While these stirring events were taking place in Hitchin, Mr. Liversedge was still knocking abortively on Captain Ware’s door. He gained admittance to the chambers at about the time the Duke and his two charges set out from the Sun Inn in a hired chaise, with Aylesbury for their destination.
The gin with which Wragby had so lavishly supplied him made Mr. Liversedge feel very unwell; and a night spent upon the kitchen floor had given him, he complained, a stiff neck. An assurance from Wragby that a halter would soon cure this was received by him in high dudgeon. He spoke with great dignity for several minutes, but to deaf ears. Wragby recommended him to shut his mummer, and to make haste and shave himself, since the Captain would certainly refuse to take such an oyster-faced rogue up beside him in his curricle. Mr. Liversedge said that he had no desire to be taken up beside the Captain. “In fact,” he added austerely, “the less I see of a young man whom I find unsympathetic in the extreme the better pleased I shall be!”
“You stow your whids, and do what I tell you!” said Wragby.
“It is a marvel to me,” said Mr. Liversedge, picking up the razor, and looking at it contemptuously, “that any gentleman should employ such a vulgar fellow as you.”
“And don’t give me no saucy answers!” said Wragby.
By the time the Captain was ready to set forward on the journey, Mr. Liversedge had not only shaved, but had Imbibed a cup of strong coffee, which revived him sufficiently to enable him to greet his host with creditable urbanity. His optimistic temperament led him to busy himself with the forming of various schemes for turning the present distressing state of affairs to good account rather than to waste time kicking against the pricks. The day was fine, and the cool air refreshing to him. It was not long before he was complimenting Captain Ware upon his horses, and his skill in handling the ribbons.
“Devilish obliging of you to say so!” said Gideon sardonically. “You are no doubt a judge!”
“Yes,” said Mr. Liversedge, tucking the rug more securely round his legs. “I fancy I may be held to be so, sir. You must know that many years ago I was employed in the stables of a notable whip—quite a nonesuch, indeed! A menial position, and one from which I swiftly rose, but it enabled me to judge a horse, and a whip.”
Gideon was amused, “A groom, were you? And what then?”
“In course of time, sir, I attained what was then the sum of my ambition. I became a gentleman’s gentleman.”
Gideon glanced curiously at him. “Why did you abandon that profession?”
Mr. Liversedge described one of his airy gestures. “Various causes, sir, various causes! You may say that it did not afford enough scope for a man of my vision. My ideas have ever been large, and my genius is for the cards and the bones. In fact, had I not suffered certain ill-merited reverses I should not today be in your company, for I assure you that the business in which I have lately been engaged is wholly alien to my tastes—quite repugnant to me, indeed! But necessity, my dear sir, takes no account of sensibility!”
“You are a consummate rogue!” said Gideon forthrightly.
“Sir,” responded Mr. Liversedge, “I must protest against the use of that epithet! A consummate rogue, you will allow, is a rogue from choice, and feels no compunction for his roguery. With me it is far otherwise, I assure you. Particularly have my feelings been wrung by the plight of your noble relative—a most amiable young man, and one whom I was excessively loth to put to inconvenience!”
“You scoundrel, you would have murdered him at a word from me!” Gideon exclaimed.
“That,” said Mr. Liversedge firmly, “would have been your responsibility, Captain Ware.”
At this point, Wragby, who from his seat behind them had been listening to this conversation, interposed to beg his master to pull up so that he might have the pleasure of drawing Mr. Liversedge’s cork.
“No,” said Gideon. “I prefer to hand him over in due course to the Law.”
“I am persuaded,” said Mr. Liversedge, “that when I have restored your relative to you, as I am really anxious to do, you will think better of that unhandsome notion, sir. Ingratitude is a vice which I abhor!”
“We shall see what my relative has to say about it,” replied Gideon grimly.
Mr. Liversedge, who could not feel that forty-eight hours spent in a dark cellar would engender in his victim any feelings of mercy, relapsed into a depressed silence.
