CHAPTER VIII "IN CELLAR COOL!"
The duke knew perfectly well that he had fallen into the hands of as rascally and evil a gang of ruffians as London could produce. He made no answer to the words of the man who had addressed him.
"You will be better off if you listen to Sidney reasonable, dearie," said the horrible old woman. The words dropped from her lips like gouts of oil. "You will be all the better for listening to Sidney! I'm sure nobody wants to do anything unpleasant to you, but folks must live, and you've reely walked in most convenient, as you might sye."
"What do you want?" the duke said at last.
"Well, sir," the man addressed as "Sidney" replied, "we have got you fair. Nobody saw us take you away. You've disappeared from the accident without leaving a trace like." As he spoke, the man's servile, wolfish face was a sheer wedge of greed and cunning. His tongue moistened his lips as if in anticipation of something. "You see, nobody can't possibly know where you've come. They will think you were smashed up, or got up and went away, out of your mind, after the shock. People'll hunt all over London for you, no doubt, but they won't never think of us. Now, we've got your very 'ansom ticker and a few quids, and the gold purse that 'eld them, and there was a matter of forty or fifty pound in notes in the pocket-book when we opened it. It was that, by the wye, as told us who you was. Now, our contention is that them as 'as as much money as you must contribute to them as 'asn't."
He grinned as if pleased with his own wit, and a horrid little uncertain chuckle went round the room, a chuckle with something not quite human in it.
"Now, wot I says," the man continued, "is this. We will return you the ticker because it won't be of much use to us, except the gold case. We'll keep the chain and the quid box and the quids, and we'll also keep the fi-pun notes. Then, my lord, you'll sit down and write a little note to your bankers and enclose a cheque. I see you have got the cheque-book with you, or I've got it at least. Now, the question is what the amount of this 'ere cheque shall be. You, being a rich man, we cannot put it low, and we hold all the cards. Let's say three thousand pounds. In addition to that you'll give us your word of honour as a gentleman to take no proceedings about this 'ere little matter and say nothing about it to nobody. When that's done, by to-morrow morning, mid-day, say, you can go, and I am sure," he concluded, "with an 'earty hand-shake from yours truly, being a gentleman, as I am sure you will prove, and a lord, too."
The duke considered.
Three thousand pounds is a large sum of money, though to him it meant little or nothing. At the same time his whole manhood rose up within him—the stubbornness of his race steeled him against granting these miscreants their demand. A flood of anger mounted to his brain. His upper lip stiffened and his eyes glinted ominously.