Grey Timothy

Front matter

GREY TIMOTHY

BY

EDGAR WALLACE

Chapter 1

I.—INTRODUCES THE CALLANDERS

Brian Pallard wrote to his uncle:

“Dear Uncle Peter,—Though I have never seen you, I have heard my father speak so highly of your many qualities that I am looking forward to seeing you and my cousins, on my visit to England. As you know, I was born in Kent, though everybody here regards me as Australian bred. Is that a tribute to my temporary sojourn at Oxford, or is it not?

Anyway, I will let you know just when I arrive. I am sending this to your office, because I do not know your address. I have been having a great time in Melbourne.

Brian P.”

Mr Peter Callander wrote back.

It was a letter carefully considered, and as carefully worded; every comma was in its place, every ‘t’ was crossed. It was the type of letter you might suppose that a conservative Englishman doing a conservative business would write.

It was a letter harmonizing with his correct frock-coat of conservative cut, his plain trousers, his cloth spats and his heavy watch-guard. It was a letter one would expect from a thin-faced man with grey hair, straight black eyebrows, cold, suspicious eyes that queries your bona fides through gold-rimmed glasses, and lips a trifle thin and tightly pressed.

It ran:

“Dear Sir,—I have your letter (undated) addressed from the Sporting Club of Melbourne, and I note its contents. I am gratified to learn that your poor father had so high an opinion of me, and I am sure no man held him in greater esteem than myself. I shall be glad to see you if you will write making an appointment, but I am a very busy man.

Unfortunately, you are not without fame—or perhaps I should say—notoriety. The halfpenny press, in its anxiety to disseminate rather the sensational than the useful, has made no secret of your transactions on the Australian turf. Such head-lines as ‘Pallard the Punter wins another fortune’, or ‘Pallard the Punter’s sensational bet’, neither edify nor please me. Frankly, they fill me with a sense of humiliation and shame that one, who is my kinsman, should have so far descended the slippery path of Sin that ends in Ruin and Despair, and that one so gifted with Fortune should embark upon a gambler’s career. Of all forms of gambling perhaps horse-racing is, to my mind, the most abhorrent. That so beautiful a creature as the horse—the friend of man—should be debased so that he becomes the enemy of man is at once pitiable and, I speak in all solemnity, degrading.

I shall, as I say, be prepared to meet you, but I regret that I am unable to offer you the hospitality of a home which shelters my son, untouched by the world, and my daughter who has inherited all her father’s instinctive distaste for those forms of amusement which appeal to you.

Yours very faithfully,

Peter Callander.”

This letter, Mr Callander read and approved, lifting his pen deliberately to put a comma here and dot an ‘i’ there. When he had finished it, he folded it neatly and inserted it into an envelope. He licked the envelope down, stuck a stamp on the north-west corner, and rang his bell.

“Post this,” he said. “Has Mr Horace called?”

“Yes, sir,” said the clerk who had answered the summons; “come and gone. He said he would call back—he has gone on to meet Miss Callander.”

“That will do, thank you, Mr Russell,” said Peter Callander, with a courteous nod of his head.

That was a trait in which he took the greatest pride. He was an intensely courteous man to his dependents. He invariably raised his hat to the salutation of the porter who guarded the entrance of Callander & Callander’s. The meanest office-boy that ever stole stamps was sure of a kindly nod and a friendly pat on the head. He addressed his junior clerks as ‘Sir’, and carried with him that air of genial benevolence which so admirably suits white hair and plaid trousers.

It is true that he paid his clerks at a poorer rate and worked them longer hours than any other employer of his standing in the City of London. It is true that he visited the office-boy, when his peculations were discovered, with the utmost rigour of the law, and was adamantine to the weeping mother and pleading father. It is equally true that he was always setting mean traps to test the honesty of the juniors to whom he said ‘Sir’; but in all things he was courteous.

Having disposed of his immoral relative to his own satisfaction, Mr Callander proceeded to deal with weightier matters, such as the one-sixteenth rise in Anglo-Japanese Rubbers, the report of the Siamese Railways, the fluctuations of the Russian Threes, and the iniquitous rig in West Suakim Gold Syndicates, so ruthlessly, fearlessly, and disinterestedly exposed by the public-spirited editor of The Gold Share Review.

