Читать книгу A Poached Peerage - Sir William Magnay - Страница 11

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With a vicious kick at the encumbering and undignified table-cover, Mr. Sparrow, green with passion, advanced upon his supposed traducer, who backed away in a composite attitude of protest, authority, and apprehension.

"Oh, Tom!" cried Miss Popkiss ruefully, but Mr. Sparrow had no eyes for her just then.

"Scoundrel, am I? Rascal, am I?" he hissed at the retreating stranger. "I'll show you. I'll give you——"

The other man had backed, by an oversight, into the corner and stood at bay, with an ugly look in his eyes and a thick-set hand stretched out in front of him. "Don't you touch me," he exclaimed warningly, "an officer of the law in the execution of his duty."

The words had a certain effect on Mr. Sparrow, since his threatening fist remained in the air. "What do you want wi' me?" he demanded, with a quiver in his voice which was, perhaps, not altogether the result of righteous anger.

"You are Percy Peckover?" the man suggested.

"You are a liar!" was the ready retort. "I am Thomas Sparrow."

"Yes," corroborated Miss Popkiss, with a remorseful sob; "he is my Tom Sparrow."

The other man began to look doubtful; then he pulled the telegram from his pocket and unfolded it with legal deliberation. "Stop a bit," he said brusquely. "Five foot seven," he glanced up uncompromisingly at the ruffled Sparrow—"You're five foot nine——"

"And a half," put in the person under review.

The other took no notice of the correction, but proceeded with his comparison. "Pale—you are brick-dust; oval face—yours is round enough; dark moustache"; he moved his head quizzingly from side to side as though looking for something not easily distinguishable: "yours is sandy—what there is of it——"

Miss Popkiss gave an hysterical giggle, and Mr. Sparrow, words evidently failing him, merely gurgled and showed his teeth in a discomfited grin.

"Flash dress," read on the detective, outwardly ignoring the effect of his blunt differentiation, "yours is agricultural and shabby."

"Shabby?" Sparrow cried furiously. It was early closing day, and he had been at pains to smarten himself up in his best; added to which he would at any time have deprecated personal criticism in the presence of Miss Popkiss.

But all the apology he got from his tormentor was the terse summing up, as the telegram was refolded, "Description don't tally. You can go."

Gathering that it was no half-forgotten peccadillo that had risen against him, Mr. Sparrow resumed his boldness and eased the curb upon his wrath. "Go?" he cried witheringly. "How about the stuffing? I'll go for you!"

He proceeded to do so in such unmistakable fashion that the arm of the law (being in this case one that was at a disadvantage in the essential of reach) found itself inadequate for its own protection, and was fain to invoke lay assistance which forthwith appeared in the portly form of Host Popkiss.

"Hullo! hullo!" cried that worthy, his high-pitched croak sounding above the scuffle. "What's the matter? I won't have no row on my licensed premises," he protested in fussy indignation, proceeding to separate the combatants with a vigour which made up in authority what it lacked in physique. "Why, Mr. Doutfire!" he exclaimed in horrified amazement as he recognised Sparrow's victim.

"Yes, me, Mr. Popkiss," gasped that gentleman, keeping a vicious eye on his late assailant. "Will you deal with this party, or shall I?" As he spoke he produced and exhibited with a significance which was not lost upon Mr. Sparrow, a pair of highly-polished handcuffs, of a more elegant make than the usual vulgar "darbies" which festoon the blankness of a police-station wall; in effect these were of a pattern de luxe. None the less had they the immediate effect of calming the aggressive Sparrow; to whom, with the severity of the outraged licensee of a highly respectable house of entertainment, Mr. Popkiss now addressed himself.

"What have you come in here for? In my coffee-room?"

"I did not come for to be insulted," answered Mr. Sparrow sullenly, as preferring a negative handling of an awkward question.

But Mr. Popkiss held on to the positive. "I ask you what you did come for," he insisted, his severe eye suggesting how much more weight his tone might have carried had his bones carried less.

"He was under the table." Mr. Doutfire made the statement without heat, as though content to let the bare and damning fact speak for itself.

