Amusement Only
THE LOST DUCHESS
CHAPTER I
THE DUCHESS IS LOST
"Has the Duchess returned?"
Knowles came further into the room. He had a letter on a salver. When the Duke had taken it, Knowles still lingered. The Duke glanced at him.
"Is an answer required?"
"No, your Grace." Still Knowles lingered. "Something a little singular has happened. The carriage has returned without the Duchess, and the men say that they thought her Grace was in it."
"What do you mean?"
"I hardly understand myself, your Grace. Perhaps you would like to see Barnes."
Barnes was the coachman.
"Send him up." When Knowles had gone, and he was alone, his Grace showed signs of being slightly annoyed. He looked at his watch. "I told her she'd better be in by four. She says that she's not feeling well, and yet one would think that she was not aware of the fatigue entailed in having the Prince to dinner, and a mob of people to follow. I particularly wished her to lie down for a couple of hours."
Knowles ushered in not only Barnes, the coachman, but Moysey, the footman, too. Both these persons seemed to be ill at ease. The Duke glanced at them sharply. In his voice there was a suggestion of impatience.
"What is the matter?"
Barnes explained as best he could.
"If you please, your Grace, we waited for the Duchess outside Cane and Wilson's, the drapers. The Duchess came out, got into the carriage, and Moysey shut the door, and her Grace said, 'Home!' and yet when we got home she wasn't there."
"She wasn't where?"
"Her Grace wasn't in the carriage, your Grace."
"What on earth do you mean?"
"Her Grace did get into the carriage; you shut the door, didn't you?"
Barnes turned to Moysey. Moysey brought his hand up to his brow in a sort of military salute-he had been a soldier in the regiment in which, once upon a time, the Duke had been a subaltern:
"She did. The Duchess came out of the shop. She seemed rather in a hurry, I thought. She got into the carriage, and she said, 'Home, Moysey!' I shut the door, and Barnes drove straight home. We never stopped anywhere, and we never noticed nothing happen on the way; and yet when we got home the carriage was empty."
The Duke stared.
"Do you mean to tell me that the Duchess got out of the carriage while you were driving full pelt through the streets without saying anything to you, and without you noticing it?"
"The carriage was empty when we got home, your Grace."
"Was either of the doors open?"
"No, your Grace."
"You fellows have been up to some infernal mischief. You have made a mess of it. You never picked up the Duchess, and you're trying to palm this tale off on to me to save yourselves."
Barnes was moved to adjuration:
"I'll take my Bible oath, your Grace, that the Duchess got into the carriage outside Cane and Wilson's."
Moysey seconded his colleague:
"I will swear to that, your Grace. She got into the carriage, and I shut the door, and she said, 'Home, Moysey!'"
The Duke looked as if he did not know what to make of the story and its tellers.
"What carriage did you have?"
"Her Grace's brougham, your Grace."
Knowles interposed:
"The brougham was ordered because I understood that the Duchess was not feeling very well, and there's rather a high wind, your Grace."
The Duke snapped at him:
"What has that to do with it? Are you suggesting that the Duchess was more likely to jump out of a brougham while it was dashing through the streets than out of any other kind of vehicle?"
The Duke's glance fell on the letter which Knowles had brought him when he first had entered. He had placed it on his writing-table. Now he took it up. It was addressed:
"Private!
"Very Pressing!!!"
The name was written in a fine, clear, almost feminine hand. The words in the left-hand corner of the envelope were written in a different hand. They were large and bold; almost as though they had been painted with the end of the penholder instead of being written with the pen. The envelope itself was of an unusual size, and bulged out as though it contained something else besides a letter.
The Duke tore the envelope open. As he did so something fell out of it on to the writing-table. It looked as though it was a lock of a woman's hair. As he glanced at it the Duke seemed to be a trifle startled. The Duke read the letter:
"Your Grace will be so good as to bring five hundred pounds (£500) in gold to the Piccadilly end of the Burlington Arcade within an hour of the receipt of this. The Duchess of Datchet has been kidnapped. An imitation duchess got into the carriage, which was waiting outside Cane and Wilson's and she alighted on the road. Unless your Grace does as you are requested the Duchess of Datchet's left-hand little finger will be at once cut off, and sent home in time to receive the Prince to dinner. Other portions of her Grace will follow. A lock of her Grace's hair is enclosed with this as an earnest of our good intentions.
"Before 5.30 p. m. your Grace is requested to be at the Piccadilly end of the Burlington Arcade with five hundred pounds (£500) in gold. You will there be accosted by an individual in a white top-hat, and with a gardenia in his button-hole. You will be entirely at liberty to give him into custody, or to have him followed by the police. In which case the Duchess's left arm, cut off at the shoulder, will be sent home for dinner-not to mention other extremely possible contingencies. But you are advised to give the individual in question the five hundred pounds in gold, because in that case the Duchess herself will be home in time to receive the Prince to dinner, and with one of the best stories with which to entertain your distinguished guests they ever heard.
"Remember! not later than 5.30, unless you wish to receive her Grace's little finger."
The Duke stared at this amazing epistle when he had read it as though he had found it difficult to believe the evidence of his eyes. He was not a demonstrative person as a rule, but this little communication astonished even him. He read it again. Then his hands dropped to his sides and he swore.
He took up the lock of hair which had fallen out of the envelope. Was it possible that it could be his wife's, the Duchess? Was it possible that a Duchess of Datchet could be kidnapped, in broad daylight, in the heart of London, and be sent home, as it were, in pieces? Had sacrilegious hands already been playing pranks with that great lady's hair? Certainly, that hair was so like her hair that the mere resemblance made his Grace's blood run cold. He turned on Messrs. Barnes
