The gentleman in riding-dress paused between mouthfuls to heave a deep sigh. ‘Ah, if ever I see such a rare bleached mort!’ he said, shaking his head. ‘What a highflyer, Sam! But no sense in her cock-loft, which makes her dangerous ware for a man like me. Else I would have –’
‘You would have done no such thing, Nat Shifnal, as I have erstwhile made plain to you!’ said Mr Liversedge. ‘Nothing could be more fatal for a man in my position than to be bringing damaged goods to market!’ He stretched out a hand for the dish on which a somewhat mutilated sirloin of beef reposed, and drew it towards him. ‘I will trouble you for the carving-knife, Joe,’ he said, with dignity.
His brother pushed it across the table. ‘She’s loped off in pudding-time, that’s what I say and will hold to!’ he announced. ‘If you had of gone on the dub-lay, Sam, it’s low, but not a word would you have heard out of me! Nor I wouldn’t have blamed you for turning bridle-cull, like Nat here. But you took and tried to be a petticoat-pensioner, and that’s what I don’t hold with, and nothing will make me say different!’
Mr Liversedge replied in a lofty tone that he would thank his brother not to use such vulgar terms to him. ‘There is, I will grant, a certain distinction attached to those who embrace the High Toby as their profession. But the dub-lay – or, as I prefer to call it, the very ignoble calling of a common pickpocket – is something I thank God I have never yet been obliged even to contemplate!’
‘No, because every time as you’re nippered it’s me as stands huff!’ retorted Mr Mimms.
‘Easy, now, easy!’ begged Mr Shifnal placably. ‘I don’t say as Sam done right this time, but there’s no denying, Joe, he’s got gifts. For one thing, he talks as nice as a nun’s hen; and for another, there ain’t anyone to touch him for drinking a young ’un into a fit state for plucking.’
‘Then let him stick to it!’ retorted Mr Mimms. ‘I got nothing against that lay, but petticoat-pensioners I can’t stomach!’
Mr Shifnal regarded Mr Liversedge curiously. ‘How did you come to be diddled by a greenhorn, Sam? It ain’t like you, I’ll cap downright! By what Joe tells me, you shouldn’t have had trouble in plucking that pigeon.’
Mr Liversedge described an airy gesture with one white hand. ‘The greatest amongst us must sometimes err. I own that I erred. Talking pays no toll, or I might be tempted to say much in extenuation of what I admit to have been a misjudgment.’
‘It wouldn’t be no use talking them breakteeth words to Nat,’ said Mr Mimms caustically. ‘He ain’t had your advantages, Sam, for all he’s able to pay his shot, and don’t have to come down on me for the very bread he puts in his mummer.’
Mr Liversedge’s bosom swelled perceptibly, but after looking hard at his brother for a moment he apparently decided to ignore his lapse from good taste. He said: ‘What I ask myself is, Who was he?’
‘If you was to be asking yourself how you was to set about making a living, there’d be some sense in it,’ commented the aggressive Mr Mimms. ‘It don’t matter to none of us who that downy young ’un was. I’ll allow he looked like a flat, but he knocked you into horse-nails, which I hope and pray as it will be a lesson to you not to meddle with swells again!’ He perceived that he was not being attended to, Mr Liversedge having fallen into a brown study, and added bitterly: ‘There you go! A-thinking up some more of your cork-brained lays! You won’t be happy till you’ve got yourself into the Whit, and me along with you!’
‘Be silent, Joseph!’ commanded Mr Liversedge. ‘I must and shall make a recover!’ He passed a hand across his brow as he spoke, and rather impatiently tore off the Duke’s handkerchief. ‘That young addle-plot was very perfectly acquainted with all the circumstances of this affair,’ he said. ‘In a word, he was deep in Ware’s confidence. I hold to my original conviction that his purpose in coming here was to treat with me. Had I not, for a fatal instant, lowered my guard, I fancy I should now be in possession of a substantial sum of money – of which you, Joe, would have had your earnest, I assure you.’
‘That’s handsomely said, Sam,’ approved Mr Shifnal. ‘What’s more, Joe don’t doubt you’d have paid him his earnest, nor no one that knows you.’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Mr Mimms. ‘Because I’d ha’ seen to it you did. But not one meg have I had out of you, Sam, and all I got is you borrowing from me to take and hire a shay to fetch that silly wench here, which I never wanted, nor don’t hold with!’
