Maggie MacKeever by The Misses Millikin

red-veined eye alit on Angelica, cowering behind her employer. “Who’s this, your doxy? Damned if you ain’t a rum one! And at your age!”
    Here Mallet grew weary of this exchange of pleasantries and intervened. “Cut line!” he abjured. “Was you to slip a Ned into our crooks, Sir Randall, we might be persuaded to shove our trunks. Have a bit of hub and grub, eh? Being as you won’t want anybody about whilst you conduct your little business.”
    To this incomprehensible speech—which, when translated into less colorful terms, meant merely that Messrs. Mallet and Bimble would, if Sir Randall paid them a guinea, retire forthwith to indulge in food and drink—Angelica paid little heed. She was stunned by the realization that Sir Randall was acquainted with these ruffians.
    “One must cut one’s garment to fit one’s cloth,” remarked Sir Randall, as he delved into a coat-pocket.
    “Knew as soon as I clapped my glaziers on you—” began Bimble, only to be silenced in mid-speech by Mallet’s elbow in his ribs. He whoofed. Mallet muttered a single word. They took summarily to their heels.
    “A most infamous proceeding!” remarked Sir Randall, restoring the guinea to his pocket. “I wonder what made them take fright. Odd, that, since the brutes usually fear nothing, even going so far as to snatch the bodies of those unfortunates who meet with violent death before the coroner’s inquest. Did you take note of their tools? The sharp curved long-handled spades, the scoops on jointed shafts, the grappling tongs and crowbars? Naturally it is essential that in their work they leave no trace. Miss Smith, what ails you? Why are you yanking in that annoying manner on my sleeve? My dear, you are looking absolutely sick with fright! The wretches will not return, I promise you.”
    Certainly Bimble and Mallet had vanished, but the inspiration of their hasty departure had not. In fact that inspiration minced ever closer, an expression of extreme distaste on its pinched features, prominent among which was a twitching nose. Angelica strove desperately to compose herself sufficiently for speech. “Durward!” she hissed.
    Sir Randall swung around to follow her anguished gaze. “That’s put the cat among the pigeons!” he muttered bitterly. “I daren’t hope Durward will refrain from pitching tales.”
    “But sir, to whom?” Though Angelica was appalled by her discovery for the reason underlying the surveillance kept on her employer—said reason being her employer’s attraction to cemeteries and the contents thereof—she was in no way reconciled to the possessor of that twitching nose.
    With as cherubic a countenance as ever graced a church-choir, Sir Randall gazed heavenward. “My dear, have I not explained? How very remiss of me! Durward is in the employ of my son.”
    “Your son!” Angelica gasped. Her employer had heretofore made no mention of any progeny.
     

Chapter Eight
     
    It was yet mid-afternoon when Lord Chalmers returned to his elegant town house, behavior so unlike his lordship, who usually departed the premises at dawn and remained absent until sunset, that his butler stared. Lord Chalmers then added to that august individual’s confusion by inquiring the whereabouts of his baroness, another unprecedented event. The butler controlled his amazement sufficiently to respond that he believed Lady Chalmers had retired to her boudoir. Lord Chalmers mounted the pretty wooden staircase with barley-sugar twisted balusters and finely moulded handrail; the butler retired to the nether regions, there to inform the superior French chef that something had put his lordship in a right rare tweak, for which her ladyship was about to be raked over the coals, unless the butler had misread the signs.
    In point of fact, the butler had done precisely that: Lord Chalmers was not in a temper but in a state of extreme contemplativeness, due to a conversation held that morning with his old friend and political antagonist,