But his mercurial spirits could not long remain damped, and by the time Gideon stopped to change horses, he had recovered enough to regale him with a very entertaining anecdote to his first employer’s discredit. While Wragby besought the ostlers to fig out two lively ones, and made arrangements for the Captain’s own horses to be led back to London, he considered the chances of escape; but even his hopeful mind was obliged to realize that these were slim. However, he was a great believer in Providence, and he could not but feel that Providence would intervene on his behalf before the end of the journey. He had not yet divulged the locality of the Duke’s prison, and he had not been urged to do so. Captain Ware was taking it for granted that he would lead him to it. Upon reflection, Mr. Liversedge acknowledged gloomily that unless something quite unforeseen occurred this was precisely what he would do.
Baldock was reached all too soon for his taste, and without the slightest sign of an intervention by Providence. Captain Ware reined in his horses in the middle of the broad street, let them drop to a walk, and said: “You may now direct me, Mr. Liversedge. Unless you would prefer me to enquire the way to the nearest magistrate? It is all one to me.”
Mr. Liversedge was irritated by this remark, and answered with some asperity: “Now that, sir, is a manifestly false observation! It is not all one to you—or would not be to a gentleman of the smallest sensibility! Nothing, I am persuaded, could be further from your wishes than to create a stir over this business! In fact, the more I think on it, the more convinced I become that you and your noble relatives will be very much in my debt if I contrive the affair without anyone’s being the wiser. Consider what must be the result if I compel you to call in the Law! Not only will his Grace—”
He stopped, for it was apparent to him that Captain Ware was not attending. The Captain, glancing idly at an approaching tilbury, had stiffened suddenly, and pulled his horses up dead. “Matt!” he thundered. The next instant he had perceived that Nettlebed was sitting beside his cousin in the tilbury, and he ejaculated: “Good God!”
Young Mr. Ware, on being hailed in such startling accents, jumped as though he had been shot, and dragged his horse to a standstill. “Gideon!” he gasped. “You here? Gideon, something has happened to Gilly! Something must have happened, because—oh, we can’t talk here, in the road!”
“Yes, something has indeed happened to Gilly,” replied his cousin. “But what the devil are you doing here, and what do you know about it?”
Mr. Ware looked extremely wretched, and said: “It is all my fault, and I wish I had never consented to let him—But how was I to guess—though I told him I knew something would happen to him if he persisted! And then, when Nettlebed came to Oxford, and told me—”
“I suspicioned Mr. Matthew had a hand in it,” said Nettlebed, with ghoulish satisfaction. “Sitting up till all hours, and keeping his Grace from his bed, the way he was, the very day before he went off! If I hadn’t been so set-about, I should have thought of Mr. Matthew sooner, no question!”
“I never asked him to do it, and I would not have!” Matthew said hotly. “He would go, in spite of all I could say!”
“Come to the George!” commanded Gideon. “I’d better get to the bottom of this before I do anything else. I suppose you’re in a scrape again!”
“Gideon, where is Gilly?” Matthew called after him urgently.
“Kidnapped!” Gideon threw over his shoulder, and drove on towards the posting-inn.
Mr. Liversedge, who had been sitting wrapped in his own thoughts, gave a genteel little cough, and said: “Another relative, I collect, Captain Ware? Possibly—er—Mr. Matthew Ware?”
“You seem to be remarkably well-acquainted with my family!” returned Gideon shortly.
“No,” said Mr. Liversedge sadly. “Had I been better acquainted with them—But it is useless to repine! So that is Mr. Ware! Dear me, yes! Strange how the dice will sometimes fall against one, do what one will! I wish I had had the good fortune to have met Mr. Ware earlier. He is just the kind of young man I had supposed him to be. I am not one of those who are unable to judge a matter dispassionately, and I will own that although I might have a personal preference for Mr. Ware, his Grace is the better man.”
“You are right,” said Gideon, “but what you are talking about I have not the remotest guess!”
“And I wish with all my heart,” said Mr. Liversedge, with feeling, “that you might never have the remotest guess, sir!”
