"Yes, Your Majesty," answered the bewildered, wounded man as he disappeared in the dusk.
I stood watching the Duke as he went coolly back without a word to me to his place; this, then, was the cool, resourceful scoundrel I had to deal with!
* * * * *
Sitting by the big fire in the smoking-room at Bannington Hall that night after dinner, I told St. Nivel the whole of the incident of the shooting of the beater by the Duke of Rittersheim.
"Well, that's the limit," commented Jack, taking the cigar out of his mouth; "he must be a cool-headed scoundrel. I never heard of such nerve!"
"It's a nice thing to have a brute like that on one's track, isn't it?"
I remarked dejectedly; "it makes life hardly worth living."
Jack sat and smoked placidly for some moments looking into the fire.
He was thinking.
Presently he turned to me.
"Look here, Bill," he remarked, "Ethel and I had a talk this evening before dinner about matters generally and she has started what I call a very good idea."
"What's that?" I asked.