"Most irregular," said Popkiss weakly, at a loss exactly what to do, and wishing, but for the slur on his house, that the law's representative would take the matter out of his hands. "Look here," he went on, with an ill-timed and coldly received wink at the detective, "if you want to play under the table, stop at home and play under your own; if I catch you under mine or anywhere on my premises where there is no call for you to be, I'll pull your wing feathers out, Mr. Sparrow. Now, hop off."

Under other circumstances Mr. Sparrow might have been ready with a more or less pertinent rejoinder to the stout inn-keeper's brutum fulmen; as it was, with the glittering symbols of durance dangling before his fascinated eyes, he was glad enough to find himself in a position to depart even with his repartee unspoken.

"Mercy," commanded her father, dropping the jocular element in his severity; "go into the bar, I'll talk to you presently."

And Miss Popkiss, with the uneasy conviction that she had made a fool of herself, was glad to obey.

"Now, Mr. D., what gives us the pleasure of seeing you here to-day?" inquired the host, lapsing without an effort into affability. "I didn't notice you come in."

"No," replied Doutfire, as he dropped the minatory tokens of his office into his pocket; "I made free of the window—just in the way of business, you understand. Fact is," he continued in a more confidential tone and with a quite unnecessary repetition of his trick of glancing round the room in search of impossible eavesdroppers, "I've had a wire from town. You are likely to have a queer customer to-day."

The fat face of Mr. Popkiss showed no tangible sign of the effect the news had on him. "What, coming here, to this house?" he asked futilely. "For Bunbury Races to-morrow, I suppose?"

"Maybe," Mr. Doutfire agreed, in the tone of one who could say more if he chose, "young swell-mob, I reckon. Travelled by nine-thirty train from Waterloo, alighted at Faxfleet and inquired the way here. I was ten minutes late at the station and got a lift on here, calculating to overtake him. He must have gone by the fields."

"What has he done, Mr. D.?" Popkiss inquired huskily.

"Serious case; counterfeit coin," Mr. Doutfire answered with importance. "One of a flash gang. Now look here," he said with a touch of authority, "The party I want is sure to turn up soon. Don't you allow yourself to do anything calculated to rouse that party's suspicions: serve him with what he calls for, and leave the rest to me."

"I'd better leave the bill to you as he pays in wrong money, eh?" suggested Mr. Popkiss, with true trade waggishness, and becoming purple with enjoyment of his own joke.

Mr. Doutfire permitted himself no more than a faint smile. "Treasury won't see you out of pocket, Mr. Popkiss," he declared with importance, as one fully competent to answer for the liberality of that notoriously niggardly office. Then, as having settled the point, he thrust his hand into his trouser pockets and strutted complacently to the window. "I hope to make a neat job of it this time," he announced.

"Ah, you're a cute one, you are, Mr. D.," said Popkiss knowingly.

"Well," assented Doutfire, still looking out of the window and rattling the money in his pockets, "I flatter myself I have done a few pretty things in my time. Yes," he continued introspectively, "I've got a good bit of the fox in me—natural and acquired in the profession"—he turned suddenly on his heel, confronting Mr. Popkiss—"only in the way of business, mind you."

The sudden volte face so startled the worthy host that all he could put forward by way of comment was the trite formula, "You'll have a glass of me, Mr. D.?"

Possibly Mr. Doutfire took the offer as a tribute to his professional sagacity; all the same, he declined it. "No, thank you. Must keep my head clear. Can't drink."

"What, not in the way of business?" chuckled Mr. Popkiss with another sub-apoplectic seizure. "One glass," he urged, perhaps wishing, in the ticklish position of proprietor of licensed premises to stand well with the representatives of the law.

"Well, just a small one," Mr. Doutfire consented, in a tone which suggested that the blandishments of all the publicans in England should not persuade him to exceed his modicum or his duty.

As they turned towards the bar, Mercy met them. "Father," she said breathlessly, "the carriage from the Towers has just driven into the yard. Colonel Hemyock is asking for you."

"Eh? All right," exclaimed Popkiss, turning down his cuffs in a flurry. "Here, Mercy,"—he ran back—"draw Mr. Doutfire a glass of anything he fancies." And so he bustled out, a quivering jelly of importance and servility, into the courtyard.