The Hunchback of Westminster

“And did you find him?”

“No; he was too quick for me. I slipped as hard as I could to his chambers in Embankment Mansions in Whitehall Court, but he was not in them. They were closed and locked.”

“Embankment Mansions in Whitehall Court,” I repeated. “That is where Colonel Napier lives.” And as I uttered the name of the dead officer I scrutinised every line on Casteno’s face.

“Of course it is,” he responded, and not the smallest sign of excitement did he exhibit. “Paul, for some years, has had a set of chambers over the flat occupied by Colonel Napier. He has got one of those wild, hopeless passions that sometimes seize the lowly born for girls in the higher ranks of life, for Miss Napier.”

“Not Miss Doris Napier!” I interjected.

“Oh yes, Miss Doris. The thing is almost laughable – except for Paul, who is absolutely crazy on the subject, and who has often told me that on the day you are formally engaged to her he will shoot you like a dog.”

“Pleasant for me,” I observed, “extremely pleasant. Your father and I are old friends; how is it he didn’t warn me?”

“He always hoped that Paul would come to his senses. He was ashamed of the lad’s madness. He trusted that some other girl would appear on the scene to fascinate Paul. Besides, he did tell Colonel Napier about it. The colonel and he are related, as a matter of fact. Both of them married step-sisters; but my mother died many years ago.”

“I had no idea of this.”

“No doubt,” returned the Spaniard courteously. “Lovers don’t usually trouble to inquire as to the relations of the girls they love until after marriage. If they did, cynics say that they would spare themselves a good many highly unpleasant surprises. The colonel, of course, was equally annoyed about this infatuation, and I am told that only a few days ago he met Paul on the stairs of the flat and gave him a good beating with his cane for daring to send Miss Napier a bunch of flowers. Perhaps, however, this is only idle gossip. I heard it from a servant whom my father had recently dismissed. He said that Paul was so incensed at this outrage that he would have stabbed the colonel dead on the spot if he had had his dagger with him. Luckily, he had forgotten that morning to fasten it on – ”

“I am not so sure about that,” I answered slowly and with great distinctness, “although, now I came to think of it, I did recollect that in the old days Doris had told me a good deal about the persecutions she had suffered from the ridiculous attentions of a foreign boy who lived in the set of rooms above theirs – attentions, I am sorry to say, I had only laughed to scorn.”

“Not so sure!” echoed my companion in tones of genuine disgust and horror. “Why, would you, Mr Glynn, have liked my brother to make an attempt on his uncle’s life?”

“That would have been better than what happened,” I returned meaningly.

“Why, what was that?” cried the Spaniard in alarm.

“Somebody crept into his bedroom as the colonel slept and stabbed him to the heart – to be precise, the exact hour you left me to search for Paul.”

“Good heavens!” gasped Casteno, falling back. “Then the wretched boy has broken loose from his reason and carried out his insane idea of revenge! Ah! now I see it all. That was why I caught him lurking about your office! He had tracked Colonel Napier there earlier, and had no notion that he had returned to Whitehall Court until he saw a strange figure at your door.”

“Even that doesn’t explain who killed the clumber spaniel Fate.”

“I think it does,” urged Casteno stoutly. “The dog knew, somehow, he had done wrong to his master and would not leave him. In a fit of passion and terror Paul whipped out his knife and stabbed him.”

“But that would happen near Whitehall Court. How came the dog to die in a passage near Stanton Street?”

“He must have been making for your office: remember all dogs have odd gleams of foresight at times.”

For a few moments we walked on in silence. The duel had been a sharp one and a long one, but already I was possessed with an uncomfortable suspicion that the Spaniard had won. Even as I surveyed the ruins of my theories I was conscious that little was left to connect Casteno with the murder.

“But do you think your brother Paul will be discovered?” I asked.

“I cannot tell,” said Casteno, and I could see now he was sincerely grieved at the disastrous intelligence I had communicated to him. “There are sure to be plenty of people in Embankment Mansions who will remember the caning which the lad had from the colonel on the stairs. They will be certain, when they recover their wits, to give the police the details of that affray; also there is that discharged servant I spoke of – the man Butterworth. He hates Paul like poison. He will leave no stone unturned, I am certain, to connect the lad with the crime.

“Still, mere suspicion is one thing, and evidence strong enough to warrant arrest is another,” he added after a moment’s careful consideration. “Perhaps, after all, I am wrong. Somebody else may have done it. We shall see.”

“Whoever it is I shall do my best to bring them to justice,” I cried hotly. “I don’t care whether it is Paul Zouche – ”

“Of course not,” replied Casteno with much dignity. “I have no doubt you will communicate all I have repeated to you to Scotland Yard. Indeed, I never had any two opinions on that score. At the same time you must excuse me if I don’t evince any keen desire to debate the matter further.”

“I never asked you to do so,” I retorted, anxious not to be outdone in courtesy by the Spaniard. “All your statements to me were practically volunteered.”

“True,” said Casteno. “As a matter of fact, I felt they were honestly due to you. I saw that my absence from your rooms at the time when the colonel was murdered looked very ugly for me. Very ugly, indeed.”

“Particularly after you had warned the man only an hour previously that if he didn’t do a certain thing, which he subsequently declined to do for you, he would regret his action before four and twenty hours had passed.”

“Quite so. Quite so. All the same, that was but a figure of speech. Myself, I had no idea of violence or revenge. My sole impression was of his gross injustice to yourself, which I felt Time himself would most quickly avenge.

