Clovelly E-Book

Max Brand

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

One of Max Brand’s worth reading as an alternative to his western stories. Michael Clovelly might not have been the greatest swordsman ever to come to London town during the reign of the Merry Monarch, Charles the Second, but if a better man ever wielded a blade, he had not yet stepped forth to claim the distinction. Seeking gold with which to elevate his beggarly fortunes, Clovelly chances to encounter a bully, and his fierce sword work brings him to the attention of Lord Teynham, who has need of a resourceful man with a rapier. The commission: to turn highwayman and rob a certain coach. The reasons? They are both murky and mysterious. But they have to do with a certain lady of impeccable character...

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER I. THE GAMECOCK'S SPUR

CHAPTER II. WRIST OF STEEL

CHAPTER III. A NOVICE HIGHWAYMAN

CHAPTER IV. THE HORSE THAT THOUGHT LIKE A MAN

CHAPTER V. STAND AND DELIVER

CHAPTER VI. A WOMAN'S REPUTATION AT STAKE

CHAPTER VII. NOT IN THE BARGAIN

CHAPTER VIII. A PARRIED BLOW

CHAPTER IX. DAMNING EVIDENCE

CHAPTER X. THE POISON OF THE TIMES

CHAPTER XI. THE POWER BEHIND THE THRONE

CHAPTER XII. C FOR CECILY!

CHAPTER XIII. HER FATHER'S FRIEND

CHAPTER XIV. GAME AFOOT

CHAPTER XV. A JACKAL'S TRICK

CHAPTER XVI. IMMURED

CHAPTER XVII. BEWARE THE KING

CHAPTER XVIII. THE TOWER OF FAITH

CHAPTER XIX. TO SERVE THE SUMMONS

CHAPTER XX. PERFUME OF THE SEA

CHAPTER XXI. A PIOUS BUCCANEER

CHAPTER XXII. THE MEASURE OF A MAN

CHAPTER XXIII. THOROUGHBRED

CHAPTER XXIV. WIFE

CHAPTER XXV. AMBUSH

CHAPTER XXVI. MASQUERADE

CHAPTER XXVII. MINX!

CHAPTER XXVIII. UNSEEING

CHAPTER XXIX. A VENAL RAPIER

CHAPTER XXX. THE MURDERER'S ART

CHAPTER XXXI. UNDYING MALICE

CHAPTER XXXII. THE FOG BEGINS TO LIFT

CHAPTER XXXIII. AN UNENDURABLE DOUBT

CHAPTER XXXIV. GOSSIP

CHAPTER XXXV. DARKNESS FLEES

CHAPTER I. THE GAMECOCK’S SPUR

THOSE in this London street who looked up to the oriel window admired the gracefulness of the stone scrollwork which bracketed it out from the wall, and the slenderness of the mullions that supported the little squares of leaded glass and arose to a tangle of intricate tracery at the top. Indeed, the window, with the rich red of the curtain which screened the interior of the room, had an air of half Moorish enchantment. And it was a day as fair as any that ever arched over far-off Granada. It was such a day as made men forget the mud in the street and look up to the smoke-blackened fronts of the buildings, seeing pleasant and gay details like this oriel window for the first time, perhaps, and then staring higher to the unaccustomed blue of the sky.

For though London is dim nowadays, it was a dark, dark city in that time when the Merry Monarch was but newly seated upon the throne of his father. The houses were huddled one upon another like frightened sheep, and from a close-crammed myriad of chimneys the smoke of the sea-coal rolled steadily up and was woven into the warp of the fog which rarely left the sky, and together with it drew a close gray veil across the city.

But this day a wind came clipping briskly over the land with the fresh purity of spring fields, and the sweetness of flowers in its breath; it tossed the sea mist back to the sea; it scoured the coal smoke out of the air; and London, looking up into the sparkling blue, could have exclaimed with one voice: “There is a heaven above us, after all!”

