A Poached Peerage Part 52

"Let go, ma'am," he said rea.s.suringly. "It's all right now. I'll rake the fire out."

Thus bidden Miss Leo relaxed her clasp, not however, before Mr.

Doutfire had, with a practised twist, wrenched the sword from the ducal grasp.

"Now, then," he demanded in a tone of stern reproof, "what's this all about? What's the trouble now?"

"You shall not interfere," foamed the duke. "You are not wanted, policeman."

"Detective-Inspector is my rank," Mr. Doutfire reminded him with a touch of severity. "Looks as though I was wanted," he added with a curl of the lip and a confident glance round the company.

"You are not," insisted the duke in his fiercest tone and with his most appalling glare. "I am the Duke of Salolja, and I tell you you are to go."

He might as well have glared at the spattered portrait of Everard, ninth Baron Quorn, on the wall for any effect his eyes produced on the uncompromising and unimaginative official.

"I should like that corroborated," was all the response he got from Mr.

Doutfire.

"No, don't go!" cried Mr. Leo with a subdued and, painful roar. "He has a.s.saulted me, stabbed me, threatened to shoot me. I give him in charge. Take him. I----"

"Has he got firearms on him?" enquired Mr. Doutfire severely.

For answer the duke whipped out his revolver. But swift as the action was, Mr. Doutfire's counter move was quicker.

With practised skill he clutched the dangerous wrist and with a business-like jerk held it in the air with the revolver pointing to the ceiling.

"That'll do, my lord duke," he said with playful insistence. "Better let me take care of that. It's a dangerous plaything."

But the duke's characteristic under-estimation of the power of the British police system prompted him to resist and to struggle violently to release his hand. Mr. Doutfire gave a well-understood nod to his subordinate, and that functionary smartly acting upon it, came behind the duke and pinioned his arms. Next moment the revolver was detached by a knowing professional trick, and was in Mr. Doutfire's pocket.

"You can let go, Tugby," he said with calm authority, and the raging n.o.ble was free to dance and gesticulate in a very tornado of rage.

He was understood to intimate that the insult put upon him, a Duke of Salolja and a Grandee of Spain, by a mere paltry English policeman, in not allowing him free vent for his display of _force majeure_ and homicidal proclivities was one which would not only be the cause of private and personal bloodshed, but would in all human probability result in a devastating war between the two Powers, from which the least unpleasant outcome England could expect would be the loss of Gibraltar and the bulk of the British fleet. Mr. Doutfire received the intelligence with a tolerant stolidity. Custom had made him impervious to threats and sceptical of the practical value of vindictive utterances. His scornful and unmoved att.i.tude had the effect of raising to a still higher pitch the rage of the Spanish fire-eater, who seemed now to have lost all that self-control which before had been so telling. He had, in fact, become inebriated with wrath and excitement.

"Scoundrel, villain!" he cried, shaking both fists in the air before the imperturbable Doutfire. "You lay your ign.o.ble hands on the Duke of Salolja! I will have your life."

"Steady! Steady!" responded Mr. Doutfire in a tone of gentle warning.

"I shall not steady," roared the duke, whose face had now a.s.sumed the look of the false nose, eyes and moustache of a carnival mask. "You shall not defy me. You shall go this moment, or I will run you through your wretched body."

With a sudden dart he s.n.a.t.c.hed up the sword from the floor and began a series of flourishes which threatened seriously to embarra.s.s Mr.

Doutfire. "Steady, now," commanded that gentleman, but instead of complying, the duke seemed to be ferociously bent on selecting a suitable point of impact in the detective's thick-set figure.

"Lay hold, Tugby."

The duke comprehending the order, jumped round swiftly, bringing the sword point in opposition to Mr. Tugby's advancing tunic. But the diversion was enough for Mr. Doutfire's purpose. He seized the Spaniard's flouris.h.i.+ng arms from behind, then planting his knee in the small of the ducal back, by way of purchase, he held the heir of all the Saloljas trussed.

"Take the sword away from him," he ordered his subordinate. "Now,"

when that was, after a short but fierce struggle, accomplished, "you had better slip on the bracelets."

Accordingly, with some difficulty and much explosive language the hands of a Grandee of Spain were, it is sad to relate, for the first time on record, fastened behind his back by a pair of vulgar English handcuffs, and the traditions of the Saloljas were, for the moment, rendered a negligible quant.i.ty.

