“Fancy one of us being as cool as that, if he knew he had to stand up within an hour and rattle off a speech in Parliament. I ‘d be in a devil of a funk myself. And yet he is as keen over that book he’s reading as though he had nothing before him until bedtime.”
“Yes, see how eager he is,” whispered the youngest member. “He does not lift his eyes even now when he cuts the pages. It is probably an Admiralty Report, or some other weighty work of statistics which bears upon his speech.”
The gentleman with the black pearl laughed morosely.
“The weighty work in which the eminent statesman is so deeply engrossed,” he said, “is called ‘The Great Rand Robbery.’ It is a detective novel, for sale at all bookstalls.”
The American raised his eyebrows in disbelief.
“‘The Great Rand Robbery’?” he repeated incredulously. “What an odd taste!”
“It is not a taste, it is his vice,” returned the gentleman with the pearl stud. “It is his one dissipation. He is noted for it. You, as a stranger, could hardly be expected to know of this idiosyncrasy. Mr. Gladstone sought relaxation in the Greek poets, Sir Andrew finds his in Gaboriau. Since I have been a member of Parliament I have never seen him in the library without a shilling shocker in his hands. He brings them even into the sacred precincts of the House, and from the Government benches reads them concealed inside his hat. Once started on a tale of murder, robbery, and sudden death, nothing can tear him from it, not even the call of the division bell, nor of hunger, nor the prayers of the party Whip. He gave up his country house because when he journeyed to it in the train he would become so absorbed in his detective stories that he was invariably carried past his station.” The member of Parliament twisted his pearl stud nervously, and bit at the edge of his mustache. “If it only were the first pages of ‘The Rand Robbery’ that he were reading,” he murmured bitterly, “instead of the last! With such another book as that, I swear I could hold him here until morning. There would be no need of chloroform to keep him from the House.”
The eyes of all were fastened upon Sir Andrew, and each saw with fascination that with his forefinger he was now separating the last two pages of the book. The member of Parliament struck the table softly with his open palm.
“I would give a hundred pounds,” he whispered, “if I could place in his hands at this moment a new story of Sherlock Holmes—a thousand pounds,” he added wildly—“five thousand pounds!”
The American observed the speaker sharply, as though the words bore to him some special application, and then at an idea which apparently had but just come to him, smiled in great embarrassment.