"Did you call, my lord?" was, considering the tone of the summons, Host
Popkiss' unnecessary enquiry.
"My lord!" repeated Peckover irritably. "How you country fellows do a
joke to death. Yes; I did call. Who was that absurd person intruding
through the window?"
Mr. Popkiss went to the window with what promptness his bulk would
allow and looked blankly out into the rain-swept courtyard. "I don't
see any one," he said.
"I can't eat my dinner with a Jack-in-the-box fooling behind me,"
Peckover complained suspiciously.
"No, certainly not," the host agreed with professional severity. "It
must have been Doutfire." Satisfied with the conjecture he went up
confidentially to his guest. "I'll tell you, my lord. It might have
been Mr. Doutfire, our detective from Long Rixon."
Peckover with an effort arrested his jaw in the act of falling, and
snapped it to with a rattle of the teeth.
"De--detective?"
"Yes," Popkiss explained, with a touch of importance, as one who, in
his responsible calling, is permitted to share the Treasury secrets;
"he is expecting a chap down here that is wanted by the London police.
He missed him at Faxfleet railway station, and has now gone back to
Rixon, but if he don't hear of him there he is coming back here again.
He is a clever man, is our Mr. Doutfire," he proceeded, warming with
local pride and at the same time justifying any eccentric methods to
which the eminent officer of the law might have thought proper to
descend; "cleverest man in these parts by a long chalk, and we are a
bit proud of him."
So full of admiration and pride was Host Popkiss that he failed to take
notice of his guest's ghastly face.
"Thank you, that will do," said Peckover hurriedly, with an effort to
appear loftily satisfied. "If it is only the detective, I don't mind."
His one and feverish desire now was to be left alone. The crisis was
at hand, and it must be faced without witnesses.
As Popkiss with corpulent strut left the room, somewhat disgusted at
having failed to excite interest in the artful Doutfire, Peckover went
hastily to the door and shut it upon the retreating mass of licensed
importance. Then he turned, almost in a state of collapse. The
champagne bottle caught his eye; he staggered to the table, poured out
a glass blindly, and swallowed it. "It's all up," he muttered in a
hoarse whisper. "It has come to amen. That was not the detective, but
he's not far off. Clever man: back directly." He laughed miserably,
then subsided limply into the chair, and sat with his head resting on
his clammy hands. He was caught. If the local police, headed by the
nailing Mr. Doutfire, had got wind of his presence in the neighbourhood
there was clearly no escape but one. "Ugh!" He shuddered as in
imagination he heard handcuffs click and felt the cold embrace of the
steel round his wrists. He sat there with head erect now, his hands
pressed against his cheeks, his eyes staring fascinated by the scenes
which his imagination, coloured by the study of police reports,
pictured before him: he saw the magistrate committing him; then himself
in the dock at the Old Bailey; the Treasury counsel unfolding a black
case against him, his flash pals, the real culprits, grinning at his
misery from the gallery; the jury shaking their uncompromising heads in
all a small tradesman's Pharisaical virtuousness; he heard the verdict,
guilty; he saw the judge, unrelenting and terrible in scarlet and
ermine, mouthing at him before coming to the point--five years, ten,
fifteen! He started up trembling, with beads standing on his forehead
and with despairing eyes. "I couldn't stand it!" he moaned. "I'll
never go through it. They shan't take me alive."
Feverishly he felt for his pocket, in his agitation missing the opening
more than once. He took out the phial, gave an apprehensive glance
round at the window, emptied the contents into the glass and filled it
up with champagne. Then, with the means of escape ready to his hand,
he seemed to steady himself. "Now," he said, with a grim smile; "five
seconds' courage, and I can snap my fingers at 'em all. It's only like
a sleeping draught." He raised the glass to his lips, held it there
for two or three seconds, and then set it down. Perhaps there was no
hurry for five minutes.
"Now, I'm going off," he soliloquized dreamily. "I wish I'd had a
fairer fling while I was at it. It has been a poor, middle-class
rollick after all," he continued ruefully. "It's too late now. But I
should like to have done the real swell, if only for a week; gone in
for thousands instead of a few paltry pounds; Belgravia instead of
Camden Town; Monte Carlo instead of Herne Bay and Yarmouth;
high-steppers; Hurlingham; Henley; a real lady or two mashed on me
instead of--ah, well, she wasn't so bad; it wasn't her fault she wasn't
class: she'll be the only one to be sorry. Champagne," he took up the
glass, "I might have had this sort all along if I'd had the nerve."
Suddenly recollecting, he set down the glass hastily. "I forgot."
Curiously he seemed to shudder at his narrow escape. Then, as though
impatient with his temporizing, "Bah! let me get it over," he muttered,
and lifted the glass again, only to set it down once more. "I wonder,"
he said, as making an excuse for delay, "what the bill for this little
dinner comes to. Poor Fatty will have to apply to my executors.
Wonder if he will see a joke there." He laughed at his touch of
Cockneyfied humour. Then relapsed into the morbid state. "Will the
pretty little daughter be sorry? Perhaps. Not she; no one will. The
sooner I'm off the hooks the better. Here goes for the last time." He
took up the glass. "I'll count three, and then toss it off." He shut
his eyes, hesitated a moment, then began. "One, two, thr----"
The glass was but waiting for the last word to leave his lips when the
door opened with an impatient, unceremonious burst, and a man came in,
flinging it to behind him. Another dusty, worn-out man, who stared for
a moment at Peckover, and then, turning a chair from the table, just
let himself fall into it.