A Poached Peerage Part 17

"Five pounds apiece?"

So profound was his emotion that for the moment Peckover was at a loss as to the real effect of his offer.

"As a mark of my high appreciation of your services, and taking into consideration that we did not know the depth of water was only three foot six, I shall be pleased to make it guineas," Peckover announced, in as grand a manner as he knew how to a.s.sume.

Mr. Fanning threw up his hands and turned to Mr. Purvis, an incarnation of despair. "Five guineas! Five!" he gasped.

"The gentleman's joking," was all Purvis could say.

"No, I really mean it," said Peckover with princely condescension. "I absolutely refuse to reward your services at any lower figure, however much less your modesty may feel them to be really worth. I said five guineas and I mean five guineas, and not a shilling less than five guineas apiece shall you have."

Mr. Fanning was now reduced to a state of abject helplessness. "Five guineas! five guineas!" was his cry. "While the man who had to be rescued himself--by us, by us--gets a sum running into six figures.

It's something to be a lord."

"A poor look-out for respectable farmers and tradesmen," put in Purvis.

"What," demanded Peckover, in well-feigned surprise, "aren't you satisfied?"

"Not exactly," Fanning answered feelingly.

"Well," returned Peckover, "I consider five guineas very good pay for ten minutes' work in preventing two gentlemen from drowning in three foot six of water."

"It's an insult," Fanning maintained.

"Oh, well," retorted Peckover, "I won't insult you. Good-day."

But neither Mr. Fanning nor Mr. Purvis had any intention of leaving heroism to be its own reward. They made a simultaneous movement to intercept their insulter as he moved towards the door.

"Don't misunderstand us, sir," said Fanning, tempering with a nice sense of dignity his demand for justice. "We are poor men, and if five guineas apiece is really all you are disposed to offer us, why, our duty to our families is to accept it."

"Ah, I thought you'd come to your senses," observed Peckover with a grin. "Five guineas isn't to be sneezed at."

"I've done a lot of sneezing for it," replied Fanning, "and so has Mr.

Purvis. We both got bad colds from the wetting."

"Well, you can't expect me to pay you for having a cold in the head,"

returned Peckover, with more flippancy than justice. "Here's your bonus."

He took out the money and paid them, with the full intention of recovering the same from his friend and patron upstairs. Messrs.

Fanning and Purvis received the inadequate solatium in a due spirit of protest. The crackle of the notes in their bucolic fingers woke them from their dreams of affluence, and as they gazed with sorrow on the legend thereon the fact was established that five, not five thousand, was the figure at which their heroism was a.s.sessed, and that if justice was to be found in the world her habitat was not Staplewick Towers.

With the departure of the dissatisfied pair Peckover threw himself into a chair and laughed for some minutes as he recalled, one after another, the salient points of the serio-comic interview. He had his limitations and deficiencies, but a certain sense of humour was not among them, and the logical consequence of that magnificently absurd rescue and reward appealed to it strongly.

"Oh, I'm in for a fine time at last," he chuckled, in unrestrained enjoyment of his new state of existence. "What a bit of luck! I'm going to be in clover for the rest of my days. Tal ra, ra! It's immense!" He jumped up and began, in pure joyousness, to dance a double shuffle. In the midst of his saltatory abandon he suddenly stopped. The light in the room had become sensibly diminished.

Pirouetting round to the window to ascertain the cause, he saw bulking therein the huge figure of a man who was watching his caperings with a threatening eye.

CHAPTER XVI

The man who, with his burly form filling up the window, stood looking in with grim amus.e.m.e.nt at Peckover's performance, was a great round-faced, bullet-headed fellow of six feet two, whose ma.s.sive proportions, coupled with his juvenile countenance and somewhat vacuous expression, gave him the appearance of a fat schoolboy seen through a magnifying-gla.s.s. He was dressed in a Norfolk suit of leather, which by its amplitude of cut made the wearer look even a bigger man than Nature had intended him to be.

For some seconds the two stood staring at each other in a sort of stupefied silence. Then Peckover, somewhat nervously, remarked, "Hullo!"

"Keeping warm?" the substantial apparition enquired, drawing back the corners of his wide mouth in a sarcastic grin.

"Foot asleep," was the ready explanation, given with a certain apprehensive quaver.

"I see." The stranger accepted the statement for what it was worth.

"This is Staplewick Towers?" The question was put in a tone of settled conviction that only an answer in the affirmative would be deemed worthy of credence.

"Yes. Front door round to the left," said Peckover perking up.

"Thanks," returned the intruder significantly. "I'll try that way when I leave." He took a step in to the room and stared round him curiously.

"Awkward member!" was Peckover's muttered comment, duly impressed by the other's size, which made the furniture look small. "You wish to see Colonel Hemyock?"

"Not particularly," returned the stranger gruffly, "I want Lord Quorn."

"Lord Quorn!" Peckover caught up his face in the act of falling.

"Pressing business?" he inquired politely.

"Very."

"Any message?"

"No." The man's voice was unnecessarily, objectionably loud, Peckover thought. "You would not care to take what I've come all the way from Australia to give him," he added with unpleasant significance, as he twirled a thick crop, just missing a statuette by half an inch.

So the complication which Peckover had feared but of which his good fortune and the zest of his new life had made him forgetful, had arrived. In a moment the particularly awkward truth flashed upon him, that this was the dreaded bully from Australia, the brother of the would-be Lady Quorn.

The idea put his thoughts in such a whirl that he was not ready with any reply. His hesitation seemed to have the effect of exasperating the quick-tempered visitor.

"Where is this n.o.bleman?" he roared, with sneering emphasis on the substantive.

Peckover, with the income of a Cabinet Minister at stake, was rapidly running over expedients for meeting the monstrous emergency. To put him off for the moment and send for the police seemed the most feasible way.

"Lord Quorn?" he replied. "Oh, he's about."

"He won't be about much after I have done with him," was the grim retort. Suddenly stooping forward and looking viciously round the room, the unpleasant visitor carelessly threw his crop away over his shoulder and caught up the poker. "Look here!" he bellowed. "His lordship's right leg." With the word he made a furious effort and snapped the poker in halves. "See?" he panted, throwing the pieces down so near Peckover's feet that the impressed observer sprang eighteen inches into the air. "How will his lordship like that?" he asked loudly.

It occurred to Peckover that, considering the poor fellow's situation, the tampering with his n.o.ble limbs would not be likely to affect him much, and he said so.

The strong man stared at him in incredulous exasperation that the performance had missed its intended effect. "What? He's not a big chap, is he?" he demanded.

"No," Peckover answered, "I--I mean he is so devoid of feeling."

The visitor caught up his crop and flourished it. "My poor sister is not, though," he roared, with a violence which even his possibly just resentment scarcely seemed to justify. "He promised to marry her, and then ran off. But we are on his track. Yes, I've got my broken-hearted sister waiting outside in the garden."