Barnstable looked from one to another as if he were unable to understand what was going on around him.
"Curse it!" he broke out, his face assuming its apoplectic redness. "Curse those fellows that write novels! Here I've got to be assassinated just because some confounded scribbler couldn't keep from putting my private affairs in his infernal book! It's downright murder!"
"And the comic papers afterward," murmured Jack.
"But what are you going to do about it?" asked Tom.
"You might have the Count arrested and bound over to keep the peace," suggested Bradish.
"That's a nice speech for the Count's second!" cried Jack with a roar.
"What am I going to do?" repeated Barnstable. "I'll fight him!"
He struck himself on the chest, and glared around him, while they all stood in astonished silence.
"My wife has been insulted," he went on with fresh vehemence, "and I had a right to call the man that did it a villain or anything else! I owe it to her to fight him if he won't take it back!"
"Gad!" said Jack, advancing and holding out his hand, "that's melodrama and no mistake; but I like your pluck! I'll back you up, Barnstable!"
"Does that mean that you'll be his second, Jack?" asked Harbinger, laughing.
"There, Tom," was the retort, "don't run a joke into the ground. When a man shows the genuine stuff, he isn't to be fooled any longer."
Bradish followed suit, and shook hands with Barnstable, and Harbinger after him.
"You're all right, Barnstable," Bradish observed; "but what are we to do with the Count?"
"Oh, that ass!" Jack responded. "I'd like to help duck him in a horse-pond; but of course as he didn't write the book, Mr. Barnstable won't mind apologizing for a hasty word said by mistake. Any gentleman would do that."
"Of course if you think it's all right," Barnstable said, "I'd rather apologize; but I'd rather fight than have any doubt about the way I feel toward the whelp that libelized my wife."
Jack took him by the shoulder, and spoke to him with a certain slow distinctness such as one might use in addressing a child.
"Do have some common sense about this, Barnstable," he said. "Do get it out of your head that the man who wrote that book knew anything about your affairs. I've told you that already."