The Earl raised his brows. “I think I said that you were an odd creature, Crosby.”
“It may appear so, but I had a good reason for my action. Had it not been for the fact that Lord Lethbridge pursued me on my journey here, and by force wrested the brooch from me, I should lay it before you now. For that brooch is very well known both to you and me. A ring-brooch, cousin, composed of pearls and diamonds in two circles!”
The Earl never took his eyes from Mr Drelincourt’s; it may have been a trick of the shadows thrown by the candles on the tables, but his face looked unusually grim. He swung his leg down from the arm of the chair leisurely, but still leaned back at his ease. “Yes, Crosby, a ring-brooch of pearls and diamonds?”
“Precisely, cousin! A brooch I recognized at once. A brooch that belongs to the fifteenth-century set which you gave to your—”
He got no further. In one swift movement the Earl was up, and had seized Mr Drelincourt by the throat, dragging him out of his chair, and half across the corner of the table that separated them. Mr Drelincourt’s terrified eyes goggled up into blazing grey ones. He clawed ineffectively at my lord’s hands. Speech was choked out of him. He was shaken to and fro till the teeth rattled in his head. There was a roaring in his ears, but he heard my lord’s voice quite distinctly. “You lying, mischief-making little cur!” it said. “I have been too easy with you. You dare to bring me your foul lies about my wife, and you think that I may believe them! By God, I am of a mind to kill you now!”
A moment more the crushing grip held, then my lord flung his cousin away from him, and brushed his hands together in a gesture infinitely contemptuous.
Mr Drelincourt reeled back, grasping and clutching at the air, and fell with a crash on to the floor, and stayed there, cowering away like a whipped mongrel.
The Earl looked down at him for a moment, a smile quite unlike any Mr Drelincourt had ever seen curling his fine mouth. Then he leaned back against the table, half sitting on it, supported by his hands, and said: “Get up, my friend. You are not yet dead.”
Mr Drelincourt picked himself up and tried mechanically to straighten his wig. His throat felt mangled, and his legs were shaking so that he could hardly stand. He staggered to a chair and sank into it.
“You said, I think, that Lord Lethbridge took this famous brooch from you? Where?”