THE YELLOW DOVE
raising his liqueur glass. “And you, Lord Kipshaven, how can we be sure of you?”
“By this token,” said the old man, rising and putting his back to the fire, “that if I even suspected, I’d shoot any one of you down here—now, with as little compunction as I’d kill a dog.”
“I’ll have my coffee first,” laughed Byfield, “if you don’t mind.”
“Coffee—then coffin,” said Rizzio.
“Jolly unpleasant conversation this,” remarked Hammersley. “Makes a chap a bit fidgety.”
“Fidgety!” roared the Earl. “We ought to be fidgety with the Germans winning east and west and the finest flower of our service already killed in battle. We need men and still more men. Any able-bodied fellow under forty who stays at home”—and he glanced meaningly at the Honorable Cyril—“ought to be put to work mending roads.”
The object of these remarks turned the blank stare of his monocle but made no reply.
“Yes, I mean you, Cyril,” went on the Earl steadily. “Your mother was born a Prussian. I knew her well and I think she learned to thank God that fortune had given her an Englishman for a husband. But the taint is in you. Your brother has been wounded at the front. His blood is cleansed. But what of yours? You went to a German university with your Prussian kinsmen and now openly flaunt your sympathies at a dinner of British patriots. Speak up. How do you stand? Your friends demand it.”
Hammersley turned his cigarette carefully in its long amber holder.
“Oh, I say, Lord Kipshaven,” he said with a slow smile, “you’re not spoofing a chap, are you?”
18