Both carriages had by this, time reached the George. Gideon sprang down from the curricle, and strode into the house, closely followed by his agitated young cousin, but any hope that Mr. Liversedge might fleetingly have cherished of making good his escape was frustrated by Wragby, who conducted him into the inn in a manner strongly reminiscent of his days in the army.
Gideon having demanded a private parlour, the whole party was conducted to a small apartment on the first floor. Matthew was barely able to contain himself until the door was closed. He burst out into speech as soon as the waiter had withdrawn, exclaiming: “You said he had been kidnapped! But I don’t understand; It was all over! He wrote to me that it was!”
“ What was all over?” demanded Gideon.
“Oh, Gideon!” said Matthew wretchedly, “it is all my fault! I wish I had never told Gilly about it! Who has kidnapped him? And how did you come to hear of it?”
“Ah, you have not yet been presented to Mr. Liversedge!” said Gideon, with a wave of his hand. “Allow me to make him known to you! He kidnapped Gilly, and has been so very obliging as to offer to sell his life to me.” He paused, perceiving that this speech had had a strange effect upon Matthew, who was staring at Mr. Liversedge in mingled wrath and bewilderment. “ Now what is the matter?” he asked.
“So it was you!” said Matthew, his eyes still fixed on Mr. Liversedge’s face. “You—you damned scoundrel! You did it for revenge! By God, I have a mind to kill you, you—”
“Nothing of the sort!” said Mr. Liversedge earnestly. “No such paltry notion has ever crossed my brain, sir! I bore your cousin no ill-will—not the least in the world!”
“Sit down!” commanded Gideon. “Matt, what do you know of this fellow, and what’s your part in thiscoil?”
“Ay,” nodded Nettlebed, grimly surveying Matthew. “That’s what I’d like to know, sir, and tell me he will not!”
“I ought to have told you, Gideon!” Matthew said, sinking into a chair by the table.
“You are going to tell me.”
“Yes, but I mean I should have told you before, and never breathed a word to Gilly! Only I thought very likely you would say something cutting, or—But I should have told you! It was a breach of promise, Gideon!”
His cousin was not unnaturally mystified by this abrupt statement. Mr. Liversedge seized the opportunity to interpolate an expostulation. Such ugly words, he said, had never soiled his pen. Wragby then commanded him to shut his bone-box, and Captain Ware, in the voice of one who has reached the limits of his patience, requested Matthew to be a little more explicit. Matthew then favoured him with a somewhat disjointed account of the affair, to which Captain Ware listened with knit brows, and an air of deepening exasperation. He said at last: “You young fool! You’re not of age!”
Matthew blinked at him. “What has that to say to anything? I tell you—”
“It has this to say to it! No action for breach of promise can lie against you while you are a minor!”
There was a shocked silence. Mr. Liversedge broke it. “It is perfectly true,” he said. “Sir, I shall not conceal from you that this has been a blow to me. How I came to overlook such a circumstance I know not, but that I did overlook it I shall not attempt to deny. I am chagrined—I never thought to be so chagrined!”
“Oh, Gideon, I wish I had told you!” gasped Matthew. “None of this dreadful business need have been at all!”
“No, it need not,” said Gideon. “But why the devil didn’t Gilly come to me?”
“It was because he was tired of being told always what he should do next,” explained Matthew. “He said here was something he might do for himself, and that it would be an adventure, and that if he could not outwit a fellow like this Liversedge he must be less of a man than he believed!”
Mr. Liversedge bowed his head in approval. “Very true! And outwit me he did, sir. Yes, yes, I am not ashamed to I own it! I was quite rolled-up. Your noble relative obtained possession of your letters, Mr. Ware, and without expending as much as a guinea on the business. You have every reason to feel pride in his achievement, I assure you.”
Both the Wares turned to stare at him. Gideon said: “How did he outwit you?”
Mr. Liversedge sighed, and shook his head. “Had he not appeared to me to he so young, and so innocent, I should not have fallen a victim to such a trick! But my suspicions were lulled. I thought no ill. Taking advantage, I regret to say, of my trust, he drove a heavy table against my legs, as I was in the act of rising, and felled me to the ground, where, striking my head against the fender of the grate, I lost consciousness. By the time I had regained my senses, his Grace had made good his escape, bearing with him, to my chagrin, the fatal letters.”
