"First," said Cooper-Nassington, who by unanimous request had taken the head of the table, with Doris and I on his right hand and Casteno on his left and the colonel to the front of him, "you are both, no doubt, literally dying to know how Lord Cyril came to tumble from his pinnacle as Foreign Secretary in a day as it were. Well, don't trouble to look at the papers. They are full of lies, as usual. They pretend it is failing health, that the strain of European complications has been too much for him, that he's threatened with softening of the brain; but all that is really nonsense. I got at the great man myself, and I _made_ him resign!" And, swelling with pride and importance, the Member of Parliament rose and gazed delightedly upon us. "You actually did!" we cried in a breath; but he waved our dissent aside. "Yes; I contrived it all," he went on. "As a matter of fact, I did it by bluff, sheer bluff; but I knew my man, and I knew where to hit him. He had tried to crush us, and I recognised that the time had come when, if we didn't wish to be totally exterminated, we must fall upon him and demolish him." And we both nodded, recalling that cruel letter of his to Jose. The Member of Parliament paused for a moment theatrically, and then went on in a more grave and earnest tone. At the bottom we could see he was really profoundly touched by the turn events had taken and by our own good fortune, but, British like, he sought to hide it by a jocularity and levity he was very far, indeed, from feeling. "I got a private interview with him at the Foreign Office this afternoon," he said, "just after he had announced to a delighted House all about the wonderful discovery he had made of documents that proved that the sacred lake belonged to England, and that a mission would be despatched forthwith to take possession of it. This he did on the strength of the forged manuscripts which Naylor found in the safe when he searched St Bruno's from top to bottom. `Cuthbertson,' I began very firmly, `you've been fooled, fooled completely. Those are not the documents you want at all. They are forgeries, as your experts will rapidly discover; forgeries made by the hunchback's good-for-nothing second son.' He stormed and he raved, and he sent for old Peter Zouche and his son Paul, who, of course, had to admit the truth of what I said, and then he lost nerve completely, begged my pardon, and tried to come to terms with me. `Let me have the real things,' he pleaded, `and I'll release your friends. I'll give you a share of the credit of the discovery, and at the first opportunity I have I'll find you a snug place in the Government.'