It was to appear that Mr. Carnaby Leo and his sister were not to be put
off so easily as the confederates imagined. Encouraged by what they
considered the other side's weakness, and led on by their ignorance of
European ways, they--or rather the lady--grew determined to make out of
their trip a much bigger coup than at first seemed likely to be
forthcoming from what was really nothing but a huge piece of bluff. It
is true that Lady Agatha, with her unassailable manner, was a serious
obstacle in the path which this enterprising couple proposed to take,
but she, after all, Lalage argued, was but an outside and detached
factor in the affair, an outlying rampart, as it were, in the defence.
Nevertheless the influence of her repellent personality was so great
that neither of the Leos cared to come face to face with her again if
that situation could by any possibility be avoided, and in their
councils of war (in which Lalage tried to teach her thick-witted
brother how to back up her brain by his muscle) the temporary mistress
of Staplewick was never regarded as a negligible quantity.
So it happened that when, in the evening, the Leos resolved to pay
another visit of coercion to the Towers, they took care to enter
unannounced, and to keep out of Lady Agatha's way. Confident in the
reasonable cause of their presence, they made their way quietly from
the hall along a corridor leading to the picture gallery which seemed
to offer an inviting lurking-place. As luck would have it, the
gallery, as being somewhat isolated, had been appointed the
trysting-place of Peckover and Miss Ethel. And it was there that the
arch-deceiver with a cynically expectant smile on his face was awaiting
his lady-love.
The long room had struck chill as he entered it, and he had lighted a
cigarette, if not with the idea of warmth, at least to keep his nerves
in order. "Quiet," he remarked aloud to himself as he glanced with a
little shiver along the line of effigied Quorns before whose canvases
at intervals were arranged, like sentinels, stands of armour. "Not to
say Madame Tussaudy. Rum things ancestors. What a lot some folks seem
to think about 'em. Can't say I ever troubled about mine. That
reminds me, I must get up a family history of these Quorn Johnnies, and
impart it to poor old Gage. It need not," he gave a little knavish
laugh, "be all strictly correct according to 'Ume and Smollett. Well,
Percy, my boy," he kept talking to himself as though to keep the
silence at bay, "you've dropped into a nice thing. It's a fine life to
be a rich toff, or the imitation of one--which is quite sufficient for
the general public. Ethel is a smart little thing; she has come on
wonderfully since those Australian nuisances gave her a fright. Poor
old Gage! Strikes me I'm having the fun he's paying for. Ah, here she
comes."
Footsteps were heard by the door. He flung away his cigarette, and
went forward as quickly as the semi-darkness would allow him. "Ethel!"
he whispered.
The figure whom he addressed emerged into the stream of moonlight, and
he saw, to his dismay, Lalage Leo.
"It's me, dear," was her greeting, pleasant, yet with a suggestion of
business behind it. "Lalage."
"Eh, yes," he stammered, trying to mask his annoyance with a laugh.
"Funny place to meet, isn't it?"
"You and Miss Ethel evidently don't think so," was the obvious retort.
"So you were expecting her?"
"I thought the step was hers," he replied disingenuously.
"Poor girl! She must have a heavy tread if it is anything like
Carnaby's," Lalage returned pleasantly.
On the hint Peckover looked beyond her and saw the looming figure of
her brother with an irritating grin on his just discernible face.
"Carnaby has got a heavy foot," his sister pursued significantly, "and
he is going to put it down and keep it there. Eh, Carnaby?"
The objectionable figure lurched forward. "Point out the spot you want
it planted, Lal," he said truculently, "and down it goes."
Peckover found himself wishing that the abominable extremity had been
planted in the Antipodes and had taken root or, for preference,
withered away there. "Where?" he asked wearily.
"Where," Miss Leo echoed. "Why, on your carrying on with these Hemyock
girls. Carnaby, dear," she made the appeal with a vicious look, not at
her brother but at his intended victim, "you won't see me fooled?"
"But I tell you----" Peckover began, when she snapped him up.
"If you are good enough for other people, you are good enough for me.
So no nonsense."
"Nonsense?" Carnaby roared. "I'll----"
Lalage thoughtfully turned to shut the door. "That's it," she
whispered. "Frighten him a bit." For it seemed to her that the effect
of the snapped fire-irons was wearing off. "Tell Mr. Gage," she said
aloud, holding Carnaby in the moonlight with a glittering eye, "what
happened to those three mounted police who went after you."
