"I have," said the stranger with another courteous flourish, "already given myself the high pleasure of surveying your charming park and castle by moonlight. It is romantic, it is enchanting. And now there but remains to me to crave the honour of a short conference with your lordship. Am I permitted, then, to flatter myself that my request is granted?"

"Oh, yes. Step in," said Gage, not over cordially.

"Before I so unceremoniously cross the threshold of your window,"

observed the man with another bow, "permit me to announce myself--my name and condition." With more flourishes he produced a pocket-book almost entirely covered with an immense gold coronet and cypher, extracted therefrom a card of unusual dimensions, and with a deep bow presented it to Gage, who drew back into the light, glanced at it, and showed it with a wink to Peckover; that worthy greeting the information it conveyed with a low whistle of amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Your friend----?" said the stranger with a low bow to Peckover.

"Mr. Gage."

"Ah? I have heard of him too. Mr. Gage, I have the honour." And he bowed again.

When at last he resumed an upright position with some prospect of permanency, the friends could see what manner of man the stranger looked. He was small, wiry and rather bald. His bristling moustache turned up from under the longest nose and above the most prominent jaw nearly into the fiercest eyes they had ever seen. With less aggressively piercing eyes he would have been rather a comical figure; as it was, except when he shut them (which he had a trick of doing), or hid them by bowing, he was no laughing matter. His jutting chin wore a closely clipped Vandyck beard, and his clothes were black.

Both men, as they regarded him, tried to persuade themselves that they were amused, without, however, the result being quite convincing.

"I have the honour," said the stranger, inclining his head and shutting his eyes, "to request--I do not say, demand--the grace of a few words with my Lord Quorn and his honourable friend."

"Have a gla.s.s of wine?" Gage proposed.

The stranger made a stately gesture of refusal. "We have a proverb in my country, Spain," he said, "'The thistle before the fig.' You are too kind. But with your permission I will defer the acceptance of your gracious hospitality for the present."

"Not a cigar?" Peckover suggested, pushing along the box.

Again the pantomime of refusal. "At considerable pain to myself, I must decline--at least till I have done my poor best to make myself understood," the man replied, with his eyes shut. "Nevertheless, you will not impose upon me the heavier penalty of seeing you forego the enjoyment of your own cigars?"

They bowed, none the less appreciatively that neither man had entertained the slightest intention of doing so. But they were strangely subdued. Somehow, ridiculous as they a.s.sured themselves it was, the stranger's personality chained and fascinated them. He was a little man with an absurd nose, but---- They found themselves staring at him, drinking in every detail, every flourish, as he drew forward a chair with a gesture of asking permission, then sat down and faced them with a quiet mastery of the situation which was horribly disconcerting.

So they waited in a silence, half apprehensive, half quizzical, for him to begin, not without a shrewd idea of the purport of the approaching communication.

At length with a preliminary flourish of a ringed hand, and an effective raising and dropping of the fierce eyes, he began.

"You will have already graciously noted by the acceptance of my poor card that it is the Duke of Salolja, Hereditary Grand Sword Bearer to his Most Gracious Majesty the King of Spain, Lord Keeper of the Royal Vaults, Duke also of Oswalta, Marques of Risposta, with many other t.i.tles and offices, and a Grandee of Spain,"--at the recital of each succeeding dignity he raised his voice till at the culminating t.i.tle the reverberation made the gla.s.s rattle--"who has the honour to address your grace."

Both men bowed, and at the same time did their best not to feel much smaller than the diminutive duke who held them as an undersized rattlesnake might fascinate a couple of finches.

"I must begin," said the duke, with what looked like the dangerous calm of a quiescent volcano, "by craving your grace's most amiable patience while I touch, very briefly, on a few points which stand out in my family history, the chronicles of the n.o.ble House of Salolja, of which I have the honour to be the present unworthy representative."

Peckover glanced at Gage and his look said, "Family history. We've got hold of a crank," and they both looked less uneasy.

"Families have their characteristics and idiosyncrasies," pursued the duke, nodding his head to and fro sententiously. "In my country, Spain, this is peculiarly the case. Family tradition is strong, it is tenacious, inexorable, immovable." At each succeeding adjective his voice rose till it reached the climax in an intense scream. Then he dropped back quite casually into a conversational tone, and proceeded--

"It is a notorious tradition in my family that we never suffer an interloper in affairs of the heart."

The faces of his two listeners indicated a realization that he was now coming to business, and their interest visibly quickened.

"In the year," the duke threw back his head, as though searching for the date in the ceiling, "1582, my n.o.ble ancestor, Alfonzo de Salolja was pleased to love a Castilian lady of great beauty, Donna Inez de Madrazo. A certain vain Hidalgo, one Lopez de Fulano, was rash enough to cast eyes on her and enter the lists with him. Alfonzo did not insult the lady by questioning her preference. He ran de Fulano through the heart. His blood is still to be seen on the Toledo blade which hangs in my poor palace in Segovia."