“Still,” he went on, and now his tones were particularly grave, “don’t let us go on debating this business further. It is very awful – it is dreadfully tragic – and it seems to strike right at the heart of the family life of us both. Let us leave it where it stands. I am sure myself a crime like that, in the heart of London, can’t remain hidden for many days, particularly with such assistance as you will be able to give the police when you have a few moments to spare to write or to wire to the headquarters staff at Scotland Yard. Therefore don’t pursue the matter with me any longer. Realise that you, and I too, are engaged on a business of gigantic international importance. Aren’t you curious to hear what I have arranged since I sent you that telegram informing you my father, as I suppose I must now call the hunchback when I speak of him to you, had picked up with this flying machine inventor, Sparhawk, and had actually determined to go on a journey through the air with him to-morrow in a brand new flying machine?”

“I am very curious,” I admitted. “I had no idea old Peter had such adventurous tastes.”

“Nor have any of his friends. Yet such is the fact. He has really two natures – the student’s and the explorer’s, – always at work within him; and I never knew him have a big job on, like the deciphering of those three manuscripts relating to the Lake of Sacred Treasure, that he has not eased the strain on his brain, caused by the hours of close attention which the work demands, by going on some wild excursion of this sort. Curiously enough, too, he has always believed in flying machines. It has been one of the dreams of his life to patent one which he could present to Spain for use in warfare. Indeed, all the time Santos-Dumont was making those daring ascents of his in Paris he haunted the French capital in the hope he might pick up some tips for his own models, which he keeps in a disused stable near the Crystal Palace, and which he works on every Sunday after he has heard Mass in that impressive-looking church in Spanish Place.”

“But how about his studies?” I asked.

“Oh, he doesn’t find Shrewsbury hotel life agree with him. He and Sparhawk are only waiting here until the fête to-morrow, and then they’ll career off; and wherever they drop, even if it is only in a village seven miles away, they will not trouble to come back here. They’ve quite resolved to cut off to some other part of England, but where, I can’t for the life of me find out. Still, I think I have done very well to book up the only two seats they offered for sale to the public, don’t you? We shall have to be careful, of course, or they will see through our disguises. At all events, they’ll find it hard to shake us off – ”

“Unless the apparatus goes wrong and drops us to earth.”

“Well, we must take all those risks, mustn’t we? And, by Jove, talking of angels, here we can see two of them – at least, there are Captain Sparhawk and the worthy hunchback walking off together up the street yonder. Let’s follow them. By the way in which they’ve put their heads together they’re up to no good I am certain. Just before you came I peered through the keyhole of my father’s room, and I saw him hard at work on the manuscripts. Now, what on earth can have happened to have made him give it up so suddenly and dress himself up as though he were going for a long journey?”

“He may have discovered something startling and strange,” I answered, a great fear now in my heart. “Those documents may have yielded up their secret to him. See! he’s going in the direction of the railway station. He may be going back to town.”

“Or to the shed where Sparhawk keeps his flying machine. It lies in this direction – in a street parallel with the railway station. Luckily, we have not far to go before we shall see what they are up to. Personally, I don’t like the look of things at all.” And we both of us quickened our pace.

Outside a fence that skirted a long and rambling garden they were joined by a third companion – a girl attired in a bright summer costume, who chatted with them gaily as they marched steadily forward.

“Who can that be?” cried Casteno, much puzzled. “I did not know my father had any woman friends.”

“Well, let’s slip to the other side of the street,” I suggested. “Then we can catch a glimpse of her face. The figure certainly seems very familiar to me, although my short sight often plays me the strangest of pranks.”

We stepped quickly across the road, and with a few strategic movements materially lessened the space between us and the trio in front.

A moment later the girl turned her face in the direction of the hunchback, evidently to exchange some jest with him, for her features were wreathed in smiles.

I stopped short in astonishment.

It was no other than Doris Napier!

Casteno recognised her almost at the same moment that I did. The effect upon him was just as great, for he, too, halted and gazed at me with an expression of vague but sincere concern.

“This is odd – very odd!” he muttered. “I had no idea that Miss Napier was out of London. I wonder, now, how she came to have missed all news of her father’s death? Can she have mixed herself up in this manuscript hunt – under pressure from Lord Cyril Cuthbertson or the Earl of Fotheringay, for instance? I remember, now, that she was a great patriot at one time – used to speak for the Primrose League and organisations like that. It would have been a masterly stroke on their part to get hold of her – to work on my father – for he has had always a very soft corner in his heart for her, and in the old days the colonel used to say there was nothing he would refuse her. What do you think, Glynn?” he added, turning suddenly to me. “Is it your idea that she has come under some lofty notion that England’s interests are in peril both from the Jesuits and from Spain, and if she doesn’t circumvent these enemies the Lake of Sacred Treasure will be lost to this country for ever?”

But I refused to be drawn. Her appearance was sudden, too unexpected. “I don’t know,” I answered. “I can’t even guess. The thing may be a ruse on the part of the wretch that killed her father. He may fear the effect of her disclosures. I must wait; just now I cannot see.”

“At all events, I am sure the hunchback is no partisan to any move like that last one you mention,” returned Casteno stoutly, with something resembling offended family pride vibrating through his voice. “Indeed, I am certain that as yet he knows nothing, absolutely nothing, about the tragedy at Whitehall Court. He has been too busy trying to decipher the manuscripts to have had any time or strength to glance at the Saturday night or Sunday morning papers. As for Captain Sparhawk, like all enthusiastic inventors, he is a man of one idea. He can think of nothing, talk of nothing, dream of nothing, read of nothing but the flying machine which he is going to try to-morrow in the Quarry at the great floral fête.”