"Oh!" Peckover's face brightened at the news. "But he is Lord Quorn,"

he insisted.

Mr. Doutfire, who had been keeping that n.o.bleman under observation with a wary and scornful eye, looked as though quite unable to reconcile the statement with its object's position on the floor. "Do I understand that he states he is Lord Quorn?" he asked severely, taking out a large note book with bodily contortions and ominous play with its broad elastic band.

"On the contrary, I've said nothing of the sort," objected Quorn. "Did I?" he added appealing to the company above him.

Mr. Doutfire's look suggested that to his mind that a.s.sertion, even if correct, did not fully account for the suspect's position on the carpet. "Well, bring yourself up," he commanded roughly. "And let us get at the rights of the question."

Thus bidden, Quorn rose, and faced the officer of the law, defiantly reticent.

"You shall find out at once which of these gentlemen is Lord Quorn,"

ordered the Duke of Salolja, folding his arms.

"By your leave, sir----" began Doutfire in a tone of trenchant reproof.

"Sir?" cried the duke, speaking very fast and staccato. "My rank and appellation are the Duke of Salolja, I am, moreover, a Grandee of Spain."

Mr. Doutfire covered the hit by a business-like action of putting the point of a stubby lead pencil in his mouth. "I'll make a note of that," he said, to all appearances unmoved by the momentous announcement. And he proceeded to do so, taking a subtle revenge by making the haughty Castilian spell his t.i.tle, and furthermore suggesting that his p.r.o.nounciation of the alphabet was suspiciously misleading.

"Your grace," he observed sternly, when the elaborate entry had been made and deliberately revised, "may trust me to take the steps, if any, necessary to clear up this matter." He turned from the fuming Spaniard, and addressed himself pointedly to the rest of the company.

"Do I understand," he asked approaching the extraordinary complication with an absence of emotion which suggested that the tackling of such questions was with him an every-day occurrence, "do I understand that there is some doubt as to the ident.i.ty of Lord Quorn?"

"Precisely," replied the duke.

Mr. Doutfire by an authoritative wave of his notebook enjoined the Castilian despot to silence. "I ask you, sir," he said, pointedly to Gage, "whether you are or are not Lord Quorn?"

"Not I," was the prompt and comparatively cheerful answer.

Mr. Doutfire accepted it with a suggestion of reserving all comment on the surprising statement till a later stage. "Perhaps, then, you will be good enough to tell me who is," he said.

Gage pointed with his thumb to Peckover. "If it's not this gentleman, I don't know who it is," he replied indifferently.

"Nothing of the n.o.bility about me," Peckover declared in answer to Doutfire's interrogative glance. "I tell you that is the individual, over there," indicating Quorn, who was now sufficiently recovered from the ducal onslaught to laugh jeeringly.

"I like that!" he exclaimed. "Making me Lord Quorn when it comes useful."

"You are Peckover?" demanded Mr. Doutfire confidently.

"If you say so," was the reply.

"I do say so," said Doutfire, whose reputation clearly hinged on the correctness of the statement.

"I knew he was not Lord Quorn," put in Lady Ormstork.

"He told me he was," observed Miss Buffkin.

Mr. Doutfire turned a threateningly suspicious glance on the stolid Quorn, then pursed his mouth with a pitying smile of non-acceptance as he shook his head emphatically at the young lady. "He's Peckover all right, miss," he a.s.sured her. Then glared at Quorn as though challenging him to deny it.

And Quorn, although not overburdened with intellect, had sense enough to recognize that his game just then was to lie low and admit nothing if he could help it.

"My dear Ulrica," said Lady Ormstork in her superior fashion, "how could you allow yourself to be taken in by such a transparent pretence?

Does the person look in the least like Lord Quorn?"

"Or any other n.o.bleman?" supplemented Doutfire, with menacing sarcasm.

"Of course," he added, in a more uncompromisingly professional tone, "if he has been defrauding any of you ladies and gentlemen, under the false pretence that he is Lord Quorn, I'll take him now to Bunbury against your preferring a charge against him."

