find that Ajax shall cope the best!”retorted the Major, with a grin. “Now then! we must bustle about a little. The dragoons will have gone to report to Ottershaw, but for aught we know they may not have had to go far, so just do what I’m going to tell you, every one of you, without asking why, or arguing about it! Mrs. Flitwick, I want you out of the way until we’re rid of Excisemen: the fewer people to be mixed up in this the better. So you may stay out of sight, and don’t say a word to anyone about what’s been happening! Chollacombe, I want a couple of packs of cards, another brandy-glass, and the clothes you stripped from Mr. Richmond—yes, I mean that, so off with you! Anthea, love, slip away to the billiard-room, and fetch Claud’s and my coats, will you? Nay, pluck up, lass! We’re going to save Richmond’s groats, never you fear!”

  She nodded, trying to smile, and hurried away.

  “Claud,” said the Major, a twinkle in his eye, “I want every stitch of clothing you’ve got on, except your drawers! Go on, lad, don’t stand gauping at me, or we’ll have Anthea back before we’ve made you respectable again! It’s you that got fired at, not Richmond, and I want your clothes for him!”

  “Here, I say, no!” exclaimed Claud, appalled. “If you think I’ll put on Richmond’s clothes—dash it, even if they weren’t soaked in blood I wouldn’t like it, and—”

  “Get your shoes off, and be quick about it!” interrupted Vincent, advancing upon him. “If you don’t, I’ll knock you out and strip you myself! Hurry!”

  The look on his face was so alarming that Claud sat down hastily to untie his exquisitely ironed shoestrings. No sooner were his shoes and striped socks off than Vincent jerked him to his feet, ripped off his neckcloth, and began to unbutton his waistcoat, commanding him to do the same to his breeches. Over his shoulder, he said: “I make you my compliments, Hugo! But why was Claud skulking in the wood? I see that no Exciseman in his right senses could possibly think him engaged in smuggling, but we must have some reason to account for his running away when challenged!”

  “Nay, lay!” said the Major reproachfully, tossing Richmond’s rent and blood-soaked shirt on to the floor. “You’ve got a short memory! He thought it was the Ackletons, lying in wait to rend him limb from limb, of course! Happen it gave him such a fright that he didn’t hear just what they were shouting—nothing about halting in the name of the King, for instance!—and when they took to firing at him, what could he do but run for his life? Let alone he’d no weapon, he was in a very ticklish situation—having been trysting with that prime article of virtue the Ackletons forbade him ever to look at again!”

  “I’ll be damned if I have anything to do with a story like that!” declared Claud indignantly. “Why, I’d never be able to show my face here again!”

  “Why should you want to?” said Vincent, who was shaking with laughter. “It’s magnificent, Hugo! Here, Polyphant, take these, and give me Mr. Richmond’s! Claud, there’s no need to look at Richmond’s breeches: all you have to do is to step into them: I’ll even pull ’em up for you! They’ll be a tight fit, but you won’t have to sit down in them: we’ll stretch you out on the sofa!”

  Claud, bullied and hustled into his cousin’s obnoxious breeches, was so much incensed that he became quite scarlet in the face as he informed his relatives, in impassioned accents, that nothing would induce him to take part in the proposed drama. “I ain’t handy with my fists, and I don’t like turn-ups, but I ain’t a rum ’un, and I’m damned if I’ll have you two cooking up a story like that about me! Not if you were to offer me a fortune!”

  “No one will offer you a fortune, brother,” said Vincent, pushing him on to the sofa, and picking up one of Richmond’s boots. “Pull this on!—all you will be offered, if you don’t do as you’re bid, is a facer heavy enough to send you to sleep while we exhibit you to the Excisemen.”

  “Think, lad!” Hugo interposed. “If we’re to hoax Ottershaw, we must have a tale that’s got some likelihood to it, for he’ll not swallow it readily!”