It may be said that this gentleman had persistently refrained from publishing the advertisements of the W. S. G S., because the syndicate had so persistently refrained from sending those advertisements to him.

Mr Callander read the slashing attack with peculiar pleasure. For one reason, he hated double-dealing and trickery; for another reason, he had sold all his West Suakims before the depreciation had set in.

He had finished the review with a shake of his head, which signified his complete agreement with the writer, and was noting down some personal transactions of the day in his private ledger—a little red book with a Yale lock—when his son was announced. He looked up with a smile of welcome.

Horace Callander was a slight young man of middle height, with a full, effeminate chin, large eyes, well shaded with long lashes, a well-proportioned face, and a trim figure. He had as trim a moustache, so trim, in fact, that it had the appearance of having been painted on his face by Michael Angelo—this is the view of one who did not love Horace Callander.

Symmetrical is the word that described his appearance, deferential his attitude. His voice was musical and well-pitched, being neither too loud nor too soft.

The girl who entered the room behind him—it would have struck the observer as strange that this perfect young gentleman did not open the door for her and allow her to enter before him—was made on different lines.

She was fair and tall, taller than her brother. Her figure was slim, and she moved with the freedom of one who loved the field and the road. Her head was well set on a pair of graceful shoulders and crowned with magnificent hair of that hue which halts midway between gold and russet-brown. Two big grey eyes set in a face of delicate colour; a pair of generous lips and a straight little nose, she resembled her brother only in respect to the quality of her voice.

“Well, my dear?” said Mr Callander. It was his son he addressed in such tones of affectionate pride. “So you’ve been to fetch this sister of yours? And how is Gladys, eh?”

She bent down to kiss his cheek, and he submitted to the indignity with great resignation. It was his practice to address her always in the third person. It was a practice which had began in banter and ended by becoming a custom.

“Dear Gladys was annoyed,” said Horace, with habitual tenderness, “and really it is very distressing2”

“Distressing!” She did not wait for her father’s invitation, but seated herself in one of the luxurious arm-chairs of the room. “It is abominable that a man, having any pretensions to decency, should get himself talked about, and not only himself, but us!”

Mr Callander looked from one to the other in perplexity, and Horace drew a neatly folded evening newspaper from his pocket.

“It is Pallard,” he explained in a hushed voice.

“Confound the fellow!” gasped Mr Callander, “what has he been doing—and, as you say, surely I am not mentioned?”

He seized the paper and wrenched it open.

It was a common evening paper published at a price which alone proclaimed its infamy, and the news had evidently been extracted from a morning paper.

Mr Callander gasped again.

In the most prominent part of the front page, sandwiched between an interesting inquest and the no less fascinating particulars of a divorce case, were the head-lines

PALLARD THE PUNTER’S PARTING COUP. WINS TWENTY THOUSAND POUNDS “TO PAY HIS EXPENSES HOME.” CAREER OF THE GREAT TURF SPECULATOR.

And if this, and the cablegram which followed, was not bad enough, there was a subjoined paragraph:

“Mr Brian Pallard, who has made turf history in Australia, has earned distinction in other branches of sport; he won the middle-weight at the Public Schools Competitions-Amateur Light-weight; he is reported to be enormously wealthy. He is a near relative of Mr P. Callander, of the well-known City firm of agents.”

“Infamous!” said Mr Callander. He said it without heat, but with great intensity. “I am not so sure that this isn’t libellous, Horace.”

Horace shook his head doubtfully, thereby expressing his opinion that he wasn’t sure either.

“It isn’t libellous,” said the girl, her straight brows puckered in a frown; “but it’s awfully uncomfortable for us, father. I wish these newspapers wouldn’t publish such things.”

“It’s a craze,” said Horace thoughtfully. “A man I know in the City—you know, Willock, father—he’s the president of our Art Circle, and knows all these journalist people.” Mr Callander nodded his head. “He says that things were awfully dull, and one of the big dailies was struck with the idea of working the colonies up and all that sort of thing. So it cabled all its correspondents, and Pallard happened just then to be the best talked of man in Melbourne, so the correspondent wired about him.”

Mr Callander rose from his desk, smoothing his coat.

“It is simply deplorable,” he said.

“Thank goodness he’s in Australia!” added his daughter with a note of relief.

Mr Callander looked at her for a long time.

