"He pulled out a packet of letters, and transferred them to his own pocket.""He pulled out a packet of letters, and transferred them to his own pocket."
"He pulled out a packet of letters, and transferred them to his own pocket.""He pulled out a packet of letters, and transferred them to his own pocket."
"That's it," he muttered. "They're of no use to him now, and may save an innocent man from the gallows." He set the empty phial into Quorn's limp hand. "There!" he exclaimed, as with a long drawn sigh of desperate relief he surveyed the position. "Percy Peckover is dead. Long live Lord Quorn! It's a fair desperate shift; but I can't be worse off than I was, and I may be better."
The shuffling of feet sounded outside the door, and Peckover had just time to throw himself into a chair at some distance from Lord Quorn and snatch up a newspaper when the landlord came in accompanied by Mr. Doutfire.
With a well simulated yawn, Peckover threw down the paper wearily and nodded at Popkiss. "Any one from the Towers yet, landlord?" he asked in his best off-hand style.
"Not yet, my lord," the host answered, ceremoniously important, to impress Mr. Doutfire and to show that official that he was not the only eminent personage of his acquaintance.
Peckover yawned again, and affected to consult his Waterbury with as much flourish as was consistent with the necessity for concealing the fact that it was not a hundred guinea repeater.
"Beg pardon, my lord," observed Popkiss, indicating the renowned representative of the law who already had a severe and suspicious eye upon the collapsed form at the farther end of the room; "this is the gentleman I spoke to you about."
"Oh, ah, good evening," Peckover said, acknowledging the interesting introduction as airily as the critical nature of the situation permitted.
Having dealt with the social side of the detective's presence, Mr. Popkiss' fat face became stern as he proceeded to justify it from a business point of view.
"Is that your man?" he observed, somewhat superfluously, indicating Quorn.
The alert Doutfire already within pouncing distance of his quarry was unfolding the telegram. "Five foot seven." Quorn's doubled-up attitude made an accurate estimate of his inches somewhat difficult and untrustworthy. Mr. Doutfire, glanced under the table, taking in his legs, allowed for turnings and swiftly added the measurement to the body and head, mentally straightened out for the purpose. The total was evidently not inconsistent with the official dimension, since he passed on. "Dark hair," he nodded, availing himself of a certain latitude which the somewhat vague adjective allowed. "Slight moustache," Quorn's was clipped like to a toothbrush, and the description held. "Flash dress." For a moment Mr. Doutfire looked doubtful. With all a true police official's desire to make description tally, it was plain that a very considerable point would have to be stretched before that Colonial get-up could be classed as flashy. In search of some hidden evidence of the toff in apparel, Mr. Doutfire drew aside the lappel of Quorn's coat. Some papers sticking half-way out of the breast pocket were thus disclosed. Deftly Mr. Doutfire whipped them out, glanced at them, and a gleam of satisfaction shot across his face. "My man," he announced, with a touch of pardonable triumph which thrillingly communicated itself to Peckover, whose principal employment during the process of identification had been to keep his teeth from chattering. "Here! Wake up, my man!" the detective cried, roughly shaking the irresponsive form. "Wake up, Peckover, you're wanted." Then suddenly as he turned the limp body over, his face fell from complacency to blank disappointment. "Why, burn me, Popkiss," he exclaimed savagely, "if I don't think he has given me the slip."
"What?" cried that worthy, as resenting his implied complicity in the fiasco. "Not dead?" he added, with as much awe as a quadruple chin can express.
"Or next door," replied Doutfire, clinging to the shadow of a hope which experience belied.
"Next door," echoed Popkiss, losing the man in the innkeeper. "I wish he was. I don't want no suicide in my respectable house."
"Well, you've got it, Popkiss," retorted Doutfire, as he picked up and sniffed at the phial which had fallen from the lifeless hand. "Poison, if I know anything. Send for a doctor."
The exigency of the situation roused Mr. Popkiss' sluggish faculties into prompt action. "Here, Mercy!" he bawled. "Mercy! Quick! Run for Dr. Barton directly. Gentleman taken bad."
"Now Mr. D.," he proceeded, puffing with excitement, when Miss Mercy, in a state of disgust at the contingencies to which licensed premises are liable, had gone off through the rain with such haste as was compatible with due care for her personal appearance, "if you don't want to ruin me, for heaven's sake keep this unfortunate business as quiet as you can."