In his violent struggles the duke had stumbled backwards into a low and deep-seated armchair. From this he was, from the fact that his hands were fastened behind him, unable to rise or regain his balance. All he could do was to kick furiously and to make loud use of expletives which, although couched in the Spanish language, were obviously of an exceedingly florid, even ensanguined, character. To quiet him and to prevent possible mischief, Mr. Doutfire and his underling, approaching the job on either side from behind, each seized a ducal leg, and tucked it in comparative harmlessness under his arm. It may be doubted whether in the long and blood-stained annals of the house of Salolja any member of that distinguished and ruthless family had ever occupied quite so undignified a position before.

"Dangerous party to deal with, my lord," remarked the panting Mr.

Doutfire jerkily, owing to the convulsions of the Salolja leg, addressing himself impartially to the three men, any one of whom might be Lord Quorn. "I'm afraid we shall have to see him safe to Bunbury and give him a night in the cells, in default of bail."

The prisoner laughed in the very impotence of his rage. "You shall have your absurd Great Bunbury pulled down about your ears if you do not instantly release me," he spluttered through his teeth.

"All right, my lord duke," Doutfire returned, with a wink at the company. "We'll keep in the middle of the street in case the buildings should come down on our hats. Now, when you're ready, sir, we'll make a move as it's getting late. Sorry to have to put the bracelets on a gentleman of your position, but I take the responsibility. In this country even dukes have got to behave themselves, and we don't allow tricks with these dangerous playthings."

He pulled the duke up and set him on his feet, then took up the rapier and revolver and handed them to his subordinate.

"You shall release me at once," hissed the duke through his wolfish teeth, "or it will be the worse for you."

"All right. We'll see about that," replied Mr. Doutfire in the tone he might use to a naughty child. "I understand the prisoner threatened and a.s.saulted you, Mr.----?" he added to Carnaby, producing his note book.

"Yes," affirmed that valiant gentleman. "I'm cut and stabbed all over."

"Tut!" cried the prisoner explosively. "The fellow is a great coward.

He cries if you p.r.i.c.k him."

"You will," continued Mr. Doutfire, unheeding the interruption, "charge the prisoner, I presume, with feloniously cutting and wounding?"

"That's it," replied Mr. Leo, regaining confidence.

"Carnaby, you great fool, why didn't you wring his neck and fling the little brute into the dust-hole?"

Carnaby failed to impart into his expression any regret that he had not endeavoured to forestall the suggestion.

"Good job he didn't try it on, ma'am," observed Mr. Doutfire dryly.

"Whether he succeeded or not, in either case it might have been awkward for him. You'll attend at 10.30 a.m. to-morrow at the Court House, Great Bunbury," he added. "And some of you gentlemen had better be on hand to give evidence if required."

He nodded to Tugby, and each taking an arm of the speechless duke they conducted him, with certain indications of unwillingness on his part, to the door. This the representative of the Saloljas favoured with a mighty kick, by way of protest and also doubtless of letting off some of his compressed rage. Mr. Doutfire pulled him unceremoniously back, then, as Tugby opened the door, shot him forwards, and in such humiliating fas.h.i.+on did the manacled Grandee disappear from the scene of his brief triumph.

Those who remained were now at liberty to take more precise and less preoccupied notice of one another.

"So I've got you at last, Lord Quorn," observed Miss Leo with somewhat menacing satisfaction.

"No, you haven't," objected that person, coolly lighting a fresh cigar."

"Oh, haven't I?" the lady rejoined. "You hear that, Carnaby dear?"

"Don't worry dear Carnaby," put in Peckover. "He has got a headache."

Mr. Leo's stony stare of discomfiture did not relax to traverse the statement. Mechanically he put forth a great hand and poured himself out, as in a dream, an overflowing gla.s.s of port wine. He then, still in a state of mental apathy, sought, with cowed and lackl.u.s.tre eye, the cigar-box and absently helped himself--to more of the contents than he could smoke at once. But he made no other and more relevant answer to the bugle-call of his sister's question. It was felt by the three men that the legend of his doughty deeds was a myth; as a terrorist he belonged to ancient history.

CHAPTER XLI