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 t.i.tle."

"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 n.o.body 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 a.s.sented 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 const.i.tuted, 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 sh.e.l.ling out, you find you haven't got half what, if you'd only been 'cla.s.s,' you'd have got gratis for nothing."

"That's so," Peckover a.s.sented 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 t.i.tle 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 t.i.tle 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed opulence opening before him.

"I propose," Gage replied impressively, "that you should allow me to a.s.sume the t.i.tle, the ident.i.ty 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 const.i.tution 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 n.o.body's hurt."

"Just so," a.s.sented Peckover. "Well, what's your offer?"

"Four thousand a year, paid monthly, as long as you let me hold the t.i.tle 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 gla.s.ses.

"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."

CHAPTER XI

"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 ident.i.ty 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 n.o.ble 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 superinc.u.mbent fat which circ.u.mvallated them Mr.

Popkiss could not open his eyes very wide, but, as far as the m.u.f.fling flesh permitted, his s.p.a.cious 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."