“Ah well, he’s a valiant lad, surely!” said Bundy, indulgently, and withdrew.
Sir Tristram stayed where he was, and in a very few minutes Mr Bundy once more appeared at the window and said simply: “He ain’t there.”
“Damn the boy!” said Sir Tristram. “Get away from that window! There’s someone coming!”
Bundy promptly ducked beneath the level of the windowsill just as the door opened, and Gregg staggered in, supported by the butler.
His jaw was much swollen and two front teeth were broken. Sir Tristram put his grazed right hand into his pocket. It was evident that although his head might be swimming, the valet still had some of his wits about him, for no sooner did his bleared gaze fall upon Shield than he turned an even more sickly colour, and catching at a chair-back to steady himself, said in a thick voice: “It’s like that, is it? But I’ll watch. I have the keys of the doors. If he’s there still he won’t get away!”
The groom came into the room and said in his serious young voice: “I’d get him a drop of brandy if I were you, Mr Jenkyns. Regular shook to pieces he is. Now, don’t you fret, Mr Gregg! No one can’t get out while you’ve got them keys.”
The butler, who thought that a drop of brandy would do him good also, said graciously that he believed the “lad was right, and went away to fetch the decanter. The groom, coming up behind the valet, said solicitously: “You shouldn’t ought to have come down, Mr Gregg,” and knocked him out with one nicely-delivered blow under the ear. The unfortunate valet collapsed on to the floor, and the groom, looking down at him with a smouldering expression of wrath in his pleasant grey eyes, said grimly: “Maybe that’ll be a lesson to you, you cribbage-faced tooth-drawer, you!”
Before Sir Tristram, considerably astonished by this unexpected turn events had taken, had time to speak, the butler, hearing the sound of Gregg’s fall, came hurrying back into the room. The groom at once turned to meet him, saying: “Blessed if he ain’t swooned off again, Mr Jenkyns! Done to a cow’s thumb, he is!”
“Carry the poor fellow up to his room again, and this time keep him there!” commanded Sir Tristram, recovering from his surprise.
“Just what I was a-going to do, sir,” said the groom. “Now, Mr Jenkyns, if you’ll take his legs we’ll soon have him in his bed!”