"All right," he said in that sharp, decisive way of his; "I won't beat about the bush any longer. You shall go with me, and if, between us, we don't make some of these fiends sit up, and do a fine stroke of business for the old flag, I'll sit down and let that man I hate so cordially-- Lord Cyril Cuthbertson--have a shot at it. But I won't--I won't--I won't." And once again he stretched out that vice-like hand of his to enforce his words on my over-slow imagination. But this time I was too quick for him--I slipped on one side--and he broke into a hearty laugh. "You'll do," he said admiringly, giving me a hearty slap on the back. "Just meet me at the main entrance to the House in thirty minutes, will you? Then we'll go straight on." But as he hastened back I could not help two questions recurring to me with startling distinctness: What "fiends" were those we had got to face? And why should an insignificant-looking fellow like Jose Casteno so well understand the bitter personal rivalries that spring up between strong men on the same party side in the British Houses of Parliament as to be able to play what looked like a game of childish see-saw between two such redoubtable antagonists as Lord Cyril Cuthbertson, His Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and John Cooper-Nassington, uncrowned Emperor of Greater South America? Both problems, however, were destined to be answered much more rapidly and sensationally than ever I expected when I left the House that night. I drove my Panhard at break-neck rate back to its garage in St Martin's Lane, Charing Cross, snatched a hurried meal, and tore back in a hansom to St Stephen's. One thing was soon evident--Cooper-Nassington was a man of his word. As a matter of fact, I hadn't been waiting three minutes by those large and imposing gates that mark the main entrance to the Houses of Parliament before his _coupe_ and handsome pair of bays clattered across the courtyard, and pulled up with a jerk close to the kerb, and he thrust his head out of the carriage and bade me enter. In response, I took a vacant seat beside him, and without a word being exchanged between footman and master, the servant mounted the box again, and the carriage was driven rapidly away.