Mr. Doutfire with professional promptitude at once proceeded to adapt
himself to the situation. He planted himself in business-like fashion
before the wriggling duke, and with a wave of both hands, suggested to
his captor that she should release him.
"Let go, ma'am," he said reassuringly. "It's all right now. I'll rake
the fire out."
Thus bidden Miss Leo relaxed her clasp, not however, before Mr.
Doutfire had, with a practised twist, wrenched the sword from the ducal
grasp.
"Now, then," he demanded in a tone of stern reproof, "what's this all
about? What's the trouble now?"
"You shall not interfere," foamed the duke. "You are not wanted,
policeman."
"Detective-Inspector is my rank," Mr. Doutfire reminded him with a
touch of severity. "Looks as though I was wanted," he added with a
curl of the lip and a confident glance round the company.
"You are not," insisted the duke in his fiercest tone and with his most
appalling glare. "I am the Duke of Salolja, and I tell you you are to
go."
He might as well have glared at the spattered portrait of Everard,
ninth Baron Quorn, on the wall for any effect his eyes produced on the
uncompromising and unimaginative official.
"I should like that corroborated," was all the response he got from Mr.
Doutfire.
"No, don't go!" cried Mr. Leo with a subdued and, painful roar. "He
has assaulted me, stabbed me, threatened to shoot me. I give him in
charge. Take him. I----"
"Has he got firearms on him?" enquired Mr. Doutfire severely.
For answer the duke whipped out his revolver. But swift as the action
was, Mr. Doutfire's counter move was quicker.
With practised skill he clutched the dangerous wrist and with a
business-like jerk held it in the air with the revolver pointing to the
ceiling.
"That'll do, my lord duke," he said with playful insistence. "Better
let me take care of that. It's a dangerous plaything."
But the duke's characteristic under-estimation of the power of the
British police system prompted him to resist and to struggle violently
to release his hand. Mr. Doutfire gave a well-understood nod to his
subordinate, and that functionary smartly acting upon it, came behind
the duke and pinioned his arms. Next moment the revolver was detached
by a knowing professional trick, and was in Mr. Doutfire's pocket.
"You can let go, Tugby," he said with calm authority, and the raging
noble was free to dance and gesticulate in a very tornado of rage.
He was understood to intimate that the insult put upon him, a Duke of
Salolja and a Grandee of Spain, by a mere paltry English policeman, in
not allowing him free vent for his display of _force majeure_ and
homicidal proclivities was one which would not only be the cause of
private and personal bloodshed, but would in all human probability
result in a devastating war between the two Powers, from which the
least unpleasant outcome England could expect would be the loss of
Gibraltar and the bulk of the British fleet. Mr. Doutfire received the
intelligence with a tolerant stolidity. Custom had made him impervious
to threats and sceptical of the practical value of vindictive
utterances. His scornful and unmoved attitude had the effect of
raising to a still higher pitch the rage of the Spanish fire-eater, who
seemed now to have lost all that self-control which before had been so
telling. He had, in fact, become inebriated with wrath and excitement.
"Scoundrel, villain!" he cried, shaking both fists in the air before
the imperturbable Doutfire. "You lay your ignoble hands on the Duke of
Salolja! I will have your life."
"Steady! Steady!" responded Mr. Doutfire in a tone of gentle warning.
"I shall not steady," roared the duke, whose face had now assumed the
look of the false nose, eyes and moustache of a carnival mask. "You
shall not defy me. You shall go this moment, or I will run you through
your wretched body."
With a sudden dart he snatched up the sword from the floor and began a
series of flourishes which threatened seriously to embarrass Mr.
Doutfire. "Steady, now," commanded that gentleman, but instead of
complying, the duke seemed to be ferociously bent on selecting a
suitable point of impact in the detective's thick-set figure.
"Lay hold, Tugby."
The duke comprehending the order, jumped round swiftly, bringing the
sword point in opposition to Mr. Tugby's advancing tunic. But the
diversion was enough for Mr. Doutfire's purpose. He seized the
Spaniard's flourishing arms from behind, then planting his knee in the
small of the ducal back, by way of purchase, he held the heir of all
the Saloljas trussed.
"Take the sword away from him," he ordered his subordinate. "Now,"
when that was, after a short but fierce struggle, accomplished, "you
had better slip on the bracelets."
