Mr. Mamble gave a crack of sardonic mirth. “Ay, I’ll be bound you are! How much more time am I to waste kicking my heels here?”
“But I have got my watch!” suddenly remembered the Duke, drawing it from his pocket, and laying it upon the table. “You will perceive that it is engraved with my arms on one side, and with the letter S on the other.”
All three men closely inspected the timepiece, and the constable began to look uneasy. However, Mr. Snape pointed out that such a daring rogue would make nothing of picking pockets, and was felt to have scored a point. The constable then had a happy thought, and said with some relief: “It’s easy settled, and it won’t do for me to go making no mistakes. I’ll have a man go out to Cheyney, which is his Grace of Sale’s place, and if this gentleman is the Duke he can easy be identified by them as knows him!”
Mr. Mamble, who had watching the Duke, said shrewdly: “Don’t like the sound of that, eh, my fine fellow?”
The Duke did not like the sound of it at all. It seemed to him more than probable that those in charge of Cheyney would spurn with contumely the suggestion that he might be in the Roundhouse at Bath; while if it was disclosed to them that he had come to Bath with one coat and no attendants they would quite certainly refuse to believe it. He was not really at all anxious that they should believe it, either, for they would be very much shocked, and he would find himself obliged to enter into long and fatiguing explanations.
“No, I do not like it,” he said. “I’ve no desire to sit here for the rest of the day, while someone goes to Cheyney and back. I have a better notion than that.” He turned to the constable. “Are you familiar with Lord Gaywood?” he asked.
The constable said bitterly that he was very familiar with Lord Gaywood, and added some pungent criticisms on high-spirited young gentlemen’s notions of amusement.
“Does he box the watch?” asked the Duke sympathetically. “I don’t do it myself, but I feel sure Gaywood does, when he isin his cups. Let me have a pen and some paper, if you please.”
Mr. Mamble at once protested against this further waste of time, but the constable, on whom (for all his dislike of that young gentleman) Lord Gaywood’s name was working powerfully, fetched some writing materials, and told Mr. Mamble it would be as well not to act hasty.
The Duke drew up his chair to the table, and began to write a note to his betrothed.