“I give in, Lord Cuthbertson, I give in!” he cried. “Order this man to take off these absurd bracelets. I’ll do as you wish—throw in my lot with the British Government. Send him away, and let us discuss the terms.”
The Foreign Secretary lifted his eyes lazily from his papers and pretended to yawn. “I beg your pardon,” he said politely. “I was busy putting the finishing touches to a despatch. What was that you said?”
“I will sell the manuscripts to the British Government. I will give you the benefit of my services as translator,” repeated the hunchback.
Lord Cuthbertson yawned again. “Make a note of that offer, Fotheringay, will you?” he said, turning to the earl, “and speak to me about it when I’ve got a little more time. At present I’m too busy to think of these things as carefully as I ought.” And, rising, he nodded to Naylor, but the hunchback stood his ground.
“My lord,” said he warningly, “it’s now or never. Don’t play with me. Don’t push me too far. I will be with you now, but if not now I’ll be against you and your Government for ever, so be careful how you treat me.”
To my mind there was no question that Lord Cuthbertson never meant to let the hunchback leave that chapel; thus, as an outsider watching every feint and move in that closely-contested duel of wit and nerve, I recognised that all he did was pose—bluff—strategy of the lowest bullying type. All the same, I am not sure whether, if I had been in Peter Zouche’s shoes, I should have seen through the sharp practice of this pinchbeck Napoleon so easily. Indeed, I might as easily have been taken in as he was, for was there not at work that strange, compelling moral suasion of the handcuff?
“Very well, then,” said Lord Cuthbertson after a suitable pause. “I am, I repeat, very busy, very busy indeed, but I will see whether I can’t do as you ask. Naylor, take off those wristlets, and go out of the room for a few minutes; and you, Mr Zouche, come here quite close to us so that we can be quite certain that the terms of our understanding are not overheard by any of the other detectives we brought down from Scotland Yard to Shrewsbury last night.” The detective disappeared with the handcuffs, and the hunchback went close to the table and engaged in confidential conversation with the Foreign Secretary and the earl for nearly a quarter of an hour.
In vain Casteno and I worked and edged and wriggled. All of the men round the table spoke so low and so earnestly that we could not catch a single word of what they were saying, and we might just as well have gone back to the hotel, and there awaited the hunchback’s return, as have prowled so uneasily on the far side of those doors for all the good we did to our cause, until I had an idea which I put immediately into effect.
“Look here,” I whispered suddenly to my companion, “you come here instead of me and take a turn at peeping through the keyhole!”
“Why?” he queried in a thin, complaining voice. “Your eyes are better than mine, and your ears. You hear things twice as quickly as I do!”