“He’s not in Australia, or, at any rate, he won’t be for long; he’s coming home.”

“Coming home!” exclaimed Gladys in horror, and Horace allowed himself to say, “Confound it!”

“Yes, he’s coming home,” said Mr Callander moodily. “I had a letter from him only this morning—and can’t you read? ‘Parting coup. Expenses for his trip home’—that’s England. All these Colonial fellows call England home.”

“Infernal cheek!” murmured Horace.

“Coming home?” said the girl in distress. “Oh, surely not!

“We can’t know that sort of man, father.” Horace and his proud parent smiled.

“You shall not know him, my dear,” he said. “I shall meet him here, alone.”

He waved his hand round the room heroically. It was as though he anticipated a worrying time with a tiger.

“I know the kind of person he is,” he said. “I have to meet all types. He is probably a stout, coarse, young man, with a loud voice and a louder suit—if you will forgive the vulgarism. I know these hard-drinking, hard-swearing ruffians. I hate to say it of my own sister’s child, but I must be just.” He took his umbrella from the stand by the wall, smoothed his glossy silk hat, and carefully adjusted it to his head. “Now, my dear, I am ready,” he said.

He took his son’s arm and walked to the door. It opened before he reached it, and his confidential clerk handed him a telegram.

“Excuse me,” he said, and opening it, read:

“PLEASE CONTRADICT STATEMENT IN THIS MORNING’S PAPERS THAT I WON MONEY YESTERDAY AT FLEMINGTON. CABLE IS A FAKE. I LEFT MELBOURNE WEEKS AGO.”

Mr Callander read the wire again and groaned. It was inscribed, “Handed in at Southampton Docks.”

Pallard the Punter had arrived.

Chapter 2

II.—AND A VISITOR

Mr Peter Callander lived near Sevenoaks in a lovely old Georgian house, big enough and important enough to be referred to as a ‘seat’, surrounded by grounds sufficiently extensive to be referred to as an ‘estate’.

He had the ordering of its furniture, which meant that it was severe and comfortable. There was no Mrs Callander. She had died when Gladys was a baby of embarrassing diminutiveness. She had been many years younger than her husband, and Gladys often indulged in the disloyal speculation whether her mother had worried herself to death trying to understand her husband, or whether she understood him too well and accepted oblivion cheerfully.

For Gladys had no illusions about her father. Worthy man as he was, admirable pillar of society, she never deceived herself as to his limitations.

Three days after the coming of the telegram which announced the arrival of the infamous Pallard, she was walking up and down the lawn before Hill View—so Mr Callander’s country called—awaiting her father.

Horace was amusing himself with a croquet mallet. He was passionately fond of croquet, and was one of the best players in the county: this game and painting were his two known vices. He was of the pre-Raphaelite School and specialized in willowy maidens with red hair.

Now he threw down his mallet and came across the lawn to his sister, his hands thrust deeply into the pockets of his grey flannel trousers.

“Aren’t we going to have tea or something?” he asked.

“Father promised to be here by five,” she said; “but if you can’t wait, I will get something sent out to you.”

“Oh, don’t bother!” he said. He took a silver case from his pocket, selected a Virginian cigarette and lit it. “I wonder if father has seen that man?” he asked.

“I shouldn’t imagine so,” she answered dryly. “I hardly think that his enthusiasm for meeting us would survive father’s letter.”

“Yes, it was pretty warm,” admitted Horace admiringly. “The governor can be awfully cutting. By the way, Gladys dear, did you speak to him about—you know?”

A little frown of annoyance gathered on her forehead.

“Yes,” she said shortly, “and I wish I hadn’t. Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

“I’ve had my allowance, and, to be perfectly frank, I’ve used it up,” he confessed. “Wouldn’t he let you have any money?”

“No,” she said.

“You didn’t say it was for me?”

“Oh, don’t be afraid,” she said coldly. “If I had said it was for his dear chickabiddy, I should have got it. You had better ask yourself.”

The young man threw his cigarette away.

“You’re very unfair, Gladys,” he said with a reproving shake of his head; “very unfair. Father thinks no more of me than he does2”

“Fiddlesticks!” interrupted the girl, with a little smile. “Why don’t you own up like a Briton? And why don’t you tell me what you want the money for? Father isn’t a niggard where you are concerned. He paid twenty pounds into your account not much more than a week ago. The bills for all your pastime material go straight to him; you do not even pay for your clothes or cigarettes.”

