“I am a Spaniard.”
“Quite so.” And again there was silence, during which the hunchback shuffled uneasily, for, although he was brave enough in conflict, silence tried him, like it does all highly-strung men.
Another footstep made itself heard, and through the keyhole Casteno and I caught sight of the burly proportions of Detective-Inspector Naylor standing in front of the Foreign Secretary, his hand raised at the salute.
“What orders, my lord,” he asked.
“Oh!” replied the Foreign Secretary carelessly, still going on with his correspondence, “I think you will find a man there at the end of the table standing quite close to you. His name is Peter Zanch or Zouch, or something foreign and uncanny like that. The Home Office has issued a warrant for his arrest on some serious charges. Put a pair of handcuffs on him and take him up to Bow Street, will you? Be very careful, too, how you search him. He has got three old, valuable manuscripts somewhere—either in his pockets, amongst his luggage at the Green Dragon Hotel, or hidden in the rooms in which he is in temporary occupation. Arrange for a careful search for those before you leave Shropshire.”
“I will, my lord,” returned Naylor, stretching out a muscular hand and taking a firm hold of the hunchback. “As a matter of fact, I know this man very well. I have been to his shop in Westminster scores of times!” And he took a step forward, as though he would move Zouche promptly out of the room.
Now, as I have hinted before, the hunchback had plenty of pride, and as he felt this coarse-grained Briton attempt to drag him unceremoniously away from the table at which Lord Cuthbertson, Lord Fotheringay, and the lawyer still sat immovable and unconcerned, as though no such person as himself existed within a radius of one hundred miles of them, his rage mastered him.
“I will never go, never!” he shrieked, and he whipped out a revolver and actually levelled it at the officer and fired it, but Naylor was too quick for him, and in a flash knocked the muzzle of the revolver upward.
“Humph! a dangerous customer, I see,” exclaimed the detective coolly. “Well, you can’t be left to go as a gentleman, that’s all. I must treat you as a criminal.” And whipping out his handcuffs he had them snapped on Zouche’s wrists in a couple of seconds.
Oddly enough, what threats, persuasions, offers of bribes, actual violence had failed to win the touch of that cold steel accomplished. Personally, I have seen the same thing happen scores of times, but, to the general public, the moral power of the silent handcuff must ever rank as one of the greatest of the modern noiseless miracles. Certainly it was so in the case of the hunchback. No sooner did he find himself really captured than all his braggadocio left him—dropped from him like a moth-eaten mantle.