Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: "'I have a prior and a stronger claim on Mr. Gage,' said
Lalage, with calm determination." (Page 171.)]
A POACHED PEERAGE
BY
SIR WILLIAM MAGNAY, BART.
AUTHOR OF
"FAUCONBERG," "THE RED CHANCELLOR,"
"A PRINCE OF LOVERS," ETC.
"There is a third party to all our bargains"
_ILLUSTRATED_
LONDON
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
1909
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXX
CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXII
CHAPTER XXXIII
CHAPTER XXXIV
CHAPTER XXXV
CHAPTER XXXVI
CHAPTER XXXVII
CHAPTER XXXVIII
CHAPTER XXXIX
CHAPTER XL
CHAPTER XLI
CHAPTER XLII
CHAPTER I
A pretty girl looked out of the low-silled coffee-room window of the
_Quorn Arms_ at Great Bunbury, and threw a glance of roguish invitation
at a watchful young man who was pretending to be busy in the courtyard.
Then she disappeared. The young man lost no time in throwing down his
broom, and, with a manifestly assumed air of indifference, approached
the window. He looked in warily, then glanced round behind him, and
next moment had thrown his leg over the sill and was in the room. The
girl, with her back to the window, was polishing a brass candlestick
with a vigour which suggested that the occupation left no room for less
material thoughts. Also that she was, for a smart young woman,
strangely unobservant of the fact that a man had entered by the window,
until an arm round her waist brought the fact to her notice. Even then
she did not start or cry out, merely disengaging herself from the
expected caress by a self-possessed and apparently well practised twist.
"I can't stop a moment, Tom," she remarked coolly; "only I saw you
outside. Father's in the bar."
"And I've been hanging about a good half-hour to see you, Mercy," her
swain declared impressively. "I say, as time's short, don't let's
waste it. Give us a kiss."
For answer Miss Mercy Popkiss turned her head aside at a right angle as
though suddenly attracted by something in the street. An attitude of
preoccupation does not, however, necessarily imply refusal; under
certain circumstances it even stands for an invitation. As such Mr.
Thomas Sparrow unhesitatingly regarded it.
"One more," he pleaded coaxingly, as Miss Popkiss bent away from his
somewhat ravenous embrace.
"Wait a bit," she said. "I've something to tell you. I'm going to
leave here."
"What, leave the _Quorn Arms_?" exclaimed Mr. Sparrow blankly.
"Yes, truly. I'm going to be still-room maid at the Towers. You see,"
she went on to explain cheerfully, "father doesn't like my being here,
having to wait on the riff-raff as well as the gentry. He says it is
not the best training for a young lady; and when father says a thing,
that thing's settled. They are all swells at the Towers; lords and
ladies and toffs from London. It will be fine."
But Mr. Sparrow was far from sharing her jubilation. "The Towers!" he
exclaimed disconsolately. "Why, they be four mile off, or more.
You'll forget me, Mercy, among all them fine folk; lords, flunkeys and
valets and butlers and swells like that, with their dashin' London
ways."
"Oh, don't you look so silly," the girl remonstrated archly. "Noblemen
and butlers and all that sort aren't anything particular to me. If
you'd smarten yourself up a bit instead of looking like a ploughman,
you might get a place there too. Especially now the new Lord Quorn is
coming home and Colonel Hemyock will have to turn out."
Mr. Sparrow perked up a little. "Ah," he observed with an air of
indifferentism to the warmer subject, "Lord Quorn; he that has been
found in Australy. I suppose when her ladyship turns out you'll be off
to London with her."
"Time enough to think about that when she goes," Miss Popkiss returned
evasively. "Lordship or no lordship, he can't turn her out before her
time's up. And then it might suit me to stay on with him. I wonder
what he'll be like," she added, with a significant touch of feminine
interest.
Mr. Sparrow's prosaic face grew dark. "Oh, Mercy," he cried, gloomily
wrathful, "if I was to see another man, lord or lout, making love to
you, I'd smash him."
Her words having produced what was precisely the desired effect, Miss
Popkiss proceeded to tone it down with a provocative smile. "You can
think of smashing when you see it, Tom. And, I say----"
"Yes, dear?" said Tom, inwardly despising himself for being so easily
mollified.
"I--I hear father in the bar," she suggested significantly.
Mr. Sparrow took the hint and another kiss. Perhaps his ruffled
feelings were responsible for its being a louder osculation than
prudence dictated. Anyhow an approaching voice croaked--
"Mercy! Mercy! What are you after?"
"Quick, Tom," the girl directed in a hurried whisper, "slip out of the
window."
Mr. Sparrow was already there, with a foot over the sill. Its passage
to the ground was, however, prevented by the substantial back of some
one who was crouching outside the window. The disconcerted Philander
swiftly drew his leg back again as though it had been stung, and made a
slinking rush for the table under which he crept just as Popkiss
_pere_, his rotund face coruscating with suspicion, filled the doorway.
"What are you up to, I ask you?" he demanded of his daughter with what
seemed unnecessary vehemence as his small eyes roved in puffy cunning
round the room.
"Polishing the candlesticks, father," she answered coolly. "Is there
anything else you would prefer me to do?"
Not being ready with a suggestion, Mr. Popkiss merely fell back upon a
snort of sagacity, and turned his portly person preparatory to waddling
back to the bar. "Come here, I want you," he commanded vaguely by an
after-thought, in the hope that by the time he had reached his beery
citadel a task might suggest itself to his sluggish invention.
"All right, father," Miss Popkiss replied cheerily, as with more
clatter than was absolutely necessary, she replaced the candlestick on
its shelf. Then she took a round-about route to the door, preferring
it possibly on account of the variety its closer view of the courtyard
afforded. As she was about to pause at the window the man crouching
outside suddenly raised himself and looked in with a knowing grin.
