The Hunchback of Westminster

With a nod that might mean anything or nothing I fell into step with my companion. By this time Doris, the hunchback, and the aeronaut had got quite a considerable distance ahead. As a matter of fact, I was just then struggling with a fierce desire to rush forward – to see Doris face to face – to speak with her – to tell her all that had happened – to warn her of her dangers – to assure her and myself that nothing on earth could part us. Hence it was I could not carry on any conversation no matter how important. I had first to conquer myself. Haste would ruin all.

Unfortunately, we had not proceeded many yards before the worst we could have anticipated happened. All at once the three whom we were pursuing stopped at a gate which led, by way of a drive, up to a large, superior-looking house. A tall, interesting stranger with the clear-cut features of a typical barrister, who has not been down long enough from ’Varsity life to forget all the graces, stepped up to them, and then the entire party moved round and went into the house, the door of which closed behind them.

“Confound it! we shall learn nothing like this,” snapped Casteno, biting his lips in his annoyance. “I thought I knew my father’s habits and methods pretty well, but ever since I have been down here at Shrewsbury he has managed to throw me out of my reckoning continually. Now, what are we to do, Glynn? Had we better grin and bear it, or ought we to try if we can’t find out for ourselves what is happening in this place?”

I turned round stolidly and motioned to a boy who was passing, his eyes fixed in admiration on the uniform I was wearing – that of a sergeant in the Royal Engineers. “Who lives in this house?” I asked, and a sixpenny piece travelled from my palm to his.

“Nobody – often,” answered the lad, with a smile. “As a matter of fact, it belongs to the Earl of Fotheringay, like the most of the property does hereabout. He came down here late last night. I know, because I serve him with milk.” And with a self-conscious nod the juvenile tradesman pulled himself together and passed on.

“There! What did I tell you?” asked Casteno. “Didn’t I suggest Miss Napier had been inveigled into this business to help Lord Fotheringay out of his difficulties? You mark my words. This walk of theirs – this meeting – this encounter outside these gates – are all a plant – a trap designed to get the hunchback into the Government’s clutches. Our duty now is clear. We must find our way inside and checkmate any of their moves at once.”

“Steadily,” I replied, “steadily,” pulling the excited Spaniard down a long, narrow, leaf-covered passage that ran by the side of a wall which skirted the limit of the grounds attached to the house. “It is all very well to pull up these theories in this fashion; but there is one great helper of ours always ready to checkmate both Fotheringay and Cuthbertson, and him you have quite forgotten. Now, remembering the existence of Mr Cooper-Nassington, why should we go and put our necks in jeopardy, eh?” And out of the corner of an eye I shot a quick glance at Casteno. It had been long on my mind to find out what that Honourable Member was up to, and I realised that this was a most favourable chance. After all, we had to wait for a decent interval. There was just a possibility that the trio might re-appear and return to the Green Dragon.

Casteno, however, seemed to be on this occasion perfectly frank. “Cooper-Nassington,” he explained, “is by no means idle. He is as hard at work as you or I. As a matter of fact, he has run up to Whitby, in Yorkshire, where he has an interest in a shipbuilding yard and an iron mine, and he is fitting out an expedition for Mexico, which will leave immediately we get wind of the exact spot where the Lake of Sacred Treasure may be found.”

“And he does all this for England, and so do you?”

“Yes – in a way – yes,” the Spaniard replied hesitatingly. “There is a lot of things to explain which I can’t explain yet. But that’s the substantial fact.”

“Then why do you fight the hunchback, you a Spaniard,” I queried, “when all the benefit will go to England if you succeed, not to Spain?”

Casteno never flinched. “That’s another thing which I can’t make clear to you just now; but perhaps it may be enough for you if I say the whole thing turns on my quarrel with my father and my love for Camille Velasquon. But stop,” he went on in a different voice; “we can’t go on exchanging confidences like this or we shall never get down to business at all. What do you say to slipping over this wall and stealing across the grounds? Often most valuable clues can be picked up by spies who get beneath windows and peer in at the corners at critical times.”

“All right. Time presses. Let’s see what we can manage,” I said. After all, I had now no love for Lord Fotheringay. I was just as glad of an opportunity of upsetting his little schemes as was Casteno. Besides, did not every move I made then take me just a little nearer to the solution of that mysterious appearance of Doris?

Selecting a point where the wall stood but seven or eight feet from the ground we quietly scrambled to the top by the aid of some projecting stones and then dropped on the other side to the turf at that extremity of the garden. Between ourselves and the house lay a belt of thick, high shrubs, then a long stretch of greensward, and afterwards two or three terraces flanked by urns, in which geraniums and other gaudily-coloured flowers had been planted. In the deepening shadows we flitted like two spectres – swiftly and silently – until at length we found beneath our feet the beds of plants which blossomed outside the quaint old mullioned windows in the front of the house.

Stealthily we crept from point to point, intent on hearing the voices of the trio we sought, or at least of catching some token of their presence. Time after time we raised our heads above the level of the window-sills and peered into the interiors, so cool, so fresh, so tastefully furnished. Nothing but disappointment seemed to dog our footsteps. We could not catch a glimpse of a single living person in the entire ground floor of that house.

