Count Bunker

CHAPTER XXXI

In spite of the Spartan transformation which Sir Justin's bedroom had undergone, our adventurer enjoyed an excellent night's rest. So fast asleep was he at the hour of eight next morning that it took him a few seconds to awake to the full possession of his faculties, even when disturbed by a loud exclamation at his bedside. He then became aware of the presence of an entire stranger in his room—a tall and elderly man, with a long nose and a grizzled beard. This intruder had apparently just drawn up the blind, and was now looking about him with an expression of the greatest concern.

“Mackenzie!” he cried, in the voice of one accustomed to be heard with submission, “What have you been doing to my room?”

The butler, too confused for coherent speech, was in the act of bringing in a small portmanteau.

“I—I mentioned, Sir Justin, your room was hardly ready for ye, sir. Perhaps, sir, if ye'd come into the pink room——”

“What the deuce, there's hardly a stick of furniture left! And whose clothes are these?”

“Mine,” answered the Count suavely.

The stranger started violently, and turned upon the bed an eye at first alarmed, then rapidly becoming lit with indignation.

“Who—who is this?” he shouted.

“That, sir—that——” stammered Mackenzie.

“Is Count Bunker,” said the Count, who remained entirely courteous in spite of the inconvenience of this intrusion. “Have I the pleasure of addressing Sir Justin Wallingford?”

“You have, sir.”

“In that case, Mackenzie will be able to give you a satisfactory account of my presence; and in half an hour or so I shall have the pleasure of joining you downstairs.”

The Count, with a polite smile, turned over in bed, as though to indicate that the interview was now at an end. But his visitor apparently had other views.

“I should be obliged by some explanation from yourself of your entry into my house,” said he, steadily keeping his eye upon the Count.

“Now how the deuce shall I get out of this hole without letting Julia into another?” wondered Bunker; but before he could speak, Mackenzie had blurted out—

“Miss Wallingford, sir—the gentleman is a friend of hers, sir.”

“What!” thundered Sir Justin.

“I assure you that Miss Wallingford was actuated by the highest motives in honoring me with an invitation to The Lash,” said Bunker earnestly.

He had already dismissed an ingenious account of himself as a belated wanderer, detained by stress of weather, as certain to be contradicted by Julia herself, and decided instead on risking all upon his supposed uncle's saintly reputation.

“How came she to invite you, sir?” demanded Sir Justin.

“As my uncle's nephew, merely.”

Sir Justin stared at him in silence, while he brought the full force of his capacious mind to bear upon the situation.

“Your name, you say, is Bunker?” he observed at length.

“Count Bunker,” corrected that nobleman.

“Ah! Doubtless, then, you are the same gentleman who has been residing with Lord Tulliwuddle?”

“I am unaware of a duplicate.”

“And the uncle you allude to——?”

By a wave of his hand the Count referred him to the portrait upon the wall. Sir Justin now stared at it.

“Bunker—Count Bunker,” he repeated in a musing tone, and then turned to the present holder of that dignity with a look in his eye which the adventurer disliked exceedingly.

“I will confer with you later,” he observed. “Mackenzie, remove my portmanteau.”

In a voice inaudible to the Count he gave another order, which was followed by Mackenzie also removing the Count's clothes from their chair.

“I say, Mackenzie!” expostulated Bunker, now beginning to feel seriously uneasy; but heedless of his protest the butler hastened with them from the room.

Then, with a grim smile and a surprising alacrity of movement, Sir Justin changed the key into the outside of the lock, passed through the door, and shut and locked it behind him.

“The devil!” ejaculated Count Bunker.

Here was a pretty predicament! And the most ominous feature about it appeared to him to be the deliberation with which his captor had acted. It seemed that he had got himself into a worse scrape than he could estimate.

He wasted no time in examining his prison with an eye to the possibility of an escape, but it became very quickly evident that he was securely trapped. From the windows he could not see even a water-pipe within hail, and the door was unburstably ponderous. Besides, a gentleman attired either in pajamas or evening dress will naturally shrink from flight across country at nine o'clock in the morning. It seemed to the Count that he was as well in bed as anywhere else, and upon this opinion he acted.