Miss Popkiss, suppressing a start, deftly changed the amorous look she
had prepared into one of haughty displeasure, and swept in a fine
carriage of scorn from the room. Whereupon the man surmounted the sill
and entered.
He was a curiously nondescript sort of person, with a short, round
face, a short nose, short hair, short beard, short arms, short fingers
and short legs. His manner also was short, even jerky. He looked
round the room with a sharpness and vigilance which seemed quite thrown
away upon its commonplace and unsuspicious contents, and absolutely
futile in that they failed to detect Mr. Sparrow who lay snug
underneath the table. But then self-constituted keenness is usually
ignorant of what is going on under its nose.
"No stranger about," the man muttered. Then he took a telegram from
the side pocket of his light overcoat, where it had lain as though
ready to his hand for consultation. "My wire from the Yard is
explicit. Yet," he mused, as he methodically folded the telegram and
dropped it back into his pocket, "if he left the train at Faxfleet he
ought to be here by this. It might take him an hour and a half, or two
hours. I must find out." He walked softly towards the door. "Better
not let old Popkiss see me," he murmured, "he talks too much. But," he
chuckled knowingly, "there's the pretty daughter, if I can catch her
that's the dodge; I don't know what Sarah would say, but it's all in
the way of business." From which observation it is plain that aesthetic
shortcomings do not necessarily prevent a man from fancying himself
irresistible.
Peeping cautiously through the doorway he saw Miss Mercy alone in the
bar, perfunctorily at work upon a task of supererogation which the
paternal wisdom had set her.
"Hist!" he signalled, and when she looked up in disdain he beckoned
mysteriously and withdrew.
Miss Popkiss, in no amiable humour, was forced as a matter of business
to follow him. "What is your order, sir?" she inquired, with a toss of
the head. But the man signed to her to come nearer still with such an
air of mysterious importance that she was forced to drop something of
her haughty manner. "I did not see you come in, sir," she remarked
casually, as a first step toward affability.
For reply the man gave a knowing jerk of the head and indicated the
window with his thumb. "Hope you are well this morning, my dear," he
observed inconsequentially. "It is quite a pleasure to see any one
looking so pretty and blooming."
Ignoring the incongruity between the guest's mysterious prelude and his
crudely outspoken appreciation of her charms, Miss Popkiss was not
above accepting the tribute to her good looks. "Oh, sir," she said
with a touch of protest just sufficient to maintain her propriety; and
so waited for the order to which the compliment would have been a
natural preamble.
The guest pursed his lips and kept his small eyes on her with
business-like admiration. "Very busy, eh?" he suggested, absurdly
enough, since he appeared to be the only customer in the house. "Any
one fresh staying here?" he asked with an obvious affectation of
indifference.
"No, we've had no one fresh to-day, sir," Miss Popkiss answered,
beginning to lose interest in the colloquy.
"Oh," said the man, blinking his eyes suspiciously. "Are you quite
sure? No one been here to-day?"
His manner was so exaggerated in its significance that Miss Popkiss,
with Mr. Sparrow's clandestine visit fresh in her mind, grew uneasy
under it. "No, sir," she answered, a trifle unconvincingly. "Who
should there have been?"
A triumphant gleam shot through her questioner's eyes. He dropped his
cross-examiner's manner and said confidentially, "I thought I saw some
one come in just now."
So it was Tom. Miss Popkiss flushed a little guiltily.
"By the door?" she suggested evasively.
"Or by the window," he hazarded, with noncommittal sagacity.
Miss Popkiss concluded that further equivocation was futile.
"Well, sir, and if you did, what about it?" she demanded defiantly.
Her cross-examiner saw that he had made a lucky hit. "Oh," he
answered, assuming a careless manner "I only looked in to warn you, in
case he has been making up to you, that he is a bad lot, a wrong 'un
altogether; so don't you have anything to do with him."
Had the speaker's searching little eyes not been attracted elsewhere
they must have noticed a peculiar agitation of the table-cloth greater
than the draught would account for.
"Why, you don't mean to say he makes love to any one else," Miss
Popkiss asked, between wrath and jealousy.
"Dozens, dozens," the visitor replied cheerfully. "Every girl he
meets. All that sort do."
"Two can play at that game," the lady commented resentfully.
"Yes," he agreed waggishly: "it takes two to play it properly. Now,
look here, my dear," he added with an abrupt return to business; "I'll
talk to him. You just tell me where he is."
"Oh, no, sir," Miss Popkiss returned resolutely; "you just leave him to
me. I'll do the talking."
But her interviewer did not seem content, for reasons of his own, that
the matter should be taken out of his hands.
"Now just let me see him, there's a dear," he urged coaxingly. "Do,
there's a little darling," he pleaded, becoming somewhat unreasonably
affectionate. "I'll put some salt on his tail."
"Please, no; I'd rather you didn't, sir," returned Miss Popkiss with
decision, as though feeling quite competent to perform the condimentary
operation herself.
"All in the way of business," the visitor persisted, rubbing his stubby
hands together with anticipatory gusto. Then, before the young lady
could realize it, one of the stumpy arms had stolen round her waist.
"Give me a kiss and tell me where to find him, and I'll knock the
stuffing out of the rascal," he whispered insinuatingly.
But Miss Popkiss was not so easily got round. "Don't, sir! What would
father say?" she protested with a vigour which was likewise included in
the action with which she released herself; an action performed with
such adroitness as to give the impression that this was owed to its
being frequently called for.
"Where is he, my sweetie?" persisted the curious one, in no wise
abashed by his repulse.
Next moment the question was answered by a crash, as the table was
overturned, and there rose, struggling with the hampering folds of its
cover, the irate form of Mr. Thomas Sparrow.