"Certainly, Mr. Popkiss," the detective replied, assuming at once the mastery of the situation, "certainly, so far, that is, as is compatible with the due requirements of the law."
"Can't you take him out of here?" Peckover suggested, as he began to feel the strain on his nerves.
"Ah, we might do that, Mr. D., with your permission," the landlord begged submissively. All his importance was gone now; the last five minutes had turned him into a fat, abject slave, ready to grovel at any man's feet.
"Don't care to move him till the doctor arrives," objected Doutfire, less by way of conforming with legal procedure than of asserting his authority. Mr. Popkiss had thrown open an inner door. "Only just through here, Mr. D.," he whined spasmodically. "Nice snug little room; better for the doctor and—and all parties," he urged. "Gentleman, I mean nobleman there," he sank his wheezy voice and jerked his head towards Peckover; "Lord Quorn, on his way to the Towers. Very distressing for his lordship as it is for me. You'll oblige an old friend, Mr. D.!"
The appeal was so abject that Mr. Doutfire felt he was losing nothing of his importance by yielding. "Lend a hand, then," he said, having first judicially inspected the room in question. Between them, with much puffing and wheezy mutterings, they carried out the limp form, and as the door closed upon them Peckover's air of lofty indifference fell from him as a garment, and resting his elbows on his knees and bowing his head on his hands he collapsed into a state of utter fear and misery.
From this flaccid condition he was roused by a somewhat obstreperous knocking and whistling in the passage dividing the coffee-room from the bar. In a moment he had sprung up and run to the window, which he threw open, and stood there ready to bolt through it if necessary.
"What ho! Anybody alive here?" a voice called out. "Hi, yi! Where do I come in?"
As the invocation and inquiry seemed reassuring. Peckover turned back into the room as the door opened and a man in a dripping mackintosh appeared looking in.
"Hullo!" he exclaimed. "I can't find anybody worth mentioning. Bar empty as a mortuary chapel. Young lady in the cellar hiding from the thunderstorm, eh? You don't happen to be the proprietor of the establishment?"
"Not exactly," Peckover answered, wondering what kind of customer he had come across now.
"That's near enough," said the man in the mackintosh. "You're alive at any rate. Well, somebody has looked after you all right," he remarked, eyeing the remains of Peckover's last dinner.
"Oh, yes, I've dined," Peckover replied loftily.
"You bet. Like a lord," assented the stranger cheerfully. "By the way"—he scrutinized him curiously, much to that gentleman's uneasiness—"by the way, you don't by any chance happen to be a lord?"
Something in the man's manner suggested a reason for the inquiry other than mere chaff. "Suppose I am?" returned Peckover, with his best attempt at an enigmatical smile. The newcomer stared at him as though unable to make up his mind to risk a question, and as he hesitated, the dripping mackintosh made a circle of water round him. "Well, if you are——" he stopped, and abruptly changed the subject. "Staying here?" he asked; "or just waiting till the rain stops?"
"That's it," Peckover answered, scarcely knowing how to take the fellow.
"Far to go?"
"Few miles, I'm waiting for the carriage," said Peckover casually, remembering what Quorn had told him.
"H'm!" The man looked at him as though stoked to blowing-off point with curiosity. "Not going Staplewick Towers way?"
The problem as to whether it were better to say yes or no was too complex for Peckover's present state of mind.
"That's my way," he declared, and chanced it.
The stranger's face brightened with anticipation. "Going to the Towers, perhaps?" he asked with hopeful persistence. Peckover nodded in as non-committal a fashion as he could command. "Why," cried the other, "I do believe I'm in luck after all. You hinted just now you might be a lord. You don't tell me you are Lord Quorn?"
"You've guessed it."
With another word the stranger turned and walked energetically to some pegs at the end of the room, unbuttoned the humid mackintosh and hung it up; also his hat. Then, with business-like action, he came back and favoured the astonished Peckover with a long stare of gratified curiosity. "Excuse me," he said, "but it's more than curious that the man I have been hunting all the week should run across me like this."
Instantly Peckover remembered Quorn's amateur bush-ranger.
"You're from New South Wales?" he faltered.
"Wrong," the other declared cheerfully. "You're not quite as good at guessing as yours truly. I'm from Tasmania, I'm proud and happy to say."
It struck Peckover that the dapper, well-knit man with the keen hustler's face set in straight black hair could hardly be Quorn's bully. He could not quite imagine the man before him spending even his leisure time in trying feats of strength on his long-suffering neighbours who chanced to displease him, to say nothing of cattle and fire-irons.
