"Nonsense?" Carnaby roared. "I'll----"

Lalage thoughtfully turned to shut the door. "That's it," she whispered. "Frighten him a bit." For it seemed to her that the effect of the snapped fire-irons was wearing off. "Tell Mr. Gage," she said aloud, holding Carnaby in the moonlight with a glittering eye, "what happened to those three mounted police who went after you."

Owing either to the suddenness of the demand or the spell of his sister's masterful glare, the small mind which dominated the ma.s.s of muscle seemed paralysed. "Ah, yes," he responded stupidly. "Didn't they!"

Miss Leo for the moment seemed to justify her name; she looked like a lioness ready to spring, but withheld by considerations of expediency.

"Go on," she whispered through her clenched teeth. "Carnaby!" she said more mildly and aloud. "The three who looked after you in the Bush."

But either the hero's recollection was hazy or invention was not his strong point. "Eh?" he said confusedly. "Yes. They--they followed me into the Bush."

"Yes? Well?" enquired Peckover, curiously.

"And two of them are there now," continued Lalage with a world of uncomfortable meaning.

"I wish you two were," thought Peckover. "Tell us all about it," he said resignedly.

"Go on, Carnaby," his sister commanded.

Whether or not the man of thews and sinews had been keeping up his const.i.tution injudiciously at the _Three Pigeons_, certain it was that his brain did not seem in glib working order. "Ah, yes," he said slowly, quailing under Lalage's eye, "three mounted constabulary----"

after which thrilling statement he paused.

"Came after you in the Bush," the flippant Peckover ventured to supply.

"Yes, we've heard that." For the little man saw no chance of ending the interview till the narrative was concluded.

Mr. Leo, failing to stimulate his imagination to the required point, fell back upon a more ready and less intellectual form of address.

"I'll eat you in a minute, boots and all," he informed his impatient listener with an undue amount of emphasis. Then, as though the outburst had spurred his invention, he went on, "Three--three mounted police at me at once. Three to one----"

"Cowards," commented Peckover warmly.

"I was alone," shouted the son of Mars, now plunging recklessly into the recital; "no bush-armour; nothing but my fighting-jacket.

They--they----" he stammered and stopped as the trickling stream of imagination ran dry. He, however, sought to make up for verbal shortcomings by fixing Peckover with a stare of the most appalling ferocity. Lalage saved the situation by prompting from the darkness behind him into which she had slipped. "They came on at the charge,"

he roared, never relaxing his truculent glare at his listener; "one in front, one on each flank----"

"That's right," whispered Lalage. "Keep it up."

"And one----" roared the encouraged swashbuckler.

"Thought you said there were only three," objected the irrepressible Peckover.

"I'll wring any man's neck who interrupts me and puts me off my stroke," was the savage response, and as the application of the remark could bear but one interpretation, its object decided that it would be better to curb his critical faculties before they brought on an interference with his personal appearance and comfort.

"On they came like a hurricane," roared Carnaby, as the promptings reached him, "one here in face: one on the right flank, one on--on----"

He stopped with some hazy notion that he had made a mistake. In his graphic action ill.u.s.trating the narrative he had landed himself beyond ear-shot of his prompter.

"On the left," Peckover supplied sympathetically. "What's the matter?"

For the reciter seemed confused.

"He has had so many fights that he forgets them," explained Lalage, emerging from the darkness to the rescue. "More than the other fellows do, though. Go on, you great fool!" she politely adjured the free-lance under her breath.

Thus incited, Carnaby put on a grimace which would have been nicely calculated to send an old lady into a fit or an infant into convulsions, albeit there lay beneath it an abject fear of his sister's displeasure. "I'll show you!" he bellowed, while Peckover, with an uneasy calculation of the means of exit, wondered whether the object lesson would involve his posing as the inadequate representative of the unfortunate mounted police. "First chap," the mighty one proceeded, with, it must be confessed, a certain tendency to reiteration, "first chap comes on full gallop in front." Peckover nodded his absorbed interest. "I pull off my boot and dash it in his face." For an instant Peckover looked dubious; then realizing his ignorance of fighting under antipodean conditions, he accepted the statement for what it was worth.

"Down he goes," the story continued, "tobogganning over the horse's tail." Peckover, having without prejudice admitted the premises, could not resist accepting the conclusion as highly probable.

