With a prodigious effort Mr. Leo pulled himself together. "We've had
enough of your lip," he declared in a loud voice. "I don't jaw, I
fight. Look here." He caught up the fire-irons one after another and
went through the rather too familiar business of twisting and snapping
them. The duke watched the performance with folded arms and a
sarcastic smile. Mr. Leo, lashing himself into as much of a fine fury
as he could attain, and losing his head in the process, took a silver
goblet from a niche in the overmantel and with a mighty play of muscle
squeezed it out of shape, not altogether to the silent Lord Quorn's
satisfaction. "That's the way I talk," he cried, with gathering
confidence, as he tossed the shapeless cup on the floor. "Any man who
argues with me knows what to expect. It's too late to apologize when
I've snapped your legs and arms for you and dislocated your neck."
The duke intimated politely to his fuming opponent his entire agreement
with the remark. "I am sorry," he went on suavely, "if I have spoken
in a language which has not appealed to your grace. Perhaps I may yet
be so fortunate as to be able to make myself better understood."
As he spoke he took a candle from the table, and, flicking off the
shade, set it on the side-board. Then he pivoted round and stepped ten
paces across the room, turned, whipped out his revolver, took instant
aim and fired. The candle stood as before, but extinguished. The duke
advanced and bowed with something, it must be confessed, of the air of
a music-hall performer. "That," he said quietly, "is how I reply to
your grace's remarks. I trust I have the good fortune to make myself
understood. No?"
Quite gratuitously imagining a negative on Mr. Leo's part, which that
redoubtable fighter was far from expressing, the duke made a swift
movement and tore down a rapier which hung as an ornament on the wall.
After making a few passes, which seemed to have Mr. Leo's person for
their ultimate destination, he spitted the shade of another candle,
flung it aside, and drawing back, put himself in fencing attitude, and
lunging furiously, after a grand flourish, just hit the wick and
extinguished it likewise. Then he favoured his impressed audience with
a deprecating gesture intimating that his exhibition of skill was a
matter of small account, after which, without waiting for comments or
applause, he turned with startling ferocity upon Mr. Leo and in an
unpleasantly resonant tone commanded him to take down the fellow weapon
and defend himself.
Mr. Leo showed no sign of falling in with his desire, but made a
ghastly attempt to laugh the order to scorn and then to treat it with
the contempt due to such an out-of-date proposal. But as it is
difficult to preserve an attitude of dignified opposition in the
neighbourhood of an aggressive and business-like hornet, so the
Antipodean giant found it impossible to treat the duke with the passive
scorn which prudence dictated. For the little Castilian had now
arrived at a stage when he considered he might fairly let himself go,
and let himself go he did.
He simply danced like a blood-thirsty Rumpelstilzchen before the
anxious man of muscle, making his sword cut the air as though it were a
riding whip, and describing inconvenient circles and passes with it in
close proximity to the more cherished portions of his unwilling
opponent's anatomy.
Mr. Leo looked very unhappy, and in the deplorable condition of a man
who is consumed by the knowledge that he ought to be very angry and
retaliative, and yet dares not. As he continued to hang back with a
suggestion in his stupid face of how much he would give to be safe at
_The Pigeons_, the duke's aggressiveness increased to the extent of
prodding the massive frame before him with playful sword thrusts. This
was more even than the abject Mr. Leo could stand.
For an instant he looked dangerous; then with a roar, of rage or pain
according to the fancy of the audience, he made a snatch at a decanter
with the object of hurling it at his tormentor. But before he could
raise it for the fling the little rapier came down with a smart flash
upon his wrist and the decanter fell shattered to the floor.
"That your grace's idea of fighting a Grandee of Spain, you abominable
great hulks?" cried the duke viciously. "You want a lesson, milord,
you foolish breaker of tongs. When shall you begin to snap my legs and
arms and to screw my neck, you quaint elephant? You shall go down on
your knees and apologize to me or I will run you through your absurd
body and let the saw-dust run out. Shall I not, eh? eh? eh?" He
accompanied each note of interrogation by a stinging slash of the
flexible steel, and Mr. Leo began to look very weary and unwell.
But Lord Quorn's face was beaming as though a load had been taken off
his mind.
For an instant Mr. Leo seemed to be gathering himself together for a
bull-like rush, then the intention died away in helplessness. "It's
all a mistake, I tell you," he blurted out in a quavering roar. "The
pine was not intended for you."