Just then Mr. Popkiss appeared, and approached Peckover with a mien of deferential apology. "Beg pardon, my lord," he said confidentially, "but I'm glad to say that Dr. Barton has had that unfortunate mishap removed to his surgery, which is a great relief to me, and I must apologize to your lordship for the unpleasantness occurring on my respectable premises. We've never had anything of the kind occur before."
"Oh, you couldn't help it," Peckover replied graciously, his wits more keenly about him. "He ought to have known better, but people, I believe, are very careless about these matters. I didn't see what the poor fellow was up to."
"No, my lord; naturally, my lord."
"Now, landlord, since you've seen fit to come to light, bring us a bottle of your best champagne," directed the stranger.
Mr. Popkiss, who had been inclined to disregard the new customer, at once became exceedingly attentive and bustled off on his errand, since a hungry guest is worth twenty full ones.
No sooner was he gone than the man drew his chair up to Peckover's and said quietly: "Now that I know I'm really right and you are Lord Quorn, I've got a proposal, a genuine business proposition to make to you."
"Have you?" replied Peckover, wondering what in the world was coming, and cursing Popkiss who came in just then with the wine and so delayed the explanation of the mystery.
The stranger's quick eye had caught the similarity of the labels on the bottles. "Why you've been having one of the best too," he remarked. Then added in an undertone as the fussy Popkiss left them, "I thought in your case the title didn't carry exactly a million with it."
"No, not exactly," Peckover replied equivocally. "But I don't see what business that is of yours," he added by an afterthought, to maintain his dignity.
"You will directly, though," the other retorted. "Till then I beg to apologize. Now look here," he touched glasses with his companion, "luck; and may we both get what we want, which is assured if we come to terms." They emptied their glasses, and the stranger, refilling them, leant forward to whispering distance.
"No time to lose, if this matter is to go through," he said in a business-like undertone. "So I won't beat about the bush. This fat publican"—he jerked his head backwards towards the bar—"knows you are Lord Quorn. Does any one else know it in these parts?"
The question was put so purposefully that Peckover had no hesitation in answering it frankly. "No one but the barmaid. I've not been here more than two hours."
"That's all right. Now for my proposition." He drew up yet an inch or two closer to Peckover. "First of all it is necessary for me to state I am a rich man; well, practically a millionaire."
Peckover pushed back his own chair. "I say; no room for the confidence trick here, old man," he exclaimed suspiciously. "Try next door."
"Pouf!" the stranger contemptuously blew away the suggestion. "'Confidence trick?' It's the other way on. It is I who am going to place the confidence in your lordship. Now, look. Here is my proposal in a word. You're a poor man, or at least a poor peer; I'm a rich man. We are both of us practically unknown over here. I want you to sell me your title."
"What?" cried Peckover in amazement.
"Don't make a noise," said the other quietly. "If this transaction is to go through, as, if you are not a fool, it will, the less attention we call to ourselves for the moment the better. Just hear what I've got to say. My name is Gage. Come into property down under from my father. Now I'm, as I say, a millionaire. But the devil of being a millionaire is, when you are nobody in particular but a millionaire, that you don't and can't get value for your money."
"Ah!" Peckover nodded sagaciously as he began to comprehend.
"Now," pursued Mr. Gage, "an ordinary person would imagine that a man with an income nearer forty than thirty thousand could have for the asking—and the paying for—the best of everything this world has to offer. All rot. An outsider like myself with the income I have mentioned doesn't have nearly such a good time as a smart young sprig of good family, who's been born and bred in the swim, can get with a beggarly fifteen hundred a year."
"That's right enough," Peckover assented with an air of endorsing from experience that profound truth.
Mr. Gage took out a coin and laid it on the table. "There's a sovereign," he said, tapping it impressively, while his companion eyed it covetously. "There it is. Coin of the realm. Value fixed and accepted all the world over, you'd say. Yet it's a strange thing, as society is constituted, that, according to the value to be got out of it, to one man it will be worth, say, five and thirty shillings, and to another about six and sixpence. You follow me?"
Mr. Peckover intimated by a knowing nod that not only did he follow the argument, but that, as a member of the aristocracy, he was prepared to back it by getting the enhanced value from the coin in question.
"The reason is," continued Mr. Gage, "that when you are what what's called an outsider you have to pay, and pay double and treble for everything. And when you've paid, and paid till you're sick of shelling out, you find you haven't got half what, if you'd only been 'class,' you'd have got gratis for nothing."
