CHAPTER XXVIII
Somehow, in spite of Major O’Teague’s promise of secrecy, the rumour of the impending duel went round Bath, and Dick had to use all his adroitness in replying to those of his friends who questioned him on the subject in the course of the evening. But of course people were not nearly so certain about this encounter as they had been about the previous one—the one which did not take place. Young Mr. Sheridan’s imagination was quite equal to the strain put upon it by his interrogators, and he was able to give each of them a different answer. He assured some of them that he had excellent authority for believing that there was to be a meeting between Mr. Long and Captain Mathews, and that, in order to assure complete secrecy, it was to take place in the Pump Room before the arrival of the visitors some morning—he hoped to be able to find out the exact morning. Others he informed that it had been agreed by the friends of Mr. Long and Captain Mathews that they were to fight with pistols across the Avon at the next full moon; while to such persons as wanted circumstantial news on the subject, he gave the information in an undertone in a corner, that the fight was to come off on the following Thursday, on the lawn at Bath-Easton, Captain Mathews having declared that he would not be satisfied unless the same people who had witnessed the insult that had been put upon him were present to see him wipe it out. Dick even went the length of quoting the first two lines of a poem which he himself was composing for Lady Miller’s urn, feeling convinced that the prize would be awarded to him on account of its appropriateness. He meant to leave a blank in the final line, he said, to be filled up at the last moment with the name of the survivor.
The result of this unscrupulous exercise of his imagination was to alienate from him several of his friends and to mystify the others; so that, when he drove out with Mr. Long the next morning to the paddock by the Gloucester Road, it was plain that the secret as to the place of meeting had been well kept. Whatever might be said about Major O’Teague, he had respected the plea for secrecy advanced by Dick, though Dick knew that it must have gone to his heart to be deprived of the crowd of spectators on whom he had reckoned.
Dick saw that the ground lent itself to secrecy. At one part of the paddock there was a small plantation, and this screened off the greater part of it from the road. Here the ground was flat, but only for about half an acre; beyond this space there was a gradual rise into a wooded knoll, which could also be reached by a narrow lane leading off the road. Opposite the entrance to the paddock was the iron gate, behind which Mr. Long had retreated on the night when he was attacked; and now that Dick saw the place by daylight, he noticed that the gate gave access to the weedy carriage drive of an unoccupied house.
“A capital covert for footpads,” said Dick, when he stood by the side of Mr. Long beyond the plantation in the paddock. “I daresay it was just here that the fellows lay in wait for the approach of a victim.”
“That was the conclusion to which I came,” said Mr. Long. “And now here are we waiting for them.”
“For them?” said Dick.
“Well, for Mathews and his friend,” said Mr. Long with a quiet laugh.
“Worse than any footpads,” growled Dick, examining the ground just beyond the belt of trees.