“Of a common welsher,” he concluded. “But I won’t put up with it. No; not for an instant. I insist upon you returning that money to me here and now. If you have not got it with you, go and fetch it.”
His lordship’s face betrayed the deepest consternation. He had been prepared for much, but not for this. That he would have to undergo what, in his school-days, he would have called a “jaw” was inevitable, and he had been ready to go through with it. It might hurt his feelings, possibly, but it would leave his purse intact. A ghastly development of this kind he had not foreseen.
“But, I say, uncle!” he bleated.
Sir Thomas silenced him with a grand gesture.
Ruefully his lordship produced his little all. Sir Thomas took it with a snort and went to the door.
Saunders was still brooding statuesquely over the gong.
“Sound it!” said Sir Thomas.
Saunders obeyed him with the air of an unleashed hound.
“And now,” said Sir Thomas, “go to my dressing-room and place these notes in the small drawer of the table.”
The butler’s calm, expressionless, yet withal observant eye took in at a glance the signs of trouble. Neither the inflated air of Sir Thomas nor the punctured-balloon bearing of Lord Dreever escaped him.