"I confess," said the Duke, with pleasing frankness, "that I spotted the false whiskers—or was it a moustache? I said to Hank, 'Who on earth can it be?' and Hank couldn't think of anybody. 'It's a detective,' said Hank, 'but what detective?' We thought of everybody till Hank—you know what a penetrating devil he is—said 'By Jove! It must be Jacko—I mean Nape!'"
Mr. Nape looked important.
"And the commission you wish me to accept?" he asked.
"It will be necessary," said the Duke slowly, "to take you into my confidence. I am in a deuce of a mess: I have incurred the enmity of a great and powerful man, who has invoked the machinery of the law and threatened me with its instrument—in fact," he said in an outburst of candour, "brokers." Mr. Nape who had visions of something a trifle more heroic, said "Oh."
"Not only this," the Duke went on, "but he has unscrupulously, pertinaciously and several other words which I cannot at the moment recall, brought to his aid the most powerful factor of all—the Press."
The Duke picked up a long newspaper cutting that lay at his side.
"Read that," he said.
Mr. Nape obeyed.
It was headed "The Duke in the Suburbs," "meaning me," said the Duke complacently, "read on."
Mr. Nape skimmed the leading article—for such it was—rapidly: