“Thank you, my Dishonourable friends—thank you for your support to-night. You see before you a bankrupt, but a merry one. You will hear of me again before long. I think of taking a house on the south side of the river, and turning hooligan. I invite you to become members of my band. I hope to give some trouble to the authorities. We are fortunate in having one of them here to-night. I invite you to drink his health, gentlemen—my brother, the Home Secretary, author of a Bill to punish the hooligans by flogging. In your name I defy him, and drink damnation to his Bill!”
The thickness of his speech and the increasing wildness of his behaviour relieved Lord Alistair’s hearers from the necessity of treating this as anything but the utterance of an intoxicated man. But it was clearly necessary to put an end to the scene.
Mendes and the Duke of Trent rose together, but the financier was the first to speak.
“Gentlemen, it is time we were going. Stuart, sit down! You don’t know what you are doing!”
He thrust Lord Alistair down into a chair and held him there, while the others made their hasty farewells and streamed out into the hall.
“I am obliged to you, Mendes,” said the Duke. “Do you think,” he added in a whisper, “you could get that girl out of the way?”
“It’s her house, I believe, but I’ll try to send her to bed,” was the answer.
The Brazilian went up to Molly, who sat looking rather frightened at her end of the table. He said a few words in a low voice which appeared to produce the right effect. Molly Finucane glanced timidly at the Duke, and then came towards him with an evident desire to propitiate.
“I’ll leave him with you, if you like,” she said, “but you won’t find it much good talking to him to-night, I expect. You’d better come again in the morning, if it’s any business.”
Trent confined himself to bowing silently, and Mendes accompanied Miss Finucane out of the room, leaving the brothers together.