While George was making these arrangements, Sherry had astonished his man, Bootle, by commanding him to have everything in readiness for a journey to Bath by an early hour on the following morning. He was rather vague about the probable length of his stay in this watering-place, and from never having been obliged to pack for himself, he could not conceive why Bootle should think this a matter of even trifling interest. He decided to drive himself down in his curricle, since this would frustrate at the outset any attempt on his parent’s part to force him into sitting with her in the family travelling coach. So Jason and his groom had immediately to be warned, and by the time this had been done, and the groom given his orders to arrange for suitable changes of horses at the various stages, it was going on for eight o’clock, and the Viscount began to think of his dinner. Since Hero’s disappearance it had become increasingly rare for him to dine at home. On this evening, so firmly persuaded was he that he at last had the clue to Hero’s whereabouts, he felt cheerful enough to have eaten his dinner in Half Moon Street, had Mrs Bradgate made any preparation to meet so unexpected an eventuality. As she had not, he was obliged to go out again. He walked down to White’s and ordered the most sustaining meal he had been able to fancy for many weeks. He was finishing it when his cousin Ferdy strolled into the coffee-room. Ferdy was engaged with a party of friends, but as they had not yet put in an appearance, he sat down beside Sherry and joined him in a glass of burgundy.

“Care to see a little cocking tomorrow night, Sherry, dear old boy?” he asked, sipping his wine.

“Can’t,” responded Sherry briefly. “I’m off to Bath.”

Ferdy choked. It took a great deal of backslapping to restore him, and when he was at last able to catch his breath again, his eyes were watering, and his countenance was alarmingly flushed.

“Well, what the deuce!” exclaimed Sherry, eyeing him in surprise.

“Crumb!” gasped Ferdy.

“Crumb? You weren’t eating anything!”

“Must have been,” said Ferdy feebly. “What takes you to Bath, Sherry?”

“My mother. She’s putting up at Grillon’s with the Incomparable. Both going to Bath to drink the waters. I’m to escort ’em.”

Ferdy gazed at him in dismay. “I wouldn’t do it, Sherry,” he said. “You won’t like it there!”

“Well, if I don’t like it, I can come back, can’t I?”

“Much better not go at all,” said Ferdy. “Very dull sort of a place these days. Don’t even waltz there. Won’t like the waters either.”

“Good God, I ain’t going to drink “em!”

“Pity to miss the cocking! Very good match!” Ferdy said, faint but pursuing.

“I tell you I’m going to escort my mother to Bath!” Sherry said impatiently. “What the deuce ails you, Ferdy? Why shouldn’t I go to Bath?”

“Just thought you might not care for it, dear boy! No offence! Did you say the Incomparable was going too?”

“Going to bear my mother company.”

“Oh!” said Ferdy, thinking this over painstakingly. “Well, that settles it: much better not go, Sherry! If the Incomparable goes, Revesby will, and you won’t like that.”

“I suppose Bath is big enough to hold us both. In fact, if he means to hang about Bella’s apron strings, it’s as well I should go!”

Ferdy gave it up. He withdrew a few minutes later to join his friends, and Sherry went home. But Ferdy’s friends found him preoccupied that evening. He sat in a brown study over dinner, followed the party in a trancelike fashion to the card-room, and there paid so little attention to the game that his brother accused him of being castaway. Their host, considering the question dispassionately, shook his head. “Not castaway, Duke. Very affectionate as soon as he’s a trifle disguised. Not affectionate tonight. You quite well, Ferdy, old fellow?”

“Had a shock,” Ferdy said. “Saw Sherry tonight.”

“Sherry?” said the Honourable Marmaduke.

“My cousin Sherry,” explained Ferdy.

“Dash it, he’s my cousin too, ain’t he?” said Marmaduke. “You’re as dead as a house, Ferdy!”

“He may be your cousin too,” said Ferdy, not prepared to dispute this, “but it wouldn’t have given you a shock. No reason why it should. Sherry’s going to Bath.”

Marmaduke stared at him. “Why?” he asked.

“Just what I’ve been wondering all the evening, Duke. You know what I think? Fate! That’s what it is: fate! There’s a thing that comes after a fellow: got a name, but I forget what it is. Creeps up behind him, and puts him in the basket when he ain’t expecting it.”

“What sort of a thing?” inquired his host uneasily.

“I don’t know,” replied Ferdy. “It ain’t a thing you can see.”

“If it’s a ghost, I don’t believe in ’em!” said his host, recovering his composure.

Ferdy shook his head. “Worse than that, Jack, dear boy! I’ll think of its name in a minute. Met it at Eton.”

