While he and his young friends were eating their dinners, Mr. Liversedge and Mr. Shifnal were taking counsel together. Mr. Shifnal’s suggestion that Mr. Liversedge should also hire a room at the Sun, and should smother the Duke in his bed at dead of night, was ill-received by his partner, who demanded to know how that could serve any good purpose. He said that even supposing that Mr. Shifnal were there to give his assistance it was hardly to be supposed that they could smuggle out of a busy inn an unconscious guest. Mr. Shifnal, a little damped, was still trying to think out an alternative scheme when the Duke’s party issued forth from the inn, and began walking in the direction of the Fairground. Protected by the tilt of the cart, the confederates watched them go, and could scarcely believe their good fortune.
“Sam,” said Mr. Shifnal, “if we can’t nabble that Dook while everyone’s watching the fireworks we don’t deserve no thirty thousand pounds!”
The Fair, when the Duke reached it again, was the scene of even denser crowds than it had been during the daylight hours. All the shopkeepers of Hitchin seemed to have thronged there, and although the open-air competitions were over, the various booths were packed with people, either staring at some monstrosity, or taking part in wrestling, boxing, or single-stick bouts. A large prize was offered to any sportsman able to knock out a professional bruiser with a broken nose and a cauliflower ear, and it was with difficulty that the Duke dissuaded Tom from instantly throwing his hat into the Ring. He took him instead to witness a stirring drama, entitled Monk and Murderer! or The Skeleton Spectre, which gave both him and Belinda the maximum amount of fearful enjoyment. Belinda was obliged to cling tightly to the Duke’s arm from the moment of the Mysterious Monk’s first appearance in Scene 2 (The Rocks of Calabria), to the Grand Combat with Shield and Battle-Axe in Scene 6, but upon being asked rather anxiously if she liked the piece, nodded her head very vigorously, and heaved a tremulous sigh.
When this stirring drama came to an end, the last daylight had faded, and the Fairground was lit by flares and cressets. The crowd was wending its way towards the open space where the fireworks were to be let off. The Duke, with Belinda still hanging on his arm, joined the general throng, and managed to secure good places for her and Tom on one of the forms set up in tiers round the field. He gave up his own place to a stout and panting dame, who sank thankfully down beside Belinda. With this bulwark on one side of his charge, and Tom on the other, the Duke thought that he might safely relax his vigilance, and retire from the crowd. He made his way between the forms to the back of the field, and was idly watching the struggles of determined citizens to push their way to the fore when a respectful voice said softly, yet with urgency, a little behind him: “My lord Duke!”
Instinctively he looked round. A neat man in a sober riding-dress, who had something of the look of a head-groom, touched his hat to him, and said: “I ask your Grace’s pardon for intruding, but I have a message for your Grace.”
Without giving himself time to consider that his cousin could not possibly have received the letter he had posted to him in Baldock that morning, the Duke leaped to the conclusion that the neat man must have come to him from Gideon. There was nothing at all alarming in Mr. Shifnal’s appearance: indeed, he ascribed much of his success to his respectable air. The depth of his bow was exactly as it should have been; his manner was a nice mixture of deference and the assurance of a trusted personal servant. He glanced deprecatingly at the persons within easy earshot, and moved suggestively in the direction of one of the tents that were dotted about the edge of the field. The Duke followed him. “Well?” he said. “What do you want with me?”
“I beg your Grace’s pardon,” Mr. Shifnal said again, “but I was told—by your Grace perhaps knows who—to deliver my message into your Grace’s private ear.”
The Duke was a little amused, but still unsuspicious. Gideon must be hard-pressed, he thought, to have sent to him. Possibly Lord Lionel had arrived in London, and was threatening to cut his son off with a shilling unless he divulged his cousin’s whereabouts. Mr. Shifnal was standing in the deep shadow cast by the now deserted tent; the first of the rockets went up in a glorious burst of stars; the Duke came up to Mr. Shifnal, and repeated: “Well, what do you want?”
He did not feel the blow that struck him down, for Mr. Liversedge, sliding out of the murk behind him, was leaving nothing to chance. The Duke dropped where he stood; and Mr. Liversedge, thrusting his cudgel out of sight under the tent-wall, instantly bent over him in an attitude of tender solicitude. A man, who had been staring up at the bursting rocket, glanced over his shoulder, and Mr. Liversedge at once called peremptorily to Mr. Shifnaclass="underline" “You, sir! Would you have the goodness to assist me to carry my nephew to my carriage? He has fainted from this excessive heat and these crowds! My sister’s son: a very delicate young man! I told him how it would be, but these young sparks! They will never listen to older and wiser heads!”
The stranger watching the fireworks at once drew near, offering his aid. Mr. Liversedge thanked him profusely, and agreed that the poor young man did indeed look pale. “Sickly from birth!” he confided. “I have known him to swoon for as much as an hour on end! But I beg you will not put yourself to the trouble of coming with me! This gentleman will perhaps help me to my carriage: ah, I thank you, sir!”
Mr. Shifnal, who had picked up the Duke’s hat and malacca cane, here joined his confederate, and offered to take the poor gentleman’s legs. One or two people began to be interested in what was going on, but Mr. Liversedge was spared the trouble of repeating his story by the first gentleman, who very kindly retailed it for him. While he was doing this, Mr. Liversedge and Mr. Shifnal made haste to remove the Duke to where they had left Mr. Mimms’s cart, outside the field. A particularly fine display of pyrotechnics diverted the attention of those who had shown faint interest in the Duke’s swoon, and as he and his bearers had disappeared from view when they again had leisure to look round they troubled themselves no further in the matter.
The Duke’s inanimate body was soon hoisted into the back of the cart, and laid upon the boards. Mr. Liversedge scrambled in beside him, adjuring Mr. Shifnal to make haste and drive off before any meddling busybody could come poking and prying. He slid his hand under the Duke’s coat, feeling for his heart, and was relieved to feel it beating. He was not, as he had told his friend, a man of violence, and he had suffered quite a horrid revulsion of feeling when the Duke had gone down under the blow of his cudgel. He decided, privately, that if it should become necessary to dispose of the Duke someone other than himself would have to undertake that task: probably Nat, who had little sensibility, and none of the gentlemanly qualms that troubled his friend.
Chapter XIV
Upon the morning of the Duke’s departure from London, Captain Ware was awakened by the sound of altercation outside his door. Ex-Sergeant Wragby’s voice was raised in indignant refusal to allow anyone to enter his master’s room; and he was freely accusing the unknown intruder of being as drunk as an artillery-man. Captain Ware then heard Nettlebed’s voice, sharpened by fright, and he grinned. He had enjoined Wragby, who had been his trusted servant for several years, not to mention the Duke’s presence in Albany the previous evening to anyone, and as his batman had not been on duty he had no fear of the information’s leaking out. He linked his hands behind his head, and awaited events.