“I have a lot of expenses you know nothing about,” he began roughly, when the hoarse boom of Mr Callander’s motor horn sounded on the road without, and in a second or so his handsome car came into view round the clump of laurels which hid the lodge end of his restricted drive. He descended with the weary air of a man who had done a day’s work and was conscious of the fact.

At the sound of the motor horn two servants had hurried from the house, the one with a silver tea-tray, laden with the paraphernalia for afternoon tea, another with a wicker-work table.

Horace collected three chairs, and into one of these his father sank.

“Ah!” he said gratefully.

“Well, father,” said the girl, as she handed him his tea, “we are anxious to hear the news. Did you see our terrible cousin?”

Mr Callander, sipping his tea, shook his head. “I did not, but I spoke to him.” He put down his cup. “You would not imagine that, after receiving such a letter as I sent him at his hotel, he would wish to communicate with me again. Yet this morning he rang me up—actually rang me up!”

“Impertinence!” murmured Horace.

“So I thought, and the voice!” Mr Callander raised his hand in despair. “Coarse, uneducated, raucous. ‘Is that Callander’s’, he said: ‘it’s Misther Pallard of the Great West Central spakin’. I want to get through to ye’re boss.’”

Mr Callander was an excellent mimic, and Gladys shuddered as he faithfully reproduced the conversation.

“Before he could get any farther,” said Mr Callander solemnly, “I said, ‘Understand once and for all, Mr Pallard, that I want to have nothing to do with you.’ ‘It’s the boss I’m wanting’, said the voice. ‘I am the boss’, I said—it is a word I hate, but I used it. In reply there came a profane expression of surprise, which I will not repeat. I put the receiver on, and there was an end to the conversation.”

“And an end to him,” said Horace decisively. “What a brute!”

Gladys said nothing. She was conscious of a sense of disappointment. Without definite reason she had expected that Pallard, rascal as he undoubtedly was, would have cut a more heroic figure; somehow the description her father gave did not tally with the picture she had formed of this gambler from his letter. She had hoped at worst only to be shocked by her erratic relative; as it was, both her taste and her principles were offended.

Mr Callander went into the house to change. It was his practice to play a game or two of croquet with his heir before dinner, and since Horace had returned to his mallet, Gladys was left to her own devices.

She was debating in her mind whether she should go into the drawing-room and relieve her boredom with the elusive Grieg, or whether she should inspect the farm, when an exclamation from her brother arrested her.

“I say,” he said, looking at his watch, “I’m expecting a man to dinner—Willock; you’ve heard me speak of him. Could you drive down and meet him, Glad? He’s coming to the village station, and he’ll be there in a quarter of an hour.”

She nodded.

“I’ll walk down,” she said. “I want something to do.”

“I’d go myself, but father is very keen on this game.”

“Don’t bother. I dare say Mr Willock will survive the shock of being met by a girl. What is he like?”

“Oh, he’s a very decent chap,” said Horace vaguely.

She ran into the house to get her hat and a stick, and in a few minutes was swinging across the fields, taking the short cut to the station.

It was a glorious evening in early summer, and as she walked she whistled musically, for Gladys Callander had many accomplishments of which her father never dreamt.

She reached the station in good time. The train was ten minutes late, and she had time to get to the village to re-post a little parcel which had come to her that morning.

She hated doing so, for the parcel had contained an Indian shawl of the most beautiful workmanship. With it had come a card: “From Brian to his cousin.”

She could do no less than return it; it was a lovely shawl, and she sighed resentfully as she affixed the stamps which would carry it back to the donor.

She came to the station platform just as the train steamed in. Only one passenger alighted and instinctively she knew that this was her visitor.

He was a man a little above medium height, straight shoulders, and erect. There was nothing of the artist in his appearance, though the face was intellectual and the humorous blue eyes, no less than the well-shaped, sensitive lips, told of imagination. He was clean-shaven, and might as well have been an actor, a barrister, or a doctor as an artist.

He saw her coming and walked to meet her with outstretched hands.

“I am Miss Callander,” she said demurely. “My brother asked me to meet you.”

“Gladys Callander, eh?” he said, with a smile. “I’m jolly glad to see you.”

His greeting was a trifle warm, but one forgives the artistic temperament much.