"That's so," Peckover assented dogmatically.
"The millionaire business has been overdone," Gage proceeded, warming feelingly as he got into the swing of his grievance. "Men like myself have been in too much of a hurry to buy up all the cake in the universe, consequently the price has gone up for it, and now, instead of a good substantial slice for a reasonable sum, we get only a few crumbs at famine prices."
"No doubt," Peckover agreed, getting impatient of the preamble and anxious to come to the gist of the offer.
"The fact is," Gage went on, hammering one fist on the other emphatically, "money by itself is a delusion and a daily eye-opener. Money with a title like yours is quite another pair of shoes. If you reckon its purchasing power, and that's what justifies its existence, the golden sovereign in a millionaire's pocket dwindles to the size of a threepenny bit, and in a peer's it expands to the size of this." He held up a dinner plate.
"Inconveniently bulky," observed Peckover with a grin.
"That's merely my illustration of the fact," said Gage severely, as deprecating cheap witticism in business discussions. "Anyhow, I am content to put up with the inconvenience. I want to have a good time. Fate has given me money with one hand and with the other prevents my getting value for it. I don't want to waste time in building up a social position for myself; I want one ready-made, now; when I can enjoy it. You want to have a good time, a better time than you'll get living on an empty title which means starving at Staplewick Towers. You're just the man I have been looking out for. When I heard of your being found in Australia, I determined to do business with you if I could catch you soon enough, before you got known."
"Well, what do you propose?" Peckover asked, a vista of escape and the enjoyment of a snatched opulence opening before him.
"I propose," Gage replied impressively, "that you should allow me to assume the title, the identity and privileges of Lord Quorn. After all, you did not expect to come into it; you are a backblocksman, like myself; only my father made it pay, and you hadn't begun to when you were sent for to join the House of Lords. So far as any one outside our two skins is concerned it doesn't matter a rush whether you are Lord Quorn, or I. So far as the British constitution goes there's no divine right about you, visible at least to the naked eye, that I don't possess. You don't feel anything like it inside, do you?"
"Can't say I do," answered Peckover, with more instant conviction than the other could possibly give him credit for.
"No," resumed Gage; "we are of the same make, I guess; and if it suits us to make a fair exchange, why nobody's hurt."
"Just so," assented Peckover. "Well, what's your offer?"
"Four thousand a year, paid monthly, as long as you let me hold the title undisputed."
Four thousand a year! It was as much as the thirty-five-shillings-a-week clerk could do to refrain from an astounded whistle at his luck. But he did repress it, and, shrewdly grappling with the overwhelming proposition, replied, after what seemed a calculating pause, "Make it five thou., and it's a bargain."
Five thousand had been the figure of Mr. Gage's willingness; only, in accordance with a well-established business method, he had offered less than he was ready to give.
"All right," he replied. "Five thousand while I'm Lord Quorn. We shan't need a written contract. It will be as much to your interest to keep quiet as it will be mine to write you a cheque on the—let's see—the ninth of every month. So that's settled, eh?" He refilled the glasses.
"Yes, my lord, that's settled," responded Peckover with a grin, and feeling happier than at any time during the past twenty-four hours. "Here's health and the best of luck to your lordship."
"I don't quite see ourselves bluffing all and sundry that you are Lord Quorn," Peckover said doubtfully, as they finished the bottle.
"My good sir," replied Gage, "I don't see how we can help taking them in if we make up our minds to do it. Just think; what man is there alive who could really, logically prove his own identity if he were put to it. Not one of us. We are just accepted by the world as William White and Henry Black, John Thompson or Thomas Johnson; and in most cases correctly so. In one case in ten thousand the world makes a big mistake, but it doesn't count for much."
"Suppose not," observed Peckover, wondering whether he would not have plenty of enforced leisure for counting if the world should find out its mistake about him.
"Very few people know us over here," argued Gage; "and the few who do can be easily bluffed, if it comes to that. If we both swear to the same thing, who can stand against us?"
"No, that's right enough," Peckover agreed.
"Now I've been thinking," continued Gage, "that it won't do for us to part company till this little arrangement of ours can run along without pushing. You must come over to these Towers with me and see how the land lies. We shall want to spend some money, at least I shall, so you had better be a rich friend I picked up on the voyage, and we can pretend the ready comes out of your pocket."
"But only Lord Quorn is asked," Peckover objected.