In a trice the pens of poets were scratching frantically, the brushes of painters were swashing the colors upon the canvas, and the trembling musicians were trying to make the glory of that day pass into their instruments. But still wiser were those who made no effort to capture this rare day, but who went out to spend its beauty as fast as it came pouring down.

Of the sensible ones was Michael Clovelly, for he had drawn his sword belt a notch tighter about his empty belly, paid for his night’s lodging with his last coppers, and now wandered through the streets with a blithe hope that good fortune might be lying in wait for him around any corner. And, when he passed that oriel window and saw the darkly handsome young man who stared gloomily out from behind it, he could not help taking off his hat and waving it so that the wind flaunted the red feather that curled upon its brim.

So doing, his eye was raised from the drift of people about him, and the next instant he was shouldered so heavily to the side that one boot sank deep in the kennel. For in those days pavements were little known in London.

The footpath on either side was set off from the street by long rows of posts, and between the footpath and the street there was a deep gutter called the kennel, in which the rain water and the slops thrown from the windows of the houses flowed sluggishly. To keep the wall was a necessity if one wished to retain clean feet.

The temper of Michael Clovelly was as peaceful as well-dried gunpowder. Now he shook the filth from his boot, and wheeled about to see a towering fellow who passed on shaking his wide shoulders with laughter and cocking up the end of his long rapier beneath his cloak.

A passing apprentice had stopped his cry of “What d’ye lack?” and paused to laugh also; but the next instant he was crowing “Fight! Fight!” like a little rooster to gather a crowd to see the fun, for Michael Clovelly had stepped up to the big man and twitched his cloak.

The jostler wheeled with such violence that his cloak flared as wide as a vulture’s wings, and, scowling down at Clovelly, he clapped a hand upon the hilt of his heavy rapier.

“What will you have?” he roared.

“Your apology,” answered Clovelly, “or your blood, you fat- gutted bullock!”

The voice of the other exploded in inarticulate joy at the thought of battle. A dexterous motion of his left arm twitched the cloak from his shoulders and coiled it in thick folds around his forearm, and at the same instant he swished the long blade from the scabbard and with the single motion flicked the point at the pace of the smaller man.

Only a backward leap saved his nose from being slashed across; then his own weapon winked out of its sheath, and he stood on guard, measuring his work. It seemed a very great work indeed!

He was himself of no more than the middle height and very sparely made. In the wide shoulders of the other there was twice his bulk and several inches advantage in reach. That was not all. Their weapons were as mismated as their persons, for Clovelly carried a small-sword with a triangular blade tapering smoothly from fort through foible to a long needle point. It was a new fashion in blades, lately introduced in France, but still a great novelty for England.

The rapier of the big man, on the other hand, was one of those tremendous cut-and-thrust weapons which had an edge capable of shearing through armor and far more than a yard of steel from hilt to point.

And their methods of attack and defense were as different as their weapons or their persons. The big man rushed in and poured a storm of steel at his antagonist, sweeping cuts which might almost have shorn the head from his shoulders, great lunges, mezzo-drittos at the wrist, rovescios at the knee of Clovelly.

At the same time he weaved back and forth, passing to the right so that he swung in a great circle on which Clovelly was more or less the center. For defense he had not only his blade for parrying, but the cloak which was wrapped about his left arm.

And yet, quite mysteriously, Clovelly did not go down bathed in gore. His left arm he flung idly behind him; his right he kept well extended with the point more or less steadily threatening the throat and breast of the other.

At the same time, with the base of his triangular blade, he picked off the attacks of the other, clicking the thrusts and the lunges sharply away and making the cuts slither harmlessly off the steel. As for his footwork, it consisted in dancing lightly in and out and never to the side.

The whole affair took hardly thirty seconds, but it was time enough for the spectators who had paused and turned to watch or rushed to windows or out of doors, to stop holding their breath in expectation of the slaughter of the smaller man and to shout in admiration of his wonderful address. For twenty-nine seconds he did nothing but defend.

Then he stepped in, his rapier’s point darted out like a snake’s tongue, and the big fellow dropped his weapon, yelling an oath.

He had been pricked in the wrist.