A slow smile curled Gideon’s uncompromising mouth. “Adolphus!” he said softly. “Well done, my little one! So here was your dragon!”
“Drove the table against your legs?” repeated Matthew. “Gilly? Well, by God!”
“So far, so good,” said Gideon. “But how came he to fall again into your clutches?”
“That,” said Mr. Liversedge evasively, “is a long story, sir. But it should be borne in mind that it is I who have been the humble instrument whereby your interesting relative has met with the adventure his soul craved.”
Nettlebed, who had been listening to this interchange with scarcely concealed impatience, interrupted to say fiercely: “You gallows-cheat, you’ll say where you have his Grace hid, or you’ll have it choked out of you!”
“This fellow lives at the Bird in Hand, that I do know,” Matthew declared. “And there Gilly found him, for he told me so!”
“Ay, that’s what you say, Master Matthew, but a solid hour have we been in this town, trying to find where this place may be, and not a soul able to tell us!” said Nettlebed bitterly. “And if we can’t discover it, how can his Grace have done so?”
“His Grace would appear to have his own ways of going about his business,” remarked Gideon, his eyes glinting. “We need exercise no ingenuity, however, for Mr. Liversedge will now guide us to the Bird in Hand. Eh, Mr. Liversedge?”
“Sir,” said Mr. Liversedge, with hauteur, “I must perforce yield to force majeure. ”
But when, half an hour later, the curricle and the tilbury drew up outside the shell of the Bird in Hand, he was at last bereft of all power of self-expression, and could only gaze upon the blackened ruins in incredulous dismay. Both Wragby and Nettlebed were inclined to make an end to him then and there, but his amazement was so patent that Gideon intervened to restrain them. “Well, Mr. Liversedge?” he said. “What now have you to say?”
“Sir,” said Mr. Liversedge, in some agitation, “when last I saw this hostelry it was indeed a poor place, but, I assure you, intact! What can have occurred to reduce it to this pitiful skeleton, I know not! And what has become of its owner, or, I may add, its noble guest, are matters wholly beyond my powers of conjecture! I confess that they are matters which do not, at this present, exercise my mind profoundly. I have no reason to suppose, Captain Ware, that you are a man of feeling, but even your hardened heart may be touched by the reflection that the few worldly possessions remaining to me were encased in that unworthy building!”
“My hardened heart remains untouched. I want my cousin!” Gideon said brusquely, and touched up his horse. “There must be someone in the village who can tell us when this fire broke out!”
Enquiry in Arlesey led him presently to the cottage inhabited by the Shotterys. Their account of the fire was necessarily imperfect, but they knew enough to be able to convince Gideon that it had been started by his enterprising cousin. He listened to them at first in surprise, and then with his crooked smile. But Nettlebed was quite thunderstruck, and said roundly that he had never known his Grace to do the like, and didn’t believe a word of it.
“Peace, fool!” said Gideon. “You know nothing about his Grace—as little as the rest of us! So he won free without our help! He is doing very well, in fact.”
“Captain Ware,” said Mr. Liversedge warmly, “you are in the right of it! Though I am a sufferer from his ingenuity, I bear him no malice. Indeed, it is very gratifying to see a man so young and so untried acquit himself so creditably! You will permit me to tell you that this little adventure has been the making of him. When I saw him first he was uncertain of himself: he had been too much cosseted, too carefully shielded from contact with the world. The experiences he has passed through will have done him a great deal of good: I have no scruple in asserting it, and it is a happiness to me to reflect that he owes his emancipation to me.”
This was too much for Nettlebed, who advanced upon Mr. Liversedge with such deadly purpose that he had to be called sharply to order. “Master Gideon!” he said explosively, “I’ve known you from your cradle, and stand by while that gaol-bird gammons you with his talk I will not! And his Grace, the while in the lord knows what case!”