Suddenly the warrior's hand shot out and grasped him by the shoulder.

"You," he shouted, becoming intoxicated with excitement as the tale of his prowess grew, "are the second man. As you pa.s.s, I slip under your arm and catch you a smack on the point of the jaw which puts you to sleep."

Instantly Peckover covered with both hands the part of his anatomy referred to, and was understood to intimate that his own powers of imagination were quite equal to the task of realizing the particular form of a.s.sault which it was unnecessarily proposed to ill.u.s.trate.

Postponing for the moment the exemplification of the knock-out blow, Mr. Leo proceeded in spluttering ferocity with his narrative. "In a moment I have got hold of the first man's cutla.s.s----" here he caught up in his excitement a sword which unfortunately hung near, and flourished it in a fashion not hitherto adopted by any recognized school of arms. "I turn, and cry----" he bellowed, when, as luck had it, his energy led him to catch the weapon, in his terrific swing, against a suit of armour which was brought toppling over upon him and thence to the floor with a crash which sounded through the gallery with startling din.

The effect on the man of doughty deeds was, however, even more than startling. He fell forward under the shock of the cold metal, and with the helmet, thus jerked loose, striking him a smart blow on the head, his roaring was changed in a moment from truculence to terror. "Oh!

Oh!" he cried, as he sprawled over a chair, "don't hurt me. I am only pretending!"

But his quicker-witted sister was already at hand to cover his confusion. "Carnaby will have his joke," she exclaimed laughing loudly. "You see?" she demanded suddenly of Peckover, effectually dispelling the amus.e.m.e.nt which was gathering on his face, "he is a man of action," she continued with grim significance. "Cares for n.o.body, except his sister. And he won't see her made a fool of." Then, having beaten Peckover into retreating from too close an inspection of her brother's real state of mind, she turned, caught the sprawling fighter by the collar, and pushed him to his feet. "Great goose!" she hissed at him. "I could strangle you!"

The striking of a clock told Peckover that the time appointed for his a.s.signation had arrived. "We'll hear that bloodthirsty anecdote to-morrow," he said, half trembling at his own temerity. "It's too good to be wasted on an audience of one."

"All right, my little wallaby-rat," responded Carnaby in a tone unpleasantly threatening, and with a valiant attempt to cover his discomfiture.

"Don't wait," Peckover's apprehension of a coming complication forced him to say. "Not much fun in this dark, chilly place. I'll stop and pick the tin plates up."

But as he made for the scattered armour, Lalage seized him. "No, you don't," she said, with determination that filled her victim with despair. "You come with us. I don't trust you out of my sight."

"Going to meet a girl here?" cried Carnaby, with a quite surprising flash of intuition. "I'd like to see him."

"We will," said Lalage, with quiet insistence; "we will see him.

Here!" She took up a breastplate and helmet. "Get inside this armour, Carnaby dear, and we'll just keep an eye on him."

Piece by piece she picked it up and buckled it on him, Carnaby during the somewhat irksome operation relieving his feelings by addressing various minatory remarks to the now discomfited Peckover. "You stir a foot, and I'll twist it off, my pigeon. You just mention we're here, and I'll pull your tongue out, my little magpie. So you'll play fast and loose--chrrr Lal, you're pinching me--fast and loose with my beautiful sister, will you? You just try it on, my chicken, and it will be the last article you ever do try on. I'll flatten you out, and then swab the floor with you."

With a running fire of such cheering announcements did Mr. Leo relieve the tedium of his process of adornment. At length the pieces of armour were fixed to him. There were absurd gaps in the covering; nevertheless, in the semi-darkness there was no manifest difference between him and the empty suits of mail.

"Now," directed Lalage, as she arranged him on a stand, "you stay there as still at you can. And you"--she turned to Peckover--"stir from the room if you dare. You just tell the young minx you won't have anything to do with her, and, if she poaches on other people's preserves there won't be much sport for her by this day week."

"Yes!" A husky voice filtered through the vizor of Carnaby's helmet, as he flourished the sword in his hand. "If you try fooling I'll cut your----"

"Hush!" Lalage commanded, as she drew back into the obscurity of a recess. "Some one coming."

"Nice evening this evening," muttered Peckover ruefully as the door softly opened.

CHAPTER XXIII

"Mr. Gage--Percy--are you there?"