The Moonless Night, page 16
“What on earth would he be doing there?” Marie asked, feeling an angry thrust that yet another gentleman had fallen under the trollop’s spell.
“Making right up to Sanford’s girl,” David explained. “Sitting on the sofa together, close as inkle-weavers, with their heads together laughing and talking.”
“You don’t mean he was making love to her!” Benson asked.
“Couldn’t hear what he was saying, but Rawlins didn’t have to run up any flags for anyone to read the gist of it. Billing and cooing—Lord, what a sight! That old man and Madame.”
“This is outrageous!” Benson said, jumping to his feet.
“Known all along what she is,” David pointed out.
“Wouldn’t I love to drop Sanford the hint, though.”
“No!” Benson said, the word a sharp command.
“Just razz him a little is all I mean,” David countered.
“No, David, in our business personal feelings have no place. You have misunderstood the matter, no doubt. Rawlins has become suspicious of Madame, and is following his own investigations. The likeliest way of discovering anything from a woman of her kidney is by lovemaking. He was only trying to find out what she’s up to. Naturally the navy is suspicious of French persons who came to the town just at the time Napoleon was brought here. I wouldn’t want Sanford to know what Rawlins is up to.”
“But you said Sanford is doing nothing but trying to stop anyone from rescuing Napoleon,” Marie reminded him.
“Lord, where did you get such an idea! Sanford is Cicero!” David shouted. He had been absent during the period when Sanford had been whitewashed.
“He is a dark horse,” Benson decided. “He may be fairly innocent, or he may be playing some deep game. We’ll just keep an eye on him. There is a reward of one hundred thousand pounds for whomever frees Bonaparte, you recall, and it may be that he is trying to stop anyone else from doing it in order to claim the reward himself.”
“But he’s rich as Croesus,” Marie pointed out. “He wouldn’t take such risks for money.”
“He admires Napoleon. He may be doing it to secure the reward money for Napoleon. And one hundred thousand pounds is a considerable prize. Even to Sanford it would be something. What a lot of art-works he could buy for that sum,” Benson said.
“What a lot of mortgages he could snap up,” Marie added with a speaking look at Benson, who smiled warmly to show her he understood.
“Oh, by the way,” David said suddenly, “I expect something ought to be done about Sanford’s groom.”
“How did you know about his being French?” Marie asked, for during their multi-faceted discussion this point had been neglected entirely.
“French? Is he, by God! I never knew that,” David exclaimed. “He spoke English as well as anyone when he showed me the Arab stallion’s points.”
“What did you mean then?” Marie asked.
“He’s been knocked out cold. Was lying on the stable floor when I came in. I roused up John Groom to see to him, but I ought to tell Sanford, maybe.”
“I wonder what could have happened to him!” Benson asked innocently. Marie looked at him with an approving smile. He had checked not only Sanford’s room, but upon finding it empty of the message, had also gone to the stable and frisked the groom. How clever he was! He thought of everything. But neither was Sanford completely stupid, she acknowledged grudgingly. He had hidden the message, somewhere well enough that it went undiscovered.
David went to the door and told the butler to notify Sanford his groom was unconscious, then walked back into the saloon. “So, what did you do with your night, Benson, if you wasn’t at the Point and wasn’t at Madame’s?”
“I was searching Seadog for the gold. You half convinced me, David, that Sanford was our man, and I thought he might have the money there, but found nothing.”
“Yes, but your mount wouldn’t have been gone from the stable if you were only there,” Marie said.
“What a clever pair you Boltwoods are!” he laughed fondly. “You don’t miss a trick. The fact of the matter is, I have heard some few rumors about Sanford’s servants. That groom of his is not the only Frenchman in his retinue. His valet likewise is French, and the pair of them spend a good deal of time in Plymouth, scraping acquaintance with the roughnecks that inhabit the wharf—the French element, I refer to. However, I could discover nothing against them.”