“If one thing is more plain than another,” responded Gideon, “it is that his Grace stands in no need of our help! I own, if I had known what dangers he would run into I would not have let him set out as I did, but by God I am glad I did not know! This fellow is a rogue, but he is speaking the truth: his Grace has found himself. I wonder what took him to Hitchin?”
Matthew, who had been puzzling over it in silence, said: “Well, I don’t understand any of it! Why did he not go home when he had done what he came to do? What should have kept him in Hertfordshire?”
“Ay, and it’s my belief you can answer that!” said Nettlebed, addressing himself to Mr. Liversedge.
“Fellow,” said Mr. Liversedge loftily, “do not try my patience too far, or you will regret it! I have so far held my peace, but if you provoke me I shall disclose certain information so damaging to the Duke’s reputation that you will be sorry!”
Nettlebed wrung his hands. “Master Gideon!” he said imploringly, “it’s more than flesh and blood can bear! If you won’t let me make him swallow his lying words, will you give him over to the Law, and be done with it?”
“Captain Ware,” said Mr. Liversedge, “if you do any such thing, I must throw my scruples to the wind, and bring an action against your noble relative for abducting my ward!”
At these words, Matthew gave a start, and exclaimed: “Belinda? Good God! No, no, he would not—!”
“I never heard the like of it, not in all my days!” exploded Nettlebed. “To think I’d be standing here listening to such wicked slanders! His Grace never abducted no one, nor never would!”
“He seduced her—I say it with confidence!—with promises of rich raiment!” announced Mr. Liversedge. “And let me tell you, Captain Ware, that my ward has not yet attained the age of seventeen! An innocent flower, who has now suffered doubly at the hands of your family!”
Matthew drew his cousin a little apart, an urgent hand grasping his elbow. “Gideon, if that is so it is the most devilish coil! No, no, I don’t mean he abducted her, but you don’t know Belinda! Indeed, it will not do! We must instantly find them, and rescue him! She is the loveliest creature, and I’m sure I don’t blame him for—But it will not do, Gideon!”
“What nonsense, Matt!” Gideon said impatiently. “Gilly became engaged to Harriet only a week ago!”
“Yes; I know, but you haven’t seen Belinda!” said Matthew simply.
Gideon suddenly remembered a passage in the Duke’s letter to him. “Good God!” he muttered. “No, it’s ridiculous! I never knew Gilly to be in the petticoat-line. As for abduction—fustian!”
“Well, of course, but yon don’t know what a fellow this Liversedge is!” Matthew said, under his breath. “He will make trouble for Gilly if he can, and he is Belinda’s uncle—or so he says.”
“He’ll have no opportunity to make trouble,” replied Gideon shortly.
“He will if you hand him over to the Law,” Matthew warned him. “I don’t mean he could succeed in a charge, but it would make the devil of a stir, you know! But what are we to do with him?”
“It seems to me,” said Gideon, “that I had best find Adolphus, and discover just what mischief he is brewing. I’ll take Liversedge along with me, and Adolphus can decide what is to be done with him. As for you, had you leave to come here?”
“Oh, yes, I told the Bagwig I was wanted on urgent family affairs, and he gave me an exeat. But, you know, Gideon, I do think Nettlebed needs a set-down! It is the outside of enough for him to come searching for me at Oxford, and behaving as though I were a schoolboy, and threatening to go to the Bagwig himself if I would not tell him where he could find Gilly!”
“I wish he might have done so!” said his cousin unsympathetically. “What in thunder do you mean by saddling Adolphus with your damned follies? No thanks to you he is not now being bled white! Get back to Oxford, and if you can’t keep out of silly scrapes, for God’s sake bring ’em to me in future, and don’t encourage Gilly to risk his neck in your service!”
Matthew was so much incensed by this unfeeling speech that he embarked on a long and indignant vindication of himself. Gideon broke in on it without compunction, and told him to spare his breath. Matthew glared at him, and said: “Well, it is just as much my affair as yours, and I shall go with you to Hitchin!”
“You may do that, for it’s on your way, but you’ll go no farther with me!” said Gideon, turning away.