“Dash it, Ferdy, I was at Eton the same time as you were, and you never said a word about anything creeping up behind you!”

“I may not have said anything, but it did. Crept up behind me when I broke that window in chapel.”

“Old Horley?” Mr Westgate said. “You don’t mean to tell me he’s come up to London? What’s he creeping up behind you for?”

“No, no!” replied Ferdy, irritated by his friend’s poverty of intellect. “Not old Horley! Thing that made him suspect me when I thought my tracks were covered. Not sure it ain’t a Greek thing. Might have been Latin, though, now I come to think of it.”

“I know what he means!” said Marmaduke. “What’s more, it proves he’s castaway, or he wouldn’t be thinking of such things. Nemesis! That’s it, ain’t it, Ferdy?”

“Nemesis!” repeated Ferdy, pleased to find himself understood at last. “That’s it! Dash it, it all goes to show, don’t it? Never thought the stuff they used to teach us at school would come in useful, but if I hadn’t had to learn a lot of Greek and Latin I shouldn’t have known about that thingummy. Forgotten its name again, but it don’t signify now.”

He seemed inclined to brood over the advantages of a classical education, but his brother brought him back to the point. “What the deuce has Nemesis to do with Sherry’s going to Bath?” he demanded.

“You wouldn’t understand,” said Ferdy. “Think I’ll go and see Gil.”

“Dash it, Ferdy, you can’t go off like that!” expostulated Mr Westgate.

“Yes, I can,” replied Ferdy. “Got a fancy to see Gil. Very knowing fellow. Come back again later.”

“You know what, Duke?” said Mr Westgate, watching Ferdy wend his way to the door. “I’ve never seen poor Ferdy so bosky in all my life! He’ll be taken up by the Watch, that’s what’ll happen to him!”

This ignominious fate did not, however, overtake Ferdy. He reached Stratton Street unmolested, to be met by the same intelligence which had greeted Lord Wrotham earlier in the day. He was even more dashed than his lordship had been, but he reached the same decision. For the second time that day Mr Ford ushered one of Mr Ringwood’s cronies into his parlour for the purpose of writing a note to him.

It cost Ferdy time and profound thought to achieve a letter that should explain the whole situation to Mr Ringwood; but when he presently read the elegantly phrased document over to himself he was not ill-pleased with it. To his mind it contrived both to impress Mr Ringwood with a sense of the urgency of the situation and to reassure him on the question of the writer’s selfless loyalty to the cause at stake. It stated clearly that Ferdy would accompany his cousin to Bath, but it became a trifle involved after that, a dark reference to the possible need of a second leaving Mr Ringwood to infer that Ferdy felt there was a strong likelihood of Sherry’s calling him out: a contingency which he explained as being due to the machinations of a mysterious agency whose name might be discovered on application to the Honourable Marmaduke Fakenham. It struck Ferdy, when he came to this portion of the missive, that it would be highly undesirable for Mr Ringwood to make any such application, so he appended a terse postscript: Better not.

The composition of such a literary effort naturally made it necessary for the Honourable Ferdy to seek a little stimulant. Fortunately, there was some brandy in one of the decanters on the sideboard. Ferdy poured it into a rummer, drank it off, and then, for he was very meticulous in all matters of good ton, added a second postscript: Took a glass of brandy.

He departed from Mr Ringwood’s lodging, feeling that no action befitting a man of honour had been left undone; and, the brandy having made him pot-valiant, betook himself to Half Moon Street. The house was in darkness, and it was some time before he could obtain a response to his insistent knocking. It seemed to him a very peculiar circumstance that no one should answer the door in Sherry’s house, and he was just wondering whether he could have made a mistake in the number when a window was flung up on the second floor, and Sherry’s voice, rather sleepy and extremely irate, asked who the devil was there.

Ferdy gazed up at the vague outline of his cousin’s head and said: “Hallo, Sherry, dear boy! What the deuce are you doing up there?”

“Is that you, Ferdy?” demanded Sherry wrathfully. “What the deuce are you doing down there, waking me up at this hour of night?”

“What, you ain’t asleep, Sherry, surely?” said Ferdy incredulously. “Night’s young! Come to have a chat with you. Very important.”

“Oh, the devil! Dead-beat again! What a curst nuisance you are, Ferdy!” said Sherry, exasperated.

He withdrew his head from the window, and in a few minutes had opened the front door to admit his cousin. Ferdy walked in, smiling affably, but declined an offer of the spare bedchamber. “Going back to White’s when I’ve had a word with you, Sherry,” he said. “Engaged with some friends. What made you go to bed?”