The man who, avoiding the bar, made his way straight into the coffee-room, entered with an air in which jauntiness and limpness were curiously combined. His get-up showed that curious caricature of the prevailing fashion which dressy young men of depraved, or at least untutored, judgment are prone to affect, and was, from his patent leather boots to his aggressive diamond tie-pin, in singular contrast to his dusty and rather forlorn appearance. His clothes, in spite of their over-smart cut, had the stale, creased look of garments that have been worn for several days continuously. They were, indeed, in keeping with the wearer's hunted look, resembling in character the coat of a fox after a stiff run.
With a half yawn, half sigh of exhaustion, the man dropped into a wooden armchair, and flicked with his partridge cane a bell on the table by him.
"Heigho! My last fling. Now for a good one," he muttered.
Miss Popkiss, more than usually on the alert, and postponing for the moment the respective claims of blue and pink, lost no time in presenting herself.
"Well, my dear, what have you got in the house?" the man inquired, pulling himself together and speaking jauntily, partly from policy, partly from the natural instinct ever roused by the propinquity of a pretty girl.
"Nice cold sirloin, sir," Mercy answered mechanically, regarding the new guest with expectant eyes.
"Beef? Is that the best you can do?" he asked, with a dissatisfied laugh.
"Fowl, sir," Miss Popkiss suggested in a preoccupied tone, trying to adjust the customer's appearance and manner with her preconceived ideas of the peerage.
"Fowl; that's better. No game?"
"Game's not in season, sir."
He gave a loud mirthless laugh to cover his mistake. "No, I suppose not in the country," he retorted with cockney wit. "Now, look here, my dear," he went on, impressively tapping her arm with the crook of his stick; "to cut it short, I want the best dinner you can serve me; regardless of expense, several courses—as many as you like—you understand? Tell cook to do her best, and to hurry up with it."
"Yes, sir," responded Miss Popkiss, having now little doubt as to the guest's identity. "Will you take anything to drink, sir?" she asked, lingeringly, calculating the social advantage to be derived from being the first in the place to see the long-lost and newly-found Lord Quorn.
"Will I take anything to drink?" He whistled scornfully at the suggestion of a doubt in the matter. "Where's your wine-list?"
Miss Popkiss roused herself from her contemplation, and brought it.
The guest ran his fingers quickly down the column devoted not to the brands but to their prices. "Look here. A bottle of number eleven and a bottle of twenty-four pop."
The oldest port-wine and the most expensive champagne. The order settled any lingering doubt in Miss Popkiss' mind. "Anything else, sir?" she asked with an excess of assiduity as she took back the list.
The half-admiring attention with which she was observing him could not fail by this to have its effect upon the visitor. "Well," he answered, with a leer, which was evidently intended to be killing. "I shouldn't mind a sip of something—just to keep me going."
If his words were equivocal, his manner left their meaning unmistakable. Nevertheless Miss Popkiss made a spirited attempt to ignore it. "I suppose you mean a bitters, sir?" she suggested disingenuously.
The guest went through an exaggerated pantomime of scrutinizing the lady's tempting lips. "No; they look anything but bitter," he returned, waggishly amorous.
"A glass of dry sherry, sir? What number would you like?" Miss Popkiss hastily ran to where she had replaced the wine-list, and with the same movement took the opportunity of looking out of the window. Mr. Thomas Sparrow was not in evidence: in fact, the yard seemed empty. Satisfied of this she took the list demurely to the still leering guest.
"Number four," he said, with a world of cheap blandishment in his winking eyes.
"Number four?" Miss Popkiss nearly succeeded in a look of mystification. "Number four is a claret, sir."
"That's more like the colour," he replied significantly. "Here!" He took a step to her, disregarding her feeble attempt to hold the wine-list as a barrier between them. "Don't you know what make four?"
"What, sir?" she asked with a giggle now; preferring his working out of the arithmetical problem as likely to be more racy than her own.
"Why"—taking the obnoxious wine-list with one hand, and slipping the other round her waist—"four is two and two together, like this." And he followed up the proposition by oscular demonstration.
"Oh, my lord! Don't do so, my lord!" Miss Popkiss affected to protest, without, however, raising her voice to a pitch that would reach the bar, or making more than the most perfunctory efforts to release herself from the encircling arm.
"That's a good sample," he grinned amorously. "I should like a dozen."
There was no doubt about him, Miss Popkiss concluded, the episode entirely falling in with her preconception of aristocratic ways. "Oh," she giggled, "you are a naughty nobleman." Then, releasing herself, this time by a business-like effort, she ran off, doubtless with the idea, after the manner of her kind, of doling out her favours and spreading the lordly caresses over as long a period as circumstances permitted.
