"What a remarkable man Lord Tupping is!"
"Yes."
"So popular!"
"So it appears."
"Everybody is simply charmed with him! It is 'Lord Tupping this' and
'Lord Tupping that' on every hand!"
"Yes, yes," said Sir Harry indulgently, "Tuppy is a good fellow." The
good fellow at that moment was expostulating with Hal.
"Now look here, Tanny, old friend," he said firmly. "I'm not goin' to
meet anybody else. I'm sick of this business an' I'm dashed if I'm
goin' to stick it any longer."
"It will be soon over, old man," soothed Hal, "we've finished the Duke."
"Oh!" said Tuppy absently.
"Yes--didn't you see the letter he wrote to the governor in his rag."
"No," said the innocent Tuppy.
"What! not the bit about the vultures in the air, and the brazen sky!"
"Blue sky," corrected Tuppy, and went on hastily, "I suppose you mean
blue, don't you?"
"Blue or brazen," said Hal carelessly, "it was a lot of infernal rot."
"My dear old feller," said Tuppy huffishly, "eminent strategist an'
military authority as you are, incisive analyst of character as you may
be; rampin' rhetorician an' high steppin' logician as in all probability
you imagine yourself to be, I cannot accept your dictum on literary
quality or diction. I thought that vulture touch was exceptionally
imaginative, and the introduction of the blue sky supremely delicate."
"Anybody would think that you had written that bit yourself," chaffed
Hal. Tuppy was not to be appeased.
"That's beside the question," he complained.
Then Alicia interrupted them.
She monopolized Tuppy, and Hal, after a vain attempt to join in the
conversation, withdrew a little sulkily.
"Lord Tupping," she asked, "aren't you feeling a terrible hypocrite?"
"Not unusually so, dear lady," said Tuppy.
"Sir Harry thinks that you are not on speaking terms with the Duke."
Tuppy coughed.
"At the present moment I ain't," he confessed, "it is over a little
question as to whether potatoes should be boiled with salt. I say
without, but he's a most obstinate beggar lately--since his trouble."
Alicia ignored the addition.
"Who wrote that dreadful letter," she asked suddenly.
"What letter?" Tuppy's face was a blank.
"Oh, please don't pretend that you are ignorant--that wretched letter
full of nonsensical----"
Tuppy drew himself up.
"Dear lady," he said stiffly, "if you refer to the vultures----"
With a woman's quick intuition she guessed at the authorship of that
piece of imagery.
"No--I am not referring to that portion of the letter," she said
tactfully, "in fact I thought that little touch rather fine," she added,
inwardly praying for forgiveness, "but the letter in general--the whole
idea, it was the Duke's, of course?"
"The less imaginative part was the Duke's," confessed Tuppy, "the crude
outlines, so to speak, the framework----"
"Well," she broke in, speaking rapidly, "you are to tell the Duke that
he must not do such a thing again; I will not receive farewell messages
through the public press--indeed, you may tell him that nothing will
induce me to read the paper again."
"I say," protested Tuppy, "don't say it! Next week's letter ain't half
bad----"
"Next week!" Alicia's blood boiled. "Do you mean to tell me that he
dares to repeat----"
"He's written twenty already," said the informer, "some of 'em good,
some of 'em so, so. There's a very fine one called 'The Profits of
Penitence' that'll appear in the Christmas number. That's a
tremendously touchin' thing--about Christmas bells an' children dyin' in
the snow."
Alicia had no words by now.
She gained self-possession with an effort.
"You--must--tell--the--Duke," she began.
"Why not tell him yourself," suggested Tuppy.
Somebody at the far end of the room had just finished singing, and
people who had found seats were smiling sweetly at people who were
standing. And people who were standing were smiling back and saying
"selfish pig" under their breaths, when Sir Harry mounted a chair, and
instantly the hum of talk died down.
"My friends," said Sir Harry, "I feel that we cannot separate to-night
without my saying a few words concerning the object of this gathering
(cheers). We have met together to do honour to our neighbour, Lord
Tupping (loud cheers).
"Heaven and earth!" fretted Tuppy, "why doesn't he leave me alone?"
"Lord Tupping," Sir Harry went on, "has shown us, by example, the
attitude of the typical English peer. Dignified, yet gracious;
reserved, yet approachable; he combines generosity with restraint and is
a striking contrast to the pseudo-nobleman, whose unedifying behaviour
has, I think I am right in saying, scandalized our beautiful suburb."
"I say! I say!" said Tuppy indignantly, but nobody heard him.
"As oil to water," said Sir Harry, "as the genuine is to fictitious, so
is the old nobility to the upstart--I should say, so is the English
nobility to the--er--foreign: they do not mix; they have nothing in
common; their ideals are separated by an immeasurable gulf."
"We cannot but be sensible," the knight proceeded, when there was a
commotion at the doorway and a tall man pushed his way through. It was
the Duke, hatless, pale and a little breathless.
"Tuppy!" he called, and to Sir Harry's amazement the object of his
panegyric came half-way to meet him. In the silence that fell upon the
assembly every word of the conversation was audible.
"Tuppy, did you come over the garden wall to-night?" was his astounding
question.
"No, old feller."
"Sure?"
"Sure, dear boy."
The Duke stood thinking.
"Then you didn't drop this," he said and held out his hand.
It held a silver-mounted cigar case.
Sir Harry recognized it with a smothered oath. It was the case he had
given to Bill Slewer.
"It is inscribed 'Harry Tanneur,'" said the Duke, "and the gentleman who
dropped it in his hurry left me a further token of his regard."