At last Casteno stopped. “Look here!” he said in that quick, decisive way of his. “We can’t go on like this. The more I examine this place the more convinced I am that there is something radically wrong about it and in that arrangement between Fotheringay and the hunchback. Now the point is this: will you make a bold stand if I do? You are in disguise; so am I. If we are caught, let us pretend that we are sweethearts of two of the servants who, we regret to find, have left – but, at all events, let us slip through these rooms and see what we can discover.”

“Very well,” I answered. “But if we are to have any success, we must have no pride. First of all, we must take off our boots and carry them.”

Chapter Fourteen.

Which Contains a Fresh Development

The Spaniard made a slight grimace, but, quickly recovering himself, he did as he was bidden, and we scrambled headlong into one of the reception-rooms without another moment’s hesitation.

This apartment was furnished in a light and modern style, but it bore no trace of recent occupation. Consequently, we did not waste any unnecessary time in its examination but made at once for the hall on to which it abutted. One of those noble staircases we seldom if ever find in a town mansion led to the rooms above; and at a nod from me Casteno stepped boldly upward to a door that stood slightly ajar.

Placing a warning finger on his lips he dropped to his hands and knees almost as soon as I reached the topmost stair and peered through the aperture. I also stretched over him and peeped at the interior, and even as we did so we both started back. For there, in a room fitted up like a boudoir, was the poor but over-venturesome aeronaut, Sparhawk, firmly fixed on a high-backed oaken chair with his hands tied securely behind him, his mouth tied with a handkerchief, while a piece of rope held his neck tightly pressed against the wood.

Another moment, and I am sure that, whatever might have been the consequences, we should have darted in and released him had not another object in the room caught and held our attention. That was no other than Doris herself, who had evidently been put on guard over the too venturesome captain, and was now promenading up and down the room, with a loaded revolver, trying to look fierce and commanding and well accustomed to firearms, but failing, I am bound to own, most miserably in the attempt.

Obeying a touch from the Spaniard I drew back down a few of the stairs and held a hurried consultation with him. “It seems to me,” he said, with a sly chuckle, “as though the worthy captain showed a little fight when he found that he had been trapped and that some of our friends thought it would be better if they kept him quiet for a little while so that they could fix things up with my father in comparative peace. For a time, at all events, I propose we leave him with Miss Doris.”

“So do I,” I said. “We have really no business with him except to go on that journey in his flying machine, and if he doesn’t come up to time we can always tell the committee of the fête where to find him. Now, let’s push on. As I turned away for the door of the room in which he is confined I think I saw the entrance to an oratory or chapel, and once I am almost certain I caught the sounds of voices. Let us go and explore that next.”

And I turned my face about and made for the end of the passage where I had noticed a big pair of folding doors, on the panels of which had been carved the sacred monogram and a cross about two feet in height. As I had suspected, this was the place to which the hunchback had been taken. True, the doors had been shut, but there was no key in the lock, and the first glance through the hole revealed to us the interior of a family chapel that had been turned into a kind of assembly hall, for a long oaken table ran down the centre, flanked by rows of stalls on either side that, no doubt, had occupied honoured positions in the chancel. At the top end of this table sat no less a personage than His Majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, with a quill in his hand, busily writing on some large blue official-looking paper. To the right of Lord Cyril sat Lord Fotheringay, who was also bending over some documents, while opposite to him was the lawyer we had seen outside the gate – the man who had first of all spoken to Doris and her companions – and he was reading aloud from a large book in front of him a queer, legal jargon that suggested some Act of Parliament that had been for centuries on the statute-book.

For a moment the object of all this attention eluded us, but only for a moment. Suddenly, the lawyer stopped, and Lord Cyril Cuthbertson looked up, an expression of annoyance on his firm but forbidding features. Then we saw the hunchback spring to the bottom of the table, on which he laid a fist trembling with passion.

“This is monstrous,” he cried, “monstrous! I repeat, I am no more an Englishman than is the Holy Father at Rome or the Emperor Nicholas, or my own beloved King Alphonso. I, therefore, deny your right to detain me here – to threaten me with penalties – to torture me with the knowledge that you have determined to stop at nothing to gain possession of those three manuscripts relating to the Lake of Sacred Treasure.”

“Then give them up, my good man,” replied Lord Cyril Cuthbertson suavely. “I have told you I will compensate you for them richly. It shall be no question of what they have cost you but of what they may mean to you.”

“And I refuse,” repeated the man doggedly. “I refuse. I have refused – I shall always refuse!”

“Why?” persisted the Foreign Secretary, fixing two piercing eyes on the Spaniard. “Don’t think we English politicians are fools, because, in a word, we are not. I know there is an idea abroad on the Continent that because our Secret Service Fund is so small it is utterly ineffective. But that is not true. We have been quite sharp enough to know that ever since you set foot in London you have acted as one of the spies of Spain, and in pursuance of instructions from Madrid you have often bribed some of our men to do worse things than even Alfred Dreyfus was accused of, and have often brought yourself within the meshes of our criminal law. Don’t presume too far on British complacency and good humour. We will go far, very far, to preserve the amenities of diplomacy, but over these manuscripts, with your bloodthirsty dreams of a great new Spanish empire that will sack London, you are pushing us a little too hard. Nor is that the worst. We have got your favourite son Paul in our hands at last. We have only to lift a finger and he, too, will be utterly crushed.”

