“Dang me if I know who you may be!” said Bundy, breathing heavily. “But I’m tedious glad to meet a cove so uncommon ready to sport his canvas, that I will say!”
“You may not know me,” said Shield wrathfully, “but I know you, you muddling, addle-pated jackass! Where’s Mr Ludovic?”
Bundy, rather pleased than otherwise by this form of address, said mildly: “What might you be up in the bows for, master? I misdoubt I don’t know what you’m talking about.”
“You damned fool, I’m his cousin! Where is he?”
Bundy stared at him, a slow smile dawning on his swollen countenance. “His cautious cousin!” he said. “If he hadn’t misled me I should have guessed it, surely, for by the way you talk you might be the old lord himself! Lamentable cautious you be! Oh, l-a-amentable!”
“For two pins I’d give you into custody for a dangerous law-breaker!” said Shield savagely. “Will you answer me, or do I choke it out of you? Where’s my cousin?”
“Now don’t go wasting time having a set-to with me!” begged Mr Bundy. “I don’t say I wouldn’t like a bout with you, but it ain’t the time for it. Mr Ludovic’s got himself into that priest’s hole he was so just about crazy to find.”
“In the priest’s hole? Then why the devil didn’t he come out when I shot the candles over?”
“Happen it ain’t so easy to get out as what it is to get in,” suggested Bundy. “What’s more, the cat’s properly in the cream pot now, for that screeching valet knows where he is, ay, and who he is! He means to watch till his precious master gets home.”
“He’ll do no watching yet awhile,” said Sir Tristram. “I took very good care to put him to sleep. He’s the only one we have to fear. The butler has never seen my cousin, and I doubt is not in his master’s confidence.”