The fallen sword Clovelly kicked into the kennel, and while the other floundered after it he had sheathed his own blade, turned upon his heel, and went jauntily on his way, hardly breathing from the exercise. He was given a cheer. The bully received a laugh and a few stinging words as he slouched away; and then the tide of life in the street flowed on exactly as before. But a change of fortune was waiting for Clovelly. He had turned a corner a little later when a hand tapped his shoulder and he swung around to find a youth confronting him quite out of breath from the speed with which he had been running and only able to gasp out:

“My Lord Teynham–my lord–my Lord Teynham–”

“Well,” said Clovelly, “if he’s your lord, he’s wasted a devilish deal of money fitting you out in these clothes. Are you in the service of Lord Teynham?”

For the lad was dressed in brilliant, plum-colored velvet jacket and breeches with rich lace dangling about his wrists and over the backs of his hands, and a fine lace collar blowing about his shoulders. He was bareheaded, to attest the speed with which he had darted out upon his mission, and his long, curling hair had been tossed into disorder.

He was as slenderly made as a girl, as fine of hand and foot, and there was more of the feminine than the masculine about the beauty of his face–except that all was made wholly boyish by an eye as frank, as bold, and as impishly wise as ever looked out of an English face.

“I’m in his service,” said the boy, “and damn me if I’ve ever done a harder bit than to catch you. You walk with seven-league boots, sir! I am to bring you back with me at once.”

With this he turned upon his heel and gestured to Clovelly to follow. But Michael was in no hurry; he was scenting an adventure and perhaps a meal in the near future, and he ached to go after the youngster; yet he had a certain uncomfortable pride of person which had to be consulted at every twist and turning of his life. It rooted him now in his place.

“Your pockets,” he said, “seem a bit small for me. How are you to take me back to Lord Teynham?”

The youngster turned in surprise and looked Clovelly over from head to foot, but he appeared to find nothing in the worn clothes and the muddy boots of the man to explain this attitude.

“Do you know who Lord Teynham is?” he asked.

“I never heard the name till now.”

The boy frowned, changed his mind, and grinned broadly.

“Well,” he said, “if my lord were to hear that, he’d be the most surprised man in England. He would lay you a florin to a groat that there is not a man in England past six years old who has not heard of Francis Willenden, my Lord Teynham!”

“And what the devil has my Lord Teynham done,” asked Clovelly, “that every man in England should know him? I have been out of the kingdom for a few years. Tell me the distinctions of his lordship.”

“Why,” replied the boy, “he has done all manner of great things and he’s barely turned twenty-five.”

“As young as that!” remarked Clovelly, who was himself exactly that age. “A mere youngster–but what has he done?”

“He won the great match race last year from his grace of Ipswich and five thousand guineas.”

He waited; and when Clovelly smiled, he grinned as well.

“He has been sent to Paris in an embassy and come back with the hearts of a dozen Paris beauties.”

“Wonderful!” exclaimed Clovelly, still smiling.

“And Old Rowley himself asks Teynham’s advice on matters of dress.”

“If his majesty himself consults him about such an important affair,” said Clovelly, “I see that he is indeed a great man.”

“His lordship will agree with you,” declared the imp. “Are you persuaded to come with me now?”

“I am not persuaded–I am commanded,” Clovelly admitted. “Lead on; and I follow.”

And they turned back together down the same street up which Clovelly had just come.

CHAPTER II. WRIST OF STEEL

THE door they entered was under that very oriel window which Clovelly had noticed before; and presently he was ushered into a room where there paced up and down the same handsome, dark-faced youth whom he had seen sitting in gloomy mien at the window. The page, who had learned the name of his companion as they climbed the stairs, presented him duly and then disappeared through the doorway. His lordship waved his visitor to a chair, but continued himself to pace up and down the room, scowling, and apparently at a loss for a way in which to open the conversation. But at length he turned and said:

“You have been in France, I see?”

Clovelly nodded.

“I sat at this window and saw you make a fool of that tall brawler. It was neat work. I have seen some famous blades, but that was very neat work.”

