Gideon strode over to the sideboard, and poured out some brandy. “Not dead, is he?”
“No, sir,” replied Wragby, who had been feeling for Mr. Liversedge’s heart. “He’s alive, but pretty well burnt to the socket.” He considered Mr. Liversedge’s mangled cravat, and shook his head. “Well, I thought you’d given him a leveller, sir, but I see as how you’ve been a-strangling of him.” He loosened the cravat, straightened the sufferer’s limbs, and raised his head. Gideon dropped on his knee, and put the glass he held to Mr. Liversedge’s slack mouth. “Easy, now, easy, sir!” Wragby warned him. “You don’t want to choke him again, and nor you don’t want that good ball-of-fire to be running down his shirt! Better let me give it to him. I’ll have him round in a brace of snaps.”
Gideon relinquished the glass, and rose. “Wragby, his Grace is in trouble!”
Wragby paused in his ministrations to look up. “What, not on account of this fat flawn, sir? What’s happened to his Grace?”
“I don’t know. I think that fellow has him imprisoned somewhere. I ought to have discovered more before I choked him, but—Here, give him some more brandy!”
“You leave him be, sir; he’s coming to himself nice and gentle. He never come here to tell you a thing like that!”
“Oh, yes, he did! He came to sell him to me! For the trifling sum of fifty thousand pounds, he’ll engage for it that his Grace is never seen again. He might even contrive to murder my father too. Obliging, isn’t he? He brought me that to look at!”
Wragby stared at the Duke’s handkerchief. “My God, sir, what has he done to his Grace? That’s blood, or I never saw blood!”
“I tell you I don’t know. Trust me, I shall know soon enough! He can’t be dead. No, he can’t be dead!”
“Lor’ no, sir, of course he ain’t dead!” Wragby made haste to say. “Likely there was a bit of a mill, and his Grace had his cork drawn. Now, don’t you go fuming and fretting before there’s any need, sir! Not but what we might have known something like this would happen, if his Grace loped, off the way he did!”
“God damn you, do you think I would have let him go if I’d thought he’d run into danger?” Gideon shot at him fiercely.
“Of course you wouldn’t, sir! If you was to give me a hand, we could lay this hang-gallows moulder on the sofy. We don’t want to cosset him, but on the other hand he’s more apt to talk if we make him a bit comfortable. And talk he’s got to! If he don’t see reason, he’ll have to be made more uncomfortable than what he is now, but he don’t look to me like one as is hard at hand, and the less breeze we raise the better, sir.”
Gideon nodded, and bent to take Mr. Liversedge’s legs. This unfortunate gentleman was heaved on to the sofa, and groaned faintly. “Leave him to me!” Gideon said curtly. “I’ll call you if I should need you.”
Wragby looked at him doubtfully. “Yes, sir, but the way you’ve been handling him, and the black temper you’re in, begging your pardon, it’s more likely him as’ll need me than you!”
“Don’t be a fool! I shan’t touch him. He thinks the cards are in his hands, but I am not quite at non plus! No, Mr. Liversedge! not quite!”
Mr. Liversedge opened his eyes, and lifted a feeble hand to his bruised throat. He groaned again, and Gideon poured out some more brandy, and took it to him. Wragby, in open disapproval, watched him raise Mr. Liversedge, and put the glass to his lips again. He seemed satisfied, however, that his master had no immediate intention of resorting to any more physical violence, and after remarking that there was no sense in making the fellow jug-bitten, withdrew to stand guard outside the door.
Mr. Liversedge found it rather painful to swallow, but he disposed of the brandy, and was even able to struggle into a sitting-posture. He tenderly felt his throat, uttered one or two more groans, and brought his blood-shot gaze to bear upon his host. “Very unhandsome!” he croaked. “Too hasty, sir! No need for any heat! Had but to say the word and the matter could have been arranged to your taste. For a small sum—quite trifling stun, say thirty thousand, or even twenty-five—willing to restore his Grace safe and sound!” He tried to clear his throat, and winced. “Happy to do so!” he said. “Not a man of violence—taken quite a fancy to his Grace—no wish to harm him!”
Relief at learning that Gilly was not dead did much to abate Gideon’s wrath. He gave Mr. Liversedge some more brandy. Mr. Liversedge took the glass, and lowered his feet to the floor. “Much better as it is,” he said, his volatile spirits already beginning to turn events to good account. “I may say, Captain Ware, it is gratifying to discover very proper sentiment in you. No need to have been rough, though! In fact, foolish! Must bear in mind that without my goodwill impossible to find his Grace! A very good cognac, sir!”
“Make the most of it!” Gideon advised him. “You’ll get none in Newgate.”
Mr. Liversedge sipped the brandy delicately. He was beginning to feel very much better, as a gentle glow spread through him. “That, sir, is an ungentlemanly observation,” he said. “Moreover, you would gain nothing if you acted hastily, you know. Let bygones be bygones, Captain Ware! Nothing will afford me more pleasure than to restore his Grace to his family.”
“You canting humbug, you are trying to hold his Grace to ransom!” Gideon said.
“Well,” said Mr. Liversedge reasonably, “one must live, sir, after all.”
“Be sure you have not long to do so!”
“I see what it is!” said Mr. Liversedge. “But you mistake, sir! I don’t ask ransom of you! It will be nothing to his Grace: I daresay he will be very glad to pay it, for, you know, he might expect his price to be higher.”
“Let me tell you this!” said Gideon. “His Grace is not going to be bled for as much as a farthing by any such fellow as you! Instead, Mr. Liversedge, you are going to go with me to where his Grace is! If I find him safe and unhurt, you may escape your deserts—though I don’t vouch for it!”
Mr. Liversedge leaned back, and crossed one leg over the other. “Now, indeed, Captain Ware, it is of no use to fly into your high ropes!” he said. “Do but consider for a moment! I daresay you would like to have me clapped up in Newgate, but if you were so unwise as to call in the Law, his Grace would perish. I will be open with you. If I were not to return—and that speedily—to the unworthy habitation which now shelters his Grace, I very much fear that there are those, less mild in nature than myself, who would put a period to his existence. And that, you know, would be very shocking! Yet how could you prevent it? You might indeed clap me into some disagreeable gaol, but you cannot force me to divulge his Grace’s whereabouts. One dislikes to be obliged to use vulgar expressions, but I must permit myself to say that you are at a stand, sir!”
“Down to every move on the board, are you not?” said Gideon, smiling unpleasantly.
“Sir,” said Mr. Liversedge impressively, “if a man would succeed in carrying out large enterprises, he must be so! I have heard it related that the Duke—I refer, Captain Ware, to his Grace of Wellington, not his Grace of Sale—once said that he made his campaigns with ropes. If anything went amiss, he said, he tied a knot, and went on. A valuable maxim, sir, and one on which I have striven to mould my own campaigns. I tie a knot, and go on!”
“Very well, if the knot holds,” replied Gideon. “This one won’t! If I had to search the whole of England for my cousin, I own I might find myself obliged to come to terms with you. But I have not, Mr. Liversedge. There is a card in my hand I fancy you had not thought I possessed. I received a letter from my cousin today. He wrote to me from the White Horse at Baldock. You and I, my engaging rascal, are going to Baldock to-morrow.” He observed, with satisfaction, his guest’s suddenly stricken countenance. “And when we reach Baldock, either you are going to conduct me to my cousin’s prison, or I am going to conduct you to the nearest magistrate. And let me further inform you, sir, that if it took every Runner at Bow Street, and every constable in Hertfordshire, and the militia beside to do it, I would see to it that not a house nor a barn was left unsearched within twenty miles of Baldock!”