"Ten!" the announcer shouted.
Lord Tarlton leaned gracefully in his chair as he waited for Bozy Barnes to speak. The latter could only shake his head, his pale face beaded with sweat.
"Does that mean you don't care to play any more?" the nobleman asked in his softest voice.
"I've nothing left to play with. I'm ruined."
"I'm sure you've enough to meet the obligation, or you wouldn't have played." There was just a trace of a wintry rattle in the sound.
"I'll meet it. It will take me a few days. Be a little patient with me, my lord, and you'll get every penny."
Meanwhile I had moved quietly through the gaping throng to the table.
"Lord Tarlton?"
His eyes moved slowly to mine. Not a trace of expression came into his face.
"That is my name, sir."
"I seek the honor of taking Mr. Barnes's place for one cast, all or nothing."
"You wish to hazard four thousand guineas against Mr. Barnes's debt?"
"Yes, my lord."
"Sir, I've not the pleasure of your acquaintance, and perhaps you'll not take kindly by my knowing who you are from previous description by others."
"My lord, I'm quite used to that."
"I regret that your cognomen slips my mind."
"It's Holgar Blackburn."
"Then you're the one without fail. Why, sink me if I wasn't in Cornwall, staying at my first wife's family seat, when you gave your fete in Tavistock—and the report brought to me was, it was a jam up. Since then I believe you've bought Elveshurst and the best rough shooting in sixty miles of London. If so, I don't doubt you're financially competent to play."
"My lord, I'll write an order on Baring's Bank beforehand and put it in the stakeholder's hand."
"Why, blow me down, that's plain dealing, what I like in a man. Take Bozy's seat there, and we'll roll for high dice, and the one that wins will take the box to win or crap."
There was not a sound, not even a wheeze from old Dick Vernon gazing at me with bleary eyes, as I took the seat. The Greek god with Cupid's airs stared into my face, as though trying to frighten me.
"My lord, if it meets your favor, we'll throw high dice for the main sum."
"One cast?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, I've risked more than that on a single shot. Will you roll first?"
"Gladly."
The dice rattled in the box and rolled out. I had shot an eight.
" 'Tisn't very good," I told my adversary, restoring the dice to the box and handing it to him. "My luck has been but middling ever since my birthday, happening on Christmas."
His hand paused briefly. "On Christmas, say you?"
"Yes, my lord, and since Christmas fell on Monday on the year that I was born, I should be 'fair of face.'"
He sat gracefully but very still. I wondered if others saw an obscure change of expression.
"You're about forty-four—" he ventured.
"No, sir, I'm thirty-seven according to the book. I was born on Christmas, 1781."
"So?"
But he shook the box too hard and the dice rolled out before he was ready. By the laws of chance that could not increase or decrease his chances of winning by the least jot. Yet he hated himself as he looked down and saw he had thrown a four and a three.
"That would have won for you, my lord, if we were playing hazard," I remarked.
"Now that's consolation worth having." He turned to Bozy Barnes, standing there gaping; the east wind was in his voice again and his pupils looked immense and black.
"Sir, you may pay your debt to Mr. Blackburn."
"No, he needn't," I broke in.
"What in the devil's hell do you mean?" Lord Tarlton demanded.
"I wish to call it square, as the Yankee saying goes. You've lost nothing but your winnings of the evening, I've lost nothing, so why not share our good luck with our friend?"
"I can't do it," Barnes stammered. "It's not sporting—"
"I played your turn for you, sir, and it was my pleasure to win for you, and you'll offend me if you refuse, and by heaven, I'll challenge you to a duel!"
"Then I'll not refuse! No matter what the bucks say about me. I thank you and bless you—" He covered his face with his hands.
"A touching scene," the little lord remarked. "We haven't seen its like since the late Beau Brummell—pardon me, I believe he's still alive—won fifteen hundred pounds for Tom Sheridan. Mr. Blackburn, are we to consider you a candidate for the Good Samaritan?"
"No, sir, but I thought you'd misjudged his condition, or you'd not have played with him."
"Why, blast it, you're a cool one. Twenty-odd years my junior, and spending most of your life 'mongst naked savages according to what I heard, yet better able than I to judge drunk or sober. You used a Yankee expression just now. Maybe you've Yankee wits as well."
"My lord, I hope you won't take me to task. If you're the Lord Tarlton whom I think you are, I came nigh to being named for you."
"How did that happen, if you'll tell me?"
"I wasn't christened for two months after my birth, and if some great feat of arms in the war with America had happened on my natal day, my father intended to name me for its hero. The first report was, you'd sunk a Yankee vessel on the morning of that day. But when he chanced to discover that the Saratoga went down late on the following day, I lost out on the honor."
The little lord drew his breath to speak, then let it go and stared. Perhaps this roomful of bucks and their hangers-on had never seen him stare in quite this way before. Its suggestion was too powerful to resist. One pair of eyes after another fixed on my face. It had no expression they could read; it seemed roughly carved of flint, unfinished and jagged, with a deep chisel stroke across my cheek. Yet when they looked back to the elegant figure in the big chair, there were strange questions never raised before in their searching eyes.
"You astonish me," he remarked at last—perhaps the first guarded words he had spoken in many years.
"But may I yet gain the honor of your presence at Elveshurst before very long?" I asked. "Snipe and duck are plentiful, the partridge have not yet paired off, and fox scent holds well in our damp woods. And if your son Dick and your son-in-law Mr. Alford would care to come, they'd both be welcome."
"We'll welcome the invitation, Mr. Blackburn."
"Then I'll bid you all good night."
In making for the door I must pass the young Adonis who had eyed me with such fury a few minutes before, and I was half afraid he might strike me. Instead he looked into my eyes with a revolting smile.
CHAPTER 27
Echoes Resounding
Until after my game with Lord Tarlton, I had never questioned Alan about him or shown any interest in him. While this was vaguely in accordance with my general strategy, on the whole it was a secretiveness I could not entirely explain, shot through with superstition. But when I told Alan of my winnings, he fell easily into discussing the little nobleman.
"It's not often that he loses—I'll tell you that," Alan said. "Even in games of pure chance such as yours last night—well, it's as though the dice don't dare go counter to him. And if anyone succeeds in beating him, that fellow had better look out, for Tarlton's going to get it back twofold—tenfold—once a hundredfold."
"His manners last night were most agreeable."
"I've seen them when they weren't! Still, he's a great blood. It's generally agreed that the Hanovers are upstarts compared to him."
"If you think he's going to seek revenge, you'd better tell me about him. Has he a family?"
"He has a daughter by his first wife, a lovely woman who married Lieutenant the Honorable Harvey Alford. Since Alford sold his commission in the Royal Navy, they've been living in Cornwall at an old seat, Celtburrow, that his wife inherited from her mother's family, but have very recently come to London. Tarlton has also a natural son, Dick, somewhat older, whom you may have seen at the Jockey Club—a terrific horseman and a rather hard case. His mother is Countess Isabel of Harkness, and it was quite an affair even in the good old days, when bastardy was rampant."