The House of Spies

Jasper Benham tumbled out of bed, with the crack of a pistol-shot splitting the silence of the night. Before him ran the long casement window, each diamond pane a silver lozenge set in a frame of jet. Moonlight came through and lay patterned upon the floor.

"Master Jasper--Master Jasper----!"

It was a plaintive howl from under the window, the voice of a man who was afraid.

"Master Jasper--horse-thieves in t' yard!"

The lattice opened, and a pair of broad shoulders caught the moonlight.

"What's this--Jack----?"

John Bumpstead, the groom, was squeezing himself against the wall.

"Dear Lord--sir--they've bruk into t' stable. Me and Jim Burgess tumbled up to see what was wrong. We couldn't face pistols, sir. They be there still, sir----"

"What! The infernal rogues! Here, take the blunderbuss, Jack, and have a blaze----"

"Master Jasper--I dursn't----"

"You're not man enough to scare rooks!"

The figure disappeared from the window, and from the moonlit room came the sounds of an active young man plunging furiously for his clothes. Anything served; a frilled shirt, the red coat of a lieutenant of volunteers thrown over a chair, a pair of riding-breeches and rough boots. A hanger hung from the bed-post, and there was the blunderbuss in the corner. Jasper Benham went down the oak stairs with the clattering impetuosity of a boy playing hide-and-seek. He drew back the bolts of the heavy porch door, and ran the oak bar out of its socket.

Jack Bumpstead waited in the porch, with little coquettish flirts of something white swaying in the draught. He had been valorously quick in dressing, but his teeth chattered behind his thin beard.

"Take the oak bar, Jack; it's a good cudgel. How many of them?"

"May be a dozen."

"Fudge! Where's Jim Jenner?"

"I shouldn't like t' say, sir."

"No doubt back in bed and under the sheets by this time! Shout--if you can't fight, Jack; make a noise--anything. Come along."

They skirted along the terrace, turned down by the yew hedge, and so by the stone-paved passage between the bake-house and the great brick barn. The passage was in deep shadow, and Jasper had no notion that a man was lurking there till the yellow spurt of the powder in the priming-pan of a pistol made him throw himself against the wall. The piece missed fire, and the clatter of heavy boots over the stones betrayed what had become of the man who had pulled the trigger. There was some shouting in the stable yard, and the stamping of horses. One deep voice sent oaths flying, the savage and impatient oaths of a man in a fluster.

Jack Bumpstead had thrown himself flat on his face. He caught young Benham by the ankle.

"You shan't go for to be shot, master; they be some of Dan Stunt's gang."

"Let go--you fool!"

"They don't mind God or devil, sir. Better for 'em to have the nags----"

"Let go, Jack, or by Jove----"

He twisted free and ran on into the yard in time to see a hustle of horses crowding through the gateway into the moonlight. One fellow was still lying across his horse's back with his legs dangling. Another sat gaunt and erect, pistol raised, ready, like a big forefinger.

Jasper's blunderbuss came up. He fired high, because of the horses, and the belching mouth of the blunderbuss stabbed the night with flame. Smoke hung for a moment, drifting away in wisps. The gateway had emptied as though by magic, and in the place of the black knot of men and horses, a strip of moonlit road was guarded by the two black, brick pillars with their two stone balls.

Jasper ran for the gate, shouting to Jack Bumpstead as he ran.

"Get a lantern--get a lantern."

Nothing lay in the roadway beyond the gate, no dark thing that squirmed with leaden slugs burning in its body. A dark blur that moved broke the white road across the paddock. Jasper watched it a moment with jaws set, and then turned back into the yard. He was in an ugly temper, and even the tail of Jack Bumpstead's shirt, flickering in doleful whiteness by the stable door, flapped no laughter from him. A tinder-box was kept on a window-ledge close to where the cord that held the great stable lantern sloped down to a hook in the wall. The groom had groped for the tinder-box and was trying to get a light, though his hands were shaking so that he struck the flint with his knuckles more often than he struck it with the steel.

"The deuce, Jack! Here, give me the things!"

From the loose-box at the far end of the stable came the whimpering of a horse and the clatter of hoofs on the brick floor.

"Why, they've left Devil Dick!"

"Sure, Master Jasper, sure!"

"That's luck, indeed!"

John Bumpstead managed to get one of the sulphur-tipped matches alight. Benham had lowered the great lantern and it dangled close by. The groom put the match to the candle, and the yellow rays shooting between the black bars showed four empty stalls littered with trampled straw.

Benham pulled a wry face.

"Confound the blackguards! Two cart-horses, and Peggy, and Brown Bob gone. And they have left Devil Dick, the best of the whole bunch!"

He went to the loose-box, and a warm nose was thrust over the door. The horse's lips nibbled affectionately at his hand.

"Jack, light that other lantern there. Run into the house and get me a brace of pistols. You'll find them in the case on the oak chest in my room. Run, man, run. I'll saddle Dick."

"Sir----?"