He found that he was being anxiously watched by Nettlebed and Wragby, in whom dislike of Mr. Liversedge had engendered a temporary alliance. Mr. Liversedge was seated at his ease in the curricle, his plump hands folded, and a benign, not to say saintly expression on his countenance. Mr. Liversedge saw in his sudden recollection of Belinda the hand of Providence working powerfully on his behalf, and was able to meet Captain Ware’s hard eyes with an indulgent smile.
“We are now bound for Hitchin, my hopeful friend,” said Gideon. “It appears to me that my noble relative might be glad to have you delivered into his hands!”
“If,” retorted Mr. Liversedge superbly, “your noble relative has the least regard for justice, sir, he will see in me a benefactor!”
“Master Gideon, only let me darken his daylights!” implored Nettlebed tearfully.
This favour having been denied him, he climbed up sulkily into Matthew’s hired tilbury. Gideon took his place on the box of the curricle, and gathered up the reins. Mr. Liversedge said kindly: “May I proffer a piece of advice, sir? I apprehend you are about to make some stir of Hitchin by enquiring for the Duke of Sale. Speaking as one who has his Grace’s true interests at heart, I would counsel you to enquire rather for Mr. Rufford, under which sobriquet I have reason to believe him to be travelling.”
Gideon, who was beginning to be amused by his effrontery, thanked him, and, upon arrival at the Sun Inn, followed his advice. The result was not happy. The landlord regarded him with patent hostility, and said that if ever he had had an inkling of the trouble which was to come upon him through giving this precious Mr. Rufford house-room he would have put up his shutters rather than have faced it.
“And if it’s that pesky boy of his as you’re after, it ain’t no manner of use asking me,” he added. “Because it’s none of my business, nor never was! And if it’s rooms you’re wanting, the house is full!”
Captain Ware, whose autocratic temperament did not make it easy for him to swallow impertinence with a good grace, took instant exception to this form of address, and was on the point of adding to a pithy summary of the landlord’s failings and probable end his own name and style when Mr. Liversedge, with his deprecating cough, laid a hand on his sleeve, and said: “Ahem! Allow me, sir! Now, my good man, attend to me, if you please! You will not deny that Mr. Rufford has lately been staying in this inn, with—I fancy—a young companion.”
“If you mean as how he had Miss Belinda and that young brother of hers with him, which he said as he was his tutor, I won’t,” replied the landlord. “Not but what I never saw a tutor behave like he did, nor wear a coat like his. Too smokey, by half, that’s what he is, and the more fool me to let him into my house! The trouble I’ve had! Let alone Master Tom bringing me into disgrace through getting taken up for a common felon, the way he was, I’ve had Mr. Clitheroe threatening me with hell-fires for letting rakes seduce innocent females under my roof, which I never did, not wittingly, that is! And no sooner does he take himself off than there’s Mr. Mamble on the doorstep, ay, and brought along the constable, what’s more, which is a thing I never had happen to me, not in all my days!”
“Who the devil is Mr. Mamble?” demanded Gideon.
“Ah, you may well ask, sir! Master Tom’s father, that’s who he is!”
Matthew, who had been wholly bewildered by the landlord’s speech, said: “But who is Master Tom? Gideon, it can’t be Gilly! Liversedge! who is this Master Tom?”
“There, sir, I must own that you find me at a loss,” confessed Mr. Liversedge. “I can, however, state that Belinda is without known relatives. Master Tom, in fact, is a mystery.”
“Wait!” said Gideon. “Damme, why didn’t I think to bring my cousin’s letter with me? I fancy he spoke of bear-leading some boy or another. This would appear to be the boy.”
“I don’t know about bear-leading him, sir,” struck in the landlord. “By what Mr. Mamble said, him and that Mr. Snape, which is Master Tom’s real tutor, Mr. Rufford kidnapped Master Tom. Mr. Mamble was talking of going to London to set the Runners on to his heels, but myself I’d say it was more like Master Tom kidnapped him, for a more daring boy I hope I may never clap my eyes on! Nice goings on when the gentry take to highroad robbery, and has to be bailed out of prison! Mr. Mamble has it fixed in his head his son has got into the hands of a rogue which is using him for his wicked ends, and nothing the constable said could make him change his mind! Mind you, I never thought such of Mr. Rufford myself, and no more, didn’t the constable, or Mr. Oare, which is the magistrate here.”
