So paralysed were they that it was not till the crunching of the
carriage wheels on the gravel roused them from their lugubrious stupor
that they found tongue to discuss their situation.
"Nice let-in for my money and trouble," said Gage writhing in the
Nessus shirt of that fatal peerage.
"At any rate you can't blame me for this pleasing little episode,"
returned Peckover dispiritedly.
"I like your swearing you are not the rightful Quorn," said Gage
huffily.
"I'm not, whoever else may be," maintained his late confederate with a
glance at the real man, who met it by an irresponsive glare.
"I only took it for as long as I fancied," urged Gage.
"A bargain's a bargain," observed Peckover. "You can't take on a title
and give it up as though it were a furnished house."
"Can't I?" his friend rejoined vehemently. "Anyhow, I mean to. I've
had too much of it. I didn't suppose it included Spanish bullies and
Australian bush-rangers."
"You can do as you like about giving it up," retorted Peckover. "Only
it don't come back to me I promise you. I didn't sell it on appro."
Quorn, who had been ruminating on the events just past in glowering
silence, looked up quickly.
"Sell?" he demanded suspiciously. "What do you mean by sell?"
"Mind your own business," returned Gage snappishly. "That's the worst
of men like you. You do a fellow a service and then there's no end to
the advantage you take of it. Thrusting yourself in and talking absurd
rot to the girl. If you don't keep in your place I shall have to put
you there."
"That's what I'm going to trouble you to do before you're much older,"
retorted Quorn darkly.
Gage looked puzzled. "What was your reason," he demanded, turning to
Peckover, "for sticking out that he was Lord Quorn? Were you pulling
that infernal little fire-brand's short leg, or did you mean it?"
Peckover considered a moment, then replied with a nod at Quorn, "You'd
better ask him."
Gage did accordingly ask him.
"Mind your own business," was the unsatisfactory answer. "If you are
Lord Quorn nobody else can be. But it would be interesting to know how
you came into the title."
"What the deuce does it matter," Peckover protested. "That conundrum
will keep. That little devil will be back here directly. What we've
got to talk about is how we are going to tackle him."
The suggestion was so profoundly to the point that a depressing silence
fell on the trio. They all three jumped when Bisgood came in softly to
announce that dinner had been ready half-an-hour.
"Dinner?" cried Gage. "No dinner for me. I'm off."
"Don't be silly," Peckover remonstrated. "We'll have our dinner first.
A bottle of champagne is the stuff to bring us into condition. Come
on, Jenkins, old man. You're dining with us to-night."
An exacting afternoon had left the trio in a state so low that
sustenance was imperative, wherefore they went gloomily in to dinner.
The meal was taken hurriedly, and, with regard to the wine, copiously.
So by degrees they began to feel in a less abject state of panic.
"Why did we let that fool of a detective talk himself off the
premises?" said Peckover regretfully. "Anyhow, we had better have the
local man up here in case that nuisance of a duke tries his 'Come into
the garden, Maud,' again with us."
"What good will that chaw in uniform be against that little devil?"
objected Gage drearily.
"He's somebody," urged Peckover. "And he's got the law behind him."
"And the traditions of the Saloljas in front of him," rejoined Gage.
Nevertheless, to strengthen the garrison, the local constable was sent
for, and the three resumed their repast with a slightly enhanced
appetite. They had arrived at the sweets stage, and Peckover was
wondering whether it was the last apple-tart he was destined to taste,
when a clangorous peal at the bell followed by a thundering knock at
the door sent the diners' hearts into their mouths.
"If--if that is the Duke of Salolja," said Gage, sick with fear, to
Bisgood, "show him into the library. Don't let him--that is, his
grace, come in here."
"Very good, my lord," responded Bisgood, whose imperturbability--and
immunity--he would have given a fortune to possess.
None of the three men could sit quiet. Gage, after a restless turn
round the table, went to the door and listened. As he did so a shade
of relief came over his face. "That's not the little brute's voice,"
he declared hopefully.
"Isn't it? He has got so many," Peckover said dubiously. They
scuttled back to their places as the men returned.
"Mr. Carnaby Leo, my lord," Bisgood announced in a tone which suggested
a month's notice on his part.
"Has he gone?"
"No, my lord. He said he must see your lordship, so I showed him into
the library."
"Miss Leo is not with him?" Quorn asked anxiously.
"No, sir," answered the footman, the great Bisgood declining to notice
the question.