Mr Liversedge disregarded him. ‘He was well-breeched,’ he said slowly. ‘I perceived it at the outset. That olive coat – I caught but a glimpse of it beneath his Benjamin, but I flatter myself I am not easily deceived in such matters – was only made by a tailor patronised by members of the haut ton. Not a dandy, no! But there was an air of elegance – how shall I put it? A –’
‘He was a flash-cull,’ suggested Mr Shifnal helpfully.
Mr Liversedge frowned. ‘He was not a flash-cull!’ he said with some asperity. ‘He was a gentleman of high breeding. His hat bore the name of Lock upon the band: I observed it when he laid it brim upwards on the table. That may mean little to you: it conveys to me the information that he is one who frequents the haunts of high fashion. During that period in my life when I acted as a gentleman’s gentleman, I became acquainted, with the nicest particularity, with every detail of an out-and-out swell’s attire. I recognised at a glance in this greenhorn a member of the Upper Ten Thousand.’
Mr Shifnal being plainly out of his depth, Mr Mimms kindly translated this speech for him. ‘He was as spruce as an onion,’ he said.
‘If you choose so to put it,’ agreed Mr Liversedge graciously. ‘Take only this handkerchief! Of the finest quality, you observe, and the monogram –’ Suddenly he stopped short, as an idea occurred to him, and subjected the handkerchief to a closer scrutiny. It had been hemmed for the Duke by the loving hands of his nurse, who was a notable needlewoman. In one corner she had embroidered a large S, and had had the pretty notion of enclosing the single letter in a circle of strawberry leaves. ‘No,’ said Mr Liversedge, staring at it. ‘Not a monogram. A single letter. In fact, the letter S.’ He looked up, and across the table at his brother. ‘Joseph,’ he said, in an odd voice, ‘what does that single letter S suggest to you?’
‘Nothing,’ replied Mr Mimms tersely.
‘Samuel,’ suggested Mr Shifnal, after profound mental research. He saw an impatient frown on Mr Liversedge’s brow, and corrected himself. ‘Swithin, I should say!’
‘No, no, no!’ exclaimed Mr Liversedge testily. ‘Where are your wits gone begging? Joseph, what, I ask you, are these leaves?’
Mr Mimms peered at the embroidery. ‘Leaves,’ he said.
‘Leaves! Yes, but what leaves?’
‘Sam,’ said Mr Mimms severely, ‘it’s mops and brooms with you, that’s what it is! And if it was you as prigged a bottle of good brandy from the tap-room, and me blaming it on to Walter –’
‘Joseph, cease trifling! These are strawberry leaves!’
‘Very likely they may be, but what you’ve got to get into a passion for because the swell has strawberry –’
‘Ignorant wretch!’ said Mr Liversedge, quite agitated. ‘Who but a Duke – stay, does not a Marquis also – ? But we are not concerned with Marquises, and we need not waste time on that!’
‘You’re right, Joe,’ said Mr Shifnal. ‘He is lushy! Now, don’t you go a-working of yourself into a miff, Sam! No one won’t waste any time on Markisses!’
‘You are a fool!’ said Mr Liversedge. ‘These leaves stand in allusion to the rank of that greenhorn, and this letter S stands for Sale! That greenhorn was none other than his Grace the Duke of Sale – whom Joseph, by his folly in leaving this hovel to feed a herd of grunting swine, has let slip through his bungling fingers!’
Mr Mimms and Mr Shifnal sat staring at him in blank amazement. Mr Mimms found his tongue fir
st. ‘If you ain’t lushy, Sam, you’re dicked in the nob!’ he said.
Mr Liversedge paid no attention to him. A frown wrinkled his brow. ‘Wait!’ he said. ‘Let us not leap too hurriedly to conclusions! Let me consider! Let me ponder this!’
Mr Mimms showed no desire to leap to any other conclusion than that his relative had taken leave of his senses, and said so. He filled up his glass, and recommended Mr Shifnal to do the same. For once Mr Shifnal did not respond to this invitation. He was watching Mr Liversedge, quick speculation in his sharp face. When Mr Mimms would have broken in rudely upon his brother’s meditations, he hushed him, requesting him briefly to dub his mummer. ‘You let Sam be!’ he said. ‘Up to every rig and row in town, he is!’
‘To whom,’ demanded Mr Liversedge suddenly, ‘would young Ware turn in his dilemma? To his father? No! To his cousin, Joseph! To his noble and affluent cousin, the Duke of Sale! You saw him; you even conversed with him: was not his amiability writ large on his countenance? Would he spurn an indigent relative in his distress? He would not!’
