“And that's the way of it?” he said, after a moment's silence.
“That's the way of it,” said the Duke. “She was as much the agent—let us say the spy, then—as you were yourself, and seems to have brought more cunning to the trade than did our simple Simon himself. If her friend Montaiglon had not come here to look for you, and thereby put us on an old trail we had abandoned, we would never have guessed the source of her information.”
“I'll be cursed if I have a dog's luck!” cried Simon.
Argyll looked pityingly at him. “So!” said he. “You mind our old country saying, Ni droch dhuine dàn da féin—a bad man makes his own fate?”
“Do you say so?” cried MacTaggart, with his first sign of actual insolence, and the Duke sighed.
“My good Simon,” said he, “I do not require to tell you so, for you know it very well. What I would add is that all I have said is, so far as I am concerned, between ourselves; that's my only tribute to our old acquaintanceship. Only I can afford to have no more night escapades at Doom or anywhere else with my fencibles, and so, Simon, the resignation cannot be a day too soon.”
“Heaven forbid that I should delay it a second longer than is desirable, and your Grace has it here and now! A fine fracas all this about a puddock-eating Frenchman! I do not value him nor his race to the extent of a pin. And as for your Grace's Chamberlain—well, Simon MacTaggart has done very well hitherto on his own works and merits.”
“You may find, for all that,” says his Grace, “that they were all summed up in a few words—'he was a far-out cousin to the Duke.' Sic itur ad astra.”
At that Simon put on his hat and laughed with an eerie and unpleasant stridency. He never said another word, but left the room. The sound of his unnatural merriment rang on the stair as he descended.
“The man is fey,” said the Duke to himself, listening with a startled gravity.