Mr. Doutfire came in close upon Bisgood's announcement, and threw a
severely professional eye round the company. His manner, in fact,
suggested, in a measure, that he was raiding a gambling den; but then
the suspicious habit had become characteristic with him. And indeed,
the attitudes of the party might be said to have justified mistrust, or
at any rate an inquisitorial curiosity on his part. He bowed to Gage
with a nicely adjusted balance between the homage due to a peer of the
Realm and a due regard for the Law whose representative he was and
which boasted itself no respecter of persons. It is, perhaps, scarcely
necessary to state that Peckover viewed his advent with an uneasy eye.
"Beg pardon, my lord," Doutfire said in his consequential, witness-box
manner, "sorry to intrude upon your lordship, but I considered it my
duty to inform your lordship that a certain suspicious character has
been noticed hanging about the grounds here, and I took it upon myself
to just step up and warn your lordship."
The somewhat tense silence which followed was broken by the duke's
staccato tones. "So this is milord Quorn, eh, policeman?"
Mr. Doutfire looked not merely scandalized, but ready at a moment's
notice to take the representative of the lordly Saloljas into custody.
"Detective-Inspector is my rank and appellation, sir, begging your
pardon," he said severely. "With regard to your question, sir, I have
every reason to believe I am right in stating that this gentleman--I
should say nobleman--is Lord Quorn."
"So? Thank you, detective," said the duke with a bow of acknowledgment
for the information, and a smile for the futility of the police, once
again preparing to focus his traditional aggressiveness upon the
unhappy Gage.
But that gentleman did not propose to sit again. "It's all a mistake,"
he protested loudly. "I am not Lord Quorn. There he is, so far as I
can make out."
He pointed to the real Quorn, who had retained his seat upon the floor,
and whom, owing to his position behind the door, Doutfire's eagle
glance had so far not taken in. That alert officer now, however, lost
no time in wheeling round and fixing the lowly peer with a glare of
more than suspicion. "This?" he exclaimed incredulously. "Why, this,"
he darted his head forward and sideways with the sure air of a master
of the art of criminal indemnification, "this is the party I have just
mentioned to your lordship. A suspicious character who has given us
the slip as well as a lot of trouble. A party known to us as Peckover."
"There!" cried Lady Ormstork, turning from the sedentary nobleman with
a face of contemptuous disgust. "I said it was impossible he could be
Lord Quorn."
"I know him as Peckover," Mr. Doutfire maintained with authority. "A
party against whom a charge of being in possession of and uttering
counterfeit coin was lately preferred, but which charge the Treasury
has now seen fit to withdraw."
"Oh!" Peckover's face brightened at the news. "But he is Lord Quorn,"
he insisted.
Mr. Doutfire, who had been keeping that nobleman under observation with
a wary and scornful eye, looked as though quite unable to reconcile the
statement with its object's position on the floor. "Do I understand
that he states he is Lord Quorn?" he asked severely, taking out a large
note book with bodily contortions and ominous play with its broad
elastic band.
"On the contrary, I've said nothing of the sort," objected Quorn. "Did
I?" he added appealing to the company above him.
Mr. Doutfire's look suggested that to his mind that assertion, even if
correct, did not fully account for the suspect's position on the
carpet. "Well, bring yourself up," he commanded roughly. "And let us
get at the rights of the question."
Thus bidden, Quorn rose, and faced the officer of the law, defiantly
reticent.
"You shall find out at once which of these gentlemen is Lord Quorn,"
ordered the Duke of Salolja, folding his arms.
"By your leave, sir----" began Doutfire in a tone of trenchant reproof.
"Sir?" cried the duke, speaking very fast and staccato. "My rank and
appellation are the Duke of Salolja, I am, moreover, a Grandee of
Spain."
Mr. Doutfire covered the hit by a business-like action of putting the
point of a stubby lead pencil in his mouth. "I'll make a note of
that," he said, to all appearances unmoved by the momentous
announcement. And he proceeded to do so, taking a subtle revenge by
making the haughty Castilian spell his title, and furthermore
suggesting that his pronounciation of the alphabet was suspiciously
misleading.
"Your grace," he observed sternly, when the elaborate entry had been
made and deliberately revised, "may trust me to take the steps, if any,
necessary to clear up this matter." He turned from the fuming
Spaniard, and addressed himself pointedly to the rest of the company.
"Do I understand," he asked approaching the extraordinary complication
with an absence of emotion which suggested that the tackling of such
questions was with him an every-day occurrence, "do I understand that
there is some doubt as to the identity of Lord Quorn?"
"Precisely," replied the duke.
Mr. Doutfire by an authoritative wave of his notebook enjoined the
Castilian despot to silence. "I ask you, sir," he said, pointedly to
Gage, "whether you are or are not Lord Quorn?"
"Not I," was the prompt and comparatively cheerful answer.
Mr. Doutfire accepted it with a suggestion of reserving all comment on
the surprising statement till a later stage. "Perhaps, then, you will
be good enough to tell me who is," he said.
Gage pointed with his thumb to Peckover. "If it's not this gentleman,
I don't know who it is," he replied indifferently.
