A Poached Peerage Part 9

"What?" cried that worthy, as resenting his implied complicity in the fiasco. "Not dead?" he added, with as much awe as a quadruple chin can express.

"Or next door," replied Doutfire, clinging to the shadow of a hope which experience belied.

"Next door," echoed Popkiss, losing the man in the innkeeper. "I wish he was. I don't want no suicide in my respectable house."

"Well, you've got it, Popkiss," retorted Doutfire, as he picked up and sniffed at the phial which had fallen from the lifeless hand. "Poison, if I know anything. Send for a doctor."

The exigency of the situation roused Mr. Popkiss' sluggish faculties into prompt action. "Here, Mercy!" he bawled. "Mercy! Quick! Run for Dr. Barton directly. Gentleman taken bad."

"Now Mr. D.," he proceeded, puffing with excitement, when Miss Mercy, in a state of disgust at the contingencies to which licensed premises are liable, had gone off through the rain with such haste as was compatible with due care for her personal appearance, "if you don't want to ruin me, for heaven's sake keep this unfortunate business as quiet as you can."

"Certainly, Mr. Popkiss," the detective replied, a.s.suming at once the mastery of the situation, "certainly, so far, that is, as is compatible with the due requirements of the law."

"Can't you take him out of here?" Peckover suggested, as he began to feel the strain on his nerves.

"Ah, we might do that, Mr. D., with your permission," the landlord begged submissively. All his importance was gone now; the last five minutes had turned him into a fat, abject slave, ready to grovel at any man's feet.

"Don't care to move him till the doctor arrives," objected Doutfire, less by way of conforming with legal procedure than of a.s.serting his authority. Mr. Popkiss had thrown open an inner door. "Only just through here, Mr. D.," he whined spasmodically. "Nice snug little room; better for the doctor and--and all parties," he urged.

"Gentleman, I mean n.o.bleman there," he sank his wheezy voice and jerked his head towards Peckover; "Lord Quorn, on his way to the Towers. Very distressing for his lordship as it is for me. You'll oblige an old friend, Mr. D.!"

The appeal was so abject that Mr. Doutfire felt he was losing nothing of his importance by yielding. "Lend a hand, then," he said, having first judicially inspected the room in question. Between them, with much puffing and wheezy mutterings, they carried out the limp form, and as the door closed upon them Peckover's air of lofty indifference fell from him as a garment, and resting his elbows on his knees and bowing his head on his hands he collapsed into a state of utter fear and misery.

CHAPTER X

From this flaccid condition he was roused by a somewhat obstreperous knocking and whistling in the pa.s.sage dividing the coffee-room from the bar. In a moment he had sprung up and run to the window, which he threw open, and stood there ready to bolt through it if necessary.

"What ho! Anybody alive here?" a voice called out. "Hi, yi! Where do I come in?"

As the invocation and inquiry seemed rea.s.suring. Peckover turned back into the room as the door opened and a man in a dripping mackintosh appeared looking in.

"Hullo!" he exclaimed. "I can't find anybody worth mentioning. Bar empty as a mortuary chapel. Young lady in the cellar hiding from the thunderstorm, eh? You don't happen to be the proprietor of the establishment?"

"Not exactly," Peckover answered, wondering what kind of customer he had come across now.

"That's near enough," said the man in the mackintosh. "You're alive at any rate. Well, somebody has looked after you all right," he remarked, eyeing the remains of Peckover's last dinner.

"Oh, yes, I've dined," Peckover replied loftily.

"You bet. Like a lord," a.s.sented the stranger cheerfully. "By the way"--he scrutinized him curiously, much to that gentleman's uneasiness--"by the way, you don't by any chance happen to be a lord?"

Something in the man's manner suggested a reason for the inquiry other than mere chaff. "Suppose I am?" returned Peckover, with his best attempt at an enigmatical smile. The newcomer stared at him as though unable to make up his mind to risk a question, and as he hesitated, the dripping mackintosh made a circle of water round him. "Well, if you are----" he stopped, and abruptly changed the subject. "Staying here?"

he asked; "or just waiting till the rain stops?"