  “Likelihood?”gasped Claud. “Well, of all the—”

  “Nay, how should he know whether you’re a right one, or a pudding-heart?” said Hugo hastily. “What, you may depend upon it, he does know, is what happened to Ackleton, the night he came up here, and the silly way he’s been blustering ever since about what he’ll do to you, if he gets the chance. Knowing that much for truth, he’ll find it hard to disbelieve the rest surely enough to put our tale to the test—for he knows well that if he were to make a false accusation against Richmond there’d be the devil to pay, and no pitch hot for him!” He paused, and then, as Claud still looked mutinous, added: “It’s no matter if you’re made to look foolish, Claud. If we can’t conceal the truth from Ottershaw, it’s not only Richmond who’ll be laid low, but every Darracott amongst us.”

  Richmond said suddenly: “No! You can’t ask Claud to do that! I wouldn’t—I couldn’t!”

  “That we believe!” retorted Vincent. “It is possible, however, that Claud cares more for our name than you have given us reason to suppose you do! Come, Claud! what odds does it make to you if a parcel of hicks laughs at you?” He added, rather unfortunately: “They’ve been laughing at you for years!”

  The astonished gratification with which Claud had listened to the first part of this speech changed rapidly. A mulish look came into his face, and he was just about to deliver himself of a flat refusal to sacrifice himself for the sake of any family of which his brother was a member, when Polyphant, engaged in tieing the neckcloth round Richmond’s neck, saved the situation by saying: “If I may take the liberty, Mr. Vincent, I venture to say—with the greatest deference, sir!—that Mr. Claud is equal to anything!”

  Claud wavered. Anthea came back into the room at that moment, and was not unnaturally staggered to find him sketchily attired in her brother’s blood-stained breeches, and topboots. The reason for this peculiar transformation was briefly explained to her, whereupon she instantly threw herself into the obviously necessary task of persuading Claud to immolate himself. Without allowing him an opportunity to speak, she thanked him with so much warmth as to make it extremely hard for him to disabuse her mind of its apparent conviction that he had consented. By the time she had marvelled at his nobility, prophesied the reverence with which he would for ever afterwards be regarded by them all, and declared her positive belief in his ability to carry the thing off to admiration, Claud had become so far reconciled to the scheme as to raise no further objection to it.

  Polyphant, who had come into his own with the necessity of arraying Richmond in his borrowed plumage, then called upon the Major to assist him in the task of getting him into Claud’s coat. It was plain that he was revelling in the affair, but only he knew the cause of his elation; and none could have guessed that while his nimble fingers coped with shoestrings, buttons, and neckcloth, his mind was filled with the vision of himself triumphant beyond his wildest dreams over the odious Crimplesham. Crimplesham might never learn just what had taken place on this fateful evening, but Crimplesham would know, like everyone else, that there had been very strange goings-on from which he had been rigorously excluded, with such insignificant persons as the footmen, while his rival had been in the thick of it, the trusted confidant of even his own master. And if Crimplesham tried to discover what had happened, Polyphant had every intention of proving himself worthy of the trust reposed in him by replying that his lips were sealed, which would undoubtedly infur
iate Crimplesham very much indeed.

  “Now, sir!” he said, with the authority of one who knew himself to be an expert, “if you will be so obliging as to do precisely what I shall request you to do, I trust I shall be able to manage to put Mr. Richmond into both waistcoat and coat—you will observe that I have placed one within the other—without causing him to feel too much discomfort, and without disturbing your handiwork, sir. From you, Mr. Richmond, I wish for no assistance at all. Do not attempt, I most earnestly implore you, to shrug your sound shoulder into the garment! You will please to leave it entirely to me. Fortunately, you are of slighter build than Mr. Claud: indeed, we must hope that the Riding-officer is not a person of ton (if you will pardon the jest!), and so will not think your coat sadly ill-fitting, must we not?”