“I’ll send a man for your things,” she said. “You don’t mind walking?”

“Love it,” he said briefly.

They were chatting as if they had known one another all their lives before they had left the village. There was something very fresh and delightful about him. He invigorated her by his very vitality. She found herself laughing at his dry comments on railway travelling—he had come by a slow train—and fascinated by his terse judgment. Very slowly they walked across the fields, and, to her amazement, she found herself exchanging confidences with this unknown artist.

“I suppose Horace has told you about our cousin,” she said. “Oh, yes, I remember, he told me he had; isn’t it annoying?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know all your cousins,” he smiled apologetically; “but whichever one annoyed you deserves something with boiling oil in it.”

He was so sincere in his bloodthirsty allocation of punishment that she flushed and was, for a moment, confused.

“Lead me to our cousin,” he said, and struck a little attitude which turned her confusion into laughter. “Let me at him!”

“Really, you are very ridiculous!” she laughed, “and I hardly know what you will think of me allowing you to behave like this.”

“I exonerate you from blame,” said the visitor cheerfully. “Nobody can be responsible for what I do, except me—and I am superior to all criticism.”

“Indeed,” she said, with polite incredulity. She felt it difficult to maintain a conventional gravity under the influence of his boyish nonsense.

“I am, indeed,” he went on seriously. “I am Fortune’s favoured child: criticism and reprobation trickle off my back as water from a duck’s. A sense of my rectitude, combined with a spirit of toleration for the unrighteousness of others, gives me that lofty feeling which is the peculiar possession of the philosopher.”

“You’ve been reading Shaw,” she said reproachfully.

“He wouldn’t thank you for mentioning it,” he said. “No, my absurd view of life is my very own.”

They were approaching the house now. A side wicket, which opened on to the field—Mr Callander called it a ‘paddock’—gave them access to the grounds.

She unlocked the door with a key she took from her chatelaine, and invited him in. They walked through the shrubbery at the side of the house on to the lawn.

Horace and his father were playing croquet, and an interested spectator was a stern young man with a straggling beard. A wild thought struck Gladys for an instant that possibly this was the dreadful cousin, but a second glance reassured her.

The stranger was much too respectable.

Horace looked up as she crossed the lawn.

“Hello, Gladys,” he said with a smile, “had your journey for nothing, eh? Mr Willock came by the fast train to Sevenoaks and drove out. Permit2”

He was introducing the stern stranger when he saw the look of anguished embarrassment on his sister’s face.

Simultaneously Callander senior demanded in his most benevolent tone:

“And who is Gladys’s friend?”

She looked round at the young man, who, hat in hand, stood awaiting introduction to the family circle.

He, at any rate, was neither embarrassed nor abashed, for he walked forward with a smile and grasped the outstretched hand of Mr Callander.

“I really believe you don’t remember me, Uncle Peter,” he said reproachfully. “I am Brian Pallard, and I must say it was immensely decent of you to send my cousin to meet me.”

Chapter 3

III.—MR PALLARD DOES NOT STAY

There was an awful silence.

The speechless Mr Callander stood shaking his nephew’s hand mechanically. Horace, struck dumb with amazement, could only stare, and Gladys looked from one to the other helplessly.

“I’m afraid,” began Mr Callander, summoning his reserve of dignity, “that this visit2”

“Quite so, quite so.” Brian patted him affectionately on the shoulder. “Very upsetting, very upsetting.”

“I wrote to you2” Mr Callander made another attempt.

“I know, I know,” soothed the youth kindly. “Let bygones be bygones; never,” he said, impressively raising his hand, “never let the incident be referred to again.”

Mr Callander was left with the sense that he was distinctly forgiven.

“And this is Horace?” smiled Brian, and took the limp hand of the other. “I have heard of you. I was reading something about you in one of the magazines—‘the man with the Rossetti touch’, wasn’t that it?”

Horace blushed and coughed. This dreadful man was not so bad.

“This is Mr Willock.” He introduced his friend awkwardly. “President of our Art Club, you know.”

“Charmed to meet you—the Gresham Art Club, of course,” said Brian Pallard. “Let me see, you became president last year, didn’t you, after Tyler?”

Mr Willock, who was not so fierce as he looked, was visibly gratified.