"Oh," replied Gage, "a rich man is always sure of a welcome. He may be expected to pay for it, but there it is, all ready for him, if he asks for it cheque-book in hand."
"I see."
"Perhaps it may not be a very genuine article; a sort of rolled-gold welcome for which you are expected to pay as though it were twenty-two carat all through. But it will wear long enough for our purposes, and the adulteration won't be all on their side."
Host Popkiss looked in. "Rain clearing off, my lord," he announced. "I expect Colonel Hemyock will be here directly to welcome your lordship."
"All right, landlord," replied Gage. "In the meantime my friend and I are quite comfortable here."
Popkiss stared at him, in mind to resent what he considered an irreverent liberty.
"Still, I shan't be sorry to find myself at the Towers," Gage observed casually.
This was rather more than Popkiss could stand. He did not approve of casual customers (even if they ordered champagne) playing unseemly jokes with noble guests in his coffee-room. "Beg pardon, sir," he said with puffing severity, "I was addressing myself to Lord Quorn."
"Then," returned Gage, "you were addressing yourself to me."
In consequence of the superincumbent fat which circumvallated them Mr. Popkiss could not open his eyes very wide, but, as far as the muffling flesh permitted, his spacious face was understood to express an electrifying astonishment amounting almost to incredulity. "Lord Quorn? You, sir?" he gasped.
"Look here, my venerable joker." Peckover beckoned the bewildered Popkiss to him by a backward jerk of the head. "You've been tying yourself up in the wrong bag all the afternoon. I've let you go on because I never spoil a good joke, but now my friend and fellow-traveller, Lord Quorn, has appeared, it is about time your folly was pointed out to you."
"I'm sure I'm very sorry, my lord," the discomfited Popkiss apologized. "But as this gentleman did not deny it when I addressed him as my lord, and as we were expecting your lordship to honour my poor house, why, the mistake was only natural."
"That's all right," replied Gage.
"You're forgiven," grinned Peckover.
Wheels sounded under the archway of the courtyard, and Popkiss was glad to bustle out. "I had my doubts about him all the time," he told himself in extenuation of his error. "If I'd seen them both together at first I should ha' known at once that 'tother was the lord."
Meanwhile the two confederates were laughing at each other over the success of the first step on the path that promised to be so pleasant for both.
They composed their faces as the door was thrown open and Colonel Hemyock and the Misses Ethel and Dagmar Hemyock, accompanied by John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook, were ushered in with breathless ceremony by the egregious Popkiss.
"Lord Quorn?" the Colonel inquired in a tone of pompous cordiality.
Popkiss unctuously indicated Gage, who came forward with plausible aplomb.
Then the ladies were presented, and Sharnbrook noticed gleefully the dead-set that lurked in their eyes. His escape, he told himself, was now assured.
"May I present my friend, Mr. Percival Gage?" the supposititious Lord Quorn said, as, taking the permission for granted, he brought up Peckover, whom, however, the Hemyock trio regarded a trifle doubtfully. "Made a fine position for himself out in our part of the world," Gage continued half confidentially, "and has come over to the old country to enjoy the fruits of his good fortune."
The ladies instantly thawed. The golden sun easily gets through snobbery's thin coating of ice. They looked at his aggressive diamond, excused his vulgar flashiness on the ground of Colonial ignorance, and received his advances with as much gush as was left over from the lavish expenditure on thesoi-disantLord Quorn.
"A millionaire," Gage observed to the colonel, sinking his confidential tone yet a little. The highly starched Colonel became almost limp under such a shower of good fortune.
"I—ah—hope Mr. Gage will do us the honour of staying at Staplewick," he said, and there was no doubt that he meant it. "Lady Agatha will be charmed. Any friend of Lord Quorn's will be more than welcome."
So after a few more flourishes, it was settled. Mr. Gage's luggage had unfortunately gone astray, but his costume would be excused that evening by Lady Agatha, and next day a complete outfit, the visitor declared, would be a mere question of the resources of Great Bunbury.
Presently the neglected but chuckling John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook was noticed, and casually, as a matter of grace, introduced. He lost no time in getting on easy terms with his prospective deliverer.
"I'm the tenant of your shooting, Lord Quorn."
"Hope you get good sport?" Gage replied politely.
"Birds thick as cabbages," Sharnbrook assured him. "I hope you will come out with me and see for yourself. Of course you and your friend shoot?"
