Jack look significantly at Rigby, who nodded.
"Come round to my rooms," he suggested, "and let us talk this matter over. And now that you have once appeared in public, and now that you have once told part of your story in the witness-box, you might, at least, disclose the rest of it to two sympathetic friends like ourselves."
Just for a moment Seymour seemed to hesitate.
"Very well," he said. "If you don't get it from me you will from Lord Barmouth. If it had not been for Ferris and your discovery of him at the Great Metropolitan Hotel, nothing would have induced me to say a word. But I have more than a hope now that before long I shall stand before the world a changed man, and be able to take my place amongst my fellow creatures without being the subject of vulgar and idle curiosity. I will tell you everything when we get as far as your rooms."
It was over a whiskey and soda and a cigar that Seymour proceeded to tell his story. Both Jack and Rigby had heard the best part of it before. They knew all about the Mexican tribe and the dangers of the gold belt, but the cream of the mystery to them was the way in which a man of ordinary appearance could be transformed into so repulsive an object.
"The whole thing," said Seymour, as he approached the most fascinating part of his narrative, "was the way in which those people revenged themselves upon outsiders who had the temerity to invade the region of the gold belt. Mind you, they were a powerful tribe, and in some remote age or other had evidently been highly civilized. At the time Ferris and Barmouth and myself had the misfortune to find ourselves prisoners in their hands, they were absolutely eaten up with priestcraft. As I think I told you before, the most powerful man in the tribe was not a native at all, but an Englishman. You will not be surprised to hear that the Englishman's name was Anstruther. I did not know then as I know now what that man had gone through to learn the secret of where the great masses of gold were hidden. Interrupting my narrative for a moment--have either of you ever noticed a faint resemblance between Anstruther and any other Nostalgo like myself?"
"I have," Jack cried. "Especially in moments of passion."
"That I can quite easily understand," Seymour went on. "When Anstruther first fell into the hands of those people he was served in exactly the same way as I was served myself; in other words, one of those diabolically clever surgeons in the tribe turned him into a Nostalgo. Don't ask me how it is done; don't ask me to explain how the muscles are cut and knotted and twisted so as to give one the hideous deformity of face which is my curse at present. But Anstruther carried the same intolerable burden in his day. Why he was retained amongst the tribe; why he was not sent out into the world as an example to others, is not for me to say. Perhaps he made himself useful, for he is a clever man. Perhaps they had need of his services. At any rate, the devilish surgeon who could make a man look like a hideous demon fully understood the art of restoring a face to its normal aspect."
"But Ferris has discovered a surgeon who can do that," Jack explained. "He has already told us so."
"It is on Ferris's little Frenchman that I mainly rely," Seymour said. "Otherwise, I should fade out of this business, and you would see me no more."