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He is, in fact, dressing with all haste at this moment. . . . I am his private secretary," explained the shrewd-looking gentleman in his quiet, business-like voice. "Will you come with me upstairs?" Lieutenant Lapenotiere followed him. At the foot of the great staircase the Secretary turned. "I may take it, sir, that we are not lightly disturbing his Lordship who is an old man."
He determined to wait for a while and turned away towards the garden. The dawn had just broken; two or three birds were singing. It did not surprise at any rate, it did not frighten Lieutenant Lapenotiere at all, when, turning into a short pleached alley, he looked along it and saw him advancing. Yes, him, with the pinned sleeve, the noble, seamed, eager face.
"Few men, sir, have been privileged to carry such news as you have brought us to-night." "And I went to sleep after delivering it," said Lieutenant Lapenotiere, smiling back. The night-porter escorted him to the hall, and opened the great door for him. In the portico he bade the honest man good night, and stood for a moment, mapping out in his mind his way to "The Swan with Two Necks."
The night-porter fell back a pace, opening the door a trifle wider. "Good God, sir! You don't say as how " "You can fetch down a Secretary or someone, I hope?" said Lieutenant Lapenotiere, quickly stepping past him into the long dim hall. "My dispatches are of the first importance. I have posted up from Falmouth without halt but for relays."
He carried a glass-screened candle, and held it somewhat above the level of his forehead which was protuberant and heavily pock-marked. Under the light he peered out at the visitor, who stood tall and stiff, with uniform overcoat buttoned to the chin, between the Ionic pillars of the portico. "Who's there?" "Lieutenant Lapenotiere, of the Pickle schooner with dispatches."
And, strange to say, Lieutenant Lapenotiere recognised something of it in this queer old man, in dressing-gown and ill-fitting wig, who took snuff and interrupted now with a curse and anon with a "bravo!" as the Secretary read. He was absurd: but he was no common man, this Lord Barham. He had something of the ineffable aura of greatness.
Four days after the receipt of the Austrian news Corporal Tullidge ran into the miller's house to inform him that on the previous Monday, at eleven in the morning, the Pickle schooner, Lieutenant Lapenotiere, had arrived at Falmouth with despatches from the fleet; that the stage-coaches on the highway through Wessex to London were chalked with the words 'Great Victory! 'Glorious Triumph! and so on; and that all the country people were wild to know particulars.
"The news is of great moment, sir. Greater could scarcely be." The Secretary bent his head. As they went up the staircase Lieutenant Lapenotiere looked back and caught sight of the night-porter in the middle of the hall, planted there and gazing up, following their ascent. On the first-floor landing they were met by a truly ridiculous spectacle.
But you must pick 'em out, says he, spreadin' his blessed fingers with the gold in 'em: 'for a man can't count money who's lost his right flapper. Those were his words, sir. 'Old friend, he called me, in that way of his." Lieutenant Lapenotiere pointed to his left arm. Around the sleeve a black scarf was knotted. "Dead, sir," the night-porter hushed his voice.
The voice a gentleman's and pleasantly modulated was not one he knew; nor did he recognise the speaker a youngish, shrewd-looking man, dressed in civilian black, with knee-breeches. "Lapenotiere of the Pickle schooner." "Yes, yes the porter bungled your name badly, but I guessed. Lord Barham will see you personally.
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