"Detective-Inspector is my rank," Mr. Doutfire reminded him with a touch of severity. "Looks as though I was wanted," he added with a curl of the lip and a confident glance round the company.
"You are not," insisted the duke in his fiercest tone and with his most appalling glare. "I am the Duke of Salolja, and I tell you you are to go."
He might as well have glared at the spattered portrait of Everard, ninth Baron Quorn, on the wall for any effect his eyes produced on the uncompromising and unimaginative official.
"I should like that corroborated," was all the response he got from Mr. Doutfire.
"No, don't go!" cried Mr. Leo with a subdued and, painful roar. "He has assaulted me, stabbed me, threatened to shoot me. I give him in charge. Take him. I——"
"Has he got firearms on him?" enquired Mr. Doutfire severely.
For answer the duke whipped out his revolver. But swift as the action was, Mr. Doutfire's counter move was quicker.
With practised skill he clutched the dangerous wrist and with a business-like jerk held it in the air with the revolver pointing to the ceiling.
"That'll do, my lord duke," he said with playful insistence. "Better let me take care of that. It's a dangerous plaything."
But the duke's characteristic under-estimation of the power of the British police system prompted him to resist and to struggle violently to release his hand. Mr. Doutfire gave a well-understood nod to his subordinate, and that functionary smartly acting upon it, came behind the duke and pinioned his arms. Next moment the revolver was detached by a knowing professional trick, and was in Mr. Doutfire's pocket. "You can let go, Tugby," he said with calm authority, and the raging noble was free to dance and gesticulate in a very tornado of rage.