I turned round stolidly and motioned to a boy who was passing, his eyes fixed in admiration on the uniform I was wearing—that of a sergeant in the Royal Engineers. “Who lives in this house?” I asked, and a sixpenny piece travelled from my palm to his.
“Nobody—often,” answered the lad, with a smile. “As a matter of fact, it belongs to the Earl of Fotheringay, like the most of the property does hereabout. He came down here late last night. I know, because I serve him with milk.” And with a self-conscious nod the juvenile tradesman pulled himself together and passed on.
“There! What did I tell you?” asked Casteno. “Didn’t I suggest Miss Napier had been inveigled into this business to help Lord Fotheringay out of his difficulties? You mark my words. This walk of theirs—this meeting—this encounter outside these gates—are all a plant—a trap designed to get the hunchback into the Government’s clutches. Our duty now is clear. We must find our way inside and checkmate any of their moves at once.”
“Steadily,” I replied, “steadily,” pulling the excited Spaniard down a long, narrow, leaf-covered passage that ran by the side of a wall which skirted the limit of the grounds attached to the house. “It is all very well to pull up these theories in this fashion; but there is one great helper of ours always ready to checkmate both Fotheringay and Cuthbertson, and him you have quite forgotten. Now, remembering the existence of Mr Cooper-Nassington, why should we go and put our necks in jeopardy, eh?” And out of the corner of an eye I shot a quick glance at Casteno. It had been long on my mind to find out what that Honourable Member was up to, and I realised that this was a most favourable chance. After all, we had to wait for a decent interval. There was just a possibility that the trio might re-appear and return to the Green Dragon.
Casteno, however, seemed to be on this occasion perfectly frank. “Cooper-Nassington,” he explained, “is by no means idle. He is as hard at work as you or I. As a matter of fact, he has run up to Whitby, in Yorkshire, where he has an interest in a shipbuilding yard and an iron mine, and he is fitting out an expedition for Mexico, which will leave immediately we get wind of the exact spot where the Lake of Sacred Treasure may be found.”
“And he does all this for England, and so do you?”
“Yes—in a way—yes,” the Spaniard replied hesitatingly. “There is a lot of things to explain which I can’t explain yet. But that’s the substantial fact.”
“Then why do you fight the hunchback, you a Spaniard,” I queried, “when all the benefit will go to England if you succeed, not to Spain?”
Casteno never flinched. “That’s another thing which I can’t make clear to you just now; but perhaps it may be enough for you if I say the whole thing turns on my quarrel with my father and my love for Camille Velasquon. But stop,” he went on in a different voice; “we can’t go on exchanging confidences like this or we shall never get down to business at all. What do you say to slipping over this wall and stealing across the grounds? Often most valuable clues can be picked up by spies who get beneath windows and peer in at the corners at critical times.”
“All right. Time presses. Let’s see what we can manage,” I said. After all, I had now no love for Lord Fotheringay. I was just as glad of an opportunity of upsetting his little schemes as was Casteno. Besides, did not every move I made then take me just a little nearer to the solution of that mysterious appearance of Doris?