“Bot I am! Ja, I swear to you! Can you not see zat I am noble?”
“Curiously enough we can't,” replied Mr. Maddison.
But his daughter's scepticism was a little shaken by the fervor of his assurances.
“But, Poppa, perhaps he may be a German peer.”
“German waiter, more likely!” sneered Ri. “What shall we do with him? Tar and feathers, I guess, would just about suit his complaint.”
“No, Ri, no,” said his father cautiously. “Remember we are no longer beneath the banner of freedom. In this benighted country it might lead into trouble. Guess we can find him accommodation, though, in that bit of genuine antique above the harness-room. It's fitted with a very substantial lock. We'll make Dugald M'Culloch responsible for this BARON till the police take him over.”
Vain were the Baron's protests; and upon the appearance of Dugald M'Culloch, fisherman and factotum to the millionaire, accompanied by three burly satellites, vain, he perceived, would be the most desperate resistance. He plead the privileges of a foreign diplomatist, threatened a descent of the German army upon Lincoln Lodge, guaranteed an intimate acquaintance with the American ambassador—“Who vill make you sorry for zis!” but all without moving Mr. Maddison's resolution. Even Eleanor whispered a word for him and was repulsed, for he overheard her father replying to her—
“No, no, Eleanor; no more a diplomatist than you would have been Lady Tulliwuddle. Guess I know what I'm doing.”
Whereupon the late Lord Tulliwuddle, kilt and all, was conveyed by a guard of six tall men and deposited in the bit of genuine antique above the harness-room. This proved to be a small chamber in a thick-walled wing of the original house, now part of the back premises; and there, with his face buried in his hands, the poor prisoner moaned aloud—
“Oh, my life, she is geblasted! I am undone! Oh, I am lost!”