He held up his other hand, and Alicia gave a little cry, for the hand
was swathed in a pocket handkerchief, ominously scarlet.
*Part V*
*THE DUKE ADVENTURES*
*I*
It was nearing the period when "something would have to be done." These
were Olejoe's exact words. With an action pending in the High Court,
the presence of the brokers' man was suggestive rather than conclusive.
Olejoe was a splendid splash of colour, a picturesque accessory, but as
Tuppy pathetically complained, he had not as yet justified the trouble
and expense.
It is true that with a silver salver in his hand he had replaced the
sedate servant. That he received visitors and showed them in; that clad
in his striking raiment he negotiated with the butcher and the milkman,
and that he was one of the Sights. More than this, he was admitted into
the family circle, and was invariably introduced to callers as "my
brokers' man" or "my possessionist," With Tuppy's coming the question of
Olejoe became a vital one. Tuppy, it may be said, was now an inmate of
64. A curt note from Sir Harry's solicitors had terminated his tenancy.
Supplementary to this was a letter from Sir Harry himself in which he
dealt freely in such phrases as "two-faced duplicity," "run with the
hare and hunt with the hounds," "betrayal of a sacred trust," and
similar happily coined phrases of opprobrium.
"The perfectly horrible thing is," Tuppy said in bitterness of spirit,
"I've given up my flat in Charles Street, an' it's a thousand to thirty
the landlord won't take me back again, unless I pay something off the
old account."
The Duke pressed him to stay, and Hank was extremely urgent in his
invitation.
"The Duke should surely have somebody he can talk 'blighted hopes' to,"
he said: in his capacity as An Authority on Women, Tuppy stayed.
Thus Olejoe came to be a problem, for Tuppy brought the faithful Bolt,
and No. 64 was not built for the accommodation of a house party.
Olejoe, therefore, became the pivot around which revolved a ceaseless
whirl of discussion.
He was a Domestic Crisis.
"Something must be done with Olejoe."
This was the beginning and the end of the agenda under review.
Olejoe was present at the most important of these. From time to time he
interjected expostulatory noises.
"A Johnny man that I know," said Tuppy reminiscently--"I don't exactly
know him, but I owe his brother a hundred, which to all intents an'
purposes extends my acquaintance--because if _I_ don't know him, he is
pretty sure to have heard about _me_ from the brother fellow, who's a
deuce of a bleater about money affairs----"
"I'll look him up in the Dictionary of National Biography," said the
Duke; "in the meantime, this man----?"
"Well, this man used to go to the wooliest places--Africa an' Klondike
an' similar horrid spots outside the radius; used to go bug huntin', an'
lion fishin' an' bee-stalkin'. When he got something extra, in the way
of skins or wings or feathers he used to send it to Wards, have it
stuffed an' stuck up in his library. When I say 'library' I mean the
place he used to sleep in on Sunday afternoons. But if he got something
extra-extra, somethin' stupendously gape-ish, such as a pink lion or a
sky-blue rattlesnake--somethin' absolutely priceless, he used to give it
to some dashed museum. There was insanity in the family, mind you."
The Duke cast a calculating glance at Olejoe.
"We might leave him at the South Kensington," he mused.
"Stuffed?" suggested Hank.
"In a box," said Tuppy enthusiastically, "with a rippin' big label on
the top, 'A present to the Nation from a True friend' or some rot like
that."
"Or in lieu of conscience money," said the Duke, "from two who have
robbed the inland revenue, asking finder to notify the same in the
_Times_ newspaper."
"Gents," said Olejoe with a forced smile, "foreigners I've always been
obligin' to, without the word of a lie. Orgin grinders, ice-cream
blokes, an' ladies who tell your fortune with little dickey birds wot
pick a bit of paper out of the box to tell you whether your husband will
be dark or fair, an' how many children you're goin' to have. If you
treat others well, you can expect to be treated well yourself. Do unto
others as thyself would be done is a sayin' old an' true--so no larks,
if you please."
"When you started that interestin' exposition on tolerance of the
alien," said Tuppy aggrieved, "I was under the impression you were goin'
to say somethin' particularly apposite."
"No larks," confirmed Olejoe.
"Say," said Hank suddenly, "what's the matter with sendin' him to the
Tanneur guy?"
"Alive?" asked Tuppy in a matter of fact tone that made Olejoe shiver.
"Why sure; send him along with a tag tied to his coat--it's gettin'
round about the festive season when you give away things you've no use
for."
"I feel certain," said the Duke, "that Olejoe could be used for some
wise purpose. An age that has found employment for bye-products in
general, should not be at a loss for using up this variety. The
difficulty about the knight is that he's going abroad."
"Abroad?"
"Abroad--whether that means a season at the Riviera or an exploration of
the Sandwich Islands, I cannot say. But abroad he's going, or gone."
"We couldn't send our dear old friend as a courier?" questioned Tuppy.
"A sort of unofficial dragoman?"
But the Duke shook his head.
"The situation is this," he said. "We take a house; the knight buys out
our landlord; we refuse to pay rent; the knight puts a broker's man in;
we're tired of the broker; we've no room for the broker; he has outlived
his usefulness; _Q._ What should A do with B?
"We might, of course, bury him in the garden," the Duke went on, "thus
enriching the soil; we might wait for a foggy night, take him out and
lose him----"
"Monty! I've got it!"
The inspiration had come to Tuppy with extraordinary suddenness.
"Pay him out."
"What?"
"Pay the rent," said Tuppy solemnly; "it's unusual in cases like this,
an' it's a bad precedent: but as a solution it's got points you could
hang your hat on."