“Well, well!” said his lordship, in a tone of displeasure, “I don’t know why you should find it so wonderful that a young man should choose to go off on some business of his own without admitting all of you into his confidence! It vexes me that he should not have taken Nettlebed, for he should not be travelling about without his valet, and so I shall tell him. But there is nothing in that to put you all in a fidget!”
“I think your lordship does not perfectly understand,” replied Scriven. “His Grace cannot have meditated a journey, forhe took no baggage with him, not so much as a valise! And Nettlebed will inform you that his Grace’s brushes, combs—every article appertaining to his toilet, in fact!—are still in his bedchamber here.”
His lordship appeared to be quite thunderstruck by this disclosure, but as soon as he had recovered the use of his tongue, he wheeled about to direct an accusing glare at Nettlebed, and to demand what the devil he meant by it. Nettlebed could only shake his head wretchedly. “Upon my word!” said Lord Lionel terribly. “This is a pretty piece of work! A very ill-managed business I must deem it when with I know not how many of you to care for my nephew he can disappear, and not one of you able to tell me where be is gone!”
At this point it seemed good to Captain Belper to divulge his fear that the Duke had been engaged to fight a duel. Lord Lionel lost no time in demolishing this theory. There was never, he said, anyone less quarrelsome than the Duke; and how, he would thank the Captain to tell him, had he found the time to be picking a quarrel since he came to London? He brushed aside the question of the pistols: if the Duke had a hobby, it was for shooting, and if he might not purchase a pair of pistols without being suspected of having become embroiled in an affair of honour things had come to a pretty pass.
Chigwell ventured to say:—“Yes, my lord, but—but his Grace took the pistols with him. The porter handed the package to him just before he left the house, and he took it into the library, and unwrapped it, for the wrappings were found upon the floor there. But not—not the pistols, my lord!”
“My dread is that my Lord Duke has had the misfortune to wound his adversary fatally,” said Captain Belper, “and has perhaps fled to France to escape the dreadful consequences.”
Lord Lionel seemed to have difficulty in controlling himself. An alarmingly high colour rose to his face, and after champing his jaws for a moment or two, he uttered in outraged accents: “This is beyond everything!”
“I assure you, my lord, I feel this agitating reflection as deeply as your lordship must,” Captain Belper said, with great earnestness.
“Agitating reflection!” exploded Lord Lionel.
“I have been sick with apprehension from the moment it occurred to me. The thought that I might, perhaps, have prevented—”