"Anything wrong?" roared Mr. Leo, lashing out backwards and kicking a chair, quite futilely, to a remote corner of the room. "No. But there's going to be. Lock me up, will you, you pair of skunks?" For Quorn had withdrawn to a somewhat obscure position. "I'll teach you——!"
"The lock's out of order," Peckover explained with admirable plausibility. "Slips forward when the door's banged. See? We were just coming to ask you to join us over a bottle of champagne."
The proposal had an immediately mollifying effect on the rampageous visitor. "Lead the way, then," he responded thirstily. "I've got a word or two to say to you from my sister Lalage, and I can talk better when the hinges of my voice-box are oiled."
They returned to the dining-room, and Mr. Leo began to pay an unremitting attention to the lubricant which, according to his statement, should have conduced to unusual eloquence. Anyhow, he spoke, when at last he found time, if not rhetorically, at least to the point.
"What I've come to say to you scallywags," he began politely, in a tone which made his hearers look round to be sure the doors were fast shut, "is that we, me and my sister, splendid girl, have just about had enough of this shilly-shally nonsense. We want Lord Quorn, dead or alive, and, what's more, we mean to have him."
He banged his great fist down on the table and glanced at the three men. Gage and Peckover looked politely tolerant, while Quorn regarded his bugbear now for the first time at close quarters, with an attention bordering on fright.
"As," proceeded the gentle Carnaby, "I have said before, and say now for the last time you'll have ears to hear it, I and my beloved sister have not come ten thousand miles to be made fools of."
Gage and Peckover made sympathetic responses, and Quorn exhibited signs of marked uneasiness.
"The man," their amiable guest resumed, "who tries to make a fool of us is a goner." He caught up a large apple from a dish. "I take the skunk in hand like this. See?" He twisted the fruit in halves which he casually threw over his shoulders. They reached the sideboard, where one accounted for a tray of liqueur-glasses, while the other took effect upon the globe and chimney of a tall lamp.
"See?" he repeated, with a certain pride in the rather extravagant object lesson. "See?" He turned suddenly upon the much-impressed Quorn and thundered the somewhat superfluous question at him.