  Talking chattily all the time, he began to ease Richmond into the coat. Claud, watching him with a jaundiced eye, expressed his conviction that he was going about it in quite the wrong way; but the Major meekly obeyed such instructions as he was given; and by the time Chollacombe came into the room the difficult feat had been performed with a competence that drew a Well-done! from the Major. Polyphant bowed his acknowledgment, saying that he would now slip upstairs to collect one of Mr. Claud’s black silk socks. “For it occurs to me, sir, that a few snips with the scissors will make it a tolerable mask, and we must not forget, must we, that Mr. Richmond’s face was blackened? So you will pardon me if I now absent myself for a very few moments!”

  He then departed, sped on his way by a bitter recommendation from his master to ruin a few more of his garments while he was about it.

  The Major picked up his own coat, and had just shrugged himself into it when Anthea, whose hearing was very acute, caught the sound of hoof-beats, and said sharply: “Listen! Hugo, they’re coming!”

  “Well, we could have done with another few minutes, but happen we’ll make shift without them,” he responded calmly. “Vincent, go up to the drawing-room before they start knocking on the door—or, if his lordship’s come down to the library, join him there! You’ve been writing letters—anything you choose!—and you’ve not been next or nigh the rest of us. Keep Ottershaw brangling with the old gentleman: that oughtn’t to be difficult! I must see Claud bandaged up, and the scene well set, and then I’ll part, but make me tell you why I want to speak privately to you! Quick, man! Here they are!” He fairly thrust Vincent from the room, and turned to Chollacombe. “Not in too much of a hurry to open the door to them!” he warned him. “You’re not expecting any such visitors, so you may look as surprised as you please, but take care you look affronted too! Treat them just as you would any vulgar person who came here asking impertinent questions—not that I think they’ll ask you any. All I want of you is that you shall bear it in mind that Mr. Claud has met with an accident, which is no business of any Exciseman, and that Mr. Richmond and I have been playing cards here all the evening. Don’t take them straight to his lordship: shut them into the Green Saloon, and say you’ll inform his lordship! Mr. Vincent will take care he don’t refuse to see them. Once you’ve taken them to the drawing-room, don’t show yourself again!”

  “Have no fear, sir!” said Chollacombe. “I trust I know how to depress the pretensions of such persons who know no better than to hammer on the door of a gentleman’s residence in that ill-mannered fashion!”

  The knocker had certainly been somewhat violently plied, and the effect of this solecism on Chollacombe was all that the Major could have desired. At one moment a very shaken old man, he stiffened at the next into the personification of outraged dignity, and, with a slow and stately tread, left the room, and proceeded down the broad passage that led through an archway into the central hall.

  Hugo shut the door, and cast a swift, measuring look at Richmond, seated at the table, and resting his left arm on it. Richmond was very pale, but his eyes were alert, and he met his cousin’s searching glance with a confident smile. “I shall do!” he said.

  “Ay, you’ll do, you scamp! Give him some more brandy, love!” said the Major, picking up the bowl of reddened water, and setting it down on the floor beside the sofa.

  “I shall be foxed if I drink any more,” Richmond warned him.

  “I want you to be foxed, lad—just about half-sprung! Not so drunk that you’ll say what you shouldn’t, but drunk enough to look as if you might be. That’ll be reason enough why you should stay sprawling in your chair.” He turned his head as the door opened, and for an instant it seemed to Anthea that he stiffened. But it was only Polyphant who entered the room, with his tripping gait, and delicately dropped a maltreated sock beside the horrid pile of Richmond’s clothing. The Major said: “I’m more obliged to you than I can say, Polyphant. The moment the coast is clear, off with you! I don’t want you to get tangled up in this business, so stand out now—and thank you!”

  “Sir!” said Polyphant, exalted by the realization that his moment was upon him, “any other command you may see fit to give me I shall obey with alacrity, but never, never shall it be said that a Polyphant deserted his master in his hour of need, or flinched in the face of danger!”

  “Well, if that’s how you feel, you can dashed well move that disgusting bowl out of my sight!” said his master tartly.

  Chapter 19

  It was not quite fifteen minutes later that the Major entered the drawing-room; and he knew before he opened the door that the task of prolonging the interview between his grandfather and Lieutenant Ottershaw had imposed no very severe strain upon Vincent’s ingenuity. It even seemed improbable that he had found it necessary to take any steps at all to achieve his aim, for his lordship had plainly taken instant umbrage when informed that the Lieutenant had come armed with a warrant, and was in fine fighting fettle.