Owing either to the suddenness of the demand or the spell of his
sister's masterful glare, the small mind which dominated the mass of
muscle seemed paralysed. "Ah, yes," he responded stupidly. "Didn't
they!"
Miss Leo for the moment seemed to justify her name; she looked like a
lioness ready to spring, but withheld by considerations of expediency.
"Go on," she whispered through her clenched teeth. "Carnaby!" she said
more mildly and aloud. "The three who looked after you in the Bush."
But either the hero's recollection was hazy or invention was not his
strong point. "Eh?" he said confusedly. "Yes. They--they followed me
into the Bush."
"Yes? Well?" enquired Peckover, curiously.
"And two of them are there now," continued Lalage with a world of
uncomfortable meaning.
"I wish you two were," thought Peckover. "Tell us all about it," he
said resignedly.
"Go on, Carnaby," his sister commanded.
Whether or not the man of thews and sinews had been keeping up his
constitution injudiciously at the _Three Pigeons_, certain it was that
his brain did not seem in glib working order. "Ah, yes," he said
slowly, quailing under Lalage's eye, "three mounted constabulary----"
after which thrilling statement he paused.
"Came after you in the Bush," the flippant Peckover ventured to supply.
"Yes, we've heard that." For the little man saw no chance of ending
the interview till the narrative was concluded.
Mr. Leo, failing to stimulate his imagination to the required point,
fell back upon a more ready and less intellectual form of address.
"I'll eat you in a minute, boots and all," he informed his impatient
listener with an undue amount of emphasis. Then, as though the
outburst had spurred his invention, he went on, "Three--three mounted
police at me at once. Three to one----"
"Cowards," commented Peckover warmly.
"I was alone," shouted the son of Mars, now plunging recklessly into
the recital; "no bush-armour; nothing but my fighting-jacket.
They--they----" he stammered and stopped as the trickling stream of
imagination ran dry. He, however, sought to make up for verbal
shortcomings by fixing Peckover with a stare of the most appalling
ferocity. Lalage saved the situation by prompting from the darkness
behind him into which she had slipped. "They came on at the charge,"
he roared, never relaxing his truculent glare at his listener; "one in
front, one on each flank----"
"That's right," whispered Lalage. "Keep it up."
"And one----" roared the encouraged swashbuckler.
"Thought you said there were only three," objected the irrepressible
Peckover.
"I'll wring any man's neck who interrupts me and puts me off my
stroke," was the savage response, and as the application of the remark
could bear but one interpretation, its object decided that it would be
better to curb his critical faculties before they brought on an
interference with his personal appearance and comfort.
"On they came like a hurricane," roared Carnaby, as the promptings
reached him, "one here in face: one on the right flank, one on--on----"
He stopped with some hazy notion that he had made a mistake. In his
graphic action illustrating the narrative he had landed himself beyond
ear-shot of his prompter.
"On the left," Peckover supplied sympathetically. "What's the matter?"
For the reciter seemed confused.
"He has had so many fights that he forgets them," explained Lalage,
emerging from the darkness to the rescue. "More than the other fellows
do, though. Go on, you great fool!" she politely adjured the
free-lance under her breath.
Thus incited, Carnaby put on a grimace which would have been nicely
calculated to send an old lady into a fit or an infant into
convulsions, albeit there lay beneath it an abject fear of his sister's
displeasure. "I'll show you!" he bellowed, while Peckover, with an
uneasy calculation of the means of exit, wondered whether the object
lesson would involve his posing as the inadequate representative of the
unfortunate mounted police. "First chap," the mighty one proceeded,
with, it must be confessed, a certain tendency to reiteration, "first
chap comes on full gallop in front." Peckover nodded his absorbed
interest. "I pull off my boot and dash it in his face." For an
instant Peckover looked dubious; then realizing his ignorance of
fighting under antipodean conditions, he accepted the statement for
what it was worth.
"Down he goes," the story continued, "tobogganning over the horse's
tail." Peckover, having without prejudice admitted the premises, could
not resist accepting the conclusion as highly probable.
Suddenly the warrior's hand shot out and grasped him by the shoulder.
