Such a piece of good news so enlivened Mr Bhosh, that he immediately recovered his usual serenity, and astounded all by his perfect nonchalance. It was arranged that the tragical affair should come off in the back garden of Baronet Jolly's castle, immediately after breakfast, in the presence of a few select friends and neighbours, among whom—needless to say—was Princess Petunia, whose lamp-like optics beamed encouragement to her Indian champion, and the Duchess of Dickinson, who was now the freehold tenement of those fiendish Siamese twins—Malice and Jealousy. At breakfast, Mr Bhosh partook freely of all the dishes, and rallied his antagonist for declining another fowl-egg, rather wittily suggesting that he was becoming a chicken-hearted. The company then adjourned to the garden, and all who were non-combatants took up positions as far outside the zone of fire as possible.
Mr Bhosh was rejoiced to receive from the above-mentioned Mr Bodgers a secret intimation that it was the put-up job, and little piece of allright, which emboldened him to make the rather spirited proposal to his lordship, that they were to fire—not at the distance of one hundred paces, as originally suggested—but across the more restricted space of a nosekerchief. This dare-devilish proposal occasioned a universal outcry of horror and admiration; Mr Bhosh's seconder, a young poor-hearted chap, entreated him to renounce his plan of campaign, while Lord Jack and Mr Bodgers protested that it was downright tomfolly.
Chunder, however, remained game to his backbone. "If," he ironically said, "my honble friend prefers to admit that he is inferior in physical courage to a native Indian who is commonly accredited with a funky heart, let him apologise. Otherwise, as a challenged, I am the Master of the Ceremonies. I do not insist upon the exchange of more than one shoot—but it is the sine quâ non that such shoot is to take place across a nosewipe."
Upon which his lordship became green as grass with apprehensiveness, being unaware that the cartridges had been carefully sterilised, but glueing his courage to the sticky point, he said, "Be it so, you bloodthirsty little beggar—and may your gore be on your own knob!"
"It is always barely possible," retorted Mr Bhosh, "that we may both miss the target!" And he made a secret motion to Mr Bodgers with his superior eyeshutter, intimating that he was to remember to omit the bullets.
But lackadaisy! as Poet Burns sings, the best-laid schemes both of men and in the mouse department are liable to gang aft—and so it was in the present instance, for Duchess Dickinson intercepted Chunder Bindabun's wink and, with the diabolical intuition of a feminine, divined the presence of a rather suspicious rat. Accordingly, on the diaphanous pretext that Mr Bodgers was looking faintish and callow, she insisted on applying a very large smelling-jar to his nasal organ.
Whether the vessel was charged with salts of superhuman potency, or some narcotic drug, I am not to inquire—but the result was that, after a period of prolonged sternutation, Mr Bodgers became impercipient on a bed of geraniums.
Thereupon Chunder, perceiving that he had lost his friend in court, magnanimously said: "I cannot fight an antagonist who is unprovided with a seconder, and will wait until Mr Bodgers is recuperated." But the honourable and diabolical duchess nipped this arrangement in the bud. "It would be a pity," said she, "that Mr Bhosh's fiery ardour should be cooled by delay. I am capable to load a firearm, and will act as Lord Jolly's seconder."
Our hero took the objection that, as a feminine was not legally qualified to act as seconder in mortal combats, the duel would be rendered null and void, and appealed to his own seconder to confirm this obiter dictum.
Unluckily the latter was a poor beetlehead who was in excessive fear of offending the Duchess, and gave it as his opinion that sex was no disqualification, and that the Duchess of Dickinson was fully competent to load the lethal weapons, provided that she knew how.