CHAPTER XXXVI
Mr. Doutfire came in close upon Bisgood's announcement, and threw a severely professional eye round the company. His manner, in fact, suggested, in a measure, that he was raiding a gambling den; but then the suspicious habit had become characteristic with him. And indeed, the attitudes of the party might be said to have justified mistrust, or at any rate an inquisitorial curiosity on his part. He bowed to Gage with a nicely adjusted balance between the homage due to a peer of the Realm and a due regard for the Law whose representative he was and which boasted itself no respecter of persons. It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to state that Peckover viewed his advent with an uneasy eye.
"Beg pardon, my lord," Doutfire said in his consequential, witness-box manner, "sorry to intrude upon your lordship, but I considered it my duty to inform your lordship that a certain suspicious character has been noticed hanging about the grounds here, and I took it upon myself to just step up and warn your lordship."
The somewhat tense silence which followed was broken by the duke's staccato tones. "So this is milord Quorn, eh, policeman?"
Mr. Doutfire looked not merely scandalized, but ready at a moment's notice to take the representative of the lordly Saloljas into custody.
"Detective-Inspector is my rank and appellation, sir, begging your pardon," he said severely. "With regard to your question, sir, I have every reason to believe I am right in stating that this gentleman—I should say nobleman—is Lord Quorn."
"So? Thank you, detective," said the duke with a bow of acknowledgment for the information, and a smile for the futility of the police, once again preparing to focus his traditional aggressiveness upon the unhappy Gage.
But that gentleman did not propose to sit again. "It's all a mistake," he protested loudly. "I am not Lord Quorn. There he is, so far as I can make out."
He pointed to the real Quorn, who had retained his seat upon the floor, and whom, owing to his position behind the door, Doutfire's eagle glance had so far not taken in. That alert officer now, however, lost no time in wheeling round and fixing the lowly peer with a glare of more than suspicion. "This?" he exclaimed incredulously. "Why, this," he darted his head forward and sideways with the sure air of a master of the art of criminal indemnification, "this is the party I have just mentioned to your lordship. A suspicious character who has given us the slip as well as a lot of trouble. A party known to us as Peckover."
"There!" cried Lady Ormstork, turning from the sedentary nobleman with a face of contemptuous disgust. "I said it was impossible he could be Lord Quorn."