Piqued by her failure to maintain the interest she had so auspiciously begun to excite in the distinguished guest, Miss Popkiss turned in a huff to the window, and affected a melancholy interest in the heavy shower which had come on, to be roused suddenly from her air of indifference to things in general and the preoccupied gourmandizer in particular by catching sight of the adventurous Mr. Thomas Sparrow sheltering under a lean-to a few feet from the window. Evidently on the watch, he came quickly to the window, heedless of the downpour.

Miss Popkiss, with a guilty conscience, received him graciously; put her finger to her lip and pointed with an air of importance to the still voracious Peckover. Sparrow looked, and his damp face clouded with jealous doubt. "Lord Quorn," whispered Miss Popkiss behind her hand. Even if Mr. Sparrow had seen that affectionate pa.s.sage he could scarcely expect his sweetheart to withhold an occasional kiss from a real, if newly discovered, peer of the realm.

Whatever attraction a n.o.ble _bon-vivant_ might have had for Mr. Sparrow at any other time, he was just then in too close proximity to a gutter-spout and a tempting pair of lips to devote more than a critical glance and a nod of surprised comprehension to the person indicated.

Then, eager to catch the fleeting opportunity, he put forth a moist hand, pulled Miss Popkiss a thought nearer to him, and so steadying her for the operation and obviating a possible retreat, he kissed her.

Whether caused by the unusual electricity in the air or the eager hurry with which it was performed, the osculation created more noise than is considered desirable by well-bred lovers. Peckover, dining steadily, silently, jumped round, uncertain for the moment whether the report was that of a drawn cork, or some trick of the neglected waitress to attract his attention. He was alert enough and man of the world enough to comprehend the situation; indeed, had he been aware that a man was so near it would never have been in question. As it was he turned just in time to see Mr. Sparrow's gratified countenance drawing back into the unsympathetic rain. The sight gave him an uneasy thrill.

"Hullo!" he cried sharply. "Who was that?"

"Only a friend of mine," answered Miss Popkiss, with an air of showing herself not dependent for amatory attentions upon casual customers.

Her manner scarcely rea.s.sured the visitor. "It wasn't--I mean--" he stammered uneasily, "he looked like a policeman."

"Oh, no, sir; how could you think so, sir!" Miss Popkiss protested with a touch of offended dignity.

"I thought I heard a kiss," Peckover suggested, still unsatisfied.

"Other people can kiss besides the police," Miss Popkiss declared, with a toss of the head, too exasperated by the ba.n.a.l suggestion to deny the act.

Peckover began to think it was all right. "So they can, my poppet, so they can," he exclaimed more cheerfully, regarding the young lady with a leer which owed much of its _empress.e.m.e.nt_ to the champagne. As it occurred to him that a little philandering might form a not unpleasing diversion between the courses, he rose with the leer intensified and approached Miss Popkiss with the recognizable intent of sharing with Mr. Sparrow the charmer's osculatory liberality.

But the young lady was astute enough to realize the unseasonableness of what at another time she would have welcomed. Accordingly she retreated before Peckover's advance, taking care to keep to that side of the room least visible from the window. "Oh, sir, no, sir; I'd rather you didn't, my lord," she protested, in quite a virtuous fl.u.s.ter.

But Peckover's knowledge of human character did not incline him to believe in the coyness that will sometimes try to stiffen the market for notoriously cheap kisses. He manoeuvred Miss Popkiss into a corner and then pounced upon her.

Whether it was that Mr. Thomas Sparrow, waiting discontentedly in the rain, had had his suspicions aroused as to the real sentiments existing at the moment between his lady-love and the n.o.ble customer, or whether he was merely anxious, now that the intervening attraction was removed, to take a more curious and leisurely survey of the interesting addition to the peerage, anyhow, he again, in a lull of the storm, sidled to the window and looked in. Not seeing the guest where he expected to find him, he boldly put his head in the window and glanced round the room.

To observe in a corner, Miss Popkiss, coyly--or as it seemed to him, invitingly--protestant, at bay before Peckover, who was making a playful feint attack upon her with his serviette preparatory to getting to close quarters.

Whatever effect the sight had upon Mr. Sparrow, words utterly failed him to give adequate expression to it. All he could emit was a choked half-cry, half-growl of rage and warning. At the sound Peckover gave a great jump and for the moment stood scared and paralysed. Miss Popkiss, profiting by the respite, gave a scream just loud enough to justify herself and preserve her character for fidelity without arousing her father, and fled from the room, possibly to avoid awkward explanations. Peckover stood, staring blankly at the wrathful Sparrow, who, emboldened by his rival's limp att.i.tude, shook his fist at him viciously.

"All right, my lord! Wait till I get at you, my lord!" he foamed.

His air was so menacing that when Peckover found his voice the first use he put it to was to call, "Landlord!"

Throughout the vocabulary he could not have chosen a word which would have had a more immediate and electric effect on the qualified aggressiveness of Mr. Sparrow. That love-sick functionary seemed instantly to collapse and recede from the window which had been the frame round a picture of rustic fury. Only with his retreat, certain words, like Parthian arrows, floated in from the storm to Peckover's hypersensitized ears.

"Wait till you come outside, my n.o.ble lord. I'll teach you to dance."

"You'll be very clever if you do," their object commented grimly as with a sigh of relief he turned to the smilingly inquisitive face of the landlord who had now appeared.

CHAPTER VI

"Did you call, my lord?" was, considering the tone of the summons, Host Popkiss' unnecessary enquiry.

"My lord!" repeated Peckover irritably. "How you country fellows do a joke to death. Yes; I did call. Who was that absurd person intruding through the window?"