"You," he shouted, becoming intoxicated with excitement as the tale of
his prowess grew, "are the second man. As you pass, I slip under your
arm and catch you a smack on the point of the jaw which puts you to
sleep."
Instantly Peckover covered with both hands the part of his anatomy
referred to, and was understood to intimate that his own powers of
imagination were quite equal to the task of realizing the particular
form of assault which it was unnecessarily proposed to illustrate.
Postponing for the moment the exemplification of the knock-out blow,
Mr. Leo proceeded in spluttering ferocity with his narrative. "In a
moment I have got hold of the first man's cutlass----" here he caught
up in his excitement a sword which unfortunately hung near, and
flourished it in a fashion not hitherto adopted by any recognized
school of arms. "I turn, and cry----" he bellowed, when, as luck had
it, his energy led him to catch the weapon, in his terrific swing,
against a suit of armour which was brought toppling over upon him and
thence to the floor with a crash which sounded through the gallery with
startling din.
The effect on the man of doughty deeds was, however, even more than
startling. He fell forward under the shock of the cold metal, and with
the helmet, thus jerked loose, striking him a smart blow on the head,
his roaring was changed in a moment from truculence to terror. "Oh!
Oh!" he cried, as he sprawled over a chair, "don't hurt me. I am only
pretending!"
But his quicker-witted sister was already at hand to cover his
confusion. "Carnaby will have his joke," she exclaimed laughing
loudly. "You see?" she demanded suddenly of Peckover, effectually
dispelling the amusement which was gathering on his face, "he is a man
of action," she continued with grim significance. "Cares for nobody,
except his sister. And he won't see her made a fool of." Then, having
beaten Peckover into retreating from too close an inspection of her
brother's real state of mind, she turned, caught the sprawling fighter
by the collar, and pushed him to his feet. "Great goose!" she hissed
at him. "I could strangle you!"
The striking of a clock told Peckover that the time appointed for his
assignation had arrived. "We'll hear that bloodthirsty anecdote
to-morrow," he said, half trembling at his own temerity. "It's too
good to be wasted on an audience of one."
"All right, my little wallaby-rat," responded Carnaby in a tone
unpleasantly threatening, and with a valiant attempt to cover his
discomfiture.
"Don't wait," Peckover's apprehension of a coming complication forced
him to say. "Not much fun in this dark, chilly place. I'll stop and
pick the tin plates up."
But as he made for the scattered armour, Lalage seized him. "No, you
don't," she said, with determination that filled her victim with
despair. "You come with us. I don't trust you out of my sight."
"Going to meet a girl here?" cried Carnaby, with a quite surprising
flash of intuition. "I'd like to see him."
"We will," said Lalage, with quiet insistence; "we will see him.
Here!" She took up a breastplate and helmet. "Get inside this armour,
Carnaby dear, and we'll just keep an eye on him."
Piece by piece she picked it up and buckled it on him, Carnaby during
the somewhat irksome operation relieving his feelings by addressing
various minatory remarks to the now discomfited Peckover. "You stir a
foot, and I'll twist it off, my pigeon. You just mention we're here,
and I'll pull your tongue out, my little magpie. So you'll play fast
and loose--chrrr Lal, you're pinching me--fast and loose with my
beautiful sister, will you? You just try it on, my chicken, and it
will be the last article you ever do try on. I'll flatten you out, and
then swab the floor with you."
With a running fire of such cheering announcements did Mr. Leo relieve
the tedium of his process of adornment. At length the pieces of armour
were fixed to him. There were absurd gaps in the covering;
nevertheless, in the semi-darkness there was no manifest difference
between him and the empty suits of mail.
"Now," directed Lalage, as she arranged him on a stand, "you stay there
as still at you can. And you"--she turned to Peckover--"stir from the
room if you dare. You just tell the young minx you won't have anything
to do with her, and, if she poaches on other people's preserves there
won't be much sport for her by this day week."
"Yes!" A husky voice filtered through the vizor of Carnaby's helmet,
as he flourished the sword in his hand. "If you try fooling I'll cut
your----"
"Hush!" Lalage commanded, as she drew back into the obscurity of a
recess. "Some one coming."
"Nice evening this evening," muttered Peckover ruefully as the door
softly opened.