He paused to let the anecdote soak in, before pouring out another. His audience looked interested, but uncertain in what spirit to take the recital.

"Nearly a hundred years after that," the duke resumed, chattily reminiscent, "a rash Frenchman, the Comte de Gaufrage, suffered himself to indulge a pa.s.sion for the lovely Donna Astoria de Rivaz y Cortano, heiress of the de Rivaz lands and wealth. Duke Miguel de Salolja, who at that date represented my honoured family, heard of this breach of punctilio on the morning of the day he had appointed for offering the fair Astoria his hand and dukedom. By noon the Comte de Gaufrage was in Purgatory and Duke Miguel in Paradise."

"Both killed?" asked Gage.

"Cut him out?" suggested Peckover.

"My ancestor," the duke replied in stately tones and with a flash of the eyes, "did not die till thirty years later. And," he turned to his second questioner with a bow and a wave of the hand, "permit me to tell your Excellency, no duke of the Saloljas ever stooped to 'cut out' as you term it. We do not enter into compet.i.tion. We have a shorter and more effectual way. I may explain that by noon the Comte was in his coffin, and Duke Miguel accepted by the lady."

The tone seemed to snub their denseness of comprehension. Peckover accepted the elucidation with a faint and inept smile.

For a few moments there was silence as the duke sat immobile; confident in, as it were, the cloak of homicidal tradition in which he had wrapped himself.

Then with a suddenness which made the two jump (for he was beginning to get on their nerves) he plunged again into his blood-stained narrative.

"To pa.s.s over many like instances of this family trait, and come to comparatively modern times," he said pleasantly, "it happened to my great grandfather, Duke Christofero, to commit a deplorable mistake.

He and his neighbour, the Prince de Carmona, unknown to each other, loved two sisters, the daughters of the Marques de Montalban. One night they both determined to serenade their respective lady-loves.

When the duke arrived at the Castle he heard a guitar, and came upon the unfortunate Prince beneath the windows of the ladies' apartments.

Only when he was drawing his rapier out of the Prince's left lung did he learn that it was Donna Maria and not Donna Lola for whom the compliment had been intended. It was unfortunate; nevertheless it tends to ill.u.s.trate the working of the traditional law which governs our house."

"Oh, yes. I believe that sort of mistake did often happen in the good old times," was the not altogether confident remark of Peckover, who felt he must make a stand against this sanguinary catalogue.

A flash from the duke's remarkable eyes, brought any further tendency to volubility to a full stop.

"Such occurrences," he said pointedly, "are, pardon me, by no means confined to bygone times. The traditions of my house will end only when my race is a thing of the past. In the year--to venture with your courteous permission to resume--in the year 1841, a t.i.tled compatriot of your own, Sir Digby Prior, allowed himself at one of the Escurial b.a.l.l.s the freedom of paying too much attention to my father's _fiancee_, the sainted lady whose unworthy son I have the honour to be.

Next morning they met on the Buen Retiro Park, from whence in that same hour Sir Digby was carried with a bullet in his brain. Yes!" He sighed reflectively. "It is not perhaps a cheerful, or agreeable record; still it is curious and interesting to trace the same inevitable characteristic of our blood in almost each succeeding generation."

"Very," Gage agreed.

"Most singular," Peckover chimed in mechanically, as he tried to fall into a pose of polite indifference under the duke's eye.

The little man received their appreciative commonplaces with a grave bow. "We have now arrived at a point," he said glaring at them, but speaking with quiet if significant deliberation, "when it becomes my duty to claim the honour of your unwavering attention."

The request was in the highest degree unnecessary. Both men were incapable of greater heed than they were already giving. "Now it's coming," was the simultaneous and uneasy thought in their minds.

"But I fear the politeness with which your graces have brought yourselves to listen to my long preamble has caused your cigars to extinguish themselves," remarked the duke, with an amba.s.sadorial smile.

"Pray let me have the supreme pleasure of seeing you relight them."

CHAPTER x.x.xI

"Having now," resumed the duke, when the two men had, with a fine affectation of nonchalance, but with somewhat unsteady hands, lighted up again, "taken you through as much of the history of my family as to persons of your acuteness of perception is necessary, I have the honour to invite your attention to the moral of my house's story."

His listeners, by this time mentally detached from each other, and held pitilessly and without respite by those auger-like eyes, puffed nervously at their now tasteless cigars, and by their apprehensive silence bade him proceed.

"The present unworthy holder of the dukedom of Salolja," that person continued, with a deprecatory gesture, "--to leave ancient history behind us--is for the moment in one of those inexpedient positions to which his ancestors were occasionally liable, and from which they invariably took prompt measures to extricate themselves. In the province where we hold sway there is a proverb, 'A Sololja's rival should make his will.' When one wishes to describe a useless action, 'It is like granting a lease to the rival of a Salolja.' Meaning that he does not live to enjoy it. The phrase is expressive."

"Rather neat," commented Peckover, with an effort.