Mr. Popkiss went to the window with what promptness his bulk would allow and looked blankly out into the rain-swept courtyard. "I don't see any one," he said.

"I can't eat my dinner with a Jack-in-the-box fooling behind me,"

Peckover complained suspiciously.

"No, certainly not," the host agreed with professional severity. "It must have been Doutfire." Satisfied with the conjecture he went up confidentially to his guest. "I'll tell you, my lord. It might have been Mr. Doutfire, our detective from Long Rixon."

Peckover with an effort arrested his jaw in the act of falling, and snapped it to with a rattle of the teeth.

"De--detective?"

"Yes," Popkiss explained, with a touch of importance, as one who, in his responsible calling, is permitted to share the Treasury secrets; "he is expecting a chap down here that is wanted by the London police.

He missed him at Faxfleet railway station, and has now gone back to Rixon, but if he don't hear of him there he is coming back here again.

He is a clever man, is our Mr. Doutfire," he proceeded, warming with local pride and at the same time justifying any eccentric methods to which the eminent officer of the law might have thought proper to descend; "cleverest man in these parts by a long chalk, and we are a bit proud of him."

So full of admiration and pride was Host Popkiss that he failed to take notice of his guest's ghastly face.

"Thank you, that will do," said Peckover hurriedly, with an effort to appear loftily satisfied. "If it is only the detective, I don't mind."

His one and feverish desire now was to be left alone. The crisis was at hand, and it must be faced without witnesses.

As Popkiss with corpulent strut left the room, somewhat disgusted at having failed to excite interest in the artful Doutfire, Peckover went hastily to the door and shut it upon the retreating ma.s.s of licensed importance. Then he turned, almost in a state of collapse. The champagne bottle caught his eye; he staggered to the table, poured out a gla.s.s blindly, and swallowed it. "It's all up," he muttered in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. "It has come to amen. That was not the detective, but he's not far off. Clever man: back directly." He laughed miserably, then subsided limply into the chair, and sat with his head resting on his clammy hands. He was caught. If the local police, headed by the nailing Mr. Doutfire, had got wind of his presence in the neighbourhood there was clearly no escape but one. "Ugh!" He shuddered as in imagination he heard handcuffs click and felt the cold embrace of the steel round his wrists. He sat there with head erect now, his hands pressed against his cheeks, his eyes staring fascinated by the scenes which his imagination, coloured by the study of police reports, pictured before him: he saw the magistrate committing him; then himself in the dock at the Old Bailey; the Treasury counsel unfolding a black case against him, his flash pals, the real culprits, grinning at his misery from the gallery; the jury shaking their uncompromising heads in all a small tradesman's Pharisaical virtuousness; he heard the verdict, guilty; he saw the judge, unrelenting and terrible in scarlet and ermine, mouthing at him before coming to the point--five years, ten, fifteen! He started up trembling, with beads standing on his forehead and with despairing eyes. "I couldn't stand it!" he moaned. "I'll never go through it. They shan't take me alive."

Feverishly he felt for his pocket, in his agitation missing the opening more than once. He took out the phial, gave an apprehensive glance round at the window, emptied the contents into the gla.s.s and filled it up with champagne. Then, with the means of escape ready to his hand, he seemed to steady himself. "Now," he said, with a grim smile; "five seconds' courage, and I can snap my fingers at 'em all. It's only like a sleeping draught." He raised the gla.s.s to his lips, held it there for two or three seconds, and then set it down. Perhaps there was no hurry for five minutes.

"Now, I'm going off," he soliloquized dreamily. "I wish I'd had a fairer fling while I was at it. It has been a poor, middle-cla.s.s rollick after all," he continued ruefully. "It's too late now. But I should like to have done the real swell, if only for a week; gone in for thousands instead of a few paltry pounds; Belgravia instead of Camden Town; Monte Carlo instead of Herne Bay and Yarmouth; high-steppers; Hurlingham; Henley; a real lady or two mashed on me instead of--ah, well, she wasn't so bad; it wasn't her fault she wasn't cla.s.s: she'll be the only one to be sorry. Champagne," he took up the gla.s.s, "I might have had this sort all along if I'd had the nerve."

Suddenly recollecting, he set down the gla.s.s hastily. "I forgot."

Curiously he seemed to shudder at his narrow escape. Then, as though impatient with his temporizing, "Bah! let me get it over," he muttered, and lifted the gla.s.s again, only to set it down once more. "I wonder,"

he said, as making an excuse for delay, "what the bill for this little dinner comes to. Poor Fatty will have to apply to my executors.

Wonder if he will see a joke there." He laughed at his touch of c.o.c.kneyfied humour. Then relapsed into the morbid state. "Will the pretty little daughter be sorry? Perhaps. Not she; no one will. The sooner I'm off the hooks the better. Here goes for the last time." He took up the gla.s.s. "I'll count three, and then toss it off." He shut his eyes, hesitated a moment, then began. "One, two, thr----"

The gla.s.s was but waiting for the last word to leave his lips when the door opened with an impatient, unceremonious burst, and a man came in, flinging it to behind him. Another dusty, worn-out man, who stared for a moment at Peckover, and then, turning a chair from the table, just let himself fall into it.

CHAPTER VII

Peckover, arrested in his intent, had opened his eyes, and now stood staring half dazed at the new-comer.

"Hullo!" yawned that person genially.

"Eh?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Peckover hazily, eyeing him with suspicion, and not quite able to realize the situation.

"Excuse me if I disturb you," said the man, with another tremendous yawn. "If I don't sit down somewhere I shall drop on the floor."

Peckover told himself that this was scarcely the detective, and even if he were his condition gave colour to a wild hope of escape.

"Tired?" The superfluous question was put tentatively.