“Highroad robbery!” gasped Matthew incredulously. “ Gilly? Fellow, do you say that Mr. Rufford was arrested?”
“No, not him, sir. He wasn’t here when that happened. Dear knows where he was, and I’m sure I never thought to see him again! It was Master Tom that set out to win a purse, and got himself locked up in the Roundhouse. And then what must happen but Miss went off with old Mr. Clitheroe, which is a highly respected Quaker gentleman living in the town!”
“That,” said Mr. Liversedge, shaking his head, “was a mistake. It would not answer at all.”
“No, sir, and nor it did, for back she came again that very evening. But Mr. Rufford was here by that time, and it wasn’t any business of mine, whatever Mr. Clitheroe may choose to say! But it was on account of Mr. Clitheroe that Mr. Rufford up and left with the pair of them last night, instead of spending it here, like he meant to. One of the waiters, which chanced to be outside the door of the private parlour, heard him say he could deal with constables and magistrates, but not with Mr. Clitheroe. And just as well he did go, for Mr. Clitheroe, he came round in such a taking as I never saw half an hour after, and for all Mr. Rufford has a high-up way with him when he chooses, I doubt Mr. Clitheroe wouldn’t have taken no account of that, him being moved by the spirit the way he was.”
“Gideon,” said Matthew, in an awed voice, “do you think that Gilly has run mad?”
“Oh, no, sir!” said the landlord. “Not if you was meaning Mr. Rufford! A very quiet gentleman he is, and knows his way about the world. I never had nothing against him. ”
“Do you know where he went to?” Gideon asked. “Was he bound for London?”
“No, sir, he was not. He hired a chaise and pair to take the whole party to Aylesbury, that I can tell you, which is the same as I told Mr. Mamble first thing this morning.”
“To Aylesbury!” The cousins exchanged glances of startled enquiry.
“Now, what the deuce should take him to Aylesbury?” Gideon wondered.
“There’s no understanding any of it!” Matthew declared. “Of course, I see why he should take Belinda with him, but what can he want with this Mamble boy? Who is he? I never met any Mamble! Host, who is Mamble? Do you know him?”
“No, sir, I never see him before. He ain’t a native of these parts, nor he ain’t what I would call true Quality.” He coughed. “A great bacon-faced man, he is, as would make no more than a mouthful of Mr. Rufford—and very willing he is to do it, by what he said! He told the constable as he was an ironmaster from Kettering, and Master Tom his only son. He has it fixed in his head Mr. Rufford means to hold the lad to ransom, for he’s mighty plump in the pockets, which he makes no secret of. And it seems as how Mr. Rufford, or maybe some rogue with him (not but what I never saw no rogues in his company) gave Mr. Snape, the tutor, a wisty leveller, and made off with Master Tom while he was stretched out senseless on the ground. Leastway, that’s his story, and not for me to deny it.”
There seemed to be no way of arriving at an explanation of Tom’s entry into the Duke’s life, but the landlord’s frequent references to his activities led Captain Ware to demand a more exact account of them. The whole story of the attempted robbery on the Stevenage road was then poured into his ears. By the time the Duke’s masterly share in the business had been described to him, his crooked smile had dawned, but Matthew appeared to be stunned. He did not recover his power of speech until they had left the inn, and then he said feebly: “He must be mad!”
“Not he!” said Gideon, grinning.
“But, Gideon, whoever heard of Gilly’s behaving in such a fashion?” He sighed despairingly. “I do wish to God I knew what he is doing!”
“You had best accompany me to Aylesbury, then.”
“Yes, by Jove, I will!” Matthew declared, brightening. “For it is on my way, after all! And there is one thing, Gideon! it is of no use your saying that it is my fault that Gilly has run mad, for I never had anything to do with foisting the Mamble-boy on to him, and if he had gone back to town as soon as he had recovered those curst letters of mine he would never have been kidnapped!”
