The Hunchback of Westminster

Oddly enough, what threats, persuasions, offers of bribes, actual violence had failed to win the touch of that cold steel accomplished. Personally, I have seen the same thing happen scores of times, but, to the general public, the moral power of the silent handcuff must ever rank as one of the greatest of the modern noiseless miracles. Certainly it was so in the case of the hunchback. No sooner did he find himself really captured than all his braggadocio left him – dropped from him like a moth-eaten mantle.

“I give in, Lord Cuthbertson, I give in!” he cried. “Order this man to take off these absurd bracelets. I’ll do as you wish – throw in my lot with the British Government. Send him away, and let us discuss the terms.”

The Foreign Secretary lifted his eyes lazily from his papers and pretended to yawn. “I beg your pardon,” he said politely. “I was busy putting the finishing touches to a despatch. What was that you said?”

“I will sell the manuscripts to the British Government. I will give you the benefit of my services as translator,” repeated the hunchback.

Lord Cuthbertson yawned again. “Make a note of that offer, Fotheringay, will you?” he said, turning to the earl, “and speak to me about it when I’ve got a little more time. At present I’m too busy to think of these things as carefully as I ought.” And, rising, he nodded to Naylor, but the hunchback stood his ground.

“My lord,” said he warningly, “it’s now or never. Don’t play with me. Don’t push me too far. I will be with you now, but if not now I’ll be against you and your Government for ever, so be careful how you treat me.”

To my mind there was no question that Lord Cuthbertson never meant to let the hunchback leave that chapel; thus, as an outsider watching every feint and move in that closely-contested duel of wit and nerve, I recognised that all he did was pose – bluff – strategy of the lowest bullying type. All the same, I am not sure whether, if I had been in Peter Zouche’s shoes, I should have seen through the sharp practice of this pinchbeck Napoleon so easily. Indeed, I might as easily have been taken in as he was, for was there not at work that strange, compelling moral suasion of the handcuff?

“Very well, then,” said Lord Cuthbertson after a suitable pause. “I am, I repeat, very busy, very busy indeed, but I will see whether I can’t do as you ask. Naylor, take off those wristlets, and go out of the room for a few minutes; and you, Mr Zouche, come here quite close to us so that we can be quite certain that the terms of our understanding are not overheard by any of the other detectives we brought down from Scotland Yard to Shrewsbury last night.” The detective disappeared with the handcuffs, and the hunchback went close to the table and engaged in confidential conversation with the Foreign Secretary and the earl for nearly a quarter of an hour.

In vain Casteno and I worked and edged and wriggled. All of the men round the table spoke so low and so earnestly that we could not catch a single word of what they were saying, and we might just as well have gone back to the hotel, and there awaited the hunchback’s return, as have prowled so uneasily on the far side of those doors for all the good we did to our cause, until I had an idea which I put immediately into effect.

“Look here,” I whispered suddenly to my companion, “you come here instead of me and take a turn at peeping through the keyhole!”

“Why?” he queried in a thin, complaining voice. “Your eyes are better than mine, and your ears. You hear things twice as quickly as I do!”

“That isn’t it,” I returned. “I don’t want you to listen at all on this occasion.”

“Well, my back is tired. I am sick of stooping down.”

“But it won’t be for long,” I persisted. “Just take this turn at the keyhole to oblige me, will you? Directly you have discovered what I want you to find – and, mark! only you can find it out – we need not wait another minute. We can get off to the Green Dragon and eat our dinner in peace.”

“Well, what is it?” he asked, bending down in front of the door, his curiosity at last faintly excited. “Don’t you see that the old man is on the point of selling us and that in a few minutes both Cooper-Nassington and I will be done as brown as the proverbial berries?”

“That’s just it,” I replied. “I want you to study your father’s face very carefully whilst he is talking to Cuthbertson. Examine every feature in it, every turn, every line, in the light of all your previous experience of him, and see whether or not he is telling those men the truth.”