In about an hour's time the door was cautiously unlocked, and a tray, containing some breakfast, laid upon the floor; but at the same time he was permitted to see that a cordon of grooms and keepers guarded against his flight. He showed a wonderful appetite, all circumstances considered, smoked a couple of cigars, and at last decided upon getting up and donning his evening clothes. Thereafter nothing occurred, beyond the arrival of a luncheon tray, till the afternoon was well advanced; by which time even his good spirits had become a trifle damped, and his apprehensions considerably increased.

At last his prison door was again thrown open, this time by Sir Justin himself.

“Come in, my dear,” he said in a grave voice; and with a downcast eye and scarlet cheek the fair Julia met her guest again.

Her father closed the door, and they seated themselves before their prisoner, who, after a profound obeisance to the lady, faced them from the edge of his bed with an air of more composure than he felt.

“I await your explanation, Sir Justin,” he began, striking at once the note which seemed to him (so far as he could guess) most likely to be characteristic of an innocent and much-injured man.

“You shall have it,” said Sir Justin grimly. “Julia, you asked this person to my house under the impression that he was the nephew of that particularly obnoxious fanatic, Count Herbrand Bunker, and still engaged upon furthering his relative's philanthropic and other visionary schemes.”

“But isn't he——” began Julia with startled eyes.

“I am Count Bunker,” said our hero firmly.

“The nephew in question?” inquired Sir Justin.

“Certainly, sir.”

Again Sir Justin turned to his daughter.

“I have already told you what I think of your conduct under any circumstances. What your feelings will be I can only surmise when I inform you that I have detained this adventurer here until I had time to despatch a wire and receive an answer from Scotland Yard.”

Both Count and Julia started.

“What, sir!” exclaimed Bunker.

Quite unmoved by his protest, his captor continued, this time addressing him—

“My memory, fortunately, is unusually excellent, and when you told me this morning who you were related to, I recalled at once something I had heard of your past career. It is now confirmed by the reply I received to my telegram.”

“And what, Sir Justin, does Scotland Yard have to say about me?”

“Julia,” said her parent, “this unhappy young man did indeed profess for some time a regard for his uncle's teachings, and even, I believe, advocated them in writing. In this way he obtained the disposal of considerable funds contributed by unsuspicious persons for ostensibly philanthropic purposes. About two years ago these funds and Count Bunker simultaneously disappeared, and your estimable guest was last heard of under an assumed name in the republic of Uruguay.”

Uncomfortable as his predicament was, this picture of himself as the fraudulent philanthropist was too much for Bunker's sense of humor, and to the extreme astonishment of his visitors he went off into a fit of laughter so hearty and prolonged that it was some time before he recovered his gravity.

“My dear friends,” he exclaimed at last, “I am not that Bunker at all! In fact I was only created a few weeks ago. Bring me back my clothes, and in return I'll tell you a deuced sight funnier story even than that.”

Sir Justin rose and led his daughter to the door.

“You will have an opportunity to-morrow,” he replied stiffly. “In the meantime I shall leave you to the enjoyment of the joke.”

“But, my dear sir——”

Sir Justin turned his back, and the door closed upon him again.

Count Bunker's position was now less supportable than ever.

“Escape I must,” he thought.

And hardly had he breathed the word when a gleam of his old luck seemed to return. He was standing by the window, and presently he observed a groom ride up on a bicycle, dismount, and push it through an outhouse door. Then the man strolled off, and he said to himself, with an uprising of his spirits—

“There's my steed—if I could once get to it!”

Then again he thought the situation over, and gradually the prospect of a midnight ride on a bicycle over a road he had only once traversed, clad in his emblazoned socks and blue-lapelled coat, appeared rather less entertaining than another night's confinement. So he lit his last cigar, threw himself on the bed, and resigned himself to the consolations of an innocent heart and a practical philosophy.