Chapter VII

Luckily Mrs. Terrill, by her simple device of opening the folding doors that separated the drawing-room from the breakfast-room, was able to offer one fair sized apartment for the accommodation of her guests. Built almost identically on the same lines as that occupied by the Duke, No. 66 had been transferred (as the _Lewisham and Lee Mail_ in a breathless article described it) into "a veritable bower of roses equalling in stateliness and expensiveness the most splendid habitations of Belgravia and the West End."

It was Hal's idea that the conservatory at the back, and which, as in the Duke's house, was an _annexe_ to the breakfast room, should be converted, by means of three flags and a red carpet ("a lavish display of bunting," said the _Lewisham and Lee Mail_), into a sort of throne room. Hither Tuppy was conducted.

Tuppy was very irritable and very beautiful in his dress kit, and one by one the guests were ushered into the presence.

Hal was a self-appointed M.C.

"Mr. Gosser and Miss Gosser," announced Hal.

"Glad to see you--how do you do."

"Mr. James Fenton, Mrs. James Fenton and Mr. Fenton, Junior."

"Happy to meet you--how de do?"

"Mr. Copley, Mr. Minting, Mr. Arthur Brown."

"Oh damn it! How de do, how de do?" wearily. It must be understood that much of Tuppy's greeting was _sotto voce_.

"Miss Sprager, who's a very fine fiddle player."

"How de do--beastly cold isn't it?"

"Mr. Willie Sime--brought any songs, Sime?"

"Got a shocking cold, old chap."

"Thank heavens--glad to meet you, Mr. Sime."

"Mrs. Outram."

"Weird old bird--how are you, Mrs. Outram, glad to meet you."

"Mr. R. B. Rake, B.A. The editor of the _Lewisham_----"

"I am honoured to make your acquaintance, my lord," said the boisterous journalist, "there is no more pleasing feature of our modern life than the democratizing of the peerage."

"Noisy devil! How de do--glad to meet you."

"Mr. Pulser, Mrs. Pulser, Miss Pulser."

"Oh Lord! how many more of em? Glad to meet you, how de do?" There was scarcely room to move, the guests overflowed into the hall and on to the stairs.

Sir Harry, wedged in one corner, surveyed the scene with a glow of pardonable pride. To him it represented the Duke's _coup de grace_.

Mr. Rake wormed his way through the press of people to his side.

"Well, sir?" demanded Mr. Rake.

He said this in a tone that suggested that he had only omitted "what did I tell you?" out of pure politeness.

For Mr. Rake had an unpleasant knack of claiming personal credit for all and sundry happenings, from weddings to earthquakes, no matter how little he had to do with their instigation, that had earned for him amongst his colleagues the title of "Prophet of the Afterwards."

"This, I think," Mr. Rake went on, "effectively settles our friend."

Sir Harry nodded.

"The letter of course was the official suicide, this might aptly be described as the wake."

Arousing no enthusiasm he continued--

"What a remarkable man Lord Tupping is!"

"Yes."

"So popular!"

"So it appears."

"Everybody is simply charmed with him! It is 'Lord Tupping this' and 'Lord Tupping that' on every hand!"

"Yes, yes," said Sir Harry indulgently, "Tuppy is a good fellow." The good fellow at that moment was expostulating with Hal.

"Now look here, Tanny, old friend," he said firmly. "I'm not goin' to meet anybody else. I'm sick of this business an' I'm dashed if I'm goin' to stick it any longer."

"It will be soon over, old man," soothed Hal, "we've finished the Duke."

"Oh!" said Tuppy absently.

"Yes--didn't you see the letter he wrote to the governor in his rag."

"No," said the innocent Tuppy.

"What! not the bit about the vultures in the air, and the brazen sky!"

"Blue sky," corrected Tuppy, and went on hastily, "I suppose you mean blue, don't you?"

"Blue or brazen," said Hal carelessly, "it was a lot of infernal rot."

"My dear old feller," said Tuppy huffishly, "eminent strategist an' military authority as you are, incisive analyst of character as you may be; rampin' rhetorician an' high steppin' logician as in all probability you imagine yourself to be, I cannot accept your dictum on literary quality or diction. I thought that vulture touch was exceptionally imaginative, and the introduction of the blue sky supremely delicate."

"Anybody would think that you had written that bit yourself," chaffed Hal. Tuppy was not to be appeased.

"That's beside the question," he complained.

Then Alicia interrupted them.

She monopolized Tuppy, and Hal, after a vain attempt to join in the conversation, withdrew a little sulkily.

"Lord Tupping," she asked, "aren't you feeling a terrible hypocrite?"