David nodded. “So we still haven’t got a lead on the gold. Have to keep after that.”
“We’ll never find it,” Benson said. “I think we waste our time and energy searching for it.”
This defeatist attitude disappointed both the Boltwoods.
David even thought the master was not confiding in him to the extent the equal partnership called for. He was beginning to take the notion the pupil had outpaced the teacher, and he must get cracking and find the gold himself. He was pretty certain he knew where to look for it, too. If the officer in command at the naval station had such high suspicions of Madame Monet that he was trying to court her into confidence, it was pretty clear she was sitting on the gold. He would have to stifle all his repugnance for the woman, and try his hand at making up to her himself. He was more than willing to take on this task for the good of the country.
Chapter 13
It was late that night before the household settled down. There was the unconscious groom to be attended to. He had suffered such a cruel blow that Miss Biddy’s help was required to rouse him. He had a purple welt on his temple, which she half hoped would grow into a concussion. His ramblings, all in French, led her to believe he was delirious, but Sanford informed her through clenched jaws that he was making perfectly good sense to him.
“What happened to him?” she asked, her hand shaking with the excitement of being roused from sleep to tend a patient.
“He ran into a beam in the stable in the dark,” he told her.
“A very nasty blow,” she tch’d tch’d, but it proved not to be too nasty for her curative powers.
“Extremely hard hit,” Sanford agreed, with just a flicker of a glance to Marie, who was still down and in attendance. Benson and David had retired to the latter’s room to discuss plans.
It did seem a harder blow than was necessary to knock the poor man out for three seconds to search him. But then the proper force must be hard to determine. Marie harbored no thought that there had been intent to do real harm. She began to see that there was a good deal of violence in Mr. Benson’s job—almost more than a sensitive man like himself would like handling. She wondered for the first time why he did it. For altruistic purposes of course, but still to so discommode himself that he lost even his own patrimony bordered on the foolishly altruistic.
“That beam just at the corner of the first stall hangs too low,” Biddy ran on, unaware of any undertones in the talk. “I’ve mentioned having it raised before. I’ll speak to Henry about it again. How awful that a servant of one of our guests should be so severely wounded.”
And here was another thing to give a little pause. Mr. Benson, who disliked to inconvenience Lord Sanford to the extent of mentioning the mortgage, had hit his servant a blow strong enough to leave him unconscious for half an hour, without even mentioning going to the man’s help. He had sat with herself chatting while a man he had knocked out stone cold lay untended. He might have seen the man was attended to in some secret way, by his own groom, for instance, who was surely not in the dark regarding his master’s work.
Lord Sanford, on the other hand, who treated the family with something approaching contempt, showed a real concern for his servant. He spoke to the man in French, but any well-reared young lady spoke enough of the language to follow the gist of it. He asked the man, Belhomme was his name, how he felt, and told him to stay in bed the next day. He showed very proper feelings throughout, and when Biddy was wrapped up in her chore, she ventured a little apology on behalf of Mr. Benson. It was of course no secret to either of them who had done this.
“I’m sure he didn’t mean to hit him so hard,” she said in a low tone.
“You have no idea what he’s like. Be very careful of him, Miss Boltwood,” he answered, also in a low tone, but with strong feeling.
It was impossible to say more. Biddy called her to help with the plaster, and when it was done, Sanford thanked them both and went with the servant to see him got into bed. “I hope the poor man doesn’t suffer a concussion,” Biddy said as she packed up her stores. “What a hard knock he suffered. I never saw such a welt.”
It was with a heavy heart that Marie went up to her bed. The hour was well advanced, and as she had had a trying night, she was fagged enough to sleep without interruption. She was dreaming of being on an island not bigger than six feet square, with dozens of yachts all around it trying to lure her off into perilous waters when a dark form slipped silently past her door, down the stairs, out the front door and around to the garrison, where he carefully lit a lamp and went down the two flights of stairs into the empty room that housed the winch and chain. He checked the mechanism silently, wondering how best to sabotage it without leaving any traces, then he turned to the heavy chest, pulled out the unused spare chain and began extricating leather bags full of sovereigns that were concealed beneath it. They were no longer safe in this spot, but he knew where they would be pretty safe, and he took them there before returning silently to the sleeping house and to bed.
