"And if any one can hustle Carnaby it's the duke," added Quorn.

"Whichever way it goes we shall be gainers," observed Gage. "But how about Ulrica?"

"Oh, we'll work her into it all right," Peckover replied confidently.

"Let's have the ruffian in and give him some pop."

"Hark!" cried Quorn, holding up his hand. As Gage opened the door there came across the hall from the library sounds suggestive of a domestic tornado. Their obvious message was that Mr. Carnaby Leo had discovered, and was resenting, the fact that he was more or less in durance, and was communicating his state of feelings through the medium of double-soled boots to the furniture in general and to the mahogany door in particular.

"Let's buck up, and release the brute before he wrecks the place," said Peckover; "or he'll have no kick left in him for that Spanish beauty."

He walked boldly to the door, and threw it open. "Anything wrong?" he inquired, with what was, under the circ.u.mstances, an irritating blandness.

"Anything wrong?" roared Mr. Leo, lashing out backwards and kicking a chair, quite futilely, to a remote corner of the room. "No. But there's going to be. Lock me up, will you, you pair of skunks?" For Quorn had withdrawn to a somewhat obscure position. "I'll teach you----!"

"The lock's out of order," Peckover explained with admirable plausibility. "Slips forward when the door's banged. See? We were just coming to ask you to join us over a bottle of champagne."

The proposal had an immediately mollifying effect on the rampageous visitor. "Lead the way, then," he responded thirstily. "I've got a word or two to say to you from my sister Lalage, and I can talk better when the hinges of my voice-box are oiled."

They returned to the dining-room, and Mr. Leo began to pay an unremitting attention to the lubricant which, according to his statement, should have conduced to unusual eloquence. Anyhow, he spoke, when at last he found time, if not rhetorically, at least to the point.

"What I've come to say to you scallywags," he began politely, in a tone which made his hearers look round to be sure the doors were fast shut, "is that we, me and my sister, splendid girl, have just about had enough of this shilly-shally nonsense. We want Lord Quorn, dead or alive, and, what's more, we mean to have him."

He banged his great fist down on the table and glanced at the three men. Gage and Peckover looked politely tolerant, while Quorn regarded his bugbear now for the first time at close quarters, with an attention bordering on fright.

"As," proceeded the gentle Carnaby, "I have said before, and say now for the last time you'll have ears to hear it, I and my beloved sister have not come ten thousand miles to be made fools of."

Gage and Peckover made sympathetic responses, and Quorn exhibited signs of marked uneasiness.

"The man," their amiable guest resumed, "who tries to make a fool of us is a goner." He caught up a large apple from a dish. "I take the skunk in hand like this. See?" He twisted the fruit in halves which he casually threw over his shoulders. They reached the sideboard, where one accounted for a tray of liqueur-gla.s.ses, while the other took effect upon the globe and chimney of a tall lamp.

"See?" he repeated, with a certain pride in the rather extravagant object lesson. "See?" He turned suddenly upon the much-impressed Quorn and thundered the somewhat superfluous question at him.

"Ye-es, I see," he answered, jumping half out of his chair and trying to look amused.

"Then why the blazes don't you say so?" Carnaby demanded, ignoring the fact that the comment he looked for was clearly unnecessary. "Who is this silly mug?" he added, with evidence of a natural antipathy to persons who received his feats in presumably unappreciative silence.

"Jenkins," answered Quorn hastily, rattling his wits together.

"Jenkins?" echoed Carnaby in loud scorn. "He looks it. Well, now, see here, Jenkins Esquire, my beauty. Just fancy yourself for the moment, if Jenkins is equal to the strain, fancy yourself Lord Quorn. He's a skunk, so perhaps it'll come easy to you, Jenkins."

Quorn could but smile uneasily at the pleasantry.

"Now, I should say to you," proceeded his urbane neighbour, making the most of a happy stroke of innuent personification, "Look here, Quorn, my dasher, the man, lord or lout, or both, who makes love to my sister, my lovely Lalage, and engages her affections has got to marry her.

See?"

The uncomfortable personator of himself signified promptly his entire comprehension.

"If you jib," continued the Antipodean Chesterfield, "if you kick, if you try to slip out,--well--you've got to settle with the strongest man for his weight in the continent of Australia; a man, mark you, whose trade is fighting, against odds for preference, and who means business.

See?"

The fascinated Quorn signed his complete grasp of the speaker's meaning.

