“Your coffee will be cold,” remarked Agnes.
|Some days had passed before Claude Westwood was able to return to the Court. He seemed now to be as anxious for publicity as on his landing in England he had been to avoid it. He was daily with Messrs. Shekels & Shackles completing his arrangements with them for the production of his book, so as to preclude the need for another visit until he had written the last page of the manuscript. He did not want to be disturbed, he said, while engaged at the work; and Messrs. Shekels & Shackles cordially agreed with him in thinking that he should be allowed to give all his attention to the actual writing of his narrative, without being worried by any of the technical incidents of presenting it in book form to the public.
They urged upon him the advisability of losing no moment of time in settling down to his work. Already a valuable month had been thrown away, they reminded him; and although, happily, the reports from the North were to the effect that the winter had set in with such severity as to make it practically impossible for Mr. Glasnevin, the Arctic explorer, to free himself from his ice-prison before the spring, so that his formidable rivalry would not interfere with the popularity of Mr. Westwood, still they had heard that another gentleman might be expected any day from the Amazon. This gentleman, in addition to a narrative of two years' residence among the Indians of the Pampas, would, it was reported, be able to give the public photographs of the injuries which had been inflicted on him by his captors, who were known to be the most ingenious torturers in the world. They feared that if this gentleman got home during the winter his arrival would seriously interfere with the sale of Mr. Westwood's book. They could only hope, however, that the Foreign Office would take up the case of the traveller at the Amazon, for that would mean the indefinite postponement of his liberation, so that Mr. Westwood would have the field to himself.
Without waiting to say whether or not he took the same bright and cheery view of the freezing in of the Arctic explorer or of the operation of the British consular system in regard to the tortured gentleman in South America, Mr. Westwood promised to do his best for his optimistic if anxious publishers, and so departed.