With a vicious kick at the encumbering and undignified table-cover, Mr.
Sparrow, green with passion, advanced upon his supposed traducer, who
backed away in a composite attitude of protest, authority, and
apprehension.
"Oh, Tom!" cried Miss Popkiss ruefully, but Mr. Sparrow had no eyes for
her just then.
"Scoundrel, am I? Rascal, am I?" he hissed at the retreating stranger.
"I'll show you. I'll give you----"
The other man had backed, by an oversight, into the corner and stood at
bay, with an ugly look in his eyes and a thick-set hand stretched out
in front of him. "Don't you touch me," he exclaimed warningly, "an
officer of the law in the execution of his duty."
The words had a certain effect on Mr. Sparrow, since his threatening
fist remained in the air. "What do you want wi' me?" he demanded, with
a quiver in his voice which was, perhaps, not altogether the result of
righteous anger.
"You are Percy Peckover?" the man suggested.
"You are a liar!" was the ready retort. "I am Thomas Sparrow."
"Yes," corroborated Miss Popkiss, with a remorseful sob; "he is my Tom
Sparrow."
The other man began to look doubtful; then he pulled the telegram from
his pocket and unfolded it with legal deliberation. "Stop a bit," he
said brusquely. "Five foot seven," he glanced up uncompromisingly at
the ruffled Sparrow--"You're five foot nine----"
"And a half," put in the person under review.
The other took no notice of the correction, but proceeded with his
comparison. "Pale--you are brick-dust; oval face--yours is round
enough; dark moustache"; he moved his head quizzingly from side to side
as though looking for something not easily distinguishable: "yours is
sandy--what there is of it----"
Miss Popkiss gave an hysterical giggle, and Mr. Sparrow, words
evidently failing him, merely gurgled and showed his teeth in a
discomfited grin.
"Flash dress," read on the detective, outwardly ignoring the effect of
his blunt differentiation, "yours is agricultural and shabby."
"Shabby?" Sparrow cried furiously. It was early closing day, and he
had been at pains to smarten himself up in his best; added to which he
would at any time have deprecated personal criticism in the presence of
Miss Popkiss.
But all the apology he got from his tormentor was the terse summing up,
as the telegram was refolded, "Description don't tally. You can go."
Gathering that it was no half-forgotten peccadillo that had risen
against him, Mr. Sparrow resumed his boldness and eased the curb upon
his wrath. "Go?" he cried witheringly. "How about the stuffing? I'll
go for you!"
He proceeded to do so in such unmistakable fashion that the arm of the
law (being in this case one that was at a disadvantage in the essential
of reach) found itself inadequate for its own protection, and was fain
to invoke lay assistance which forthwith appeared in the portly form of
Host Popkiss.
"Hullo! hullo!" cried that worthy, his high-pitched croak sounding
above the scuffle. "What's the matter? I won't have no row on my
licensed premises," he protested in fussy indignation, proceeding to
separate the combatants with a vigour which made up in authority what
it lacked in physique. "Why, Mr. Doutfire!" he exclaimed in horrified
amazement as he recognised Sparrow's victim.
"Yes, me, Mr. Popkiss," gasped that gentleman, keeping a vicious eye on
his late assailant. "Will you deal with this party, or shall I?" As
he spoke he produced and exhibited with a significance which was not
lost upon Mr. Sparrow, a pair of highly-polished handcuffs, of a more
elegant make than the usual vulgar "darbies" which festoon the
blankness of a police-station wall; in effect these were of a pattern
_de luxe_. None the less had they the immediate effect of calming the
aggressive Sparrow; to whom, with the severity of the outraged licensee
of a highly respectable house of entertainment, Mr. Popkiss now
addressed himself.
"What have you come in here for? In my coffee-room?"
"I did not come for to be insulted," answered Mr. Sparrow sullenly, as
preferring a negative handling of an awkward question.
But Mr. Popkiss held on to the positive. "I ask you what you did come
for," he insisted, his severe eye suggesting how much more weight his
tone might have carried had his bones carried less.
"He was under the table." Mr. Doutfire made the statement without
heat, as though content to let the bare and damning fact speak for
itself.