"Better turn the key on him," suggested Peckover.
This unheard-of order Bisgood took upon himself to ignore likewise. In
the abnormal state of affairs the strain on his dignity was nearly at
breaking point.
A footman who looked like going to put the suggestion into practice was
loftily, but _sotto voce_, rebuked by his superior, and abandoned his
intention.
"I'll go and do it, by Jove," exclaimed Quorn, jumping up and leaving
the room, at which action the scandalized Bisgood made no effort to
hide his disgust.
Quorn returned. "Got him safe," he said.
"Is the library safe, though?" Peckover suggested shrewdly.
"As if," remarked Gage bitterly, "we hadn't got our hands full without
that great nuisance turning up to complicate matters. Let's get on
with the wine while we've got any taste left in us," he added, filling
his own glass and sending round the decanters.
As Bisgood and his satellites withdrew, eager to find vent for their
disgust in the servants'-hall, Peckover jumped up. "An idea!" he
cried, brightening. "What do you say having this beast, Leo, in, and
passing him off to the duke as Lord Quorn?"
"Not a bad idea," responded Gage, thinking it out.
"Dashed good one," Peckover insisted.
"How can you pass him off," objected Quorn. "He'll say he is not
Quorn."
"We've all said that," rejoined Peckover shrewdly. "All the same, one
of us is that noble lord. We'll tell the duke that he is incog. for
certain private reasons, and let 'em fight it out between themselves."
"If any one can tackle that little spit-fire it's Carnaby," said Gage.
"And if any one can hustle Carnaby it's the duke," added Quorn.
"Whichever way it goes we shall be gainers," observed Gage. "But how
about Ulrica?"
"Oh, we'll work her into it all right," Peckover replied confidently.
"Let's have the ruffian in and give him some pop."
"Hark!" cried Quorn, holding up his hand. As Gage opened the door
there came across the hall from the library sounds suggestive of a
domestic tornado. Their obvious message was that Mr. Carnaby Leo had
discovered, and was resenting, the fact that he was more or less in
durance, and was communicating his state of feelings through the medium
of double-soled boots to the furniture in general and to the mahogany
door in particular.
"Let's buck up, and release the brute before he wrecks the place," said
Peckover; "or he'll have no kick left in him for that Spanish beauty."
He walked boldly to the door, and threw it open. "Anything wrong?" he
inquired, with what was, under the circumstances, an irritating
blandness.
"Anything wrong?" roared Mr. Leo, lashing out backwards and kicking a
chair, quite futilely, to a remote corner of the room. "No. But
there's going to be. Lock me up, will you, you pair of skunks?" For
Quorn had withdrawn to a somewhat obscure position. "I'll teach
you----!"
"The lock's out of order," Peckover explained with admirable
plausibility. "Slips forward when the door's banged. See? We were
just coming to ask you to join us over a bottle of champagne."
The proposal had an immediately mollifying effect on the rampageous
visitor. "Lead the way, then," he responded thirstily. "I've got a
word or two to say to you from my sister Lalage, and I can talk better
when the hinges of my voice-box are oiled."
They returned to the dining-room, and Mr. Leo began to pay an
unremitting attention to the lubricant which, according to his
statement, should have conduced to unusual eloquence. Anyhow, he
spoke, when at last he found time, if not rhetorically, at least to the
point.
"What I've come to say to you scallywags," he began politely, in a tone
which made his hearers look round to be sure the doors were fast shut,
"is that we, me and my sister, splendid girl, have just about had
enough of this shilly-shally nonsense. We want Lord Quorn, dead or
alive, and, what's more, we mean to have him."
He banged his great fist down on the table and glanced at the three
men. Gage and Peckover looked politely tolerant, while Quorn regarded
his bugbear now for the first time at close quarters, with an attention
bordering on fright.
"As," proceeded the gentle Carnaby, "I have said before, and say now
for the last time you'll have ears to hear it, I and my beloved sister
have not come ten thousand miles to be made fools of."
Gage and Peckover made sympathetic responses, and Quorn exhibited signs
of marked uneasiness.
"The man," their amiable guest resumed, "who tries to make a fool of us
is a goner." He caught up a large apple from a dish. "I take the
skunk in hand like this. See?" He twisted the fruit in halves which
he casually threw over his shoulders. They reached the sideboard,
where one accounted for a tray of liqueur-glasses, while the other took
effect upon the globe and chimney of a tall lamp.