Perhaps it was as well; for, scarcely had she turned her back on the dusty Philander when the lips which had just been pressed to hers opened wide in a very unromantic yawn. Then their owner threw himself wearily back into the chair and laughed languidly. "Nobleman!" he murmured, with a puff of amused scorn at the provincial greenness. "And she called me my lord when I kissed her." The idea seemed to tickle him in spite of his weariness. "She knows their ways," he commented languidly as he took out a silver cigarette-case, flashily enamelled with a spirited representation of men's three popular vices in combination, and lighted up. "Is it my appearance, or the swagger dinner I have ordered, or both?" he murmured, dropping now to a rueful tone. Opposite to him, filling up the space between the windows, was a long mirror. With what was evidently characteristic conceit, the young man put himself into a photographic attitude, with the cigarette held effectively after the fashion he had noted in certain royal and theatrical portraits, and regarded himself with rueful complacency. "Percy Peckover, my boy," he murmured, "you are going to deprive the world of an ornament. There is plenty of fun in the world, but not for you; so the sooner you are out of it the better. Ah!" he continued with a shudder, "that young woman little thinks that the warm lips just pressed to hers will soon be cold." With a quick, almost despairing action, he put the cigarette in his mouth and then drew a small phial from his pocket. "Yes," he said under his breath; "this will do the business in a jiffy." He shivered, and, as though to pull himself together, puffed vigorously at the cigarette. "By George, I should hope so," he muttered grimly. "Ekin would not play me a trick. Yes," he rambled on reminiscently, "I said—didn't I?—now, mind, no pain, Ekin, old man. None of your strychnines or antimonies. You've got the whole shop to choose from; let me just go off to sleep and wake no more. Yes, there were tears in poor old Tom's eyes; he was so upset he could hardly give me the bottle, telling me to rely on his professional skill. Let's see; he said, 'mix it in a glass of anything you like, and you'll drop off as comfortable as an Archbishop.'" He took out the stopper and sniffed at the phial. "It smells like Westminster Abbey," he said with the irrepressible jocularity of his type. "Well, it's better than——" he shuddered at the unspoken alternative. "It only wants a little courage; just five seconds' pluck," he told himself, as he slipped the phial back into his waistcoat pocket. "The champagne will give me that. 'Ang the future, let me fair enjoy myself for the few moments that are left me."
He lighted a fresh cigarette, got up and stood admiringly before the mirror, pulled down his soiled cuffs, settled his necktie, setting the diamond pin straight, smoothed his hair with a hand that seemed to tremble, then turned away with an exclamation of impatience, and stood looking vacantly out of the window. The feeble humours of the inn-yard seemed to amuse him: anyhow, he did not notice Mr. and Miss Popkiss who had come to the door and stayed there regarding him with intense curiosity and satisfaction.
"There he is, father; I'm sure it is Lord Quorn."
Perhaps it was the recollection of the procedure which had led her to that conclusion that surprised her into the laugh, not so low but that it reached the object of their attention.
He turned quickly, suspiciously, and, seeing the two interested faces, in an instant had assumed his air of jaunty swagger. "Well, landlord; is my dinner coming to-day, or are you waiting for the chicken to hatch?"
Popkiss advanced, purple and radiant, laughing his best laugh at the lordly joke. Mr. Popkiss, as became an innkeeper who knew his business, had a series of nicely graduated tokens of appreciation, from the superior half smile with which he discounted the poor wit of the yokel who was good but for a pint of small beer and took a whole evening to discuss it, through the qualified guffaw with which he stamped with his approval the heavy jokes of his regular market-day customers, up to the apoplectic and wheezy roar with which he would greet the sallies of a really important guest, whose bill bade fair to overrun the shilling column. Twice in one short hour had he, Samuel Popkiss, been on speaking terms with different members of the upper classes; small wonder was it that all thought of Mr. Doutfire's expected "party" had been centrifugally dispersed by the whirl in which he found his brain.
"Ha! ha!" he chuckled, rubbing his hands as he advanced with his best reception manner. "No, sir, that is to say, my lord, dinner is just ready, and I think we shall please you," he suggested unctuously. "You will want something to keep you up for the last part of your journey here."
The words sounded full of ominous significance; Mr. Peckover went a shade paler, while his swagger for an instant sagged visibly, as he wondered whether his host could have seen him sniffing at the euthanasia now lying snug in his waistcoat pocket.
Miss Popkiss was busy laying the cloth in a style most effective both as to the decoration of the table and the showing off of certain personal graces. For that young lady's methods of laying a table when alone and when being—as she hoped—watched during the operation were widely contrasted.
"After so much buffetting about, as I may say," observed Popkiss genially, as he panted round the table, laying unnecessary forks in places where their usefulness was not obvious, "you will be glad to settle down comfortable yonder."
He pointed with a fat hand vaguely and tentatively in the direction of Staplewick Towers, being perhaps anxious to put beyond doubt the question of his guest's identity. Peckover, with, doubtless, the idea of a somewhat different stronghold in his mind looked quickly towards the point indicated. His glance, however, travelled no farther than the church tower; anyhow, it could hardly have reached the other landmark which was five miles off.
But the church which shut in his view was enough. The cigarette slipped from the lips that parted convulsively with the dropping jaw. The churchyard! "Glad he has arranged it," he muttered shakily.
"And you may be sure of a warm welcome from the old gentleman," Popkiss added, stopping to beam upon his guest in the midst of his superfluous bustle.
"The devil!" Peckover exclaimed aghast, scrutinizing the expansive face for a sign of "kidding."
"Oh, yes," maintained Popkiss, proud of the office of herald of welcome between two august personages; "he has been here already to look for you, and very anxious he is to carry you off to the place which, begging pardon, is yours by rights."
This was too much for Peckover, who stood staring at his obese tormentor utterly bereft of speech.
"Of course," continued Popkiss with a mitigating chuckle, "he can't help showing the cloven hoof sometimes, they say; but he's not so black as he is painted."