“You are kind,” Clovelly returned, and let his eye rove. He could smell cookery somewhere in the house, and the fragrance filled him with a sense of weakness. It was a handsomely furnished apartment, from the oil portrait of an old cavalier in the armor of 1640 to the stiff tapestry which hung upon the other side of the room. His lordship was the brightest note in the chamber, however, for he was clad in a crimson dressing gown heavily brocaded in both silver and gold, and the lining, where the robe hung open, was of the richest green silk. He was not yet dressed for the street, for it was hardly noon, and at such an early hour no gentleman of fashion, of course, dared to show himself.

Green slippers with red heels were upon his feet; a chain of gold mesh clasped against one wrist what might have been an encased miniature. About his shoulders descended his long black hair in the most carefully ordered curls. And his face was as vain and haughty as that of a feminine beauty.

“So much for the sword-play which caught my eye. And there was something in your guard–that slight bend in the arm–which suggested Italy. Have you studied in that country also?”

“I have been in Italy,” admitted Clovelly.

“And yet you had method, too, and a certain confidence which I have never seen except in the Spanish masters. Mr. Clovelly, I wonder if you have not traveled in Spain also?”

“I have had the privilege of watching the great Rivernol in his school at Cordova.”

“Ah!” cried his lordship. “You have been around the world in great part learning the tricks of the sword!”

“I have been around the world in great part,” said Clovelly, “but as for tricks, I hold them not worthy an empty nutshell.”

His lordship frowned.

“That is a round, bold speech,” he declared. “We have many masters in London, and there is not one that does not teach more tricks than method. What is your secret to develop skill with the sword?”

Clovelly looked thoughtfully before him for a moment. Then he drew his smallsword softly from its sheath and held it with his arm stretched out full length and the blade horizontal.

“When I see a man who can do this,” he explained, “I shall fear him more than all the tricksters in the world. I have heard these grave professors make a mystery out of fencing; but I have learned to laugh at them.”

My Lord Teynham was plainly taken aback, but though he was about to scoff away the suggestion of Clovelly, yet the manner of the latter was so frank and his air so easy and so confident that his lordship hesitated.

“Upon my honor,” he objected, “I see nothing in what you are doing.”

“There is a silver knife on that table. Do with it as I am doing.”

His lordship scooped up the knife and held it forth.

“There,” he said. “And what of it? Is this a jest, sir?”

“The knife trembles, my lord. The light shakes on it.”

“So, then–”

He centered his mind and his nerve upon the task.

“The light still quivers on that metal, sir.”

His lordship tossed the knife away and stared again at the rapier in the hand of his guest. It had been extended in a trying position for some minutes now, but it stood as stiff as if it were fixed in the solid wall and not in a hand of flesh and bone. Clovelly now put up his weapon.

“A very clever trick,” admitted my lord.

“No trick, if you please.”

“How is it managed, then?”

“Most simply. An hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon of work with the sword and exercises to strengthen the wrist, and this done for five years at least, will make you the master of a steady sword, my lord.”

His lordship shrugged his shoulders and a ripple of gold light and of silver fled up and down the robe which clothed him.

“I can almost believe it,” he conceded, smiling. “But after all, what is the use of this steadiness, most amazing though it is?”

“Have you seen time-thrusts and stop-thrusts used?”

“By the score, of course.”

“And most of them failures?”

“That is true; for they must be brought off in the precise part of a second which is intended, and the sword must travel as true as a plumb line. Otherwise, they are disastrous.”

“Very good, then. And the only man who truly knows where the point of his sword is going is he who knows that the pommel is firm as a rock in his hand.”

Clovelly sighed and shook his head.

“How many times,” he continued, “a thrust has gone clean home, but has passed through nothing but the clothes of a man while the hilt rapped against his ribs; how many a sword point has slid past the cheek instead of through the eye at which it was aimed!

“Oh, my lord, a man will tell you that accuracy is indeed a most necessary thing with his pistol, but for his sword-play he seems to forget that a miss of half an inch may be as good as a miss of a yard. Besides, he who knows just where the point will go need not overreach himself and try to drive his blade clean through the body when two short inches may be enough to touch the heart.”

