Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/111

 a curt refusal to settle his sons debts, then, after certain threats on the part of Mr. Lewis, a check book drawn out and the pen scratching tremblingly across the pink slip, perhaps with an accompanying “I say. Don't deposit this check for a couple of weeks. I have to have time to turn round and make certain arrangements”—a euphemism for mortgaging or selling another piece of property.

But, for once, Mr. Lewis had made a mistake.

He stated what he wanted, and the earl, hiding the wound in his heart, looked up very much with the expression of the Punch and Judy clown just before he frizzles the policeman with a red-hot poker.

“Sam,” he said, for he had had dealings of his own with the money lender when both had been forty years younger, “you backed the wrong mare this time. Long odds—what, what?—but no starter at all! In other words, you lose, my lad.”

“Lose—what?”

“Fifteen thousand guineas, Samuel. That's the amount, isn't it?”

“Yes, yes—also some other notes long overdue—altogether nearly twenty-five thousand …”

“A whole lot of tin,” came the sardonic rejoinder, “but you should thank the God of Abraham and Jacob that you can afford to lose it.”

“But—m'lord!” Mr. Lewis shivered. He wiped beads of perspiration from his bulbous forehead with a large bandana handkerchief. “You mean to say that …”

“I mean to say that I have resigned being chancellor of the exchequer for Tollemache.”

“But …”