‘I don’t know what he done to no relative,’ responded Mr Mimms, ‘but I know what he done to you, Sam!’
Mr Liversedge brushed this aside. ‘You are a sapskull,’ he said. ‘What he did to me was done for his cousin’s sake. I bear him no ill-will: not the smallest ill-will! I am not a man of violence, but in his shoes I might have been tempted to do as he did. But we run on too fast! This is not proved. And yet – Joseph, it comes into my mind that he told me he was putting up at the White Horse, and this gives me to doubt. Would he do so if he were indeed the man I believe him to be? One would say no. Again we go too fast! He did not wish to be known: a very understandable desire! For what must have been the outcome had he come to me in his proper person? What, Joseph, if a chaise with a ducal crest upon the panel had driven up to this door? What if a card had been handed to you bearing upon it the name and style of the Duke of Sale? What then?’
‘I’d have gone and put my head under the pump, same as you ought to this very minute!’ replied Mr Mimms, without hesitation.
‘Possibly! possibly! But I, Joseph, being a man of larger vision, would have raised my price! Very likely I would have demanded not five but ten thousand pounds from him. And so he knew!’
‘Are you telling us, Sam, as that young greenhorn was a Dook?’ asked Mr Shifnal incredulously.
‘Look at the handkerchief! And if Joseph had but stayed within the house –’
‘If I’d have known he was a Dook, which sounds to me like a bag of moonshine anyways, I’d have had more sense than to meddle with him!’ declared Mr Mimms. ‘That would be the way to get dished-up, that would! Why, if I’d have bored in on him we’d have very likely gone to Rumbo, the pair of us! I dunno but what it wouldn’t mean the Nubbing Cheat.’
Mr Liversedge sat staring before him, his ingenious mind at work. ‘I may be wrong. All men are fallible. It may be that I am right, however, and am I the man to let opportunity slide? That shall never be said of Swithin Liversedge! This matter must be sifted! But he may already have departed from this neighbourhood. He had recovered the fatal letters: what should keep him longer at such a hostelry as the White Horse?’
Mr Shifnal shook his head. ‘Nothing wouldn’t keep him any longer, Sam,’ he said.
Mr Liversedge brought his gaze to bear on his friend’s face. ‘Nothing,’ he said, in a damped tone. ‘I am bound to confess – No!’ He sat up with a jerk. ‘Belinda!’ he ejaculated. ‘Where else did she go but to the man whom she allowed – for aught I know encouraged! – to fly from this place, leaving her protector for dead upon the floor?’
‘She’d lope off with anyone, she would,’ commented Mr Mimms dispassionately. ‘You had only to get talking to her when you see her at Bath, and she up and loped off with you. An unaccountable game-pullet, she is!’
‘It is my belief,’ said Mr Liversedge, ‘that she has cast herself upon his generosity! She has appealed to his chivalry! Will he thrust her away? will he refuse to aid her? He will not!’
‘Not unless he’s a bigger noddy than any I ever heard on,’ said Mr Shifnal. ‘No one wouldn’t thrust a wench like that away!’
‘That,’ said Mr Liversedge, ‘I knew the moment I clapped eyes on her! Nat, it may well be that he tarries at the inn, dallying with Belinda! For he will not, I fancy, take her to London. He is hedged about by those who would wrest her from him. Who should know if I do not how close a guard they keep about that young man? There is no coming near him, never was! I must go to Baldock in the morning!’
Mr Mimms stared at him. ‘It won’t fadge if you do,’ he said. ‘I’ll allow I didn’t take much account of him, for a proper greenhorn he looked to me, but he couldn’t be such a goosecap as not to burn them letters he took off of you, Sam! You ain’t got nothing left to do but to bite on the bridle.’
Mr Liversedge cast him a look of ineffable contempt. ‘If you, Joseph, had ever had one tenth of my vision you would not to-day be keeping a low thieves’ ken!’ he declared.
‘That’s the dandy!’ retorted Mr Mimms bitterly. ‘Go on! Insult poor Nat as never did you a mite of harm!’
Mr Liversedge waved his hand. ‘I intend nothing personal,’ he said. ‘But the fact remains that you are a hick, Joseph! Those letters no longer interest me. If all is as I think it may be, there is a fortune in it! Let me but once ascertain that that young man was indeed the Duke of Sale; let Providence ordain that he has not yet driven away to the Metropolis; let me but hit upon some stratagem to get him into my hands, and we shall not regard the five thousand pounds I was once hopeful of acquiring as more than a flea-bite!’