His lordship listened with a peculiar interest, as indeed every gentleman or boor of that day would have listened to a novel view concerning the use of weapons. For the sword which accompanied the dandy in his walk had to be a useful tool as well as an ornament, and the code which every gentleman learned was that certain offenses could only be pardoned or punished with the sword.

“All this,” said his lordship, “may be true. But a duel is fought at close hand; the weapon is small, the target is large, and surely it seems to me that even a child could understand that what is most needed is speed in the parry and lightning quickness of foot and hand for the lunge and thrust. Speed, surely, is the prime necessity.”

“A swift hand,” said Clovelly–and his voice lowered to an almost religious awe–”is truly the gift of God made more precious still by practice which never relents. The hand moves, and the eye cannot follow–”

He illustrated with a lightning gesture. His hand seemed to disappear upon one side of his chair and came into being again resting upon the other arm. His lordship said nothing, but so keen was his interest that he appeared to have forgotten all that had first been burdening his mind.

“A swift hand–and a swift foot hardly less–is indeed a precious thing, without which nothing may be done. But there lies my point: that the swiftest hand need not always win; the sure hand is better still.”

“I cannot agree, Mr. Clovelly.”

“Consider,” argued the other, “that to the man who is not absolutely sure of his mark the target is restricted. If a man aims for the head, he dares not thrust save at the very center of the face, for fear that he will miss entirely. He dares not aim at the corners, which are twenty times open to attack whereas the center is only open once.

“He cannot slip his point through a cheek and madden his man with the pain of it and the thought of disfiguration. He cannot flick his point across a forehead and blind his man with blood, or snip the point, again, across the very tip of the nose, which will cloud even the eyes of a hero with tears and so start him fighting in a fog.

“Or, again, he fears to aim at such a small and shifting target as a wrist or an elbow, a knee, or a hundred places where a fencer may be so stung as to cripple him for the one vital instant, or else turn him blind with passion.

“I tell you finally, my lord, that a man who is not sure of his point has to fight to kill and so many a murder is done, but he who knows where the point will strike and where it will end to the width of a hair and to the thickness of a sheet of paper holds his enemy at his mercy on the one hand and spares his life with the other.”

He arose as he spoke, his color mounting, his brown eyes shining, while his lordship watched and listened with a growing awe. He noted now that, upon a closer scrutiny, Mr. Clovelly seemed less fragile than before. He was lean, to be sure, but so is the hunting leopard.

And as Michael Clovelly stepped out from the shadow into the sunny end of the room, it was to be seen that his hair was not the mere brown which it had appeared before, but a lustrous black that suddenly gave a certain character and ominous distinction to his thin face and to the darkness of his eyes. He now was picking from the table a plate of Chinese porcelain, very thin and composed of the most intricate interweaving of fragile threads of gilt and enamel.

It was an age in which a passion for Chinese porcelains crammed every fashionable household with grinning, glistening dragons and wildly designed vases, but even in that time this plate–or, rather, shallow basket–was as unusual as it was precious and beautiful. Clovelly now held it to the light and pointed out his object to Lord Teynham. In the exact center there was a very small hole, and this Clovelly indicated.

“Consider, my lord, if this is not worth some dozen of the tricks of the fencing masters.”

With this, he spun the plate high in the air, brought his rapier hissing from its scabbard, and thrust. The whole movement was so quick that the sword turned into a ray of light.

But the plate of porcelain was held fast on the end of that narrow beam and Clovelly presented it to the master of the house. The point of the weapon had passed not more than a few inches through the aperture.

Lord Teynham removed the porcelain and replaced it thoughtfully upon the table. He remained for a time in deep thought without speaking a word.

“You are a dangerous fellow, Clovelly,” he declared at length, “and after what I have seen to-day alone I should be confident in you against very great masters indeed. All of which makes me feel that you are sent me from heaven in my time of need.”

