“I’d have gone and put my head under the pump, same as you ought to this very minute!” replied Mr. Mimms, without hesitation.

“Possibly! possibly! But I, Joseph, being a man of larger vision, would have raised my price! Very likely I would have demanded not five but ten thousand pounds from him. And so he knew!”

“Are you telling us, Sam, as that young greenhorn was a Dook?” asked Mr. Shifnal incredulously.

“Look at the handkerchief! And if Joseph had but stayed within the house—”

“If I’d have known he was a Dook, which sounds to me like a bag of moonshine anyways, I’d have had more sense than to meddle with him!” declared Mr. Mimms. “That would be the way to get dished-up, that would! Why, if I’d have bored in on him we’d have very likely gone to Rumbo, the pair of us! I dunno but what it wouldn’t mean the Nubbing Cheat.”

Mr. Liversedge sat staring before him, his ingenious mind at work. “I may be wrong. All men are fallible. It may be that I am right, however, and am I the man to let opportunity slide? That shall never be said of Swithin Liversedge! This matter must be sifted! But he may already have departed from this neighbourhood. He had recovered the fatal letters: what should keep him longer at such a hostelry as the White Horse?”

Mr. Shifnal shook his head. “Nothing wouldn’t keep him any longer, Sam,” he said.

Mr. Liversedge brought his gaze to bear on his friend’s face. “Nothing,” he said, in a damped tone. “I am bound to confess—No!” He sat up with a jerk. “Belinda!” he ejaculated. “Where else did she go but to the man whom she allowed—for aught I know encouraged!—to fly from this place, leaving her protector for dead upon the floor?”

“She’d lope off with anyone, she would,” commented Mr. Mimms dispassionately. “You had only to get talking to her when you see her at Bath, and she up and loped off with you. An unaccountable game-pullet, she is!”

“It is my belief,” said Mr. Liversedge, “that she has cast herself upon his generosity! She has appealed to his chivalry! Will he thrust her away? will he refuse to aid her? He will not!”

“Not unless he’s a bigger noddy than any I ever heard on,” said Mr. Shifnal. “No one wouldn’t thrust a wench like that away!”

“That,” said Mr. Liversedge, “I knew the moment I clapped eyes on her! Nat, it may well be that he tarries at the inn, dallying with Belinda! For he will not, I fancy, take her to London. He is hedged about by those who would wrest her from him. Who should know if I do not how close a guard they keep about that young man? There is no coming near him, never was! I must go to Baldock in the morning!”

Mr. Mimms stared at him. “It won’t fadge if you do,” he said. “I’ll allow I didn’t take much account of him, for a proper greenhorn he looked to me, but he couldn’t be such a goosecap as not to burn them letters he took off of you, Sam! You ain’t got nothing left to do but to bite on the bridle.”

Mr. Liversedge cast him a look of ineffable contempt. “If you, Joseph, had ever had one tenth of my vision you would not today be keeping a low thieves’ ken!” he declared.

“That’s the dandy!” retorted Mr. Mimms bitterly. “Go on! Insult poor Nat as never did you a mite of harm!”

Mr. Liversedge waved his hand. “I intend nothing personal,” he said. “But the fact remains that you are a hick, Joseph! Those letters no longer interest me. If all is as I think it may be, there is a fortune in it! Let me but once ascertain that that young man was indeed the Duke of Sale; let Providence ordain that he has not yet driven away to the Metropolis; let me but hit upon some stratagem to get him into my hands, and we shall not regard the five thousand pounds I was once hopeful of acquiring as more than a flea-bite!”

Mr. Mimms could only look at him with dropping jaw, but Mr. Shifnal’s sharp face grew sharper still. He watched Mr. Liversedge intently, and nodded, as though he understood. “Go on, Sam!” he encouraged him.

“I must have time to consider the matter,” said Mr. Liversedge largely. “Several schemes are revolving in my head, but I would do nothing without due consideration. The first step must be to ascertain whether the young man is still to be found in Baldock. Joseph, I shall be requiring the cart tomorrow!”

“Sam,” said Mr. Mimms, in a tone of great uneasiness, “if so be as he is a Dook, you don’t mean to go a-meddling with him?”

“Have no fear!” said Mr. Liversedge. “You, my dear brother, shall not be forgotten.”