There was a strained atmosphere over the breakfast table when Sanford announced blandly that he meant to sail his yacht to Sinclair’s dock that morning.
“It will be no use to anyone there,” Sir Henry told him, scowling from under his beetle brows. All pleas to Sinclair to prohibit the move had been in vain.
Sanford did no more than look. The reason was too well known to require restating. “Would you like to come with me to try her out, David?”
David said he thought not, thank you, in his coldest voice.
“You, Miss Boltwood?” he continued his invitation to Marie.
She had not anticipated the invitation, and thus had not sought instructions from Mr. Benson. “How long will you be gone?” Biddy asked. “We were to make up the menu for the ball this morning you remember, Marie.”
“It will take a while,” Sanford answered. “Mr. Sinclair has offered to show me over his place. I won’t be back for lunch.”
“You’d better not go then,” Biddy said to her niece, not without regret. But then there could be no courting done aboard a windy, lurching schooner, she thought.
Marie felt definitely piqued to be done out of the trip. She liked sailing, would have liked very much to try out Sanford’s yacht, but there was more disappointment than that in her feelings. She felt a strong inclination to prove a point; to make Lord Sanford see that she, Marie Boltwood, could be as attractive and entertaining as an aging French hussy, and as she was a good sailor, she had never found the sea impossible of romance.
“I am not busy this morning, Sanford,” Sir Henry spoke up, to everyone’s surprise. “I’ll run along with you. I would like to see Seadog in action.” Despite their bouts of altercation, the host and Bathurst's godson continued on intermittent terms of amiability.
“Excellent,” Sanford said. He made no offer to Benson to accompany them. However, as Benson fared so ill on a ship it was not necessarily an intentional slight.
While Biddy and Marie worked over the menu, deciding between lobster patties and oysters on the half shell, and finally going whole hog and having both, along with a wax basket of prawns, Benson said he would finish up his scientific drawing of the winch mechanism.
“I’ll toddle along with you,” David offered.
“Maybe you should go up to the telescope with your book of signals,” Benson suggested. David had had more than enough of sitting up on the hill like a demmed sheep, while more exciting things occurred elsewhere, and said no, he’d given the guard the book, and he’d go along with Benson, as there were certain matters he wished to discuss.
Benson was not happy for his company, but could hardly forbid him access to his own home, and the two went off together. The drawing proved to be next to finished; Benson did no more than check it against the winch itself before putting it away. He then looked around the room, empty but for the heavy chest storing the spare chain. “Maybe we should just check out the spare,” David said, noticing that Mr. Benson regarded the chest from time to time.
“That cannot be necessary. Sir Henry said it is in good repair.”
“Sanford may have been working on it,” David mentioned, to show he was as wide awake as anyone, and he lifted the lid.
Mr. Benson looked at the chain, his eyes widening in surprise. He dashed to the chest and lifted the end of the chain up.
“Looks all right,” David said. “Shall we haul her out and see he hasn’t lopped six feet off it, to make it useless?”
“An excellent idea,” Benson agreed, and they both began pulling it out.
“The way you tell is to feed it around the edge of the room,” David told him. “The chain ought to go around twice exactly. That’s how we measure it”
They did this, and soon determined that the chain was of the proper length and in good repair. David was hard put to account for Benson’s condition. The chain was safe and sound, but still he was upset about something. It was easily evident by his jerky movements, his lack of attention, by the angry tinge of his face.
“What do you think we should do now?” David asked, perplexed. He knew full well his mentor was keeping something from him.
