He accosted a passing fellow-servitor.
"Seen young blighted Albert anywhere, Freddy?"
It was in this shameful manner that that mastermind was habitually
referred to below stairs.
"Seen 'im going into the scullery not 'arf a minute ago," replied
Freddy.
"Thanks."
"So long," said Freddy.
"Be good!" returned Keggs, whose mode of speech among those of his
own world differed substantially from that which he considered it
became him to employ when conversing with the titled.
The fall of great men is but too often due to the failure of their
miserable bodies to give the necessary support to their great
brains. There are some, for example, who say that Napoleon would
have won the battle of Waterloo if he had not had dyspepsia. Not
otherwise was it with Albert on that present occasion. The arrival
of Keggs found him at a disadvantage. He had been imprudent enough,
on leaving George, to endeavour to smoke a cigar, purloined from
the box which stood hospitably open on a table in the hall. But for
this, who knows with what cunning counter-attacks he might have
foiled the butler's onslaught? As it was, the battle was a
walk-over for the enemy.
"I've been looking for you, young blighted Albert!" said Keggs
coldly.
Albert turned a green but defiant face to the foe.
"Go and boil yer 'ead!" he advised.
"Never mind about my 'ead. If I was to do my duty to you, I'd give
you a clip side of your 'ead, that's what I'd do."
"And then bury it in the woods," added Albert, wincing as the
consequences of his rash act swept through his small form like some
nauseous tidal wave. He shut his eyes. It upset him to see Keggs
shimmering like that. A shimmering butler is an awful sight.
Keggs laughed a hard laugh. "You and your cousins from America!"
"What about my cousins from America?"
"Yes, what about them? That's just what Lord Belpher and me have
been asking ourselves."
"I don't know wot you're talking about."
"You soon will, young blighted Albert! Who sneaked that American
fellow into the 'ouse to meet Lady Maud?"
"I never!"
"Think I didn't see through your little game? Why, I knew from the
first."
"Yes, you did! Then why did you let him into the place?"
Keggs snorted triumphantly. "There! You admit it! It was that
feller!"
Too late Albert saw his false move--a move which in a normal state
of health, he would have scorned to make. Just as Napoleon, minus a
stomach-ache, would have scorned the blunder that sent his
Cuirassiers plunging to destruction in the sunken road.
"I don't know what you're torkin' about," he said weakly.