"Not unusually so, dear lady," said Tuppy.

"Sir Harry thinks that you are not on speaking terms with the Duke."

Tuppy coughed.

"At the present moment I ain't," he confessed, "it is over a little question as to whether potatoes should be boiled with salt. I say without, but he's a most obstinate beggar lately--since his trouble."

Alicia ignored the addition.

"Who wrote that dreadful letter," she asked suddenly.

"What letter?" Tuppy's face was a blank.

"Oh, please don't pretend that you are ignorant--that wretched letter full of nonsensical----"

Tuppy drew himself up.

"Dear lady," he said stiffly, "if you refer to the vultures----"

With a woman's quick intuition she guessed at the authorship of that piece of imagery.

"No--I am not referring to that portion of the letter," she said tactfully, "in fact I thought that little touch rather fine," she added, inwardly praying for forgiveness, "but the letter in general--the whole idea, it was the Duke's, of course?"

"The less imaginative part was the Duke's," confessed Tuppy, "the crude outlines, so to speak, the framework----"

"Well," she broke in, speaking rapidly, "you are to tell the Duke that he must not do such a thing again; I will not receive farewell messages through the public press--indeed, you may tell him that nothing will induce me to read the paper again."

"I say," protested Tuppy, "don't say it! Next week's letter ain't half bad----"

"Next week!" Alicia's blood boiled. "Do you mean to tell me that he dares to repeat----"

"He's written twenty already," said the informer, "some of 'em good, some of 'em so, so. There's a very fine one called 'The Profits of Penitence' that'll appear in the Christmas number. That's a tremendously touchin' thing--about Christmas bells an' children dyin' in the snow."

Alicia had no words by now.

She gained self-possession with an effort.

"You--must--tell--the--Duke," she began.

"Why not tell him yourself," suggested Tuppy.

Somebody at the far end of the room had just finished singing, and people who had found seats were smiling sweetly at people who were standing. And people who were standing were smiling back and saying "selfish pig" under their breaths, when Sir Harry mounted a chair, and instantly the hum of talk died down.

"My friends," said Sir Harry, "I feel that we cannot separate to-night without my saying a few words concerning the object of this gathering (cheers). We have met together to do honour to our neighbour, Lord Tupping (loud cheers).

"Heaven and earth!" fretted Tuppy, "why doesn't he leave me alone?"

"Lord Tupping," Sir Harry went on, "has shown us, by example, the attitude of the typical English peer. Dignified, yet gracious; reserved, yet approachable; he combines generosity with restraint and is a striking contrast to the pseudo-nobleman, whose unedifying behaviour has, I think I am right in saying, scandalized our beautiful suburb."

"I say! I say!" said Tuppy indignantly, but nobody heard him.

"As oil to water," said Sir Harry, "as the genuine is to fictitious, so is the old nobility to the upstart--I should say, so is the English nobility to the--er--foreign: they do not mix; they have nothing in common; their ideals are separated by an immeasurable gulf."

"We cannot but be sensible," the knight proceeded, when there was a commotion at the doorway and a tall man pushed his way through. It was the Duke, hatless, pale and a little breathless.

"Tuppy!" he called, and to Sir Harry's amazement the object of his panegyric came half-way to meet him. In the silence that fell upon the assembly every word of the conversation was audible.

"Tuppy, did you come over the garden wall to-night?" was his astounding question.

"No, old feller."

"Sure?"

"Sure, dear boy."

The Duke stood thinking.

"Then you didn't drop this," he said and held out his hand.

It held a silver-mounted cigar case.

Sir Harry recognized it with a smothered oath. It was the case he had given to Bill Slewer.

"It is inscribed 'Harry Tanneur,'" said the Duke, "and the gentleman who dropped it in his hurry left me a further token of his regard."

He held up his other hand, and Alicia gave a little cry, for the hand was swathed in a pocket handkerchief, ominously scarlet.

*Part V*

*THE DUKE ADVENTURES*

*I*

It was nearing the period when "something would have to be done." These were Olejoe's exact words. With an action pending in the High Court, the presence of the brokers' man was suggestive rather than conclusive. Olejoe was a splendid splash of colour, a picturesque accessory, but as Tuppy pathetically complained, he had not as yet justified the trouble and expense.

It is true that with a silver salver in his hand he had replaced the sedate servant. That he received visitors and showed them in; that clad in his striking raiment he negotiated with the butcher and the milkman, and that he was one of the Sights. More than this, he was admitted into the family circle, and was invariably introduced to callers as "my brokers' man" or "my possessionist," With Tuppy's coming the question of Olejoe became a vital one. Tuppy, it may be said, was now an inmate of 64. A curt note from Sir Harry's solicitors had terminated his tenancy. Supplementary to this was a letter from Sir Harry himself in which he dealt freely in such phrases as "two-faced duplicity," "run with the hare and hunt with the hounds," "betrayal of a sacred trust," and similar happily coined phrases of opprobrium.