As it happened, however, the hunchback seemed to think but lightly of this threat against his favourite son, or he was certainly one of the cleverest actors in real life I had ever seen. “We are all in the hands of the British Government, Lord Cuthbertson,” he said, with a quick assumption of dignity that matched but ill with the Foreign Secretary’s high and overbearing tones. “Paul Zouche is no coward; and whatever blows Fate has in store for him he will meet them with a courage that befits a son of Spain in exile from his native land.”

“No doubt, no doubt,” cut in Lord Fotheringay, as though he were anxious no more should be said on the subject of Paul’s guilt just at that moment. “We all of us trust that he will, although at present things which you don’t seem to have any knowledge of look very black against him. Still, that is not the point we invited you into this assembly hall of mine to discuss.”

“Scarcely invited!” echoed the hunchback with an ill-repressed sneer. “Say, rather, tricked by the aid of a niece of mine. What did you do to poor Sparhawk when he got hot and angry and struck out in my defence?”

“Well, say ‘tricked,’ then,” observed Lord Cuthbertson. “What of that? We are all of us playing for high stakes, and in a game affecting national interests we can’t rely on everyday rules that do very well for ordinary men at ordinary times. Will you answer our plain question? – will you give up those manuscripts to the British Government, or will you not?”

“I will not,” retorted the hunchback proudly.

“They are mine. I have bought them. I shall do with them exactly as I please.”

“I am not so sure about that,” remarked the Foreign Secretary meditatively, bending forward and pressing the button of an electric bell fixed on the table in front of him. “At all events, for a time your movements must be hampered, for I see here, amongst the documents that have just been sent down from Downing Street to me for signature, is a copy of a warrant for your arrest from the Home Office on a charge of bribery of certain officials now employed at Woolwich Arsenal. My idea is that it ought to be put into effect at once.”

“Oh, but that is preposterous!” snorted the hunchback, going very white. “I shall resist it. I shall appeal to the Spanish Ambassador. I will let the public know how I’ve been tricked here in Shrewsbury whilst I was engaged on one of the most peaceable of missions – the financing and development of a new flying machine.”

“Quite so; I should,” said the Foreign Secretary, writing busily, as though he were utterly indifferent to what the hunchback said, did, or thought. “Our dear British public loves revelations of all sorts – the more sensational the better. I only hope the press won’t praise me for the part I have taken in the business and call me one of the nation’s patriots for setting the nation’s needs above the ordinary rules of criminal procedure. You really can have no idea of how keen they have become on stringing up traitors of all nationalities since some of our grim experiences in the South African War.”

“I’m not a traitor,” thundered the hunchback. “No?” said Lord Cuthbertson, all the inquiry in his assent.

“I am a Spaniard.”

“Quite so.” And again there was silence, during which the hunchback shuffled uneasily, for, although he was brave enough in conflict, silence tried him, like it does all highly-strung men.

Another footstep made itself heard, and through the keyhole Casteno and I caught sight of the burly proportions of Detective-Inspector Naylor standing in front of the Foreign Secretary, his hand raised at the salute.

“What orders, my lord,” he asked.

“Oh!” replied the Foreign Secretary carelessly, still going on with his correspondence, “I think you will find a man there at the end of the table standing quite close to you. His name is Peter Zanch or Zouch, or something foreign and uncanny like that. The Home Office has issued a warrant for his arrest on some serious charges. Put a pair of handcuffs on him and take him up to Bow Street, will you? Be very careful, too, how you search him. He has got three old, valuable manuscripts somewhere – either in his pockets, amongst his luggage at the Green Dragon Hotel, or hidden in the rooms in which he is in temporary occupation. Arrange for a careful search for those before you leave Shropshire.”

“I will, my lord,” returned Naylor, stretching out a muscular hand and taking a firm hold of the hunchback. “As a matter of fact, I know this man very well. I have been to his shop in Westminster scores of times!” And he took a step forward, as though he would move Zouche promptly out of the room.

Now, as I have hinted before, the hunchback had plenty of pride, and as he felt this coarse-grained Briton attempt to drag him unceremoniously away from the table at which Lord Cuthbertson, Lord Fotheringay, and the lawyer still sat immovable and unconcerned, as though no such person as himself existed within a radius of one hundred miles of them, his rage mastered him.

“I will never go, never!” he shrieked, and he whipped out a revolver and actually levelled it at the officer and fired it, but Naylor was too quick for him, and in a flash knocked the muzzle of the revolver upward.

“Humph! a dangerous customer, I see,” exclaimed the detective coolly. “Well, you can’t be left to go as a gentleman, that’s all. I must treat you as a criminal.” And whipping out his handcuffs he had them snapped on Zouche’s wrists in a couple of seconds.