"Nothing of the nobility about me," Peckover declared in answer to
Doutfire's interrogative glance. "I tell you that is the individual,
over there," indicating Quorn, who was now sufficiently recovered from
the ducal onslaught to laugh jeeringly.
"I like that!" he exclaimed. "Making me Lord Quorn when it comes
useful."
"You are Peckover?" demanded Mr. Doutfire confidently.
"If you say so," was the reply.
"I do say so," said Doutfire, whose reputation clearly hinged on the
correctness of the statement.
"I knew he was not Lord Quorn," put in Lady Ormstork.
"He told me he was," observed Miss Buffkin.
Mr. Doutfire turned a threateningly suspicious glance on the stolid
Quorn, then pursed his mouth with a pitying smile of non-acceptance as
he shook his head emphatically at the young lady. "He's Peckover all
right, miss," he assured her. Then glared at Quorn as though
challenging him to deny it.
And Quorn, although not overburdened with intellect, had sense enough
to recognize that his game just then was to lie low and admit nothing
if he could help it.
"My dear Ulrica," said Lady Ormstork in her superior fashion, "how
could you allow yourself to be taken in by such a transparent pretence?
Does the person look in the least like Lord Quorn?"
"Or any other nobleman?" supplemented Doutfire, with menacing sarcasm.
"Of course," he added, in a more uncompromisingly professional tone,
"if he has been defrauding any of you ladies and gentlemen, under the
false pretence that he is Lord Quorn, I'll take him now to Bunbury
against your preferring a charge against him."
His enquiring look round meeting with no response, save a scornful
smile from Quorn, Doutfire proceeded, eyeing the suspect malevolently,
"I don't know how he comes to be here, in this house, but----"
"He stopped my horse that was running away with me," Gage explained
chivalrously.
"Oh!" Mr. Doutfire's face hardened, as though that in itself were a
questionable circumstance, and made the doubtful record worse. "Well,
of course," he continued, not seeing his way to any active measures
under the reprobative circumstances, "if you are satisfied, it is no
business of mine. I've merely done my duty."
The Duke of Salolja who had endured this discussion with ill concealed
impatience, now spoke again.
"Then it is one of these gentlemen who is really Lord Quorn, eh,
constable?"
"Detective-Inspector, if your grace has no objection," was the
withering correction. After giving the same time to take effect, he
addressed himself to deal with the question. "As to which of these
gentlemen is his lordship, I do not, in the absence of any stated
charge or legal reason feel myself called upon to decide. Speaking
unofficially and without prejudice, I should, if interrogated, incline
to the opinion that this gentleman," he indicated Gage with a passing
and casual wave of his pocket-book on the way to its resting-place in
his coat-tail, "would answer to the description. But I have no _locus
standi_ in the dispute, and therefore merely express an opinion, as a
matter of courtesy, that if the question of identity should be gone
into, the gentleman by the palm-stand may possibly be found to be Lord
Quorn." After which impressive and useful dictum he bid the party
"Good evening," and took a somewhat abrupt departure, fearful, perhaps,
of being led into giving an opinion which might at some future time be
inconveniently used against him.
As the door closed on him Lady Ormstork said, in a tone of repressed
and compromising exasperation, "This is altogether a most
extraordinary, unheard-of proceeding. Perhaps by to-morrow more
sensible counsels will have prevailed, and we shall know who is and who
is not Lord Quorn. But," she added significantly, "I do not overlook
the fact that each one of you gentlemen, and consequently whichever of
you bears the title, has proposed an alliance between himself and Miss
Buffkin. Is that not so, Ulrica, dear?"
"Yes; they've all said as much," replied that young lady casually.
"So?" The Salolja growl reverberated through the room like the first
muttering of thunder.
"And," concluded Lady Ormstork, ignoring the minatory rumble, "Miss
Buffkin will marry whichever of you turns out, when this absurd mystery
is solved, to be Lord Quorn."
"Will she?" observed the duke from the depths of his thickset throat.
"Undoubtedly," was the determined and conclusive reply. "Come, dear.
We must be getting home."
"I shall," said the duke, suddenly galvanizing himself into his native
politeness, "do myself the distinguished honour of constituting myself
your graces' escort. Have I the much prized permission?"
"We will give you a lift--without prejudice," replied Lady Ormstork,
with the laudable object of drawing him off from further exercise of
his powers of intimidation upon whichever might be the prospective
bridegroom.
The duke bowed himself into a right angle. "Your illustrious kindness
transcends my poor deserts. I am overwhelmed by this distinguished
mark of your favour." He straightened himself, pivoted on his heels
till he faced the three men, and bowed to them, this time stopping at
an angle of 45 deg. "Your excellencies, I shall further do myself the
supreme honour of returning to pursue my enquiry as to which of you I
may have the inestimable privilege of addressing without fear of
contradiction as milord Quorn."
He pivoted again till he faced the door, took a phenomenally long
stride to it, recovered himself, flung it open, and with a ceremonial
which had quite a mediaeval flavour about it, and, indeed, had been
probably handed down from one generation of the amiable house of
Salolja to another, conducted the ladies to the hall, leaving the three
men inert with gloomy anticipations.