"Come, I'm glad of that," ejaculated Peckover, wide-eyed and staggered.
"But," the landlord observed, as rounding off the subject, "we must, as I always say, give the devil his due; and as you are going so soon to make his acquaintance, you will be able to judge for yourself."
Peckover turned away from what he could only consider as a corpulent and highly objectionable jester, and passed a shaking hand across his clammy brow. "I must stop these funniments," he told himself, "if I want any appetite for my last dinner." With a supreme effort he pulled himself together, and faced the fatuously grinning host with a dash of his native impudence. "Don't let me keep you, landlord," he said with a wave of condescension. "Nothing suits me so well as a pretty girl waiting on me. That's the relish for this customer, it beats all your Worcesters and Harveys."
Popkiss rubbed his puffy hands appreciatively. "My daughter, sir, that is, my lord; she shall look after your lordship." Then in a tone of deferential confidence, he added, "She will follow later on where you are going to."
"The deuce she will!" cried the guest, now fairly bewildered. "What has she been up to?"
The rotund landlord, not quite seeing the appropriateness of the inquiry, and perhaps feeling that it was a form of snubbing for undue familiarity, abruptly changed the subject. "I hope you'll like your dinner, my lord," he said with unctuous confidence as he waddled towards the door. "I know one thing," he chuckled.
"What's that?" Peckover asked half apprehensively.
"Your lordship won't want any supper." With which parting and equivocal witticism the expansive joker vanished.
"Whew! There he goes again," gasped Peckover, dropping limply into the nearest chair. "He has made me tremble all over." He gave a wild glance at the grey church tower looming—frowning, it seemed—cold and depressing. "George! I've a good mind to stop alive and risk it."
The entrance of Miss Popkiss with an array of dishes which might have elucidated the landlord's parting remark, and with a new bow in her hair, brought the guest up to attention again. Hungry, tired and especially thirsty, he lost no time in falling to, and so intent was he upon the good cheer before him that for a time the Hebe became aggrieved at the thought that the extra attention to her personal appearance had been thrown away, and the aid of curling tongs and smart ribbon been invoked to no purpose. However, with the second glass of champagne, the guest manifestly began to take more interest in things in general and of the expectant handmaiden in particular.
"Ah!" he exclaimed with a lengthy expiration of quasi-content, as Miss Popkiss deftly and with a flourish of the bangle on the wrist that was more in evidence, removed the fish and set the fowl before him. "I'm beginning to feel better." He tossed off another glass of champagne. "I say, my dear, your father is a cheerful person. His conversation is enough to make a boiled cod-fish shiver."
"Yes, sir—my lord," responded Miss Popkiss, abandoning the discussion of the parental characteristics in favour of a subject of more immediate interest, namely, herself; "it is a bit dullish here. That's why I am leaving."
"Oh, you are leaving?" remarked Peckover, taking as polite an interest in the statement as was consistent with having his mouth full.
"Yes," she informed him. "I am going to the place you are bound for."
The bubbling glass was half-way to his eager lips, but he set it down again. "The devil you are?" he exclaimed.
"It must at least be as lively as this," Miss Popkiss hazarded, with a pretty affectation of ennui.
"A good deal more so," the guest declared, pausing in his eating to stare blankly in front of him in utter mystification. The result of his hazy cogitation was that if the people of the inn were labouring under some absurd delusion it would be as well not to disturb it. "Well, there's no accounting for tastes," he remarked, falling back on that non-committal, if unoriginal aphorism, and redirecting his attention to the roast chicken.
"Some folks," gossiped Miss Popkiss, by way of a running conversational accompaniment to the dinner, "who don't fancy the place, would say it was out of the frying pan into the fire."
Number twenty-four had steadied the guest's nerves. "Yes," he agreed grimly, "most people would say that. Now," he muttered, "she's at it. What's that?" he inquired, pointing with his knife to a side dish.
"Curry, sir—my lord," the waitress answered, moving the dish towards him. "Curried goose, my lord."
He gave her a suspicious glance, and then pushed the dish away. There seemed too much of the personal and anticipatory element in the pungent dainty.
"Oh, it's not very hot," she protested, with the ready word for the credit of the cuisine. "Nothing like what you may find it elsewhere."
These jokes, it seemed to the guest, if jokes they were, grew monotonous, while their bad taste was undeniable. As a cockney sybarite in a cheap way, he liked to have a good-looking waitress to chatter to while dining, as he liked to chaff a barmaid over a "small scotch and polly", or a gin and ginger beer; but this was not the sort of thing the occasion seemed to call for. Accordingly he proceeded to eat and drink in silence. After all, the one solid tangible fact—presumably the last—that the world held for him, was the first-class dinner he was recklessly enjoying.
Piqued by her failure to maintain the interest she had so auspiciously begun to excite in the distinguished guest, Miss Popkiss turned in a huff to the window, and affected a melancholy interest in the heavy shower which had come on, to be roused suddenly from her air of indifference to things in general and the preoccupied gourmandizer in particular by catching sight of the adventurous Mr. Thomas Sparrow sheltering under a lean-to a few feet from the window. Evidently on the watch, he came quickly to the window, heedless of the downpour. Miss Popkiss, with a guilty conscience, received him graciously; put her finger to her lip and pointed with an air of importance to the still voracious Peckover. Sparrow looked, and his damp face clouded with jealous doubt. "Lord Quorn," whispered Miss Popkiss behind her hand. Even if Mr. Sparrow had seen that affectionate passage he could scarcely expect his sweetheart to withhold an occasional kiss from a real, if newly discovered, peer of the realm.
