“But Cedric, how stolen? Who took it?”
“Highwaymen. My mother sent off a courier post-haste to m’father. Chaise stopped somewhere near Bath—two fellows with masks and horse-pistols—Sophia screeching like a hen—my mother swooning—outriders taken by surprise—one of ’em winged. And off went the necklace. Which is what I can’t for the life of me understand.”
“How terrible! Your poor Mama! I am so sorry! It is an appalling loss!”
“Yes, but how the devil did they find the thing?” said Cedric. “That’s what I want to know.”
“But surely if they took Lady Saar’s jewel-case—”
“The necklace wasn’t in it. I’ll lay my last shilling on that. My mother had a hiding-place for it—devilish cunning notion—always put it there when she travelled. Secret pocket behind one of the squabs.”
“Good Gad, do you mean to say someone divulged the hiding-place to the rascals?” said George.
“Looks mighty like it, don’t it?”
“Who knew of it? If you can discover the traitor, you may yet get the necklace back. Are you sure of all your servants?”
“I’m sure none of them—Lord, I don’t know!” Cedric said, rather hastily. “My mother wants the Bow Street Runners set on to it, but m’father don’t think it’s the least use. And now here’s Ricky bolted, on top of everything! The old man will go off in an apoplexy!”
“Really, Cedric, you must not talk so of your Papa!” Louisa expostulated. “And we don’t know that Richard has—has bolted! Indeed, I am sure it’s no such thing!”
“He’ll be a fool if he hasn’t,” said Cedric. “What do you think, George?”
“I don’t know,” George answered. “It is very perplexing. I own, when I first heard of his disappearance—for you must know that he did not sleep in his bed last night, and when I saw him he was foxed—I felt the gravest alarm. But—”
“Suicide, by God!” Cedric gave a shout of laughter. “I must tell Melissa that! Driven to death! Ricky! Oh, by all that’s famous!”
“Cedric, you are quite abominable!” said Louisa roundly. “Of course Richard has not committed suicide! He has merely gone away. I’m sure I don’t know where, and if you say anything of the sort to Melissa I shall never forgive you! In fact, I beg you will tell Melissa nothing more than that Richard has been called away on an urgent matter of business.”
“What, can’t I tell her about the lock of yaller hair? Now, don’t be a spoil-sport, Louisa!”
“Odious creature!”
“We believe the lock of hair to be a relic of some long-forgotten affair,” said George. “Possibly a boy-and-girl attachment. It would be gross impropriety to mention it beyond these walls.”
“If it comes to that, old fellow, what about the gross impropriety of poking and prying into Ricky’s drawers?” asked Cedric cheerfully.
“We did no such thing!” Louisa cried. “It was found upon the floor in the library!”
“Dropped? Discarded? Seems to me Ricky’s been leading a double life. I’d have said myself he never troubled much about females. Won’t I roast him when I see him!”
“You will do nothing of the sort. Oh dear, I wish to heaven I knew where he has gone, and what it all means!”
“I’ll tell you where he’s gone!” offered Cedric. “He’s gone to find the yaller-haired charmer of his youth. Not a doubt of it! Lord, I’d give a monkey to see him, though. Ricky on a romantic adventure!”
“Now you are being absurd!” said Louisa. “If one thing is certain, it is that Richard has not one grain of romance in his disposition, while as for adventure—! I dare say he would shudder at the mere thought of it. Richard, my dear Cedric, is first, last, and always a man of fashion, and he will never do anything unbefitting a Corinthian. You may take my word for that!”
Chapter 4
The man of fashion, at that precise moment, was sleeping heavily in one corner of a huge green-and-gold Accommodation coach, swaying and rocking on its ponderous way to Bristol. The hour was two in the afternoon, the locality Calcot Green, west of Reading and the dreams troubling the repose of the man of fashion were extremely uneasy. He had endured some waking moments, when the coach had stopped with a lurch and a heave to take up or to set down passengers, to change horses, or to wait while a laggardly pike-keeper opened a gate upon the road. These moments had seemed to him more fraught with nightmare even than his dreams. His head was aching, his eyeballs seemed to be on fire, and a phantasmagoria of strange, unwelcome faces swam before his outraged vision. He had shut his eyes again with a groan, preferring his dreams to reality, but when the coach stopped at Calcot Green to put down a stout woman with a tendency to asthma, sleep finally deserted him, and he opened his eyes, blinked at the face of a precise-looking man in a suit of neat black, seated opposite him, ejaculated: “Oh, my God!” and sat up.
“Is your head very bad?” asked a solicitous and vaguely familiar voice in his ear.
He turned his head, and encountered the enquiring gaze of Miss Penelope Creed. He looked at her in silence for a few moments; then he said: “I remember. Stage-coach—Bristol. Why, oh why, did I touch the brandy?”
An admonitory pinch made him recollect his surroundings. He found that there were three other persons in the coach, seated opposite to him, and that all were regarding him with interest. The precise-looking man, whom he judged to be an attorney’s clerk, was frankly disapproving; a woman in a poke-bonnet and a paduasoy shawl nodded to him in a motherly style, and said that he was like her second boy, who could not abide the rocking of the coach either; and a large man beside her, whom he took to be her husband, corroborated this statement by enunciating in a deep voice: “That’s right!”
Instinct took Sir Richard’s hand to his cravat; his fingers told him that it was considerably crumpled, like the tails of his blue coat. His curly-brimmed beaver seemed to add to the discomfort of his aching head; he took it off, and clasped his head in his hands, trying to throw off the lingering wisps of sleep. “Good God!” he said thickly. “Where are we?”
“Well, I am not quite sure, but we have passed Reading,” replied Pen, rather anxiously surveying him.
“Calcot Green, that’s where we are,” volunteered the large man. “Stopped to set down someone. They ain’t a-worriting theirselves over the time-bill, that’s plain. I dare say the coachman’s stepped down for a drink.”
“Ah, well!” said his wife tolerantly. “It’ll be thirsty work, setting up on the box in the sun like he has to.”
“That’s right,” agreed the large man.
“If the Company was to hear of it he would be turned off, and very rightly!” said the clerk, sniffing. “The behaviour of these stage-coachmen is becoming a scandal.”
“I’m sure there’s no call for people to get nasty if a man falls behind his time-bill a little,” said the woman. “Live and let live, that’s what I say.”
Her husband assented to this in his usual fashion. The coach lurched forward again, and Pen said, under cover of the noise of the wheels and the horses’ hooves: “You kept on telling me that you were drunk, and now I see that you were. I was afraid you would regret coming with me.”
Sir Richard raised his head from his hands. “Drunk I most undoubtedly must have been, but I regret nothing except the brandy. When does this appalling vehicle reach Bristol?”
“It isn’t one of the fast coaches, you know. They don’t engage to cover much above eight miles an hour. I think we ought to be in Bristol by eleven o’clock. We seem to stop such a number of times, though. Do you mind very much?”
He looked down at her. “Do you?”
“To tell you the truth,” she confided, “not a bit! I am enjoying myself hugely. Only I don’t want you to be made uncomfortable all for my sake. I quite see that you are sadly out-of-place in a stage-coach.”