"He's in the gun-room. I told Bisgood to get him something to eat. Poor fellow seemed half starved. His name's Jenkins. Treat him kindly. He has done us both a service," he added significantly.
"All serene," Peckover assured him with another yawn. "I'll handle him tenderly. In the gun-room, eh?"
As Peckover opened the gun-room door, Gage's preserver was standing with his back to it, scrutinizing a sporting print. "Up, Jenkins," was Peckover's facetious salutation and mode of attracting his attention. Next moment it was down Peckover, for he staggered back and subsided helplessly into a low chair as, in the stranger who turned quickly, he recognized with a gasping cry the real Lord Quorn, whom he had believed to be lying poisoned and forgotten in Great Bunbury churchyard.
CHAPTER XXV
For several seconds neither man spoke; Peckover, sprawling limply as he fell, staring with distended, apprehensive eyes at Quorn who, master of the strange situation, regarded him with a certain grim amusement.
"Hope you are having a good time, Mr.—Gage, is it?—or something else, which for the moment has slipped my memory?"
Peckover's wits were rapidly recovering from the shock of dispersal caused by the unexpected bomb which had fallen on them. "Curious we should meet again like this," he said with a sickly smile.
"Very," was the pointed response. "And a trifle awkward, I should fancy, for you."
"Oh, no," Peckover protested, pulling himself together and assuming the boldest face he could summon up. "It wasn't my fault you drank that doctored wine, which I intended for my own consumption."