Whatever attraction a noblebon-vivantmight have had for Mr. Sparrow at any other time, he was just then in too close proximity to a gutter-spout and a tempting pair of lips to devote more than a critical glance and a nod of surprised comprehension to the person indicated. Then, eager to catch the fleeting opportunity, he put forth a moist hand, pulled Miss Popkiss a thought nearer to him, and so steadying her for the operation and obviating a possible retreat, he kissed her.
Whether caused by the unusual electricity in the air or the eager hurry with which it was performed, the osculation created more noise than is considered desirable by well-bred lovers. Peckover, dining steadily, silently, jumped round, uncertain for the moment whether the report was that of a drawn cork, or some trick of the neglected waitress to attract his attention. He was alert enough and man of the world enough to comprehend the situation; indeed, had he been aware that a man was so near it would never have been in question. As it was he turned just in time to see Mr. Sparrow's gratified countenance drawing back into the unsympathetic rain. The sight gave him an uneasy thrill.
"Hullo!" he cried sharply. "Who was that?"
"Only a friend of mine," answered Miss Popkiss, with an air of showing herself not dependent for amatory attentions upon casual customers.
Her manner scarcely reassured the visitor. "It wasn't—I mean—" he stammered uneasily, "he looked like a policeman."
"Oh, no, sir; how could you think so, sir!" Miss Popkiss protested with a touch of offended dignity.
"I thought I heard a kiss," Peckover suggested, still unsatisfied.
"Other people can kiss besides the police," Miss Popkiss declared, with a toss of the head, too exasperated by the banal suggestion to deny the act.
Peckover began to think it was all right. "So they can, my poppet, so they can," he exclaimed more cheerfully, regarding the young lady with a leer which owed much of itsempressementto the champagne. As it occurred to him that a little philandering might form a not unpleasing diversion between the courses, he rose with the leer intensified and approached Miss Popkiss with the recognizable intent of sharing with Mr. Sparrow the charmer's osculatory liberality.
But the young lady was astute enough to realize the unseasonableness of what at another time she would have welcomed. Accordingly she retreated before Peckover's advance, taking care to keep to that side of the room least visible from the window. "Oh, sir, no, sir; I'd rather you didn't, my lord," she protested, in quite a virtuous fluster.
But Peckover's knowledge of human character did not incline him to believe in the coyness that will sometimes try to stiffen the market for notoriously cheap kisses. He manoeuvred Miss Popkiss into a corner and then pounced upon her.
Whether it was that Mr. Thomas Sparrow, waiting discontentedly in the rain, had had his suspicions aroused as to the real sentiments existing at the moment between his lady-love and the noble customer, or whether he was merely anxious, now that the intervening attraction was removed, to take a more curious and leisurely survey of the interesting addition to the peerage, anyhow, he again, in a lull of the storm, sidled to the window and looked in. Not seeing the guest where he expected to find him, he boldly put his head in the window and glanced round the room. To observe in a corner, Miss Popkiss, coyly—or as it seemed to him, invitingly—protestant, at bay before Peckover, who was making a playful feint attack upon her with his serviette preparatory to getting to close quarters.
Whatever effect the sight had upon Mr. Sparrow, words utterly failed him to give adequate expression to it. All he could emit was a choked half-cry, half-growl of rage and warning. At the sound Peckover gave a great jump and for the moment stood scared and paralysed. Miss Popkiss, profiting by the respite, gave a scream just loud enough to justify herself and preserve her character for fidelity without arousing her father, and fled from the room, possibly to avoid awkward explanations. Peckover stood, staring blankly at the wrathful Sparrow, who, emboldened by his rival's limp attitude, shook his fist at him viciously.
"All right, my lord! Wait till I get at you, my lord!" he foamed.
His air was so menacing that when Peckover found his voice the first use he put it to was to call, "Landlord!"
Throughout the vocabulary he could not have chosen a word which would have had a more immediate and electric effect on the qualified aggressiveness of Mr. Sparrow. That love-sick functionary seemed instantly to collapse and recede from the window which had been the frame round a picture of rustic fury. Only with his retreat, certain words, like Parthian arrows, floated in from the storm to Peckover's hypersensitized ears.
"Wait till you come outside, my noble lord. I'll teach you to dance."
"You'll be very clever if you do," their object commented grimly as with a sigh of relief he turned to the smilingly inquisitive face of the landlord who had now appeared.
"Did you call, my lord?" was, considering the tone of the summons, Host Popkiss' unnecessary enquiry.
"My lord!" repeated Peckover irritably. "How you country fellows do a joke to death. Yes; I did call. Who was that absurd person intruding through the window?"
Mr. Popkiss went to the window with what promptness his bulk would allow and looked blankly out into the rain-swept courtyard. "I don't see any one," he said.
"I can't eat my dinner with a Jack-in-the-box fooling behind me," Peckover complained suspiciously.
"No, certainly not," the host agreed with professional severity. "It must have been Doutfire." Satisfied with the conjecture he went up confidentially to his guest. "I'll tell you, my lord. It might have been Mr. Doutfire, our detective from Long Rixon."