"Most irregular," said Popkiss weakly, at a loss exactly what to do,
and wishing, but for the slur on his house, that the law's
representative would take the matter out of his hands. "Look here," he
went on, with an ill-timed and coldly received wink at the detective,
"if you want to play under the table, stop at home and play under your
own; if I catch you under mine or anywhere on my premises where there
is no call for you to be, I'll pull your wing feathers out, Mr.
Sparrow. Now, hop off."
Under other circumstances Mr. Sparrow might have been ready with a more
or less pertinent rejoinder to the stout inn-keeper's _brutum fulmen_;
as it was, with the glittering symbols of durance dangling before his
fascinated eyes, he was glad enough to find himself in a position to
depart even with his repartee unspoken.
"Mercy," commanded her father, dropping the jocular element in his
severity; "go into the bar, I'll talk to you presently."
And Miss Popkiss, with the uneasy conviction that she had made a fool
of herself, was glad to obey.
"Now, Mr. D., what gives us the pleasure of seeing you here to-day?"
inquired the host, lapsing without an effort into affability. "I
didn't notice you come in."
"No," replied Doutfire, as he dropped the minatory tokens of his office
into his pocket; "I made free of the window--just in the way of
business, you understand. Fact is," he continued in a more
confidential tone and with a quite unnecessary repetition of his trick
of glancing round the room in search of impossible eavesdroppers, "I've
had a wire from town. You are likely to have a queer customer to-day."
The fat face of Mr. Popkiss showed no tangible sign of the effect the
news had on him. "What, coming here, to this house?" he asked
futilely. "For Bunbury Races to-morrow, I suppose?"
"Maybe," Mr. Doutfire agreed, in the tone of one who could say more if
he chose, "young swell-mob, I reckon. Travelled by nine-thirty train
from Waterloo, alighted at Faxfleet and inquired the way here. I was
ten minutes late at the station and got a lift on here, calculating to
overtake him. He must have gone by the fields."
"What has he done, Mr. D.?" Popkiss inquired huskily.
"Serious case; counterfeit coin," Mr. Doutfire answered with
importance. "One of a flash gang. Now look here," he said with a
touch of authority, "The party I want is sure to turn up soon. Don't
you allow yourself to do anything calculated to rouse that party's
suspicions: serve him with what he calls for, and leave the rest to me."
"I'd better leave the bill to you as he pays in wrong money, eh?"
suggested Mr. Popkiss, with true trade waggishness, and becoming purple
with enjoyment of his own joke.
Mr. Doutfire permitted himself no more than a faint smile. "Treasury
won't see you out of pocket, Mr. Popkiss," he declared with importance,
as one fully competent to answer for the liberality of that notoriously
niggardly office. Then, as having settled the point, he thrust his
hand into his trouser pockets and strutted complacently to the window.
"I hope to make a neat job of it this time," he announced.
"Ah, you're a cute one, you are, Mr. D.," said Popkiss knowingly.
"Well," assented Doutfire, still looking out of the window and rattling
the money in his pockets, "I flatter myself I have done a few pretty
things in my time. Yes," he continued introspectively, "I've got a
good bit of the fox in me--natural and acquired in the profession"--he
turned suddenly on his heel, confronting Mr. Popkiss--"only in the way
of business, mind you."
The sudden _volte face_ so startled the worthy host that all he could
put forward by way of comment was the trite formula, "You'll have a
glass of me, Mr. D.?"
Possibly Mr. Doutfire took the offer as a tribute to his professional
sagacity; all the same, he declined it. "No, thank you. Must keep my
head clear. Can't drink."
"What, not in the way of business?" chuckled Mr. Popkiss with another
sub-apoplectic seizure. "One glass," he urged, perhaps wishing, in the
ticklish position of proprietor of licensed premises to stand well with
the representatives of the law.
"Well, just a small one," Mr. Doutfire consented, in a tone which
suggested that the blandishments of all the publicans in England should
not persuade him to exceed his modicum or his duty.
As they turned towards the bar, Mercy met them. "Father," she said
breathlessly, "the carriage from the Towers has just driven into the
yard. Colonel Hemyock is asking for you."
"Eh? All right," exclaimed Popkiss, turning down his cuffs in a
flurry. "Here, Mercy,"--he ran back--"draw Mr. Doutfire a glass of
anything he fancies." And so he bustled out, a quivering jelly of
importance and servility, into the courtyard.