“A very interesting club,” said Brian admiringly; “one of the most progressive of the art clubs, if I may be allowed to say so”—Mr Willock bowed—“and one,” Brian went on enthusiastically, “that has rendered no small service to the country. Its work in connection with the purchase of the Morby Valasquez will, I think, be remembered for some time.”

“Really,” murmured Horace in his sister’s ear, “this chap is a great deal smarter than we gave him credit for. Really2”

She made no reply. Her cousin’s easy progress was fascinating. Nor was Horace the only one affected by this presentable young man. Mr Callander senior found his feelings undergoing revolution. From the chaos of mind induced by the sudden apparition of the Banned Relative there was emerging a certain irritable approval. For, villain as the man was (he told himself), he, at least, had a mind capable of appreciating Horace and his work. There was, perhaps, thought Mr Callander, something in him.

“H’m, Brian,” he said mildly, “we are, of course—er—glad to see you, though you will understand, of course, that—er, our ways are not exactly—in fact—nor your ways.”

“That I understand, Uncle Peter,” said Brian soberly; “and I will endeavour to remember it. If you detect even a suspicion of unconscious superiority in my tone, I beg that you will give me, so to speak, a moral kick under the table. I am conscious,” he added, “of my own weaknesses.”

“Very proper, very proper,” said Mr Callander in a haze; “but there is one subject—just a moment.”

He caught his nephew’s arm and led him out of earshot of the others.

“As men of the world,” he murmured, “we will agree to taboo—er—horses?”

“Horses?”

Brian raised his eyebrows.

“Racehorses,” urged Mr Callander; “we won’t talk of them, at dinner, you know.”

“Oh, I see,” Brian smiled. “You wish me not to say anything about my horses?”

“Exactly,” beamed Mr Callander.

“Why, of course, I shan’t,” declared the young man heartily. “I’m awfully particular about that sort of thing.”

“Quite right, quite right.”

“One gasses about a horse at a friend’s table,” the other went on virtuously, “and before you know where you are, he’s stepped into the ring and spoilt your market. No, sir, I shall not talk about horses.”

Again Mr Callander did not know whether to be annoyed or pleased. He was very thoughtful when they rejoined the party. He knew little about racing, but he knew enough to realize the significance of market spoliation. He took little part in the discussion that followed for many reasons, not the least being sheer inability to follow his smooth-tongued nephew in his appreciation of Watts, Rossetti, and other mysterious creatures.

“You will, of course, stay the night,” he ventured to interrupt.

“Oh, indeed, yes,” said the cheerful Brian. “I thought of staying a few days.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mr Callander weakly.

The party made a move inside to dress, and Gladys, who had been a silent listener to her eloquent cousin, found herself walking in the rear with him whilst he expatiated on the brilliancy of the pre-Raphaelite School.

“They give us form,” he was saying, with his curious intensity; “they give us thought—it isn’t only the colour. Excuse me.” He sneezed violently, and in grabbing a handkerchief from his pocket, he pulled out two little books.

Before he realized it she had stooped and picked them up. She glanced at the titles, and a smile struggled for expression at the corners of her mouth.

He took the books from her hand and hastily pocketed them.

“Then again,” he went on, “look at the spirituality of Watts2”

“Humbug!” she said in a low voice.

“Eh?”

“Blatant hypocrite and humbug,” she said.

He stopped. “May I ask why you thus upbraid me?” he demanded sternly.

“You come here talking like a Christy’s catalogue,” she said, “with a Directory of British Art Schools in one pocket and a little handbook on the pre-Raphaelite painters in the other.”

“Why not?” he asked, unashamed.

“Until this morning you never heard of the pre-Raphaelites, and were ignorant of the existence of the Gresham Art School. You swotted them up in the train.”

He met the accusation without flinching.

“Perhaps you’re right,” he said, “though you are wrong to say I know nothing of the pre-Raphaelites. I once had a horse called Dan Rossetti—he was by Raphaelite, from the dam of St. Artist, and she was by a son of Toxophilite out of Queen Nudge by Birdcatcher2”

“You came here deliberately intending to get into father’s good graces2”

“You are wrong,” he said quietly. “Whether I am in your father’s good books or not is a matter which does not concern me. After his rudeness to my Irish valet this morning—a man who has descended from the kings of Ireland—I nearly let your father slide.”

“Then why did you come?” she challenged.