Peckover with an effort arrested his jaw in the act of falling, and snapped it to with a rattle of the teeth.
"De—detective?"
"Yes," Popkiss explained, with a touch of importance, as one who, in his responsible calling, is permitted to share the Treasury secrets; "he is expecting a chap down here that is wanted by the London police. He missed him at Faxfleet railway station, and has now gone back to Rixon, but if he don't hear of him there he is coming back here again. He is a clever man, is our Mr. Doutfire," he proceeded, warming with local pride and at the same time justifying any eccentric methods to which the eminent officer of the law might have thought proper to descend; "cleverest man in these parts by a long chalk, and we are a bit proud of him."
So full of admiration and pride was Host Popkiss that he failed to take notice of his guest's ghastly face.
"Thank you, that will do," said Peckover hurriedly, with an effort to appear loftily satisfied. "If it is only the detective, I don't mind." His one and feverish desire now was to be left alone. The crisis was at hand, and it must be faced without witnesses.
As Popkiss with corpulent strut left the room, somewhat disgusted at having failed to excite interest in the artful Doutfire, Peckover went hastily to the door and shut it upon the retreating mass of licensed importance. Then he turned, almost in a state of collapse. The champagne bottle caught his eye; he staggered to the table, poured out a glass blindly, and swallowed it. "It's all up," he muttered in a hoarse whisper. "It has come to amen. That was not the detective, but he's not far off. Clever man: back directly." He laughed miserably, then subsided limply into the chair, and sat with his head resting on his clammy hands. He was caught. If the local police, headed by the nailing Mr. Doutfire, had got wind of his presence in the neighbourhood there was clearly no escape but one. "Ugh!" He shuddered as in imagination he heard handcuffs click and felt the cold embrace of the steel round his wrists. He sat there with head erect now, his hands pressed against his cheeks, his eyes staring fascinated by the scenes which his imagination, coloured by the study of police reports, pictured before him: he saw the magistrate committing him; then himself in the dock at the Old Bailey; the Treasury counsel unfolding a black case against him, his flash pals, the real culprits, grinning at his misery from the gallery; the jury shaking their uncompromising heads in all a small tradesman's Pharisaical virtuousness; he heard the verdict, guilty; he saw the judge, unrelenting and terrible in scarlet and ermine, mouthing at him before coming to the point—five years, ten, fifteen! He started up trembling, with beads standing on his forehead and with despairing eyes. "I couldn't stand it!" he moaned. "I'll never go through it. They shan't take me alive."
Feverishly he felt for his pocket, in his agitation missing the opening more than once. He took out the phial, gave an apprehensive glance round at the window, emptied the contents into the glass and filled it up with champagne. Then, with the means of escape ready to his hand, he seemed to steady himself. "Now," he said, with a grim smile; "five seconds' courage, and I can snap my fingers at 'em all. It's only like a sleeping draught." He raised the glass to his lips, held it there for two or three seconds, and then set it down. Perhaps there was no hurry for five minutes.
"Now, I'm going off," he soliloquized dreamily. "I wish I'd had a fairer fling while I was at it. It has been a poor, middle-class rollick after all," he continued ruefully. "It's too late now. But I should like to have done the real swell, if only for a week; gone in for thousands instead of a few paltry pounds; Belgravia instead of Camden Town; Monte Carlo instead of Herne Bay and Yarmouth; high-steppers; Hurlingham; Henley; a real lady or two mashed on me instead of—ah, well, she wasn't so bad; it wasn't her fault she wasn't class: she'll be the only one to be sorry. Champagne," he took up the glass, "I might have had this sort all along if I'd had the nerve."
Suddenly recollecting, he set down the glass hastily. "I forgot." Curiously he seemed to shudder at his narrow escape. Then, as though impatient with his temporizing, "Bah! let me get it over," he muttered, and lifted the glass again, only to set it down once more. "I wonder," he said, as making an excuse for delay, "what the bill for this little dinner comes to. Poor Fatty will have to apply to my executors. Wonder if he will see a joke there." He laughed at his touch of Cockneyfied humour. Then relapsed into the morbid state. "Will the pretty little daughter be sorry? Perhaps. Not she; no one will. The sooner I'm off the hooks the better. Here goes for the last time." He took up the glass. "I'll count three, and then toss it off." He shut his eyes, hesitated a moment, then began. "One, two, thr——"
The glass was but waiting for the last word to leave his lips when the door opened with an impatient, unceremonious burst, and a man came in, flinging it to behind him. Another dusty, worn-out man, who stared for a moment at Peckover, and then, turning a chair from the table, just let himself fall into it.
Peckover, arrested in his intent, had opened his eyes, and now stood staring half dazed at the new-comer.
"Hullo!" yawned that person genially.
"Eh?" ejaculated Peckover hazily, eyeing him with suspicion, and not quite able to realize the situation.
"Excuse me if I disturb you," said the man, with another tremendous yawn. "If I don't sit down somewhere I shall drop on the floor."
Peckover told himself that this was scarcely the detective, and even if he were his condition gave colour to a wild hope of escape.
"Tired?" The superfluous question was put tentatively.
"You bet."
"Dry?"
"Always."
"Have a glass of fizz?" In Peckover's situation even that unusual hospitality was a matter of indifference.