“It’s time we got busy looking for that message Sanford received last night,” Benson said, his face rigid with anger.
“Left it a bit late,” David pointed out. “If you couldn’t find it last night, I don’t suppose you’re likely to do it today. Had hours to get rid of it. Might have taken it to Sinclair’s with him for that matter. Probably did.”
“That’s a possibility,” Benson said, looking interested.
“Still, we’ll have a good look about here while he’s gone.”
The first look was in Lord Sanford’s own room, while his valet was belowstairs polishing his master’s boots. The door was locked, which filled them with hope, but when he got the housekeeper’s key and went in, he found nothing of the message. He was diverted by many other splendors—silver-backed brushes and crested notepaper were examined for clues, but without success. The valet’s room was similarly searched, after which Benson, whose intelligence was cast into serious doubt, insisted on rummaging through the entire house. From attics to cellars they searched.
That’s how they spent their morning. David was wishing he’d gone out on the Seadog, instead. A fool could see he had the message with him, anyway. She looked a proper fancy craft, and one he was eager to get his hands on quite apart from hidden messages. A good sailing breeze in the air today, too. He plodded obediently on with the task, however, through trunks and chests, all of which had recently been searched for gold, with a similar result. Nothing but moths and dust.
By the time lunch was over, he had had more than enough of routing uselessly through old lumber, and hit on the capital notion of driving the carriage over to Sinclair’s to pick up his father and Sanford, to save Sinclair the bother of driving them home. Mr. Benson made not an effort to detain him, but had his own curricle called out the minute he left and nipped into Plymouth.
“I wonder where he is going,” Marie said to her aunt, just a little offended that Mr. Benson had not told her, nor invited her to accompany him.
“To find another family to stay with I hope,” Biddy said firmly. “I cannot think why Henry lets him stay on, now that he knows the fellow is only out for your fortune. He as well as agreed to be rid of him three days ago, but something changed his mind.”
The something, so unexplainable to Biddy, was crystal clear to the younger lady. The Admiralty had asked her father to let him stay, and of course he would do as they asked. “If he’s going to Plymouth, he might have mentioned it to us. I need some supplies. My basilicum is running low, though the pharmacist puts too much pine resin in his. I prefer to make my own, but with all the rash of wounds here of late I need a quick supply. And I wanted to order extra cream and eggs too for the ball. It’s a nice day, Marie. Shall we go in? David has taken the closed carriage, but the gig is free. I wouldn’t mind the open carriage on a fine day like this.”
A trip to Plymouth was seldom spurned by Marie at any time, and with the expectation that Mr. Benson would be on the quay hanging out for information, she agreed immediately. To get to Plymouth, it was not necessary but possible to pass the cottage hired for Madame Monet, if one were willing to take a little jog north, only a mile out of the way. It had become the preferred route of all the Boltwoods of late. What was seen on this trip made all the former futile lookings well worth while. Madame was there at the doorway admitting a caller, and the caller was none other than Mr. Benson.
“There’s a good pair then,” Biddy said, looking as hard as she could in past the privet hedge.
The quay was as busy as ever, the commoners and hedgebirds in as great abundance. There was the usual number of scarlet and blue tunics. Even the tunics were more observant of a young lady accompanied by only the requisite chaperone than of one guarded by a clutch of males, but all this, which would have pleased Marie a week ago, was hardly noticed. A very handsome officer tried for two minutes to catch her eye, without being even noticed. She did no more than look once out to Billy Ruffian, and as soon as Biddy began berating the jostling her arms received, the niece turned to go.
What was Mr. Benson doing at Madame Monet’s? It must of course be in the line of unpleasant duty that he went, but Rawlins was already pursuing that particular lead, and naturally Rawlins would pass on to the government agent what he discovered. The trip was not so pleasant an outing as Marie had hoped for. When she returned to Bolt Hall, there was nothing to do. The men were still not back from Sinclair’s. It was an interminable, dull, stupid day.