"Indeed? So?" cried the duke incredulously, making the point of his
sword whirl within two inches of the herculean thorax. "And the
allusions to my nose, the Salolja nose, which is historical, and to my
stature and to my veracity--they were not intended for me? Eh?"
"If you touch me again with that beastly sword I'll have the police on
to you, duke or no duke," Mr. Leo declared, falling back somewhat
feebly behind the shelter of the law.
It was with some consternation that he noticed that not only the duke,
but the whole party seemed to derive genuine amusement from his threat.
"Ho! ho! ho!" laughed the little terrorist in his window-rattling
tones. "The police! How rich! How exquisite! When a man insults a
Salolja he does not call in the police, but the undertaker."
Mr. Leo's bronzed face had now that greenish tinge so much the fashion
in modern sculpture.
"How are you going to send for your police?" laughed the duke,
emphasizing his question by a playful prick in Mr. Leo's biceps.
"Before you touch the bell or the door-handle you are a dead man."
Mr. Leo looked as though he reluctantly accepted the probability.
"Now, your grace will go down on your knees, won't you, you absurd
hippopotamus, and make your humble confession and apology for having
treated disrespectfully a Grandee of Spain and a Salolja, before you
pay the penalty of your mistake."
There was a painful flourish of the rapier, and a gentle stab on the
lobe of Mr. Leo's large right ear. With a howl he went down on his
knees, with another he begged for mercy, and it was a third howl of a
very different character which made the duke and the other men turn to
the window, at which some one stood rattling.
[Illustration: "With a howl he went down on his knees, and with another
he begged for mercy."]
The ever-alert duke opened it, as though nothing unusual were
occurring, giving entrance to Miss Leo, who with a manly stride came in
only to stand dumfounded before the abject spectacle of her brother's
abasement.
"Carnaby!" she cried in a voice calculated to put fire into a lump of
wet clay. "You great oaf! What fool's game is this?"
The duke explained. "It is simply the result of a slight personal
difference between his grace and my humble self."
"Get up, you great booby!" Lalage commanded, naturally thinking that
the slight personal difference between the two men should have reversed
their positions.
"Stay where you are," cried the duke in his most stentorian tones. And
Mr. Leo stayed.
"Quorn! At last!" The cry came in a tone of menacing rapture from
Lalage who had now found time to glance round the table.
"Hold on!" was that nobleman's chilling response, as he rose and
stretched out a fending hand in front of him.
"My Quorn!" repeated Miss Leo with native tenacity.
"Quorn?" cried the duke in a voice of puzzled exasperation, "Quorn
again in that quarter. I get tired of this Quorn here, Quorn there."
"This is Lord Quorn," Lalage declared with an exultation which,
considering the position her champion occupied at the moment, was
scarcely justified.
"So? Are you sure?" the duke demanded searchingly.
"Sure? I knew him in Australia. I have come over to marry him," was
the convincing answer.
"So?" The fiery little Castilian turned to Quorn. "You marry this
lady, eh?"
"No," he returned, ungallantly. "I'm hanged if I do."
"Carnaby!" cried his sister in a ringing voice. "You hear that?"
"Yes," said Carnaby impotently from the floor.
"Let the poor fellow alone," recommended Quorn. "He's a thing of the
past."
But his crow was cut short by the duke. "So, your grace thinks to
marry Miss Buffkin?" No answer. "In spite of your engagement to this
handsome lady?" The duke's wry face was lost in a grin. "May I
request once again the honour of a few words with your grace in
private?"
"You may, but you won't get it," was the dogged reply. "I stop here."
"So? I believe not," said the duke, turning on his vindictive glare to
the full. "I have been long enough made a fool of with your different
Lord Quorns. I am sick of Lord Quorn. I put him away, and if I make a
mistake--ah!"
He turned swiftly with the cry of an enraged tiger. Prompted by signs
from his sister, Carnaby had taken advantage of the duke's back being
turned to rise from his undignified position and stealthily approach
his little adversary with the idea of taking him unawares from behind
and trying what muscle would do. But the Spaniard, whose energies and
faculties were concentrated in a small space, was too wide awake for
him. With the turn he sprang back and whipping round his rapier
brought it with a swift cut across Carnaby's ample countenance. As Mr.
Leo roared and danced with pain, and Lalage, throwing her arms round
the duke's, shouted to the three to help her, if they were men, in
disarming the wriggling Grandee, the door was thrown open and Mr.
Doutfire came quickly in, followed by the local constable.