"Thanks," answered the man, smothering a third yawn in recognition of his fellow-guest's civility. "You are a brick. Got more than you care to drink there?" he added to qualify his somewhat grabbing acceptance of the offer.
"Yes," answered Peckover with grim significance. Then checking himself as he was about to offer the drugged glass to the stranger, he exclaimed hastily, "Oh, that won't do."
"Short of glasses?" said the other accommodatingly. "I don't mind a tumbler to save time." He spun one across to Peckover who emptied the remains of the bottle into it. The stranger poured the wine down his throat without the action of swallowing. "Ah, that's better!" he declared with a great sigh of enjoyment.
"Walked too far?" Peckover suggested listlessly. "Not used to it, p'raps?"
"Got out of the way of it," the man explained. "Three months aboard ship."
"Australia?" Peckover suggested.
The stranger nodded. "That's it. Come from London this morning. Got out at Faxfleet to walk over here. Lost my way in the woods."
"Didn't come straight, then?" Peckover had an indistinct recollection of having seen this fellow at the station, but had been too much flurried to take more than passing notice of him. Were they companions in bad luck, he wondered. "Have a glass of port," he said, warming towards his fellow-guest.
"Your wine? Thanks. Good chap. Crime to refuse old crusted, eh?" He emptied the glass which Peckover promptly refilled. Then put on a mysteriously significant look. "No, I didn't come straight here, and for a good reason." He sank his voice. "Fact is, I'm dodging a bush-ranger."
"What?" exclaimed Peckover, disinclined to take the statement seriously.
The stranger pulled his chair close up to his companion, and tapped him with his forefinger on the knee. "Look here," he said confidently. "You don't belong to these parts? Nothing of the chawbacon about you. Town man?"
"Slightly," answered Peckover, with a chastened pride in the undisputable claim.
The other grasped his hand. "I can trust you?" Peckover, recovering from the cold thrill which the somewhat demonstrative clasp occasioned, nodded impressively. "You are a smart Londoner," the stranger continued, "I'll tell you my situation, and get your advice. Mind, though, it's a dead secret."
"It soon will be with me," thought Peckover miserably, as he assured his companion on the point.
Host Popkiss, glancing in at the door, saw the two in close confidence, and with the cocksureness usual with men of limited sagacity concluded that the "party" wanted by Mr. Doutfire had arrived and was trying the confidence trick on the new-fledged member of the peerage. And having so settled it, he strolled out to keep a watchful eye for the detective.
"It's downright romantic," the thirsty stranger was saying with an apologetic smile. "Now, you wouldn't think it to look at me, but I'm a peer of the realm."
"Jehoshaphat!" commented Peckover, more frank than polite.
"Just the remark I made when I heard I was Lord Quorn," said the other pleasantly. "Been sheep-farming in New South Wales for the last twelve years. Not much luck of any sort, though, till the other day. Got a letter to say distant cousin dead, and I had succeeded to the title. Not much trimming with it, they tell me. Bit of tumble-down family property near here, Staplewick Towers, let to some grand lady." He pulled out a letter and looked at the signature. "Lady Agatha Hemyock, that's it," he said, exhibiting the letter as documentary evidence of his veracity. "So I have just trotted down to take stock."
"And where does the bush-ranger come in?" was Peckover's not unnatural inquiry.
Lord Quorn wagged his head knowingly, and drank off another glass of port-wine without apology, as though the privilege of being made the recipient of a peer's confidences was in itself ample payment for the refreshment in question. "Out there," the vague wave of his hand was understood to be towards New South Wales, "I used up my spare time flirting with a fine woman who had a figure and a will of her own. She would not have me, though; refused me more than once: but hearing one fine day that she had said no to a real live lord she felt pretty sick. However, I wasn't going to give her another chance; not likely, seeing that, besides being somewhat off her, I knew I could have my pick over here. Thereupon she accuses me of playing the giddy deceiver, and threatens to bring me to book for breach of promise. Well, I smiled at that, but it rather sent me up a tree when she trotted out her brother, the bush-ranger."
"My eye!" observed Peckover, interested in spite of himself. "Fighting man, eh?"
Lord Quorn nodded seriously. "I saw him for the first time over here with her last night. A desperate chap, I tell you," he went on anxiously, "who will stick at nothing—except your favourite vital part with a bowie knife."
His auditor made a wry face to evince his sympathetic attention.
"He keeps on show," Quorn continued, growing more and more dismally in earnest, "fire-irons he has snapped, gun-barrels he has tied in knots, crown pieces he has bitten through, eyes he has gouged out, preserved in spirits of wine, and pickled ears he has wrung off just for fun. I'm not exactly a coward, but what can you do against a man whose favourite pastime is twisting bullocks' heads off, and squeezing cannonballs out of shape."
Peckover drew down the corners of his mouth and shook his head, finding himself fully in accord with the other's policy of non-resistance. "Awkward customer to tackle," was all the encouragement he could suggest.
"Awkward!" repeated Lord Quorn in impatient contempt for the inadequate adjective, "You'd be the one to feel awkward with your nose divided in two, and your left ear in a piccalilli bottle on an amateur bush-ranger's mantelpiece. Oh, I know," he continued in an exasperated tone, anticipating a trite and obvious piece of advice, "I could have the law of him, but there is precious small satisfaction in seeing a man go to prison out of your one remaining eye, and to know that when he comes out it will come out too. Got any more liquor?"
