My Lady Peggy Goes to Town

by Frances Aymar Mathews

Her Ladyship can not hear them, if indeed they speak at all, which is unlikely; the language of such gentry at such crises consisting usually of signs. Luckily for her, the glint from the Three Cups, meager though it be, falls athwart the cut-throats, who now move stealthily down the yard toward the pier, timing their pace so that they shall reach t’other side of the rickety float when their victim shall attain the hither. It falls out as they have designed, and now, not ten paces separate Sir Percy de Bohun from his end, when Peggy darts light-footed, having cast aside her shoes, down her side the kennel to the pier, bringing her exactly behind the murderers.

With the slow, precise tread of beings accustomed to such enterprises, not too hurried at the performance of a not unsavory task, they slip over into Sir Percy’s very wake, Peggy at their backs, noting now, with her pretty nose within twelve inches of their cat-like heels, the gleam of a dagger in the hand of each.

Before she had thought, the two scoundrels seized Percy from the rear, the one clapping his hairy hand over the game’s mouth for a gag, the other grasping the young man’s two hands which had been hanging idly clasped at his back. Not a word, a whisper, even a gasp—

But two shots! sounding like one, and striking Sir Robin McTart’s hirelings in their flanks, laying them on the ground, free Sir Percy de Bohun, stunned, bewildered, to yet catch merely a glimpse of a figure running to pier’s end, jumping into a boat; then the flash of quick oars fading into the silence and the blackness of the Thames.

With drawn sword he gave himself a rap on the chest and believed he had been dreaming.

But no, for at his feet lay two prostrate forms, each bleeding a bit, and feigning, as such apt rogues will, to be stone dead.

Percy knelt, struck a tinder and essayed to look at their faces; they were unknown to him, and perceiving now their estate, he formed the conclusion that a couple of footpads had nearly made an end of him, and walked away.

But of his rescue? the manner of it? the mysterious flight of his preserver? the boat ready at the pier’s end? the twin shots just in the nick of time! What of all this?

Bah! Some bargeman with an honest heart a-passing by had seen the foul attempt, and paused to thwart it; some gentleman, maybe, on his way to rout or tryst, thinking to divert himself with a couple of pistols and so save a human life; some third desperado, envious of the chances of these two, making shift to rob them of their prey, since he was left out of their plot.

But no! None of these explanations bore the least resemblance to probabilities, in fact showed not an atom of reason in their suggestion, and Percy was feign return to his uncle’s house, thrice puzzled now, since he had not alone Lady Peggy’s oblivion to unravel, but the miraculous saving of his own life to match it!