"Look here," he went on quickly, as though he had suddenly arrived at a momentous decision, "don't let's beat about the bush. Let me come at once to business. Don't bother me with a lot of questions. I can now see that you are simply exploding to put a lot of interrogatories to me, beginning with a demand for the reason why I came to you at all; how I dared to dress myself up exactly like yourself; what on earth has Colonel Napier to do with this business; and ending with a perfectly legitimate request for my true reasons for having so strong and deadly a hatred against this man Fotheringay, whom I know, before he went out big game shooting, you always believed was your most firm and ardent friend. "Well, just don't ask me, that's all. If you do, I can't answer you. If you persist it will inevitably mean that you and I will have to part. In the latter case you will never get any nearer the solution of that mystery of lot eighty-two--the three manuscripts which were found in the effects of the dead Father Alphonse Calasanctius--than you are to-night. "As a matter of fact, I want your aid in deeds, not words. Now, say at once--are you prepared to trust me, and to help me, and not to bother me for a lot of utterly needless explanations that will really--take my word for it--leave you in a bigger fog than ever, or do you feel that you absolutely must have my confidence or turn up the work now, at once? Speak out quite plainly. Don't be influenced by the thought of cash. Consider the seven-fifty I have handed to you as yours--whatever happens. Now, bed-rock fact!" For a moment I reflected. My enthusiasm was stirred by his speech, and in turn I mentally defied Doris, the colonel, and even the weird old hunchback. "I am prepared to trust you," I answered, holding out my hand, which he clasped with the firm touch of a straightforward, honest man. "Then take this letter for me," he said, fumbling in the pocket of his cassock and producing therefrom a formidable-looking document done up with big splashes of red legal-looking wax. "Go to the House of Commons with it, and do not open it until you reach the hall in which Members of Parliament meet any strangers who desire to speak to them. Then read the instructions you will find therein and--" and all at once he stopped and looked confused. "And what?" I queried, rising from my seat and fixing his eyes with mine. "Well--you will see," he answered, with a strange smile, touching a bell, which warned me that our interview was at an end. CHAPTER FIVE. INTRODUCES THE HUNCHBACK. I left St Bruno's and made as hard as my motor would go for Westminster. Under the new rules I knew that the House of Commons did practically no business at all on Saturdays, so that if I missed the opportunity afforded me that night I realised that I should have to wait until Monday afternoon before I broke the seal.