His apprehensive indignation left no room for the common courtesies of even coffee-room life, he was seething with the angry sense of impotence before this critical and grievous position.
Peckover emptied the bottle into his glass. "The last," he said, in a tone of sympathetic gloom; "and you're quite welcome."
"Good Samaritan!" was Lord Quorn's casual acknowledgment as he tossed it off. "Fact is," he proceeded to explain by way of tardy apology, "though I'm a swell and all that I am cleared out just now. Drew a tidy sum for my travelling exes, but spent a few days in London, and a few pounds—you know what that means?"
Peckover nodded a rakish appreciation.
"Well," Quorn resumed darkly, "who should I clap eyes on last night at the play but my Australian girl and her infernal brother. Followed me over, and on my track like an insurance agent. Luckily she didn't see me, and he doesn't know me by sight. Thinks I, best thing to do is to make a bolt down here and lie low till that bush-whacking nuisance eats his head off in London and has to go back to his happy hunting grounds. So, first thing to-day, sent a wire to Lady What's-her-name, and then found only just enough cash left in my pocket for third class to Faxfleet. So I've tramped over. That's the chronicle."
"You've given your friends the slip?" Peckover suggested encouragingly.
"Hope so," replied Quorn, doubtfully. "But they'll track me like kangaroo hunters. A woman has a fine scent for a title; a coronet is like a red herring. But I say," he broke off, as though a trifle ashamed of having monopolized the interest of the colloquy; "what does a smart chap like you want in this dead-alive hole? You are not in a mess?"
Peckover's expression swiftly changed from altruistic interest to lugubrious self-pity. "I am, though," he replied. "Got Scotland Yard after me. Don't be afraid," he protested hastily, as Lord Quorn's eyes opened wide with suspicion and he gave himself a slight, but significant, set-back in his chair; "I'm only half a criminal: the victim of circumstances. Look here, confidence for confidence. I'll tell you all about it."
"You may rely on my keeping my mouth shut," said Lord Quorn, giving a tremendous yawn which for the moment seemed to cast a doubt upon his ability in that direction.
"It doesn't much matter," Peckover responded mournfully. "Well," he proceeded, with a touch of chastened self-glorification, "you must know I've been flinging myself about in London."
"Painting the town red, eh?"
"Painting myself black, more like it," he retorted. "Very pleasant, though, while it lasted. You see," he explained conceitedly, "I always had ideas above my position, and some time back I thought I'd emerge from the grub state and do a bit of butterflying."
Quorn nodded; so far in sympathy.
"But," continued Peckover, "to be a butterfly in town you want a lot of dust on your wings; and when it comes to dressing a bit toffish, treating your friends, especially the ladies—and they've been my ruin"—he interjected with complacent self-reproach—"doing the Halls regular, and tooling your best girl out to Richmond or the Welsh Harp of a Sunday, why, five-and-thirty bob a week don't go far."
Lord Quorn shook his head sleepily, as being in complete, if drowsy, accord with the estimate.
"That figure," Peckover declared impressively, "was my blessed screw at—well, at an eminent firm of auctioneers. Things were looking a bit bluish, a writ or two out against me, my tailor showed me no mercy, but his patience got shorter even than his thirteen bob trousers, in which, though too tight, as usual, I was ready to skip, when Jimmy Cutbush, a friend of mine in the racing world, put me on to a good thing which came off. Jimmy drew my winnings and paid them over to me, promising plenty more tips of the same sort, till I began to understand how Rothschild feels; but, what do you think?"
Lord Quorn was obviously not thinking anything worth mentioning just then, but, roused by the intensity with which the question was put, he rattled his ideas together and replied, "Ah, what?"
"Cutbush drew good money," said Peckover, knitting his brows, and throwing into the statement all the impressiveness which a five-and-thirty shilling clerk and voluptuary has at command, "and paid me in bad; and there was I, swaggering about and paying my way, with a lot of wrong 'uns in my pocket. That was pretty steep, eh?"
Words failed Lord Quorn, in his present condition, adequately to characterize the situation; he contented himself by receiving it with an absurd grimace which was intended as an effective substitute for verbal comment.
"Well," pursued his companion, accepting the distortion of feature in the spirit in which it was produced, "day before yesterday I drove down to Kempton to round proper on my pal, having likewise backed Cockalorum for the Great Comet Stakes."
"Did that come off?" Quorn inquired with an effort.
"No, but his jockey did, and landed me in a nice hole. Then when I tackled Cutbush, all he had to say was to call me a Juggins, and ask me what I took him for. 'Well,' I says naturally, 'I've won this oof, and can't spend it'; 'well,' he says,'buy a moneybox and save it.' Then, as if that wasn't enough, as I was driving home, rather down in my luck, I had the misfortune to run over a noble duke in Piccadilly. His Grace was in the middle of the road, looking for his balance, but of course the police took his side—a duke is never drunk, only deaf. Having left them my name and address, as well as my blessing, I drove on, when suddenly my beast of a horse took it into his head to say his prayers; result, both knees damaged. When I left the stables, after a little friction with the proprietor, my landlady meets me and says I had better not go home, as the police have been waiting for me all day. Now you know why I am here."
