Count Bunker Part 43

"Mean to say no such marriage took place?"

"It vas not me."

"Who was it, then?"

"Anozzer man, perhaps."

"Another Lord Tulliwuddle?" inquired the millionaire.

"Zey have made a mistake mit ze name. Yes, zat is how."

"Can it be possible?" cried Eleanor eagerly, her grief for the moment forgotten.

"No," said her father; "it is not possible. The announcement is confirmed by the paragraph. A mistake is inconceivable."

The Baron thought he perceived a brilliant idea.

"Ach, it is ze ozzer Tollvoddle!" he exclaimed. "So! zat is it, of course."

"You mean to say there is another peerage of Tulliwuddle?"

"Oh, yes."

"Fetch Debrett, Ri!"

But Ri had already not only fetched Debrett, but found the place.

"A darned lie. Thought so," he observed succinctly.

The luckless diplomatist was now committed to perdition.

"It is not in ze books," he exclaimed. "It is bot a baronetcy."

"A baronetcy!"

"And illegitimate also."

"Sir," burst forth Ri, "you are a thundering liar! Is this your marriage notice?"

The Baron changed his tactics.

"Yes!" he declared.

Eleanor screamed.

"Don't fuss, Eleanor," said her father kindly. "That ain't true, anyhow.

Why, the day before yesterday he was throwing that darned hammer."

"Which came down last night in our yard with the head burst!" added Ri contemptuously. "Found you out there too!"

"Is that so!" exclaimed his father.

"That is so, sir!"

The three looked at him, and it was hard to say whether indignation or contempt was more prominent in their faces. This was more than he could endure.

"I vill not be so looked at!" he cried; "I vill leave you!"

"No you won't!" said Ri.

And the Baron saw his retreat cut of by the athletic and determined young man.

"Before you leave, we have one or two questions to ask you," said Mr.

Maddison. "Are you Lord Tulliwuddle, or are you not?"

"Yes!--No!" replied the Baron.

"Which, sir?"

Expanding his chest, he made the awe-inspiring announcement--

"I am moch greater zan Tollyvoddle! I am ze Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg!"

"Another darned lie!" commented Ri.

Mr. Maddison laughed sardonically; while Eleanor, with flas.h.i.+ng eyes, now joined in the attack upon the hapless n.o.bleman.

"You wretched creature! Isn't it enough to have shammed to be one peer without shamming to be another?"

"Bot I am! Ja, I swear to you! Can you not see zat I am n.o.ble?"

"Curiously enough we can't," replied Mr. Maddison.

But his daughter's scepticism was a little shaken by the fervor of his a.s.surances.

"But, Poppa, perhaps he may be a German peer."

"German waiter, more likely!" sneered Ri. "What shall we do with him?

Tar and feathers, I guess, would just about suit his complaint."

"No, Ri, no," said his father cautiously. "Remember we are no longer beneath the banner of freedom. In this benighted country it might lead into trouble. Guess we can find him accommodation, though, in that bit of genuine antique above the harness-room. It's fitted with a very substantial lock. We'll make Dugald M'Culloch responsible for this BARON till the police take him over."

Vain were the Baron's protests; and upon the appearance of Dugald M'Culloch, fisherman and factotum to the millionaire, accompanied by three burly satellites, vain, he perceived, would be the most desperate resistance. He plead the privileges of a foreign diplomatist, threatened a descent of the German army upon Lincoln Lodge, guaranteed an intimate acquaintance with the American amba.s.sador--"Who vill make you sorry for zis!" but all without moving Mr. Maddison's resolution. Even Eleanor whispered a word for him and was repulsed, for he overheard her father replying to her--

"No, no, Eleanor; no more a diplomatist than you would have been Lady Tulliwuddle. Guess I know what I'm doing."

Whereupon the late Lord Tulliwuddle, kilt and all, was conveyed by a guard of six tall men and deposited in the bit of genuine antique above the harness-room. This proved to be a small chamber in a thick-walled wing of the original house, now part of the back premises; and there, with his face buried in his hands, the poor prisoner moaned aloud--