"That's it," Peckover answered, scarcely knowing how to take the fellow.

"Far to go?"

"Few miles, I'm waiting for the carriage," said Peckover casually, remembering what Quorn had told him.

"H'm!" The man looked at him as though stoked to blowing-off point with curiosity. "Not going Staplewick Towers way?"

The problem as to whether it were better to say yes or no was too complex for Peckover's present state of mind.

"That's my way," he declared, and chanced it.

The stranger's face brightened with antic.i.p.ation. "Going to the Towers, perhaps?" he asked with hopeful persistence. Peckover nodded in as non-committal a fashion as he could command. "Why," cried the other, "I do believe I'm in luck after all. You hinted just now you might be a lord. You don't tell me you are Lord Quorn?"

"You've guessed it."

With another word the stranger turned and walked energetically to some pegs at the end of the room, unb.u.t.toned the humid mackintosh and hung it up; also his hat. Then, with business-like action, he came back and favoured the astonished Peckover with a long stare of gratified curiosity. "Excuse me," he said, "but it's more than curious that the man I have been hunting all the week should run across me like this."

Instantly Peckover remembered Quorn's amateur bush-ranger.

"You're from New South Wales?" he faltered.

"Wrong," the other declared cheerfully. "You're not quite as good at guessing as yours truly. I'm from Tasmania, I'm proud and happy to say."

It struck Peckover that the dapper, well-knit man with the keen hustler's face set in straight black hair could hardly be Quorn's bully. He could not quite imagine the man before him spending even his leisure time in trying feats of strength on his long-suffering neighbours who chanced to displease him, to say nothing of cattle and fire-irons.

Just then Mr. Popkiss appeared, and approached Peckover with a mien of deferential apology. "Beg pardon, my lord," he said confidentially, "but I'm glad to say that Dr. Barton has had that unfortunate mishap removed to his surgery, which is a great relief to me, and I must apologize to your lordship for the unpleasantness occurring on my respectable premises. We've never had anything of the kind occur before."

"Oh, you couldn't help it," Peckover replied graciously, his wits more keenly about him. "He ought to have known better, but people, I believe, are very careless about these matters. I didn't see what the poor fellow was up to."

"No, my lord; naturally, my lord."

"Now, landlord, since you've seen fit to come to light, bring us a bottle of your best champagne," directed the stranger.

Mr. Popkiss, who had been inclined to disregard the new customer, at once became exceedingly attentive and bustled off on his errand, since a hungry guest is worth twenty full ones.

No sooner was he gone than the man drew his chair up to Peckover's and said quietly: "Now that I know I'm really right and you are Lord Quorn, I've got a proposal, a genuine business proposition to make to you."

"Have you?" replied Peckover, wondering what in the world was coming, and cursing Popkiss who came in just then with the wine and so delayed the explanation of the mystery.

The stranger's quick eye had caught the similarity of the labels on the bottles. "Why you've been having one of the best too," he remarked.

Then added in an undertone as the fussy Popkiss left them, "I thought in your case the t.i.tle didn't carry exactly a million with it."

"No, not exactly," Peckover replied equivocally. "But I don't see what business that is of yours," he added by an afterthought, to maintain his dignity.

"You will directly, though," the other retorted. "Till then I beg to apologize. Now look here," he touched gla.s.ses with his companion, "luck; and may we both get what we want, which is a.s.sured if we come to terms." They emptied their gla.s.ses, and the stranger, refilling them, leant forward to whispering distance.

"No time to lose, if this matter is to go through," he said in a business-like undertone. "So I won't beat about the bush. This fat publican"--he jerked his head backwards towards the bar--"knows you are Lord Quorn. Does any one else know it in these parts?"

The question was put so purposefully that Peckover had no hesitation in answering it frankly. "No one but the barmaid. I've not been here more than two hours."

"That's all right. Now for my proposition." He drew up yet an inch or two closer to Peckover. "First of all it is necessary for me to state I am a rich man; well, practically a millionaire."