Inspirited by realizing that his companion's personal narrative had come to an end, Lord Quorn was able to rouse himself. "Hanged if you aren't worse off than I am," he declared with a yawn. "Don't think I'd change place with you. Rather run the risk of being chawed up by that bush-devil. Well, what are you going to do?" he asked, with lethargic sympathy. "Slip across the water?"
For a moment Peckover debated with himself whether he should declare his expedient. To conclude that it would serve no practical end. "Oh, I've got a proper way out of my troubles," he answered enigmatically.
"Glad to hear it," Quorn replied indifferently. "They are rather unkind to people who enter into competition with the Mint, aren't they? Well," he concluded, taken with a fresh access of yawning, "I hope you'll give 'em the slip. Wish I could help you, but," he added waggishly, as giving a cheerful wind-up to the somewhat depressing mutual confidences; "you see it is more than I can do at present to help myself."
To drive home his double meaning he reversed the empty bottle, and then began sleepily to fill his pipe, humming a comic song the while.
"He's cut out for a lord," was Peckover's mental comment as he sat watching his companion with some contempt. He was perhaps a little disgusted and disappointed that the story of his chapter of ill-luck and present critical position should have had no deeper or more lasting effect upon the man who had been so glad of his hospitality. Peer or no peer, he might know better than to sing "Peculiar Julia" by way of dirge for one whose minutes of life, or at any rate, liberty, was numbered. So he sat in disgust, watching the drowsy nobleman strike a match, and being too sleepy to apply it to his pipe, hold it, nodding, till the flame touched his fingers and brought him to with a start and a smothered word of objurgation. "A pretty addition to the peerage," he muttered with a sneer. "Lord Quorn, indeed! A fellow who hadn't the sense to keep awake when he had a lighted match in his hand. And here was Percy Peckover—" Suddenly a circumstance which the companionship had driven out of his mind recurred to him. Both the landlord and his daughter had called him my lord. It had seemed a feeble provincial joke, but it was now in a flash made intelligible. "Of course," he exclaimed under his breath as he started up at the thought, "I understand now. They have been taking me for him. That's what they meant by their silly my-lording. And if that's the case, why shouldn't they go on taking him for me! If they only would till I can get clear out of this, I might give that precious detective the slip and get clean away."
With eyes full of the hopeful project he stood looking at the noble slumberer, then suddenly turned and tip-toed to the door.
Quiet as it was, the movement half roused Quorn. "Jul-i-ah, Jul-i-ah! Why are you so very pecu-li-ah?" he sang sleepily.
Peckover stopped and looked back. "I'll try it," he muttered. "It's a bold stroke, but—where's that mug of a landlord?" He opened the door softly, and stole out.
A sudden gust caught the window, and the rattle woke Quorn with a start. He sat up, staring round stupidly, and found himself alone and thirsty with a full glass of champagne on the table before him. He stared at it, then round the room again.
"Gone?" he exclaimed. "Flash little coiner chap gone? Sin to waste good liquor." With the word he took up the wine and tossed it off; then set down the glass with a wry face. "Queer brand!" he ejaculated. "Faugh! Filthy stuff—or else——" He got up with a shiver of disgust, and faced the doorway just in time to see his late companion peep in. "I say, Mr. Ooff-merchant!" he called out, pointing to the empty glass, "What's the matter with this stuff?"
Occupied with the strange chance of escape, Peckover had for the moment forgotten all about his drugged wine. As his eye followed Quorn's unsteady finger, he went cold, and his knees knocked together. In a flash he saw his effective way of escape cut off and—what was worse—his own predicament intensified a thousand-fold. "You've never drunk that?" he gasped, when his dry tongue could articulate.
"I have though," Quorn replied, regarding him with fearful suspicion.
Peckover clasped his head and staggered forward. "You're a dead man," he exclaimed hoarsely.
"Scott! What do you mean?" cried Quorn, going pale.
"It was—doctored," stammered the other, hardly knowing what he said.
"Poison?" demanded Quorn in a horrified tone, clutching fiercely at Peckover who dodged, as frightened as he.
Then he gave a laugh of desperation. "Well, yes, if you like to call it so. It's as good as murder," he assured himself in a woeful whisper. "What am I to do?" He ran to the window, but was arrested by a cry from his companion, and turned to see him collapse in a chair. "Here, wake up! Stand up! You'll be all right," he cried, desperately shaking him.
"Oh, I do feel queer," muttered Quorn. The irises of his eyes seemed to turn up into his head, and he fell forward on the table insensible, with his too liberal entertainer standing over him aghast.
What was he to do? If he called for help, everything would come out, and he would be taken red-handed.
"He's done for, poor fellow," he told himself in a terrified whisper, trembling in every joint. "He's a dead man. I'd better follow him." He caught up the fatal glass, but it was empty. "Not a drop left. Ah, there will be another sort of drop for me," he whispered through his chattering teeth. "What shall I do?" Then his face sensibly brightened as the idea of his desperate expedient, which had been frightened away, came back to him. "Ah, that's it!" he muttered. "That's my only chance. They think I'm Lord Quorn. Now is my real tip to be Lord Quorn. No one here knows him, and he's not so very unlike Percy Peckover. Quick!" He ran to the window and pulled the curtains across; then hurried back and began feverishly searching the lifeless man's pockets.
"Any papers to identify him? Ah!" He pulled out a packet of letters, and transferred them to his own pocket, replacing them by some bills and a writ.