"See?" he repeated, with a certain pride in the rather extravagant
object lesson. "See?" He turned suddenly upon the much-impressed
Quorn and thundered the somewhat superfluous question at him.
"Ye-es, I see," he answered, jumping half out of his chair and trying
to look amused.
"Then why the blazes don't you say so?" Carnaby demanded, ignoring the
fact that the comment he looked for was clearly unnecessary. "Who is
this silly mug?" he added, with evidence of a natural antipathy to
persons who received his feats in presumably unappreciative silence.
"Jenkins," answered Quorn hastily, rattling his wits together.
"Jenkins?" echoed Carnaby in loud scorn. "He looks it. Well, now, see
here, Jenkins Esquire, my beauty. Just fancy yourself for the moment,
if Jenkins is equal to the strain, fancy yourself Lord Quorn. He's a
skunk, so perhaps it'll come easy to you, Jenkins."
Quorn could but smile uneasily at the pleasantry.
"Now, I should say to you," proceeded his urbane neighbour, making the
most of a happy stroke of innuent personification, "Look here, Quorn,
my dasher, the man, lord or lout, or both, who makes love to my sister,
my lovely Lalage, and engages her affections has got to marry her.
See?"
The uncomfortable personator of himself signified promptly his entire
comprehension.
"If you jib," continued the Antipodean Chesterfield, "if you kick, if
you try to slip out,--well--you've got to settle with the strongest man
for his weight in the continent of Australia; a man, mark you, whose
trade is fighting, against odds for preference, and who means business.
See?"
The fascinated Quorn signed his complete grasp of the speaker's meaning.
"A man, I repeat," Carnaby went on, after seeking fresh ideas in a
further libation, "who sticks at nothing where his honour and the
honour of his family are concerned. Law? What's the law to me?
Nothing. They know that out there. The law where I came from gives me
a wide berth. It knows me. When a slink calls himself a nobleman,
he's got to act as a nobleman, or I'll make him act as a swab and scrub
the place down with him. See?"
He glared round at his three auditors who were listening to his
edifying account of himself and his proposals with rapt attention.
"I've not seen the man I'm after, unless I see him before me now," Mr.
Leo proceeded, waxing truculent. "But I presume he has a nose." This
supposition remaining unchallenged, he took up a banana, and proceeded,
"There it is." He wrenched off the end of the fruit and tossed it in
the air whence it came down plump into Quorn's forgotten glass of wine.
Ignoring the episode, the pretty fellow continued, "He has, or as a
nobleman, should have, two eyes."
No one had a word to say against the computation.
"Here goes," said Carnaby, accompanying the words by a graphic
illustration (using the remaining portion of the banana for the
purpose) of the latest and most approved method of removing the human
eye without having recourse to a surgical operation. Then, the
experiment having been brought to an eminently impressive conclusion,
the performer playfully took aim with the residue at a portrait of
Everard, ninth Baron Quorn, and was successful in hitting that nobleman
in the middle of his somewhat vacuous face, and rendering the likeness,
if any, for the time unrecognizable.
Emboldened by the effect produced not only on the face of the family
portrait but on those of his living hearers, Mr. Leo became even more
ruthlessly virulent.
"Lord Quorn!" he cried in thick accents of withering scorn, "If Lord
Quorn or any other man, noble or otherwise, plays fast and loose with
my glorious sister, I'll just take him and twist his head off his
shoulders. Won't I?"
He glared round as though some one had had the temerity to contradict
him, which, however, was not the case. His question meeting with no
material response, he next, in pursuance of his pomological method of
illustration, snatched up a pineapple. "Twist his head off his
shoulders," he repeated somewhat unnecessarily, "like this." With a
frantic effort he tugged and twisted the cactus-like plume till it came
away from the fruit.
"That's the style," he roared exultingly, "I'll treat any man who gets
in my light or annoys my sister. See? I'll scatter his carcass to the
four winds of heaven. See?"
Suiting the action more or less to the words he flung the fragments
viciously into various corners of the room, where they did more or less
damage, coming in their flight unpleasantly near his interested
audience. Then turning round with a ferocious action, he heaved the
body of the pine in another direction. This happened to be towards the
door, which had just opened to admit an addition to the cheerful party.
Next instant a cry of rage made it apparent that the heavy fruit had
struck in the middle of his waistcoat no less a personage than his
Grace the Duke of Salolja.