stare raked Lord Dreever like a searchlight.
“Now, sir!” he said.
His lordship wilted before the gaze.
“The fact is, uncle–”
“Never mind the facts. I know them! What I require is an
explanation.”
He spread his feet further apart. The years had rolled back, and he
was plain Thomas Blunt again, of Blunt’s Stores, dealing with an
erring employee.
“You know what I mean,” he went on. “I am not referring to the
breaking-off of the engagement. What I insist upon learning is your
reason for failing to inform me earlier of the contents of that
letter.”
His lordship said that somehow, don’t you know, there didn’t seem to
be a chance, you know. He had several times been on the point–but–
well, some-how–well, that’s how it was.
“No chance?” cried Sir Thomas. “Indeed! Why did you require that
money I gave you?”
“Oh, er–I wanted it for something.”
“Very possibly. For what?”
“I–the fact is, I owed it to a fellow.”
“Ha! How did you come to owe it?”
His lordship shuffled.
“You have been gambling,” boomed Sit Thomas “Am I right?”
“No, no. I say, no, no. It wasn’t gambling. It was a game of skill.
We were playing picquet.”
“Kindly refrain from quibbling. You lost this money at cards, then,
as I supposed. Just so.”
He widened the space between his feet. He intensified his glare. He
might have been posing to an illustrator of “Pilgrim’s Progress” for
a picture of “Apollyon straddling right across the way.”
“So,” he said, “you deliberately concealed from me the contents of
that letter in order that you might extract money from me under
false pretenses? Don’t speak!” His lordship had gurgled, “You did!
Your behavior was that of a–of a–”
There was a very fair selection of evil-doers in all branches of
business from which to choose. He gave the preference to the race-
track.
“–of a common welsher,” he concluded. “But I won’t put up with it.
No, not for an instant! I insist upon your returning that money to
me here and now. If you have not got it with you, go and fetch it.”
His lordship’s face betrayed the deepest consternation. He had been
prepared for much, but not for this. That he would have to undergo
what in his school-days he would have called “a jaw” was
inevitable, and he had been ready to go through with it. It might hurt
his feelings, possibly, but it would leave his purse intact. A
ghastly development of this kind he had not foreseen.
“But, I say, uncle!” he bleated.
Sir Thomas silenced him with a grand gesture.
Ruefully, his lordship produced his little all. Sir Thomas took it
with a snort, and went to the door.
Saunders was still brooding statuesquely over the gong.
“Sound it!” said Sir Thomas.
Saunders obeyed him, with the air of an unleashed hound.
“And now,” said Sir Thomas, “go to my dressing-room, and place these
notes in the small drawer of the table.”
The butler’s calm, expressionless, yet withal observant eye took in
at a glance the signs of trouble. Neither the inflated air of Sir
Thomas nor the punctured-balloon bearing of Lord Dreever escaped
him.
“Something h’up,” he said to his immortal soul, as he moved
upstairs. “Been a fair old, rare old row, seems to me!”
He reserved his more polished periods for use in public. In
conversation with his immortal soul, he was wont to unbend somewhat.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE TREASURE SEEKER
Gloom wrapped his lordship about, during dinner, as with a garment.
He owed twenty pounds. His assets amounted to seven shillings and
four-pence. He thought, and thought again. Quite an intellectual
pallor began to appear on his normally pink cheeks. Saunders,
silently sympathetic–he hated Sir Thomas as an interloper, and
entertained for his lordship, under whose father also he had served,
a sort of paternal fondness–was ever at his elbow with the magic
bottle; and to Spennie, emptying and re-emptying his glass almost
mechanically, wine, the healer, brought an idea. To obtain twenty
pounds from any one person of his acquaintance was impossible. To
divide the twenty by four, and persuade a generous quartette to
contribute five pounds apiece was more feasible.