"I should just think we did," Peckover chipped in with an eagerness due to the near realization of one of the dreams of his life. Hitherto his shooting had taken place under cover at the rate of seven shoots for six-pence, and the presentation of a cocoa-nut if by luck or markmanship he rang the bell.
That so bucolic and provoking a person as Sharnbrook at present clothed in the contempt woven of familiarity should be allowed to monopolize the distinguished guests by his stupid sporting chatter was intolerable. Accordingly he was promptly snubbed and thrust aside. Then, amid much smirking and exhibition of the best side of everybody's face, a move was made for the phaeton. Gage surreptitiously slipped a bank note into Peckover's hand, with which, and with a grand flourish, that unexpected plutocrat settled the somewhat exorbitant demands of Mr. Popkiss, and bestowed a liberal guerdon, accompanied by a wink, on Miss Mercy. Then with what excitement and the nearest approach to cheers a country town on a wet evening can furnish the distinguished party drove off to Staplewick Towers.
"It is too bad of you, Ethel. I do wish you would mind your own business and confine your attentions to either old Sharnbrook or Lord Quorn. The way you try to flirt with Mr. Gage is disgraceful. Even you ought to be ashamed of it."
"My dear Dagmar," her sister replied blandly, "Sharnbrook is, as you always said, after finding he preferred me to you, an idiot. Only fit to be a keeper at the Zoo, or curator of a Natural History museum. Four thousand a year is utterly wasted on him."
"No reason why it should, or should not, be wasted on his wife," returned Dagmar shrewdly.
"Lord Quorn," pursued Ethel, "falls to you by right. A coronet, when he can afford one, will no doubt suit your style of beauty."
"Thank you," retorted Dagmar, "I happen to prefer reality to mere show. Quorn hasn't a penny to speak of, Mr. Gage is as rich as anybody need be."
"He is hopelessly vulgar, and has an unhappy knack of making himself ridiculous," Ethel argued.
"All millionaires are vulgar and absurd," her sister rejoined. "It is expected of them. People wouldn't believe in their money if they didn't bound and make fools of themselves. Mother says Mr. Gage's vulgarity is as good as an auditor's certificate—whatever that may be. And if he has taken a tremendous fancy to me——"
Dagmar flared up. "What conceited impudence! You want everybody. You are the elder and Lord Quorn properly falls to you. Failing him, Sharnbrook."
"John Arbuthnot," said Ethel dreamily, "has the bad taste not to be very keen, and Gage is."
"Quorn's all right," Dagmar suggested.
"Then you have him, dear," her sister retorted. "Plain Percy Gage is good enough for me."
As Ethel was clearly holding to her point, and that not a point of honour, Dagmar saw that a mere appeal to her better feelings was futile. "Tell you what it is, my dear," she said, changing her tactics. "If you go on like this we shall lose Quorn and the millionaire bounder and old Sharnbrook into the bargain. We must have the coronet and the million in the family."
"All right," Ethel agreed, after a few moments' calculation. "Let's compromise and give each other a fair chance with Gage. Suppose we take it in turns to bring him to the scratch." She took a pack of cards from a box. "Cut for first innings. First knave; two out of three."
"Why knave?" Dagmar objected, "Gage is more of a f—the other thing."
"Perhaps," Ethel agreed. "Anyhow, the knave is the nearest approach to him in a pack of cards' catalogue of humanity."
They began to cut with business-like eagerness. Presently Ethel held up the desired card. "Hurrah! Knave!" she cried exultingly.
From the amiable Miss Dagmar's protracted lips came the sound of an exclamation not unlike that which profane men are said to utter when the last match is puffed out with the pipe still unlighted. "Two out of three," she insisted, and with the next turn cut a knave also. But fate favoured Ethel, who cut the third.
"My first try," she cried.
"Wish you joy of Gage," said Dagmar spitefully.
"Now, Dagmar," her sister protested, "it's a bargain. Half an hour of uninterrupted running."
"All right," replied Dagmar hopefully. "Then I relieve guard, and you turn out. I take up the running and so on alternately, till one of us lands him." "Which shall not be so very long first," she promised herself.
"Let's find out where he is." Ethel, with business-like promptitude, sprang to the bell and rang it. "Of course," she observed complacently, "whichever of us does not bag Gage will have the reversion of Quorn or old Sharnbrook."
"Of course," Dagmar agreed with a suggested determination that the privilege in question should not be hers. "Fancy Sharnbrook! Ferrets in one's bedroom."
