"Neither, sir," replied his Grace of Dorchester. "You will kindly produce the horseshoe and the peppercorn intended for the King on the 29th. Our meeting is arranged for the 28th, so that we may return the trophies in question, and enable his lordship of Tadcaster to continue in possession of his remarkably low-rented estate."
The Right Honourable John de Mallaby, D.L., F.R.S., M.A., Eighteenth Baron and Seventh Earl of Tadcaster, lived chiefly at his Westmorland seat, Kirkdale Castle, which an ancestress in the time of George the First had obligingly brought into the family in addition to her own good looks.
A certain Mr. Shaw arrived one day of March last at the Golden Lion Inn, Kirkdale, and there spent a few days, talking much with the landlord and frequenters of the inn, and taking walks in the neighbourhood of the Castle. On the latter occasions he might have been seen gazing somewhat disconsolately at the battlemented walls which had several times defied an army.
Once when he was so occupied, a thin, grizzly, stooping gentleman had passed, and with him a handsome dark-eyed girl. He learnt that this was the Earl himself, a scientific and somewhat eccentric widower, and his only child Eva, a débutante of last season.
Prescott Cunningham—for so was this Mr. Shaw designated in the more accurate books of the Registrar-General—soon gave up any idea of entering the Castle in his quest of the peppercorn and horseshoe. The task of finding them there was too big. He had learnt that on these annual occasions Lord Tadcaster, accompanied by his chauffeur, left the castle in his motor-car four days before the King received him. He also learnt full particulars of the route followed and of the halting places, and it was his final plan of campaign to waylay his lordship on the road, and, unashamed, to rob him of the articles desired.
Having spent three days in coming to this conclusion, Cunningham moved on to Bolton Abbey, through which village he knew that his lordship would pass on his way to Harrogate, where he would spend the night of the 25th.
At five o'clock on the day in question, the Tadcaster Panhard drew up at the Devonshire Arms at Bolton Abbey, and Cunningham saw to his amazement that, instead of the Earl and his chauffeur, it contained his lordship and a lady—his daughter.
Cunningham groaned in spirit. To tackle two men single-handed might be counted sporting, but a woman—hang it all!
Mine host hurried to the door to assist his guests.