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You've been robbing me for years, you blackguard!" James Hutchings met the charge with complete calm. He shook his head and said in a surly tone: "No; I haven't done anything of the kind, m'lord." The flat denial infuriated his master yet more. He spluttered and was for a while incoherent. Then he became again articulate and said: "You have, you rogue!
"Glazebrook told me of one flushed like a woman at a bargain sale, he said and when he pointed out to her that the silk she'd got was bloodstained, she just said, 'Oh, bother! and threw it aside and went back...." We became aware that Tarvrille's butler had returned. We tried not to seem to listen. "Beg pardon, m'lord," he said. "The house IS on fire, m'lord." "Upstairs, m'lord."
And yet he insisted; in the beginning of his relationship with his employer, his soul swelling with gratitude, his imagination touched by the splendors into which his fate had led him, awed by the dominant Packard, he had wanted always upon an occasion like this to demand stiffly: "You rang, your majesty?" Packard had cursed and threatened and brow-beaten him down to "You called, m'lord?"
"The top of the headland may be inaccessible, m'lord. We may find that they Heh! what's that?" He leaned forward to peer through his glasses at a second headland that was swinging into view around the corner of the cliffs. "Smoke!" he cried. "Smoke! and a flag!" "Gad!" murmured Lord James, hastily bringing his own glasses to bear. The second headland was about five miles away.
This is his way of taking it out of me for sacking him. He's done it on purpose, the scoundrel! Now I will gaol him! Hanged if I don't!" "I'll get another bottle, m'lord," said Wilkins, catching up the decanter, and hurrying towards the door. "Get it! And be quick about it! And tell that scoundrel I'll gaol him!" cried Lord Loudwater.
But if you are ready, m'lord m'lady " "Quite! Egad! I'm curious to have a look at the fellow. Used to like to see a good honest set-to myself occasionally, before I became ahem! governor!" And rising with alacrity, Sir Charles assisted his lady from her chair. "Coming, Ronsdale?" "Believe I won't go down," drawled the nobleman at the rail. "Air better up here," he explained.
In his right hand he held the decanter of offending port, in his left a sound cork. He said firmly: "This wine isn't corked, m'lord. Its flavour is perfect. Besides, a cork like this couldn't cork it." A less sensitive man than Lord Loudwater might have risen to the double emergency. Lord Loudwater could not. He sat perfectly still.
"D'you fancy we're anywhere near the islet from which we put off last evening?" "I've tried to hold our position, m'lord. But these Mozambique Channel currents are so strong, and shift so with the tides, we may have been either set back or ahead." Already the bank of morning mist was beginning to break up and melt away under the fervent rays of the sun.
Packard wants you!" The door slammed behind him. His back once turned on "m'lord," Guy Little did not wait to get out of earshot to become less butler than human sparrow. Blenham needed but the one summons and that might almost have been whispered. He was fidgeting in his own room, waiting for this moment, knowing that he was to receive definite instructions concerning Stephen Packard.
"Just overhead, m'lord." "The maids are throwing water, m'lord, and I've telephoned FIRE." "No, m'lord, no immediate danger." "It's all right," said Tarvrille to the table generally. "Go on! It's not a general conflagration, and the fire brigade won't be five minutes. Don't see that it's our affair. The stuff's insured. They say old Lady Paskershortly was dreadful. Like a harpy.