“I thought that already, miss. Blest if I can imagine how you found out so much.”
I laughed. I was the only member of the Gang, except Minkie, who saw how important was Evangeline’s yarn to Cookie. Dan was very sore about what he called Jim’s treachery, but Bob told him not to be a fool. “When the beer is in the wit is out,” he said, and Bob ought to know, as he soaked up gallons of it while the Guv’nor and Mam and Dorothy were in Ostend last summer.
All that day there was electricity in the atmosphere. Tibbie said she felt it in her fur. Everybody in the village could speak of nothing else but the extraordinary collection of negroes who had invaded what the guidebook calls “a peaceful retreat.” At last, even the local policeman became aware that something unusual was taking place, and he strolled majestically up our drive to make inquiries.
The Guv’nor met him, and said Mr. Schwartz’s presence accounted for the sudden access of color to the landscape.
“My friend has large interests in West Africa,” he explained, “and the mere fact that he is staying at Dale End has drawn to this neighborhood many natives who are at present residing in England.”
“From information received,” quoth Robert, “I have reason to believe, sir, that a larceny on your premises is intended by some of these blacks.”
“Nonsense! That story has arisen owing to one of them’s thrusting himself in here on Christmas Eve.”
Schwartz asked the Old Man to head off any police interference in that way. So the law marched back to the village and took off its belt. Yet every man, woman, and child in Dale End resembled so many full soda syphons: the moment you touched them they spurted bubbles, and all the gas that escaped was chat concerning our sable visitors. It soon became known that there were three negroes staying at the Manor, and four at the Marquis o’ Granby. They had plenty of money, which they spent freely; but there could not be the slightest doubt that they were hostile to us at Holly Lodge, and the maids at the Marquis o’ Granby spread the story that the blacks had some awful-looking choppers among their luggage. From the description I recognized these as machetes.
When Schwartz accompanied Dorothy to her old nurse’s cottage during the afternoon, some idiot told two negroes who were standing at the door of the inn that the millionaire was just walking across the green with Miss Grosvenor. The black men muttered something, rolled their eyes in a manner that would have given Evangeline hysterics, and dogged the couple all the way back to our place.
That started a rumor of attempted murder which set the village in an uproar, and there was some danger of an attack on the strangers until P. C. Banks gave his personal assurance that Mr. Grosvenor himself had said the negroes were perfectly harmless. Altogether, Boxing Day was lively. I began to think of old times in South America, when we had a revolution every twenty-four hours, and I used to ask the baker each morning, “Who is President to-day?”