"A man, I repeat," Carnaby went on, after seeking fresh ideas in a further libation, "who sticks at nothing where his honour and the honour of his family are concerned. Law? What's the law to me?

Nothing. They know that out there. The law where I came from gives me a wide berth. It knows me. When a slink calls himself a n.o.bleman, he's got to act as a n.o.bleman, or I'll make him act as a swab and scrub the place down with him. See?"

He glared round at his three auditors who were listening to his edifying account of himself and his proposals with rapt attention.

"I've not seen the man I'm after, unless I see him before me now," Mr.

Leo proceeded, waxing truculent. "But I presume he has a nose." This supposition remaining unchallenged, he took up a banana, and proceeded, "There it is." He wrenched off the end of the fruit and tossed it in the air whence it came down plump into Quorn's forgotten gla.s.s of wine.

Ignoring the episode, the pretty fellow continued, "He has, or as a n.o.bleman, should have, two eyes."

No one had a word to say against the computation.

"Here goes," said Carnaby, accompanying the words by a graphic ill.u.s.tration (using the remaining portion of the banana for the purpose) of the latest and most approved method of removing the human eye without having recourse to a surgical operation. Then, the experiment having been brought to an eminently impressive conclusion, the performer playfully took aim with the residue at a portrait of Everard, ninth Baron Quorn, and was successful in hitting that n.o.bleman in the middle of his somewhat vacuous face, and rendering the likeness, if any, for the time unrecognizable.

Emboldened by the effect produced not only on the face of the family portrait but on those of his living hearers, Mr. Leo became even more ruthlessly virulent.

"Lord Quorn!" he cried in thick accents of withering scorn, "If Lord Quorn or any other man, n.o.ble or otherwise, plays fast and loose with my glorious sister, I'll just take him and twist his head off his shoulders. Won't I?"

He glared round as though some one had had the temerity to contradict him, which, however, was not the case. His question meeting with no material response, he next, in pursuance of his pomological method of ill.u.s.tration, s.n.a.t.c.hed up a pineapple. "Twist his head off his shoulders," he repeated somewhat unnecessarily, "like this." With a frantic effort he tugged and twisted the cactus-like plume till it came away from the fruit.

"That's the style," he roared exultingly, "I'll treat any man who gets in my light or annoys my sister. See? I'll scatter his carca.s.s to the four winds of heaven. See?"

Suiting the action more or less to the words he flung the fragments viciously into various corners of the room, where they did more or less damage, coming in their flight unpleasantly near his interested audience. Then turning round with a ferocious action, he heaved the body of the pine in another direction. This happened to be towards the door, which had just opened to admit an addition to the cheerful party.

Next instant a cry of rage made it apparent that the heavy fruit had struck in the middle of his waistcoat no less a personage than his Grace the Duke of Salolja.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

The hit was greeted by an offensive laugh of exultation by the thrower, with a gasp of subdued rage by the receiver of the spinous missile, and by the rest of the company with various indications of apprehensive curiosity.

"Now," murmured Peckover through his teeth, "we're going to see something."

An Englishman, under the same circ.u.mstances, would probably have picked up the weighty fruit and returned the shot. Not so the little Castilian, whose dignity was in no direct ratio to his inches. Quickly recovering from the discomposing impact, and forcing his sinister features as far into a smile as his mental att.i.tude would allow, he bowed ceremoniously, although the full effect of the salutation was somewhat marred by the fact that, following close on the shot, it had rather the appearance of a doubling-up caused by physical derangement.

However, he presently straightened himself and regarded the party with comparative, if delusive, serenity.

"Your excellencies are pleased to be merry to-night," he observed, in a tone which seemed to promise a speedy end to the merriment.

The duke now addressed himself to Mr. Leo. "Your grace is an admirable shot," he observed pleasantly. "If, that is, my poor person was chosen as the mark for your grace's aim." Then suddenly changing his manner from the courteous to the terrific, till he became five feet three of incarnate bristling, scintillating ferocity, he added, "I too, as I shall hope soon to convince your grace, am a tolerable shot, although not with articles of dessert."

The pug-dogged look of aggressive impudence faded from Carnaby's face, giving way to an expression of foolish discomfiture. Nevertheless he replied, with a not too convincing nod of a.s.surance. "All right, my prime bantam, I'll show you something."

But for the moment all he showed his challenger was his back as he turned and walked to the other end of the table, where he grabbed up a fistful of cigars.

"Who," asked the duke, suddenly polite again, "may I inquire, is this distinguished gentleman?"