Mr Mimms could only look at him with dropping jaw, but Mr Shifnal’s sharp face grew sharper still. He watched Mr Liversedge intently, and nodded, as though he understood. ‘Go on, Sam!’ he encouraged him.
‘I must have time to consider the matter,’ said Mr Liversedge largely. ‘Several schemes are revolving in my head, but I would do nothing without due consideration. The first step must be to ascertain whether the young man is still to be found in Baldock. Joseph, I shall be requiring the cart to-morrow!’
‘Sam,’ said Mr Mimms, in a tone of great uneasiness, ‘if so be as he is a Dook, you don’t mean to go a-meddling with him?’
‘Have no fear!’ said Mr Liversedge. ‘You, my dear brother, shall not be forgotten.’
‘I wish myself backt if I have anything to do with it!’ declared Mr Mimms violently. ‘I’ve kept this boozing-ken, and my father before me, and never any more trouble than would trouble a hen, but mix myself up with Dooks I won’t! I’m an honest fence, I am, and I make a decent living, as you have cause to be thankful for; and Nat here will tell you I give him a fair price for any gewgaws he may happen to bring me, like this little lot –’
‘Well –’ temporised Mr Shifnal. ‘I don’t know as how I’d say – ’
‘As fair a price as any fence this side of London,’ said Mr Mimms firmly. ‘And I don’t have no harmen poking and prying round this ken, so that them as earns a living at the rattling-lay, or the lift, or the High Toby, can lay up here, and not fear no one! But meddle with no Dooks I will not, for, mark my words, if we was to lay so much as a finger on such as him, we should have them Bow Street Runners here before the cat can lick her ear!’
Mr Shifnal was still thoughtfully watching Mr Liversedge. ‘It’s a good fish if it were but caught,’ he said slowly. ‘He’s a well-blunted young cove, I daresay?’
‘Able to buy an abbey!’ Mr Liversedge assured him.
‘Well,’ said Mr Shifnal, ‘I was meaning to lope off again, but what Joe says is the truth: a cull can lay up here, and no one the wiser. Maybe I’ll lay up till I see which way the wind will blow. You get off to Baldock in the morning, Sam!’
This, in spite of his brother’s protests, was what Mr Liversedge did; but owing to
the late hour to which he and Mr Shifnal sat up, and the quantity of brandy they consumed, he did not make an early enough start to reach Baldock before the Duke and his small party had left it. After carefully reconnoitring the White Horse, and ascertaining that the Duke was not within sight, Mr Liversedge walked boldly up to that hostelry and entered the tap-room. Here he encountered the tapster, who was engaged in wiping down the bar; and after passing the time of day with him, and consuming a glass of porter, he ventured to make some guarded enquiries. The tapster said: ‘If it’s the gentleman in No. 1 you’re meaning, he ain’t here, nor that doxy what came a-looking for him neither. Gone off in a chaise to Hitchin not half an hour past. Rufford, his name was.’
Mr Liversedge did not wait for more. Draining his glass, and throwing down upon the table a coin wrested from his unwilling relative, he left the inn, and made haste back to Mr Mimms’s cart. His brain seethed with conjecture all the way back to the Bird in Hand, and when he reached that hostelry, he left Walter to stable the horse, and himself hurried up to his parlour. Mr Shifnal and Mr Mimms, who had been on the look-out for him, lost no time in following him. They found him pawing over the leaves of a well-thumbed volume. This work, published by Thomas Goddard of No. 1 Pall Mall, was entitled A Biographical Index to the Present House of Lords, and it constituted Mr Liversedge’s Bible. His hands almost trembled as he sought for Sale amongst the various entries. He found it at last, ran his eye down the opening paragraph, and uttered an exclamation of triumph. ‘I knew it!’
Mr Shifnal peered over his shoulder, but not being a lettered man found the spelling out of the printed words a slow business. ‘What is it, Sam?’ he asked.
‘Sale, Duke of,’ read out Mr Liversedge in a voice of suppressed excitement. ‘Names, Titles, and Creations. The Most Noble Adolphus Gillespie Vernon Ware, Duke of Sale and Marquis of Ormesby (March 12th, 1692); Earl of Sale (August 9th, 1547); Baron Ware of Thame (May 2nd, 1538); Baron Ware of Stoven and Baron Ware of Rufford (June 14th, 1675) – Baron Ware of Rufford, mark you! I thought my memory had not erred! And our young greenhorn, my masters, has been putting up at the White Horse under the name of Mr Rufford! I can want no further proof!’