"Has she told you that?" Gage snapped.
Peckover shrugged. "Practically."
"Of course," Gage returned with an ugly mouth, "that's because she's huffy with me, thinking I'm not so keen on her as I ought to be, and you are."
"I suppose her feelings don't count," Peckover retorted, being pretty sure of himself with the fair Ulrica.
"Mine do, at any rate," Gage declared wrathfully. "I've been humbugged enough over this precious title. And as to your expecting me first to take on your revolting Australian pet and then to give up a girl like Ulrica Buffkin, why, you don't diagnose my character right, that's all. This is my show. I'm paying for it, and I'm going to run it."
"Then," returned Peckover, still cool and unmoved by his friend's thumping and shouting, "you'd better make it your business to see who that is prowling round the booth."
Gage's irate eyes followed Peckover's nod to the window. Outside, just discernible in the dusk, the figure of a man was moving to and fro. Gage jumped up and threw open the French window.
"Who are you? What do you want here?" he demanded in a rough and unnecessarily loud tone. Peckover rose and lounged against the mantelpiece, cigar in mouth, lazily interested in the encounter.
The man outside stopped, turned, brought his heels together, and made a low bow. "Have I the honour to address myself to his Excellency the Lord Quorn?" he asked in a high-pitched voice and foreign accent.
"You have. What do you want?" was the ill-matching, even brutal, reply.