Gideon only grunted, but Mr. Liversedge said kindly: “Very true, Mr. Ware, very true, but it cannot be denied that your reprehensible conduct towards my unfortunate niece lies at the bottom of all. One must hope that it may be a lesson to you, and when one considers the dangers into which his Grace has been led—”
“Well, if that don’t beat all hollow!” exclaimed Matthew indignantly. “It was you who put my cousin in danger!”
“Precisely so,” agreed Mr. Liversedge. “And who but yourself, sir, was it who introduced me into his Grace’s life?”
“Gideon!” said Matthew, very red in the face, “if you do not have this impudent dog clapped up, I’ll—I’ll—”
“Tell Gilly what you’ll do when you see him at Aylesbury!” recommended his cousin.
But when they readied Aylesbury they failed to discover the Duke at either of the chief hostelries in that town. The landlord of the White Hart informed them that Mr. Rufford, and his young cousins, had left for Reading on the stagecoach as soon as they had swallowed their breakfasts that morning. He added that they were not the first persons to enquire after Mr. Rufford, and expressed the hope that he had not been housing a fugitive from justice.
“But what in the devil’s name is he doing, jauntering about the country in stage-coaches?” almost wailed Matthew, once out of the landlord’s hearing.
“Fleeing from Mr. Mamble, I should think,” replied Gideon flippantly.
“Well, it’s no jesting matter if he did kidnap that boy!” Matthew pointed out. “What do you mean to do now?”
“My blood is up, and I shall follow him. Besides, he may yet need me to protect him from this infuriated parent. You will go back to Oxford.”
“I suppose I must,” sighed Matthew. “But what shall you do with that fellow, Liversedge?”
“Oh, take him along with me! Wragby can look after him.”
“Master Gideon,” said Nettlebed, with a set look on his face, “if you mean to continue searching for his Grace, I am coining with you!”
“By all means!” responded Gideon. “You will be very crowded in the boot, but you may assist Wragby to guard the prisoner. Mr. Liversedge! I fear you may not quite like it, but you are accompanying me to Reading.”
“On the contrary, sir,” replied Mr. Liversedge affably, “I should be sorry to leave you. Owing to the disaster which has befallen the Bird in Hand I find myself temporarily bereft of the means of subsistence. To be abandoned in this town, where I own no acquaintance, would put me to serious inconvenience. I shall be happy to go with you. Let us hope that we may be more fortunate in Reading than we have been in Hitchin or in Aylesbury!”
But when, at the end of a forty-mile drive over an indifferent road, the curricle reached Reading, Fortune (said Mr. Liversedge) seemed disinclined to smile upon its occupants. The Duke’s erratic trail was lost from the moment of his alighting, with his young companions, from the stage, and an exhausting search of all the inns in the town failed to pick up the scent again. Gideon, who had been driving all day, was tired, and consequently, exasperated; and after drawing blank at the fifth inn said that he was determined to find the Duke, if only for the pleasure of wringing his neck. “What the devil has become of him, and what am I to do now?” he demanded.
Mr. Liversedge, who had been awaiting his moment, said with admirable common-sense: “If, sir, I may venture to make a suggestion, we should now repair to the Crown, which appeared to be a very tolerable house, and bespeak dinner in a private parlour, and beds for the night I shall give myself the pleasure of mixing for you a Potation of which I alone know the secret. It was divulged to me by one of my late employers since deceased, alas!—a gentleman often in need of revivifying cordials. I fancy you will be pleased with it!”
“We must find his Grace!” declared Nettlebed obstinately.
“It will be dark in another hour,” said Gideon. “Damn it, the fellow’s right! We’ll rack up for the night!” He yawned suddenly. “God, I am tired!”
“Leave everything to me, sir!” said Mr. Liversedge graciously. “That man of yours—a worthy enough fellow, I daresay!—is quite unfit to arrange all those little genteel details so necessary to a gentleman’s comfort. In me you may have every confidence!”
“I have no confidence in you at all,” replied Gideon frankly. “I foresee, however, that we shall end by becoming boon-companions! Lead on, you unmitigated scoundrel!”