He fastened a keen eye on the other, but Clovelly had resumed his place in his chair and endured the scrutiny with the greatest calm; for his whole manner in this exhibition had not been that of one who makes a vain display and endeavors to win applause. It was rather that of one who seriously and eagerly supports a theory and having demonstrated his point has no further personal pride in the matter.

“As for that, my lord,” he replied, “I presume it depends upon what your need may be. But if it is a thing that may be done by a man of honor,” he continued with a peculiar emphasis, “I am at your service.”

CHAPTER III. A NOVICE HIGHWAYMAN

HIS lordship was young and intense, but he was also not without a sense of humor, and his eyes were glinting as he looked steadily at Clovelly. “It seems to me,” he said, “that there is something left out of your statement; which is: What will a hungry man do for food?”

Clovelly stood not upon his dignity, but grinned in turn. On this clue his lordship continued: “A private coach is starting on the Oxford Road this afternoon. I want that coach stopped and something taken from it.”

Clovelly rubbed his chin.

“I saw the hanging at Tyburn yesterday,” he remarked, “where Captain Vincent, the highwayman, was strung up.”

His lordship nodded.

“To a man who has fear, of course, what I ask is impossible.”

“You, my lord,” said Clovelly, “seem a man of courage.”

“I hope I have my share, but I am not hungry.”

“Very true. I am to commit highway robbery, then, for the sake of a full belly.”

“And certain pounds.”

Clovelly considered for an instant.

“I might as well be frank. I had as soon take this work for the sake of the adventure as well as the money that may be in it. To be a highwayman by voluntary choice I should consider as an act of horror and disgrace; but to be a highwayman by request, my lord, is quite another matter.”

His lordship was greatly pleased, for he began to nod and smile more broadly than ever.

“Can you mount yourself and arm yourself within the hour?”

“With money.”

“Here is forty pounds. Is it enough?”

“Double the amount I need,” Clovelly asserted, but he calmly pocketed the sum.

His lordship frowned, but straightway was smiling again.

“This is a disreputable business,” he said, “and if you were to make off with that money, I should have no way of bringing you to account for it. However,” he added, “I trust you, Mr. Clovelly.”

The other thanked him with a graceful inclination of his head.

“Remember,” cautioned Lord Teynham, “that the price of a good horse comes uncommonly high this year.”

“I know the one I shall take.”

“And the price of it?”

“It is pulling a peddler’s cart,” said Clovelly. “I saw it yesterday, and from the look of the driver I imagine the price will be small enough.”

“And for pistols?”

“This will serve my purpose, I presume.”

And straightway he reached into the breasts of his threadbare coat and brought deftly forth two long barreled weapons so cared for and polished that they shone like silver. The butts were rubbed black with long handling, and the guns balanced lightly in his slender hands. Lord Teynham had started from his chair at the sudden sight of such an armament.

“In the name of heaven!” he exclaimed, “Do you carry such an outfit with you, weighing you down, every day? And how by all that is mysterious can you carry such guns in your clothes?”

“It is a habit,” Clovelly explained, “which I formed in Turkey, where it is often wise to carry pistols–but not so wise, at times, to let them be seen. As for their bulk, you see that they are extraordinarily slender.”

In fact, at a closer examination, his lordship discovered that they were small indeed.

“They will carry a bullet hardly larger than a pea!” he cried.

“But heavier,” said Clovelly. “And with a good charge of powder behind them, they will pierce a thickness of wood that would surprise you, to say nothing of mere flesh. As for the size of the ball, there again let me suggest that it is not how heavily a man is struck with a bullet but where the bullet lands. Do we need to blow away half of a man’s leg to stop him? Or tear his head to bits to kill him?”

“By heaven,” his lordship remarked, leaning still closer, “they are most exquisitely overlaid with gold cashing. I wonder that you would go hungry rather than part with at least one of them for a price.”

Clovelly restored his guns to their hiding places with a single gesture.

“They were gifts from one whose memory I prize very dearly,” he said, shortly. “And now, my lord, for the business on hand.”

