Choking down any feeling of surprise I had on the subject, I meekly descended from the brougham at the heels of my companion and without a word of protest heard him tell his coachman: “Home.” It seemed to me then that we were both walking into the lion’s den together, and that, if anything untoward happened, much the same fate would befall us both.
The carriage rolled away, and as its red lights disappeared round the bend of the street, which seemed strangely silent and deserted, I was rather startled to hear my companion muffle something uncommonly like a sigh of regret. To think, of course, that he was a bit nervous about the upshot of our mission was nothing short of treason. None the less, as he advanced to the side door, and gave three peculiar taps on the woodwork, I found my hand travelling instinctively to that small pocket of mine in which rested a revolver.
Almost instantly his summons was answered, and there appeared, framed in the entrance, the grotesque figure of the hunchback, a man about four feet high, with a tiny head and face that instinctively recalled the profile of an eagle. He was carrying a candle in a heavy brass candlestick, and as he raised this above his head the light streamed full upon our features.
For a second he paused, uncertain what to do. Then a derisive smile curled around his toothless gums, and, with a sneer that I knew only too well from old and bitter experiences meant mischief, he said:
“Oh, it’s you, Nassington, also Glynn—is it? Well, come in. It’s as cheap inside as out, and not so deuced unpleasant.” And he backed up against the wall as we picked our way through the passage into a tiny parlour at the back of the shop.
The hunchback closed, locked, and bolted the door and followed us into the room, placing the candle, with great deliberation, on the mantelpiece. Then, rubbing his hands together and still sneering, he turned and faced us.
“And now, gentlemen,” he said, never attempting to ask us to be seated, “perhaps you will be as good as to tell me to what I owe the honour of this visit? Myself, I should have thought that my young friend here, Hugh Glynn, had had enough of Peter Zouche and his shop and of his way of paying out silly fellows who try to upset his plans.”
Cooper-Nassington took a step forward and interposed his big brawny frame between myself and the hunchback.
“Look here, Zouche,” he said in that strong, masterful way of his, “leave those tricks of nastiness for children, who may, perhaps, fly into a temper over them, and lose sight of the object of their visits, but we sha’n’t.” And he flung his hat deliberately on the table, and, dragging forward the most comfortable chair in the room, he coolly seated himself therein, pulled out a cigar case, extracted a weed therefrom, and began to smoke.
“As for you, Glynn,” he cried to me in a pause between the puffs, “you make yourself at home too. Have a cigar,” handing me the case and a box of vestas, “but don’t let that old scoundrel, Zouche, have one. It all depends on his behaviour whether we ever leave him again now we’ve taken up our quarters in this musty old den of his.” And he reached for a decanter of whiskey and a glass which were standing near, but the hunchback, who was now pallid with rage, made a grab for him and dragged them out of his grasp.