"Rats where you least expect them," Ethel chimed in, hilarious at what she was resolved should be her sister's fate.
"That idiotic one-legged partridge," cried Dagmar.
"Pet mice asleep in your boots," responded Ethel.
"Pattern of the carpet undecipherable for fox-terriers."
"Wouldn't I put my foot down on them," declared Ethel grimly. "Is Mr. Gage visible yet, Bisgood?" she inquired of the butler who now appeared.
A very faint film of suppressed amusement seemed to spread over the well regulated face of Mr. Bisgood. "Mr. Gage went out riding this morning," he answered woodenly. "His lordship accompanied him."
"Have they returned?"
Again the haze of enjoyment seemed to blur the suave features. "No, miss," Bisgood answered, and there might have been detected a slight, ever so slight, catch in the unctuous voice; "Mr. Gage did not get far. Harlequin was rather fresh."
"Did—did anything go wrong?" It was Dagmar who asked the question.
This time there was no doubt about the abnormal expression on the butler's sleek face. "Well, miss," he replied, with an apologetic grin, "I believe Mr. Gage came off."
Without trusting his dignity to carry him through any elaboration of the bare and pointed statement, Bisgood, turned abruptly from the room.
Miss Ethel tried to laugh off a certain sense of annoyance. Till she had tried and failed Gage was more or less her property. "Poor Gage," she exclaimed. "Fancy his taking a toss. I hope he has not damaged himself. That brute Harlequin!"
"Now, Dagmar, dear, honour between—knaves. You will take Quorn and Sharnbrook off while I have my innings, won't you? I'll do as much for you."
"All right," she answered, still rather sulky. "But mind, no unfair advantage. No running me down, or falling into his arms."
"No, no," Ethel assured her; "that's a last resort. We may have to toss for that later on."
"There's mother coming across the lawn," Dagmar remarked with a yawn of indifference. "You had better be off and console the noble sportsman."
And as the fair Ethel vanished through the door, Lady Agatha Hemyock came in by the French window. She was a woman of somewhat stately presence, acquired by long practice of standing on ceremony and on her dignity. Her face was well set off by white hair dressed straight up from her forehead, pompadour fashion, which had the effect of bringing into rather aggressive prominence her sharp physiognomy which she could make, when she chose, the vehicle of a gamut of remarkable expressions. In French phrase, her face jumped at you; nevertheless, had not the nose been rather too long and too sharp she would have been as good-looking as she was wily. Among her ladyship's more prominent accomplishments was an interesting trick of carrying on a conversation with one person while she listened to everything else that was being said in the room; a feat difficult of successful execution, and one which has a tendency to depreciate the performer's popularity.
"Where's Ethel?" Lady Agatha inquired sharply, after a preliminary glance round the room to make sure they were alone.
"Gone after Mr. Gage," Dagmar informed her, still sore from the consciousness of a lost chance.
"How provoking of her," exclaimed her mother, "when I particularly want her to look after Quorn."
"Just what I tell her," said Dagmar resentfully.
"Mr. Gage," Lady Agatha declared, "will keep. He is a fool, and is to be secured whenever we choose to bring him to the point. Quorn is—er—not such a fool, and if the coronet is to come into the family it is essential that he should be looked after. He ought to have the choice of you."
"No money, mother."
"Perhaps not. But a nice old place and an aristocratic position."
"You've got most of that, mother," Dagmar observed shrewdly, "and you are discontented enough."
"Well, you can't both marry Mr. Gage," Lady Agatha argued, ignoring the personal citation. "And if you don't take care, the one he does not choose will lose Quorn as well."
"Well, for a peer and a millionaire," Dagmar observed decidedly, "they are the most hopeless specimens. Neither being in the least like what he ought to be, I should prefer the money. It is the only thing here that looks like what it is."
"I am thinking of your position, my dear," her mother replied insinuatingly. "Millionaires are getting so common and unpopular."
"Peers are common enough," Dagmar retorted. "They made a dozen—and such a dozen—the other day."
"Not old ones," rejoined Lady Agatha. "Quorn's peerage is centuries old, and improves with time."
"But I don't," returned her daughter pointedly. "And the idea of my descendants swaggering about with a coronet wherever they can put it, in the year 2147 doesn't amuse or comfort me at all, or reconcile me to the fact that nobody, without being told, would take Quorn for a peer, even if he dressed every day in robes and coronet, always supposing he could afford that somewhat expensive get-up."