  The scene was not quite what the Major had hoped it might be. It included two persons with whom he could well have dispensed: Lady Aurelia was still seated at the card-table; and Mrs. Darracott, attired in a dressing-gown, was standing beside her chair, her pretty countenance flushed, and her expression one of strong indignation. Lord Darracott was also seated at the card-table, his chair pushed back a little from it, and one leg crossed over the other. Before him, very stiff, stood the Lieutenant; standing in front of the fireplace was Vincent; and a stalwart Sergeant of dragoons had taken up a discreet position in the background. His mien was one of stern stolidity, but although his appearance was formidable to the uninitiated the Major was not uninitiated, and one glance was enough to inform him that Sergeant Hoole, while doggedly determined to do his duty, was very far from sharing the Lieutenant’s conviction that he had as good a right to force his way into a nobleman’s house as into a common person’s humbler dwelling.

  The Sergeant was indeed wishing himself otherwhere. At no time (as the Major well knew) did he relish being placed at the orders of the Board of Customs; and when it came to being obliged to accompany a mere Riding-officer into the presence of a fierce old gentleman who reminded him forcibly of his own Colonel, he disliked it very much indeed, for it was quite evident to him, if not to Lieutenant Ottershaw (who was not by any means his notion of an officer), that the old lord was not one with whom it was at all safe to take what he felt increasingly sure was a gross liberty.

  The Lieutenant was not entirely at his ease either, but he was upheld by a Calvinistic sense of duty, and he was not so much awed by Lord Darracott’s manner as resentful of it. He had convinced his superiors that an application for the warrant he had exhibited to his lordship was fully justified, but the attitude of the Board had been cautious and reluctant, and he knew that a mistake on his part would lead to consequences disastrous to his career. He was determined to execute the warrant, but how to do it, if Lord Darracott remained obstinate in opposing him, was unexpectedly difficult to decide. Nor had he been prepared for the presence of two ladies, one of whom was a Roman-nosed dowager of quelling aspect, and the other his quarry’s mother.

  Mrs. Darracott’s entrance had followed hard upon his own, and wa
s due, not to any apprehension that her son might stand in need of her protection, but to her conviction that the arrival of visitors at so late an hour could only mean that Matthew Darracott had returned to his ancestral home; and since this would entail such domestic duties as the making up of his bed, and the provision of a suitable supper, she very naturally wished to assure herself, before setting all these matters in train, that it was indeed he who had arrived. When she had entered the drawing-room to find her father-in-law berating a complete stranger, she would have retreated in haste, had his lordship not caught sight of her, and commanded her to come in, and listen to what the stranger (whom he described as an insolent whipstraw) was having the infernal impudence to say about her son. She seemed at first to be quite bewildered by the charge laid at Richmond’s door, but by the time Hugo came into the room she had passed from bewilderment to sparkling indignation.

  Hugo’s entrance was a masterpiece of clumsy stealth. He opened the door cautiously, and having first looked round the edge of it, ventured to advance a few steps into the room, fixedly regarding his cousin Vincent. It was apparent to those who had observed his entrance that he wished to attract Vincent’s attention, and also that he was in a condition generally described as a little bit on the go. His appearance was not quite as neat as it might have been, and a singularly foolish smile dwelled on his lips. The Sergeant surveyed him dispassionately; his aunts, both of whom were facing towards the door, in considerable surprise; and Vincent, putting up his quizzing-glass, with languid contempt. This had the effect of making his lordship and Lieutenant Ottershaw look round, at which moment the Major sought, by dint of a wink, and a tiny jerk of his head towards the door, to convey to his cousin the information that he desired private speech with him.

  Ottershaw, instantly on the alert, watched him suspiciously; my lord, irritated by his peculiar behaviour, said impatiently: “Oh, it’s you, is it? Don’t stand there like a moonling! What do you want?”