The Twickenham Peerage Part 9

'Where can I see you--and when?'

'Where? In the grave; if I keep on feeling like I'm feeling now. I've slept too much.--Give me some more.'

He tilted his gla.s.s.

'You've had enough.'

'D----n you, man, what the devil do you mean by telling me I've had enough? I never have enough. If I had all that's in the world I wouldn't have enough. It's my stuff, not yours. Give me some more.' I poured him out a little. 'Don't stint, you're not paying.' Again he swallowed at a gulp what I had given him. It seemed, instead of stupefying, to clear his head. 'That's more like it. Now I'm feeling better. After half a bottle I'm pretty well, and after a bottle I'm nearly right. Listen to me. I'll see you tomorrow, Sunday morning, at the York Hotel, in Stamford Street. After twelve o'clock. Say half-past. Make a note of it.'

'I will.'

'And mind you're there.'

'I will be there. Mind you also are there.'

'If I'm alive I'll be there. You ask for Mr. Montagu Babbacombe--that's me. Let me see, your name's----'

'Smith.'

'Smith. Oh, yes, Smith. You look a Smith. I knew a Smith once who was just like you; one of the nicest fellows that ever breathed. Only an awful thief! And such a liar! Perhaps you knew him too. Might have been a brother. Did you ever have a brother who was hung? He was.

What's the other name?'

'My name's John Smith, sir, to you.'

'Very well, Mr. John Smith to me, I shall expect to see you to-morrow, Sunday morning, at the York Hotel in Stamford Street, at half-past twelve. And you be there! If you're not there, I hope that you'll be hung; like your brother. You understand?

'Perfectly.'

There was a noise at the back. Turning, I perceived that it was caused by the entrance of Mr. Augustus FitzHoward. I understood that it was time for me to take my leave. I thought it possible that the newcomer might find it difficult to induce Mr. Babbacombe to leave the chair on which he was seated, before finis.h.i.+ng the bottle of whisky--which was still half full. I had no wish to witness any discussion of the kind.

CHAPTER V

AT THE YORK HOTEL

I cannot recall spending a more cheerful night than that one. I hasten to add, as a professional humorist might do, that that remark is meant to be satirical. All night--I cannot say 'I lay in agony'--but I wrestled with various problems. Mr. Montagu Babbacombe was with me all the time. Had he been there in the actual flesh his presence could not have been more obvious.

Now that he was physically absent, the original impression recurred with its former force. I told myself, over and over again, that the man was really and truly Twickenham. His denial of the fact I accounted nothing. He always had been fond, with or without apparent cause, of denying his own ident.i.ty. That game was old. When detected in an invidious position, as he was apt to be, he would swear, using all manner of oaths and with a face of bra.s.s, that he was somebody altogether different. He had been known to do it repeatedly. The thing was notorious.

If he was Twickenham, nothing was more probable than that he should a.s.sert the contrary. It was part of his crack-brainedness. I ought to have taken that for granted from the first. His voice and manner were the two chief points on which he differed from my recollections of Leonard. They could be simulated. The man had always been an actor.

Still, I could scarcely force the man to claim his peerage. Little would be gained by my proclaiming, 'Behold, the Marquis of Twickenham!' if he himself declared that he was nothing of the kind.

The onus of proof would rest on me. The cost of it! And what profit would accrue even from success?

However, I was not altogether at the end of my resources. I was too near drowning not to clutch at every straw which offered. I believed I saw something very like a plank. If the man was not available in one way he might be in another. Even if he was Twickenham, I fancied that I had hit upon just the sort of devil's trick which would appeal to his madman's sense of humour. If he would only keep his appointment in the morning. There was the rub. That night I blamed myself a hundred times for allowing him to pa.s.s out of my sight. It was long odds against my seeing him again.

Yet if there had been a taker, and I had laid the odds, I should have lost. The man was on the spot to time.

It was before the appointed time when I alighted from a hansom outside the York Hotel. The place seemed more of a tavern than an hotel, but there was an hotel entrance. Into this I walked. Behind the swing doors stood a person apparently in authority.

'Can I see Mr. Montagu Babbacombe?'

I expected him to say that no such person was known in that establishment. Instead of that he answered my question with another.

'What name?'

'John Smith?'

He addressed a waiter.

'Show this gentleman in to Mr. Babbacombe.'

I was shown in to Mr. Babbacombe. The 'Sleeping Man' was taking his ease in what I took to be a private sitting-room. That is, he reclined on a couch. On a small table at his side was a bottle of whisky and a tumbler. On a larger table, where it was well out of his reach, was a bottle of water--full. He was smoking what I knew by its perfume to be a good cigar. He was dressed in a suit of dark grey, which not only seemed to be a good fit, but to be well cut. He wore a high collar, and a white Jarvey tie, in which was thrust a diamond pin. He looked as if he had something to do with horses. He also looked as if he was Twickenham. If he was not--then, as the phrase goes, I was prepared to eat my hat.

He paid not the slightest heed to my entrance, but, without even a movement of his head, continued in the enjoyment of his cigar. I was angered by his air of perfect calmness. The impudence of the thing!

'May I ask what you mean by your extraordinary behaviour--extraordinary even for you? Do you take me for an utter fool?'

'Name of Smith?'

'Name be hanged! Do you suppose that I don't know you?--that I couldn't bring a hundred persons into this room who'd know you on the instant?'

'Bring two.'

'What do you propose to gain?'

'That's it.'

'Why do you conceal your ident.i.ty?'

'I'm wondering.'

'If I bring the landlord into this room and tell him who you are, will you venture to deny it?'

'Depends on who I am.'

'I believe you're a criminal lunatic.'

'The same to you. And many of 'em.'

He sipped at his gla.s.s. He filled me with such rage--which was, after all, unreasonable rage--that I was unwilling to trust myself to speak.

My impulse was to seize him by the scuff of his neck and drag him home with me, and show him to them all; when the question of his ident.i.ty would be settled on the spot. However, I remembered in time that that was not the purpose which had brought me there. My intention was a very different one; and I proposed to carry it out. That is, if his humour fitted mine.

'Have you ever heard of the Marquis of Twickenham?'

'The Marquis of Twickenham?' Leaning back, he stroked his chin with a gesture which so vividly recalled a favourite trick of Leonard's that I could have struck him for thinking that I could be fooled so easily.