His lordship still stared with something of the hungry curiosity of a child at Clovelly’s coat which appeared in no wise fattened in any place or bulging because of the implements which had been placed inside it; on the contrary, the form of the man was in appearance as gaunt as ever.

“That business,” he said, “means a vast deal to me. You will imagine that when I pick a man off the street to work for me.”

“I wonder at it,” murmured Clovelly.

“Because,” his lordship went on, “though I could hire a dozen rough blades to attempt this thing, and though perhaps they might carry it through to the end well enough, how could I be sure that they would not use blackmail afterward and so bleed me white? In a word, Clovelly, I can be served in this only by a man of some honor.”

Clovelly waved his hand, as if so much were to be taken for granted.

“As for the work itself, the coach is that of Sir Christopher Redbourne. Lady Redbourne travels with him. And in particular, they are accompanied by young Herbert Theale, the viscount of Pennistone. They take the Oxford road and turn off on the Pennistone road, bound for the manor of that name.

“Clovelly, that coach must be stopped, and from the person of young Theale must be taken a certain locket which contains the picture of a young lady of great beauty. That you may recognize the picture, I may tell you that she has hair of pale gold, with blue eyes and very finely drawn, high-arched brows. It is an excellent bit of painting in the small. You cannot fail but recognize it when it is seen.”

Clovelly said not a word.

“As for her name,” continued Lord Teynham, blushing in spite of himself, “that is, of course, not to be known, either now or hereafter.”

“Naturally.”

“There will be in the coach other things of far greater value–to you!–than this locket. By all means help yourself and remunerate yourself for the work, Besides which, if you succeed in this adventure I shall give you–”

He hesitated, his lips drawn thin, his eyes boring at the face of Clovelly, as if he hoped to penetrate to the very soul of that young man.

“If I succeed,” Clovelly interposed, with a touch of scorn in his voice, “I shall have been paid by the airing in the country roads, by the forty pounds which you have so generously given me, and by the horse which shall be between my legs when I return.”

His lordship sprang to his feet and waved unceremoniously toward the door.

“Then start at once in the name of God! They may take the road early; they may take the road late. Perhaps they may not start until the evening of this warm day.”

“They have no fear of robbers, then, if they ride by night.”

“God bless us, in these rough days it seems to make but a small difference if men travel either by night or by day, for these ruffianly highway robbers had as soon take a purse by high noon as by full moon, and as soon by the moonlight as in the dark.”

“With how large an escort does Sir Christopher usually ride?”

His lordship bit his lip, as if this were a question which he would gladly have left unanswered, depending upon his man to go through the business, once committed to it, no matter how difficult it might prove.

“A small matter,” he answered. “There will be the coachman and a footman beside him in the seat, of course. But fellows of that cloth are a mere nothing to a man of determination.”

Clovelly had folded his hands and awaited the recital with an air which was neither indifferent nor excited.

“There will be an outrider or two, and I take it that this will be all.”

“A brace of men who ride before the carriage,” summed up Michael Clovelly calmly, “and two more on the seat, and two gentlemen inside the coach, to say nothing of another pair who may be riding in the rear. In all, six men certainly, and perhaps eight; and I am to stop this coach, my lord?”

His lordship scowled at the floor.

“In the name of the devil,” he groaned, “am I to hire a whole brigade of–”

“Of cutthroats?” finished Clovelly. “By no means!”

He arose from his chair.

“You’ll go through with it, Clovelly?” asked Lord Teynham, clutching his hands together in his anxiety. “Or else I’m a ruined man!”

The last phrase broke involuntarily from his lips, but Clovelly nodded.

“As you said before, an empty belly is an eloquent advocate to advise desperate deeds, Sir. And when must I be back?”

“By midnight at the very latest. By midnight. I shall be in an agony!”

“Fifty miles of riding, a coach to be found and stopped, and all by midnight? Farewell, my lord,” said Clovelly, and swiftly strode from the room.

His lordship ran to the door, but with his hand upon the knob he changed his mind about opening it, for he heard Clovelly humming as he descended the stairs.