"The perfectly horrible thing is," Tuppy said in bitterness of spirit, "I've given up my flat in Charles Street, an' it's a thousand to thirty the landlord won't take me back again, unless I pay something off the old account."

The Duke pressed him to stay, and Hank was extremely urgent in his invitation.

"The Duke should surely have somebody he can talk 'blighted hopes' to," he said: in his capacity as An Authority on Women, Tuppy stayed.

Thus Olejoe came to be a problem, for Tuppy brought the faithful Bolt, and No. 64 was not built for the accommodation of a house party.

Olejoe, therefore, became the pivot around which revolved a ceaseless whirl of discussion.

He was a Domestic Crisis.

"Something must be done with Olejoe."

This was the beginning and the end of the agenda under review.

Olejoe was present at the most important of these. From time to time he interjected expostulatory noises.

"A Johnny man that I know," said Tuppy reminiscently--"I don't exactly know him, but I owe his brother a hundred, which to all intents an' purposes extends my acquaintance--because if _I_ don't know him, he is pretty sure to have heard about _me_ from the brother fellow, who's a deuce of a bleater about money affairs----"

"I'll look him up in the Dictionary of National Biography," said the Duke; "in the meantime, this man----?"

"Well, this man used to go to the wooliest places--Africa an' Klondike an' similar horrid spots outside the radius; used to go bug huntin', an' lion fishin' an' bee-stalkin'. When he got something extra, in the way of skins or wings or feathers he used to send it to Wards, have it stuffed an' stuck up in his library. When I say 'library' I mean the place he used to sleep in on Sunday afternoons. But if he got something extra-extra, somethin' stupendously gape-ish, such as a pink lion or a sky-blue rattlesnake--somethin' absolutely priceless, he used to give it to some dashed museum. There was insanity in the family, mind you."

The Duke cast a calculating glance at Olejoe.

"We might leave him at the South Kensington," he mused.

"Stuffed?" suggested Hank.

"In a box," said Tuppy enthusiastically, "with a rippin' big label on the top, 'A present to the Nation from a True friend' or some rot like that."

"Or in lieu of conscience money," said the Duke, "from two who have robbed the inland revenue, asking finder to notify the same in the _Times_ newspaper."

"Gents," said Olejoe with a forced smile, "foreigners I've always been obligin' to, without the word of a lie. Orgin grinders, ice-cream blokes, an' ladies who tell your fortune with little dickey birds wot pick a bit of paper out of the box to tell you whether your husband will be dark or fair, an' how many children you're goin' to have. If you treat others well, you can expect to be treated well yourself. Do unto others as thyself would be done is a sayin' old an' true--so no larks, if you please."

"When you started that interestin' exposition on tolerance of the alien," said Tuppy aggrieved, "I was under the impression you were goin' to say somethin' particularly apposite."

"No larks," confirmed Olejoe.

"Say," said Hank suddenly, "what's the matter with sendin' him to the Tanneur guy?"

"Alive?" asked Tuppy in a matter of fact tone that made Olejoe shiver.

"Why sure; send him along with a tag tied to his coat--it's gettin' round about the festive season when you give away things you've no use for."

"I feel certain," said the Duke, "that Olejoe could be used for some wise purpose. An age that has found employment for bye-products in general, should not be at a loss for using up this variety. The difficulty about the knight is that he's going abroad."

"Abroad?"

"Abroad--whether that means a season at the Riviera or an exploration of the Sandwich Islands, I cannot say. But abroad he's going, or gone."

"We couldn't send our dear old friend as a courier?" questioned Tuppy. "A sort of unofficial dragoman?"

But the Duke shook his head.

"The situation is this," he said. "We take a house; the knight buys out our landlord; we refuse to pay rent; the knight puts a broker's man in; we're tired of the broker; we've no room for the broker; he has outlived his usefulness; _Q._ What should A do with B?

"We might, of course, bury him in the garden," the Duke went on, "thus enriching the soil; we might wait for a foggy night, take him out and lose him----"

"Monty! I've got it!"

The inspiration had come to Tuppy with extraordinary suddenness.

"Pay him out."

"What?"

"Pay the rent," said Tuppy solemnly; "it's unusual in cases like this, an' it's a bad precedent: but as a solution it's got points you could hang your hat on."