There had been a disturbance in the tiger-house, and Lord Kneedrock had been seriously, perhaps mortally, injured.
CHAPTER XXIX
The Mantle of Heroism
It was generally conceded that the Earl of Dumphreys was eccentric. He was an ardent disciple of Tolstoy, and lived on his estate in the North in the simplest fashion, unshaven and unshorn, and affecting coarse girdled robes and sandals.
Despite his titles and his lands, he was as much out of the world as though he rested with his sires beneath the gray stones of Dumphreys Abbey.
"Of course," said Nina, her face drawn, "we must wire at once for the earl."
They were gathered in Kneedrock's suite in St. James's Square—the duke and his duchess, Lord and Lady Bellingdown—who had chanced to be in town—and Nina and Gerald Andrews, the latter a veritable tower of strength in emergency from the very first.
It was the morning following the episode at the Zoölogical Gardens, and the fate of poor Nibbetts hung, figuratively, on a cobweb.
"Much good it will do to send for the earl," returned the duke a little testily. "He wouldn't come to town for the king's funeral, and he won't come to stand at his only son's death-bed. Why, when Nibbetts went down to see him after his return from the South Seas the earl wouldn't admit him. I know that. Don't we know that, Doody?"