Accordingly, with some difficulty and much explosive language the hands
of a Grandee of Spain were, it is sad to relate, for the first time on
record, fastened behind his back by a pair of vulgar English handcuffs,
and the traditions of the Saloljas were, for the moment, rendered a
negligible quantity.
In his violent struggles the duke had stumbled backwards into a low and
deep-seated armchair. From this he was, from the fact that his hands
were fastened behind him, unable to rise or regain his balance. All he
could do was to kick furiously and to make loud use of expletives
which, although couched in the Spanish language, were obviously of an
exceedingly florid, even ensanguined, character. To quiet him and to
prevent possible mischief, Mr. Doutfire and his underling, approaching
the job on either side from behind, each seized a ducal leg, and tucked
it in comparative harmlessness under his arm. It may be doubted
whether in the long and blood-stained annals of the house of Salolja
any member of that distinguished and ruthless family had ever occupied
quite so undignified a position before.
"Dangerous party to deal with, my lord," remarked the panting Mr.
Doutfire jerkily, owing to the convulsions of the Salolja leg,
addressing himself impartially to the three men, any one of whom might
be Lord Quorn. "I'm afraid we shall have to see him safe to Bunbury
and give him a night in the cells, in default of bail."
The prisoner laughed in the very impotence of his rage. "You shall
have your absurd Great Bunbury pulled down about your ears if you do
not instantly release me," he spluttered through his teeth.
"All right, my lord duke," Doutfire returned, with a wink at the
company. "We'll keep in the middle of the street in case the buildings
should come down on our hats. Now, when you're ready, sir, we'll make
a move as it's getting late. Sorry to have to put the bracelets on a
gentleman of your position, but I take the responsibility. In this
country even dukes have got to behave themselves, and we don't allow
tricks with these dangerous playthings."
He pulled the duke up and set him on his feet, then took up the rapier
and revolver and handed them to his subordinate.
"You shall release me at once," hissed the duke through his wolfish
teeth, "or it will be the worse for you."
"All right. We'll see about that," replied Mr. Doutfire in the tone he
might use to a naughty child. "I understand the prisoner threatened
and assaulted you, Mr.----?" he added to Carnaby, producing his note
book.
"Yes," affirmed that valiant gentleman. "I'm cut and stabbed all over."
"Tut!" cried the prisoner explosively. "The fellow is a great coward.
He cries if you prick him."
"You will," continued Mr. Doutfire, unheeding the interruption, "charge
the prisoner, I presume, with feloniously cutting and wounding?"
"That's it," replied Mr. Leo, regaining confidence.
"Carnaby, you great fool, why didn't you wring his neck and fling the
little brute into the dust-hole?"
Carnaby failed to impart into his expression any regret that he had not
endeavoured to forestall the suggestion.
"Good job he didn't try it on, ma'am," observed Mr. Doutfire dryly.
"Whether he succeeded or not, in either case it might have been awkward
for him. You'll attend at 10.30 a.m. to-morrow at the Court House,
Great Bunbury," he added. "And some of you gentlemen had better be on
hand to give evidence if required."
He nodded to Tugby, and each taking an arm of the speechless duke they
conducted him, with certain indications of unwillingness on his part,
to the door. This the representative of the Saloljas favoured with a
mighty kick, by way of protest and also doubtless of letting off some
of his compressed rage. Mr. Doutfire pulled him unceremoniously back,
then, as Tugby opened the door, shot him forwards, and in such
humiliating fashion did the manacled Grandee disappear from the scene
of his brief triumph.
Those who remained were now at liberty to take more precise and less
preoccupied notice of one another.
"So I've got you at last, Lord Quorn," observed Miss Leo with somewhat
menacing satisfaction.
"No, you haven't," objected that person, coolly lighting a fresh cigar."
"Oh, haven't I?" the lady rejoined. "You hear that, Carnaby dear?"
"Don't worry dear Carnaby," put in Peckover. "He has got a headache."
Mr. Leo's stony stare of discomfiture did not relax to traverse the
statement. Mechanically he put forth a great hand and poured himself
out, as in a dream, an overflowing glass of port wine. He then, still
in a state of mental apathy, sought, with cowed and lacklustre eye, the
cigar-box and absently helped himself--to more of the contents than he
could smoke at once. But he made no other and more relevant answer to
the bugle-call of his sister's question. It was felt by the three men
that the legend of his doughty deeds was a myth; as a terrorist he
belonged to ancient history.