CHAPTER x.x.xIX

With a prodigious effort Mr. Leo pulled himself together. "We've had enough of your lip," he declared in a loud voice. "I don't jaw, I fight. Look here." He caught up the fire-irons one after another and went through the rather too familiar business of twisting and snapping them. The duke watched the performance with folded arms and a sarcastic smile. Mr. Leo, lashing himself into as much of a fine fury as he could attain, and losing his head in the process, took a silver goblet from a niche in the overmantel and with a mighty play of muscle squeezed it out of shape, not altogether to the silent Lord Quorn's satisfaction. "That's the way I talk," he cried, with gathering confidence, as he tossed the shapeless cup on the floor. "Any man who argues with me knows what to expect. It's too late to apologize when I've snapped your legs and arms for you and dislocated your neck."

The duke intimated politely to his fuming opponent his entire agreement with the remark. "I am sorry," he went on suavely, "if I have spoken in a language which has not appealed to your grace. Perhaps I may yet be so fortunate as to be able to make myself better understood."

As he spoke he took a candle from the table, and, flicking off the shade, set it on the side-board. Then he pivoted round and stepped ten paces across the room, turned, whipped out his revolver, took instant aim and fired. The candle stood as before, but extinguished. The duke advanced and bowed with something, it must be confessed, of the air of a music-hall performer. "That," he said quietly, "is how I reply to your grace's remarks. I trust I have the good fortune to make myself understood. No?"

Quite gratuitously imagining a negative on Mr. Leo's part, which that redoubtable fighter was far from expressing, the duke made a swift movement and tore down a rapier which hung as an ornament on the wall.

After making a few pa.s.ses, which seemed to have Mr. Leo's person for their ultimate destination, he spitted the shade of another candle, flung it aside, and drawing back, put himself in fencing att.i.tude, and lunging furiously, after a grand flourish, just hit the wick and extinguished it likewise. Then he favoured his impressed audience with a deprecating gesture intimating that his exhibition of skill was a matter of small account, after which, without waiting for comments or applause, he turned with startling ferocity upon Mr. Leo and in an unpleasantly resonant tone commanded him to take down the fellow weapon and defend himself.

Mr. Leo showed no sign of falling in with his desire, but made a ghastly attempt to laugh the order to scorn and then to treat it with the contempt due to such an out-of-date proposal. But as it is difficult to preserve an att.i.tude of dignified opposition in the neighbourhood of an aggressive and business-like hornet, so the Antipodean giant found it impossible to treat the duke with the pa.s.sive scorn which prudence dictated. For the little Castilian had now arrived at a stage when he considered he might fairly let himself go, and let himself go he did.

He simply danced like a blood-thirsty Rumpelstilzchen before the anxious man of muscle, making his sword cut the air as though it were a riding whip, and describing inconvenient circles and pa.s.ses with it in close proximity to the more cherished portions of his unwilling opponent's anatomy.

Mr. Leo looked very unhappy, and in the deplorable condition of a man who is consumed by the knowledge that he ought to be very angry and retaliative, and yet dares not. As he continued to hang back with a suggestion in his stupid face of how much he would give to be safe at _The Pigeons_, the duke's aggressiveness increased to the extent of prodding the ma.s.sive frame before him with playful sword thrusts. This was more even than the abject Mr. Leo could stand.

For an instant he looked dangerous; then with a roar, of rage or pain according to the fancy of the audience, he made a s.n.a.t.c.h at a decanter with the object of hurling it at his tormentor. But before he could raise it for the fling the little rapier came down with a smart flash upon his wrist and the decanter fell shattered to the floor.

"That your grace's idea of fighting a Grandee of Spain, you abominable great hulks?" cried the duke viciously. "You want a lesson, milord, you foolish breaker of tongs. When shall you begin to snap my legs and arms and to screw my neck, you quaint elephant? You shall go down on your knees and apologize to me or I will run you through your absurd body and let the saw-dust run out. Shall I not, eh? eh? eh?" He accompanied each note of interrogation by a stinging slash of the flexible steel, and Mr. Leo began to look very weary and unwell.

But Lord Quorn's face was beaming as though a load had been taken off his mind.

For an instant Mr. Leo seemed to be gathering himself together for a bull-like rush, then the intention died away in helplessness. "It's all a mistake, I tell you," he blurted out in a quavering roar. "The pine was not intended for you."

"Indeed? So?" cried the duke incredulously, making the point of his sword whirl within two inches of the herculean thorax. "And the allusions to my nose, the Salolja nose, which is historical, and to my stature and to my veracity--they were not intended for me? Eh?"

