



Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)











                           MY LORD DUKE

                         BY E. W. HORNUNG


    NEW YORK
    CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
    1897

    COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY
    CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

    Norwood Press
    J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
    Norwood Mass. U.S.A.




CONTENTS


       I. THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY                     1

      II. "HAPPY JACK"                              16

     III. A CHANCE LOST                             31

      IV. NOT IN THE PROGRAMME                      44

       V. WITH THE ELECT                            63

      VI. A NEW LEAF                                77

     VII. THE DUKE'S PROGRESS                       90

    VIII. THE OLD ADAM                             105

      IX. AN ANONYMOUS LETTER                      122

       X. "DEAD NUTS"                              137

      XI. THE NIGHT OF THE TWENTIETH               151

     XII. THE WRONG MAN                            163

    XIII. THE INTERREGNUM                          180

     XIV. JACK AND HIS MASTER                      189

      XV. END OF THE INTERREGNUM                   199

     XVI. "LOVE THE GIFT"                          215

    XVII. AN ANTI-TOXINE                           223

   XVIII. HECKLING A MINISTER                      233

     XIX. THE CAT AND THE MOUSE                    244

      XX. "LOVE THE DEBT"                          257

     XXI. THE BAR SINISTER                         266

    XXII. DE MORTUIS                               282




MY LORD DUKE




CHAPTER I

THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY


The Home Secretary leant his golf-clubs against a chair. His was the
longest face of all.

"I am only sorry it should have come now," said Claude apologetically.

"Just as we were starting for the links! Our first day, too!" muttered
the Home Secretary.

"_I_ think of Claude," remarked his wife. "I can never tell you, Claude,
how much I feel for you! We shall miss you dreadfully, of course; but we
couldn't expect to enjoy ourselves after this; and I think, in the
circumstances, that you are quite right to go up to town at once."

"Why?" cried the Home Secretary warmly. "What good can he do in the
Easter holidays? Everybody will be away; he'd much better come with me
and fill his lungs with fresh air."

"I can never tell you how much I feel for you," repeated Lady Caroline
to Claude Lafont.

"Nor I," said Olivia. "It's too horrible! I don't believe it. To think
of their finding him after all! I don't believe they _have_ found him.
You've made some mistake, Claude. You've forgotten your code; the cable
really means that they've _not_ found him, and are giving up the
search!"

Claude Lafont shook his head.

"There may be something in what Olivia says," remarked the Home
Secretary. "The mistake may have been made at the other end. It would
bear talking over on the links."

Claude shook his head again.

"We have no reason to suppose there has been a mistake at all, Mr.
Sellwood. Cripps is not the kind of man to make mistakes; and I can
swear to my code. The word means, 'Duke found--I sail with him at
once.'"

"An Australian Duke!" exclaimed Olivia.

"A blackamoor, no doubt," said Lady Caroline with conviction.

"Your kinsman, in any case," said Claude Lafont, laughing; "and my
cousin; and the head of the family from this day forth."

"It was madness!" cried Lady Caroline softly. "Simple madness--but then
all you poets _are_ mad! Excuse me, Claude, but you remind me of the
Lafont blood in my own veins--you make it boil. I feel as if I never
could forgive you! To turn up your nose at one of the oldest titles in
the three kingdoms; to think twice about a purely hypothetical heir at
the antipodes; and actually to send out your solicitor to hunt him up!
If that was not Quixotic lunacy, I should like to know what is?"

The Right Honourable George Sellwood took a new golf-ball from his
pocket, and bowed his white head mournfully as he stripped off the
tissue paper.

"My dear Lady Caroline, _noblesse oblige_--and a man must do his obvious
duty," he heard Claude saying, in his slightly pedantic fashion.
"Besides, I should have cut a very sorry figure had I jumped at the
throne, as it were, and sat there until I was turned out. One knew there
_had_ been an heir in Australia; the only thing was to find out if he
was still alive; and Cripps has done so. I'm bound to say I had given
him up. Cripps has written quite hope