"After all, a peerage is above money, my dear," Lady Agatha urged.
"Yes," was the quick reply, "it ought to be above it, and have the money underneath to support it. No, I prefer to take my chance of cutting out Ethel, and buying a peerage with some of Gage's money."
Lady Agatha shrugged. She could not bring herself to let Quorn slip through their fingers when they had him in hand. "There is as much difference between an old title and a new one as between new wine and old," she asserted dogmatically.
"Granted, mother," Dagmar assented cheerfully. "But when some idiot has pulled the cork out, causing the strength and the flavour to evaporate, and the dust has got in, the old is worse than the new."
"You are most provoking and disappointing, Dagmar," Lady Agatha exclaimed, losing patience. "To think that the Quorn coronet should go begging."
"That's exactly what the owner will have to do, it strikes me," the undutiful one retorted. "And it is what I don't intend to do while Messrs. Gage and Sharnbrook are handy and bachelors. Here's Ethel. Hurrah! She doesn't look all over a winner. My turn," she said with a snap, as that discomfited-looking young lady came in.
"That it isn't," Ethel flung back in a reciprocally pleasant tone. "I haven't seen the man yet."
Dagmar's look would hardly have been accepted as a testimonial to her sister's veracity. The statement, nevertheless, was true. Ethel had raced all over the grounds in pursuit of her quarry, but had just missed striking the trail; the object of her hunt having contrarily appeared in the drive as the fair huntress, after drawing it blank, moved off hungrily to the park on the other side of the house, whence having prowled herself tired, she had at length come in, spent and out of breath and patience.
Noting her amiable state of mind, Lady Agatha, prompted by experience, prepared to withdraw, with a Parthian shot which took the form of the sarcastic expression of a thoughtful hope that, in case of possible accidents, the pair of charmers were not entirely losing sight of the existence and eligibility of a certain John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook, nor were permitting him to ignore theirs.
"You haven't hurt the horse?" Gage inquired, as he and his confederate walked towards the house together. "Sorry now I didn't think of stopping to see what happened."
"Hurt him?" Peckover exclaimed, resenting the question as making light of his own peril. "Never had a chance. It took all my time to see he didn't hurt me. Hurt the brute? I should like to," he continued wrathfully reminiscent. "I'd teach him the difference between a quadruped and a gentleman."
"How did you come to take him on?" asked Gage.
"Take him on? He took me on," returned the discomfited equestrian. "All right, I'll remember that groom, Wilkins, or rather, I won't remember him. 'Just throw your leg over Harlequin, sir,' he says, 'and take him over the turf!' Now, old man, I should describe that animal, from a safe distance, as an inferior plater; but when I got up my feeling of contempt changed to one of respect—it usually does. On foot I'm pretty familiar with horses; once on their back I feel as though I had not been properly introduced. Well, I mounted in best jockey style; I haven't shelled out for the saddling paddock for nothing. 'Me up,' says I, just waking him up with the whip. Next moment it was me—down, and instead of putting him over the turf, he very nearly put me under it. I don't think you could have passed a five-pound note between his hind hoof and my front teeth. His near plate was so near that my jaw was almost off."
"Good job it wasn't," observed Gage, wondering how much such a catastrophe would have affected his enjoyment of the pleasures of the peerage.
"You're right. Well, the fellows were grinning; so, thinks I, if the horse won't be beaten, no more will I. So I ups into the pigskin again, and tries the soothing system."
"Did that do better?"
"Slightly. The animal began to feel quite comfortable, and after a bit sat down."
"Sat down?" laughed Gage. "What became of you?"
"Well, I don't know," answered Peckover, with rueful humour, "whether it has ever struck you, in Tasmania or elsewhere, that it is a difficult thing for a horse and its rider both to sit down at the same time. You see, there is no back to the saddle, so I just slid down over the tail, with as much side as I could put on, and then footed it off. It's all very well for you to laugh, my lord," he remonstrated, as the other man's guffaws grew exasperating, "but it would take you all your time to keep your back stiff when the horse under you is sitting up like a cat, and the back of his head trying to play the castanets with your front teeth. Harlequin? He's a regular pantomime rally."
"I shouldn't wonder," suggested Gage, "if he was called Harlequin, because he'll jump through anything."
"Dare say!" replied Peckover dryly. "No doubt he'd have tried jumping through a brick wall if I'd stayed there long enough. No, thank you. I prefer seeing these little funniments from the top of the Grand Stand, not from the top of the performer."