The Duke Decides — Edition Insights

ing followed, but the aggressive white Panama hat was nowhere visible, the conclusion being obvious that the astute Mr. Jevons had ascertained his domicile, as well as his place of employment, before broaching his delicate business.

Tramping along the teeming Bowery and across the footway of the mighty bridge, the ex-hussar enjoyed to the full the exultation of feeling money in his pocket once more. It was not much, and it was as good as spent already in the cost of a passage and an outfit; but it was the earnest of more to come, and, above all, it franked the exile home to England. At the price of his honor, perhaps? Well, yes; but what was honor to a dry-goods clerk at eight dollars a week? He might have taken a different view two years ago, when honor stood for something in his creed; but not now, with the world against him.

Entering the sordid boarding-house, he mounted to his top-floor bedroom, aware that he had forfeited his supper of beef-hash, and that it was too late to go to the dining-room in quest thereof. His eyrie under the roof, flanked on one side by the apartment of a German car-driver and on the other by that of an Irish porter, was furnished with little else than a bed and a toilet-table.

On the toilet-table lay a telegram addressed to him—the first he had received since he had been in America. The unwonted sight caused his hands to tremble a little as he tore it open, but they trembled a good deal more as he read the fateful words:

"_Your uncle and cousin have been killed in a railway accident. Come to England at once. Have cabled a thousand pounds to Morgan’s to your credit.—Pattisons._"

"Pattisons" were the family solicitors, and he who a moment before had called himself Charles Hanbury now knew that his true description would appear in the next issue of "Debrett" as "Charles Augustus Trevor Fitzroy Hanbury, seventh Duke of Beaumanoir," with a rent-roll of two hundred thousand a year.

And he stood committed, on pain of assassination, to aid and abet in the palming off of bogus bonds on the Bank of England!

CHAPTER II—_On Board the_ St. Paul

The _St. Paul_ sped eastwards across the summer sea, and surely of all the human hopes and fears carried by the great liner those locked in the breast of the new Duke were the most momentous. To gain a little breathing time, he had booked his passage as plain Charles Hanbury. In the brief interval before sailing he had seen no more of Jevons, but he guessed that that shrewd practitioner would have watched him, or had him watched, on board, even if there was not a spy upon him among his fellow-passengers; and he wished to let it be inferred that his voyage was undertaken solely in observance of the compact made in the Bowery dive.

For as yet he was by no means certain of his attitude towards that compact. It was true that the cast-off wastrel of two days ago was now one of the premier peers of England, hastening home to take possession of his fortune and estates. But where was the good of being a duke if you were to be a dead duke? he argued with a cynicism bred of his misfortunes rather than innate. There had been a genuine ring about the proposal of Jevons that left no doubt as to the reality of the menace held out; the man’s reluctance in broaching the penalty of desertion carried conviction that it was no mere flower of speech.

On the whole, the Duke was inclined to call on the arch rogue at the Hotel Cecil before incurring a risk that might render his dukedom a transitory possession. Then, if the part he was expected to play proved to be within his powers and without much chance of detection, he might still elect to play it, and so enjoy in security his hereditary privileges.