"If you touch me again with that beastly sword I'll have the police on to you, duke or no duke," Mr. Leo declared, falling back somewhat feebly behind the shelter of the law.

It was with some consternation that he noticed that not only the duke, but the whole party seemed to derive genuine amus.e.m.e.nt from his threat.

"Ho! ho! ho!" laughed the little terrorist in his window-rattling tones. "The police! How rich! How exquisite! When a man insults a Salolja he does not call in the police, but the undertaker."

Mr. Leo's bronzed face had now that greenish tinge so much the fashion in modern sculpture.

"How are you going to send for your police?" laughed the duke, emphasizing his question by a playful p.r.i.c.k in Mr. Leo's biceps.

"Before you touch the bell or the door-handle you are a dead man."

Mr. Leo looked as though he reluctantly accepted the probability.

"Now, your grace will go down on your knees, won't you, you absurd hippopotamus, and make your humble confession and apology for having treated disrespectfully a Grandee of Spain and a Salolja, before you pay the penalty of your mistake."

There was a painful flourish of the rapier, and a gentle stab on the lobe of Mr. Leo's large right ear. With a howl he went down on his knees, with another he begged for mercy, and it was a third howl of a very different character which made the duke and the other men turn to the window, at which some one stood rattling.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "With a howl he went down on his knees, and with another he begged for mercy."]

The ever-alert duke opened it, as though nothing unusual were occurring, giving entrance to Miss Leo, who with a manly stride came in only to stand dumfounded before the abject spectacle of her brother's abas.e.m.e.nt.

"Carnaby!" she cried in a voice calculated to put fire into a lump of wet clay. "You great oaf! What fool's game is this?"

The duke explained. "It is simply the result of a slight personal difference between his grace and my humble self."

"Get up, you great b.o.o.by!" Lalage commanded, naturally thinking that the slight personal difference between the two men should have reversed their positions.

"Stay where you are," cried the duke in his most stentorian tones. And Mr. Leo stayed.

"Quorn! At last!" The cry came in a tone of menacing rapture from Lalage who had now found time to glance round the table.

"Hold on!" was that n.o.bleman's chilling response, as he rose and stretched out a fending hand in front of him.

"My Quorn!" repeated Miss Leo with native tenacity.

"Quorn?" cried the duke in a voice of puzzled exasperation, "Quorn again in that quarter. I get tired of this Quorn here, Quorn there."

"This is Lord Quorn," Lalage declared with an exultation which, considering the position her champion occupied at the moment, was scarcely justified.

"So? Are you sure?" the duke demanded searchingly.

"Sure? I knew him in Australia. I have come over to marry him," was the convincing answer.

"So?" The fiery little Castilian turned to Quorn. "You marry this lady, eh?"

"No," he returned, ungallantly. "I'm hanged if I do."

"Carnaby!" cried his sister in a ringing voice. "You hear that?"

"Yes," said Carnaby impotently from the floor.

"Let the poor fellow alone," recommended Quorn. "He's a thing of the past."

But his crow was cut short by the duke. "So, your grace thinks to marry Miss Buffkin?" No answer. "In spite of your engagement to this handsome lady?" The duke's wry face was lost in a grin. "May I request once again the honour of a few words with your grace in private?"

"You may, but you won't get it," was the dogged reply. "I stop here."

"So? I believe not," said the duke, turning on his vindictive glare to the full. "I have been long enough made a fool of with your different Lord Quorns. I am sick of Lord Quorn. I put him away, and if I make a mistake--ah!"

He turned swiftly with the cry of an enraged tiger. Prompted by signs from his sister, Carnaby had taken advantage of the duke's back being turned to rise from his undignified position and stealthily approach his little adversary with the idea of taking him unawares from behind and trying what muscle would do. But the Spaniard, whose energies and faculties were concentrated in a small s.p.a.ce, was too wide awake for him. With the turn he sprang back and whipping round his rapier brought it with a swift cut across Carnaby's ample countenance. As Mr.

Leo roared and danced with pain, and Lalage, throwing her arms round the duke's, shouted to the three to help her, if they were men, in disarming the wriggling Grandee, the door was thrown open and Mr.

Doutfire came quickly in, followed by the local constable.

CHAPTER XL

Mr. Doutfire with professional prompt.i.tude at once proceeded to adapt himself to the situation. He planted himself in business-like fashion before the wriggling duke, and with a wave of both hands, suggested to his captor that she should release him.