His Lordship's Leopard Part 19

"They're a party of ladies and gentlemen with whom I've been travelling in America," Cecil replied. "And as we'd agreed to join forces for the rest of the summer, I'd no option but to invite them here as my guests.

The gentlemen I've already introduced to you--"

"Oh, the gentlemen!" snapped his aunt. "I've no concern about them.

It's the women I--"

"The ladies, Aunt Matilda."

"The ladies, then. Your father, in what he is pleased to call his wisdom, has seen fit to allow you to introduce these persons into his house. I'm sure I hope he won't regret it! But I must insist on knowing something about the people whom I'm entertaining."

"As I've told you already," he replied very quietly, "they're ladies whom I've met in America. I might also add that they've good manners and are uniformly courteous."

Miss Matilda tilted her nose till its tip pointed straight at the spire of the cathedral, and, without any reply, swept past him into the house.

Dinner, that night, in spite of his aunt's efforts to the contrary, was an unqualified success. The Bishop hailed with joy any interruption in the monotony of his daily life, and made himself most agreeable, while his guests seconded him to the best of their ability.

The meal being over, his Lordship proposed a rubber of whist, a relaxation of which he was very fond, but which, in the reduced state of his family, he was seldom able to enjoy. Mrs. Mackintosh and Smith, as the two best players of the party, expressed themselves as willing to take a hand, and Miss Matilda made up the fourth.

"You'll excuse me," said his Lordship apologetically to Mrs. Mackintosh, "if we play only for threepenny points. Were I a curate I could play for sixpence, but in my position the stakes are necessarily limited."

"You don't ever mean to say," exclaimed the old lady, "that you're a gambling Bishop!"

"My brother," interrupted Miss Matilda, "is a pattern of upright living to his day and generation. But of course if you're incapable of understanding the difference between a sinful wager of money and the few pence necessary to keep up the interest of the game--"

"Gambling is gambling, to my mind," said Mrs. Mackintosh, "whether you play for dollars or doughnuts!"

"The point seems well taken," remarked the Bishop meditatively. "It's certainly never struck me in that light before; but if you think--"

"I think," said the old lady decidedly, "that it's lucky for you that there are no whales in Blanford!"

Miss Matilda threw down her cards.

"If I'm to be called a gambler under my own brother's roof," she said, "I shall refuse to play. Besides I've a headache." And she rose majestically from the table.

"But, my dear," began the Bishop meekly, "if we cannot find a fourth hand--"

"If Miss Banborough doesn't feel up to playing," came the sweet tones of Violet's voice, "I'll be delighted to take her place." And a moment later she was ensconced at the table.

The Bishop's sister retired to a corner with the largest and most aggressive volume of sermons she could find, and sniffed loudly at intervals all the evening. And when at ten o'clock, in response to the summons of an impressive functionary clad in black and bearing a wand surmounted by a silver cross, the little party filed out to evening devotions in the chapel, Miss Matilda gathered her skirts around her as if she feared contagion.

"I'm afraid of that old cat," Mrs. Mackintosh confided to Violet, when they had reached the haven of their apartments. "I'm sure she suspects us already; and if we're not careful, she'll find us out."

CHAPTER II.

IN WHICH THE ENEMY ARRIVES.

"I say, boss," remarked the tramp, as he paused for a moment in the process of stuffing himself to repletion with cold game-pie, "this is a rum trip, and no mistake."

"What's that got to do with you?" retorted Marchmont sharply, appropriating the remaining fragments of the pasty to his own use.

The two men were seated in the shady angle of a ruined b.u.t.tress, a portion of a stately abbey, which in pre-Norman days had flourished at a spot some half-dozen miles from the site of Blanford.

"Well," said the tramp, "if this ain't a wild-goose chase I dunno what you calls it. Here you've gone an' took me away from my happy home, an'

brought me across the ragin' Atlantic, an' dumped me in a moth-eaten little village where there ain't nothin' fit to drink, all because I happened to chum with a Bishop."

"You seem to forget," said Marchmont, "that it was you who came to me, offering to sell your friends and their secrets for a sufficient remuneration."

"So I did," said the tramp; "but it was revenge, that's what it was--revenge. I was deserted in a furrin land, with just my board-bill paid, and not a penny to bless myself with."

"Ah," said Marchmont. "That's the reason, I suppose, why you came from Montreal to New York in a parlour car."

The tramp sighed despondently, saying:

"Now whoever told you that, boss?"

"n.o.body. I found the Pullman check in your coat-pocket when I was looking for my diamond ring, which you'd absent-mindedly placed there."

"Humph!" replied the other. "There ain't no foolin' you!"

"I should be a pretty poor journalist if there were," said his employer.

"Now give me the story again, and see if you can get it straight."

"Well, there ain't nothin' much to tell, 'cept I was carried off by them Spanish conspirators in mistake for a lady, which I in no-wise resembles, an' the bloke as was the head of the gang was allus called the Bishop, and a pretty rum Bishop he was."

"Never mind about his qualifications," interrupted Marchmont shortly; adding to himself, "That explains his son's presence in Montreal."

"Well, this Bishop," continued the tramp, "used to talk about his palace at Blanford; and when the party give me the go-by, I gathered from the porter as took their traps that they'd gone to England; and the elevator-boy, he heard the Bishop say to the little actress as they'd be as safe at the palace as they would anywhere. And then I come on to New York and blew it into you."

"Yes," said Marchmont, "and I've given you a first-cla.s.s pa.s.sage to England, paid your board and lodging, and kept you full for the best part of three weeks; and what do I get out of it?"

"I admit as we haven't had much results as yet," said the tramp. "But now things is goin' to hum. The Bishop and his whole gang's coming over to these very ruins to-day."

"How did you find that out?" demanded the journalist.

"Footman up to the palace told me. I give him a little jamboree last night at the 'Three Jolly Sailor-boys.'"

"Yes, and had to be carried home dead-drunk. Nice one you are to keep a secret."

"Well, I was only a-doin' me duty," said the tramp in an aggrieved tone of voice, "and if they don't know you're after 'em, and you should happen to be inspectin' the ruins at the same time as they are, you could get chummy with 'em without half tryin'."

"I'll attend to that," said the newspaper man. "I've just had a cable from the _Daily Leader_ telling me to hustle if I want to get that position, and I've got to do something, and do it quick. But it'll never do for you to be seen. Once they know we're together, the game's up. I can't have you larking round with the servants either. You'll spoil the whole show. You've got to go back to Dullhampton this afternoon."

"What! that little one-horse fishing-town?"

"Yes, that's where you're wanted. It's the nearest port to Blanford, and it's where they'll try and get out of the country if they're hard pressed. You just stay there and keep your eyes open till you hear from me."