“I wish myself backt if I have anything to do with it!” declared Mr. Mimms violently. “I’ve kept this boozing-ken, and my father before me, and never any more trouble than would trouble a hen, but mix myself up with Dooks I won’t! I’m an honest fence, I am, and I make a decent living, as you have cause to be thankful for; and Nat here will tell you I give him a fair price for any gewgaws he may happen to bring me, like this little lot—”

“Well—” temporized Mr. Shifnal. “I don’t know as how I’d say—”

“As fair a price as any fence this side of London,” said Mr. Mimms firmly. “And I don’t have no barmen poking and prying round this ken, so that them as earns a living at the rattling-lay, or the lift, or the High Toby, can lay up here, and not fear no one! But meddle with no Dooks I will not, for, mark my words, if we was to lay so much as a finger on such as him, we should have them Bow Street Runners here before the cat can lick her ear!”

Mr. Shifnal was still thoughtfully watching Mr. Liversedge. “It’s a good fish if it were but caught,” he said slowly. “He’s a well-blunted young cove, I daresay?”

“Able to buy an abbey!” Mr. Liversedge assured him.

“Well,” said Mr. Shifnal, “I was meaning to lope off again, but what Joe says is the truth: a cull can lay up here, and no one the wiser. Maybe I’ll lay up till I see which way the wind will blow. You get off to Baldock in the morning, Sam!”

This, in spite of his brother’s protests, was what Mr. Liversedge did; but owing to the late hour to which he and Mr. Shifnal sat up, and the quantity of brandy they consumed, he did not make an early enough start to reach Baldock before the Duke and his small party had left it. After carefully reconnoitering the White Horse, and ascertaining that the Duke was not within sight, Mr. Liversedge walked boldly up to that hostelry, and entered the taproom. Here he encountered the tapster, who was engaged in wiping down the bar; and after passing the time of day with him, and consuming a glass of porter, he ventured to make some guarded enquiries. The tapster said: “If it’s the gentleman in No. 1 you’re meaning, he ain’t here, nor that doxy what came a-looking for him neither. Gone off in a chaise to Hitchin not half an hour past. Rufford, his name was.”

Mr. Liversedge did not wait for more. Draining his glass, and throwing down upon the table a coin wrested from his unwilling relative, he left the inn, and made haste back to Mr. Mimms’s cart. His brain seethed with conjecture all the way back to the Bird in Hand, and when he reached that hostelry, he left Walter to stable the horse, and himself hurried up to his parlour. Mr. Shifnal and Mr. Mimms, who had been on the look-out for him, lost no time in following him. They found him pawing over the leaves of a well-thumbed volume. This work, published by Thomas Goddard of No. 1 Pall Mall, was entitled A Biographical Index to the Present House of Lords, and it constituted Mr. Liversedge’s Bible. His hands almost trembled as he sought for Sale amongst the various entries. He found it at last, ran his eye down the opening paragraph, and uttered an exclamation of triumph. “I knew it!”

Mr. Shifnal peered over his shoulder, but not being a lettered man found the spelling out of the printed words a slow business. “What is it, Sam?” he asked.

“Sale, Duke of,” read out Mr. Liversedge in a voice of suppressed excitement. “Names, Titles and Creations: The Most Noble Adolphus Gillespie Vernon Ware, Duke of Sale and Marquis of Ormesby (March 12th, 1692); Earl of Sale (August 9th, 1547); Baron Ware of Thane (May 2nd, 1538); Baron Ware of Stoven and Baron Ware of Rufford (June 14th, 1675)—Baron Ware of Rufford, mark you! I thought my memory had not erred! And our young greenhorn, my masters, has been putting up at the White Horse under the name of Mr. Rufford! I can want no further proof!”

Even Mr. Mimms was impressed by this, but he reiterated his desire to have nothing to do with Dukes. His brother paid no heed to him, but fixed Mr. Shifnal with an unwinking stare, and demanded, in a rhetorical spirit, to be told why the Duke had gone to Hitchin. Neither of his hearers was able to enlighten him, nor, after profound thought, could he discover for himself any very plausible explanation. But since Hitchin, as he unanswerably declared, could not be said to lie on the road to London, he soon decided not to allow this trifling enigma to worry him. The Duke had directed the post-boy to drive to the Sun Inn, where it would seem reasonable to suppose that he meant to spend at least one night. His taking Belinda with him precluded the possibility, Mr. Liversedge thought, of his having gone to visit friends in the neighbourhood.

Mr. Mimms, whose uneasiness was rapidly increasing, brought his fist down with a crash on the table, and demanded to be told what his brother had in mind. Mr. Liversedge glanced at him indifferently. “If Nat is willing to lend me his assistance,” he replied, “I consider that it would be flying in the face of Providence not to make a push to capture this prize.”

Mr. Shifnal nodded, but said: “How much money is there in it, by your reckoning?”

Mr. Liversedge shrugged. “How can I say? Thirty thousand—fifty thousand—almost any sum, I daresay!”