His enquiring look round meeting with no response, save a scornful smile from Quorn, Doutfire proceeded, eyeing the suspect malevolently, "I don't know how he comes to be here, in this house, but----"

"He stopped my horse that was running away with me," Gage explained chivalrously.

"Oh!" Mr. Doutfire's face hardened, as though that in itself were a questionable circ.u.mstance, and made the doubtful record worse. "Well, of course," he continued, not seeing his way to any active measures under the reprobative circ.u.mstances, "if you are satisfied, it is no business of mine. I've merely done my duty."

The Duke of Salolja who had endured this discussion with ill concealed impatience, now spoke again.

"Then it is one of these gentlemen who is really Lord Quorn, eh, constable?"

"Detective-Inspector, if your grace has no objection," was the withering correction. After giving the same time to take effect, he addressed himself to deal with the question. "As to which of these gentlemen is his lordship, I do not, in the absence of any stated charge or legal reason feel myself called upon to decide. Speaking unofficially and without prejudice, I should, if interrogated, incline to the opinion that this gentleman," he indicated Gage with a pa.s.sing and casual wave of his pocket-book on the way to its resting-place in his coat-tail, "would answer to the description. But I have no _locus standi_ in the dispute, and therefore merely express an opinion, as a matter of courtesy, that if the question of ident.i.ty should be gone into, the gentleman by the palm-stand may possibly be found to be Lord Quorn." After which impressive and useful dictum he bid the party "Good evening," and took a somewhat abrupt departure, fearful, perhaps, of being led into giving an opinion which might at some future time be inconveniently used against him.

As the door closed on him Lady Ormstork said, in a tone of repressed and compromising exasperation, "This is altogether a most extraordinary, unheard-of proceeding. Perhaps by to-morrow more sensible counsels will have prevailed, and we shall know who is and who is not Lord Quorn. But," she added significantly, "I do not overlook the fact that each one of you gentlemen, and consequently whichever of you bears the t.i.tle, has proposed an alliance between himself and Miss Buffkin. Is that not so, Ulrica, dear?"

"Yes; they've all said as much," replied that young lady casually.

"So?" The Salolja growl reverberated through the room like the first muttering of thunder.

"And," concluded Lady Ormstork, ignoring the minatory rumble, "Miss Buffkin will marry whichever of you turns out, when this absurd mystery is solved, to be Lord Quorn."

"Will she?" observed the duke from the depths of his thickset throat.

"Undoubtedly," was the determined and conclusive reply. "Come, dear.

We must be getting home."

"I shall," said the duke, suddenly galvanizing himself into his native politeness, "do myself the distinguished honour of const.i.tuting myself your graces' escort. Have I the much prized permission?"

"We will give you a lift--without prejudice," replied Lady Ormstork, with the laudable object of drawing him off from further exercise of his powers of intimidation upon whichever might be the prospective bridegroom.

The duke bowed himself into a right angle. "Your ill.u.s.trious kindness transcends my poor deserts. I am overwhelmed by this distinguished mark of your favour." He straightened himself, pivoted on his heels till he faced the three men, and bowed to them, this time stopping at an angle of 45. "Your excellencies, I shall further do myself the supreme honour of returning to pursue my enquiry as to which of you I may have the inestimable privilege of addressing without fear of contradiction as milord Quorn."

He pivoted again till he faced the door, took a phenomenally long stride to it, recovered himself, flung it open, and with a ceremonial which had quite a mediaeval flavour about it, and, indeed, had been probably handed down from one generation of the amiable house of Salolja to another, conducted the ladies to the hall, leaving the three men inert with gloomy antic.i.p.ations.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

So paralysed were they that it was not till the crunching of the carriage wheels on the gravel roused them from their lugubrious stupor that they found tongue to discuss their situation.

"Nice let-in for my money and trouble," said Gage writhing in the Nessus shirt of that fatal peerage.