“By George! what a stupid I was not to think of that before? What a splendid idea! Of course, he has no love for them. It would be the most natural thing in the world for him to trick them. Look what careful preparations he made with Paul just before he left and how he hid those forged manuscripts in that steel box to throw every manner of inquiry off the scent! Why, he is the last man in the wurld not to burn to pay anybody out who gets the best of him. And yes!” he whispered, “I am certain he is lying to them. I can see it,” and the Spaniard dragged me down level with the keyhole so that I, too, could follow what was happening in the interior of the chapel. “Don’t you observe that very curious trick he is doing quite unconsciously – standing first on one foot and then on another and then rubbing the ankle of one with the toe of the other? Well, he always did that to customers in the old days when we were poor and he had not got such a fine sense of honour about the sale of a spurious antique as he had when times became more prosperous for us!”

“Well, if you are satisfied, so am I,” I returned. “We need not spy about this creepy old mansion any longer. We have discovered all we have set out to find, and now I propose we get back to the Green Dragon Hotel, whither, doubtless, he and Captain Sparhawk will return.”

“And how about Miss Napier?” queried Casteno slyly.

“Oh! Miss Napier will probably come back with her uncle to the same place. He, doubtless, to keep up the deception that he is going straight now for England and English interests, will forgive her that piece of trickery which landed him right into Cuthbertson’s net; and she, to see that he does keep straight, will let herself be deceived by him, and will watch him as far as she dare without exciting his suspicions. At all events, it is useless for me to think of making any move with regard to her just at this moment. In the first place, she has her hands full watching her prisoner, Sparhawk, and if I showed up now in this disguise she might put a bullet through the pair of us. Certainly she would raise an alarm, and there would be endless trouble and difficulties before we managed to explain, at all satisfactorily, what we were doing here without an invitation when so many vital national issues were being settled. In the second place, I can’t make out her ignorance of the death of her father. Is it real, or assumed? Something very odd must have happened to make her behave like this at this mournful crisis in the family fortunes. Now, what can that be? So far as I can see there is only one source here in Shrewsbury which can possibly supply any sort of key to the mystery without asking the girl herself. That is, a Sunday special edition of one of the Sunday papers – the People, Lloyd’s, or some journal like that. The only place where we can find that with any degree of certainty is the Green Dragon, so, naturally, I am all eagerness to hasten back there and to look over its columns!”

“I see you’re right,” replied Casteno, as, springing to his feet, he snatched up his boots and hastened as rapidly as he could down the stairs, with the result that in a few seconds we had crossed the lawn and reached the shelter of the belt of trees near the boundary wall by which we had effected our entrance. Here we set to work, and quickly removed all traces of our adventures; then, hoisting ourselves over the wall that divided us from the side lane, we raced back as hard as we could in the direction of the town.

“We must eat,” he argued; “eat to live. Everything just now depends on us keeping in the pink of condition. To do that we must never neglect our food.”

Happily, after moments that seemed as long as hours, the paper I sought did materialise at last. It was a newly-arrived copy of the Weekly Dispatch, I remember, and no sooner did I glance at the first page than I saw from the headlines that some startling developments in the case had occurred since I turned my face from London towards the west. As a matter of fact, quite a new complexion had been put on the tragedy, and the latest report now ran as follows: —

THE MYSTERY OF WHITEHALL COURT

WHO IS THE DEAD MAN?

STRANGE STORY OF A VALET

“Quite a new turn has been given to the tragedy in Embankment Mansions, full particulars of the discovery of which appear on an inside page. Firstly, the valet Richardson has now had time to examine the body which was found in Colonel Napier’s bedroom, and he says unhesitatingly that it is not that of his master at all but of a stranger who at first sight resembles him strongly. This view is borne out by two old friends of Colonel Napier who have also seen the corpse – the Rev. Richard Jennings, the vicar of St. Helen’s, Palace Street, Westminster, and Colonel Goring-Richmond, who some years ago was on the most intimate terms with the deceased and spent the summer with him in the Austrian Tyrol. Secondly, if this be true, there is no doubt that not only Colonel Napier, but also his daughter Doris, have suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. All their affairs, it seems, have been left in the uttermost confusion, and it looks as though, if there has not been foul play in their lives in one direction, there has been in another. Close inquiries amongst their friends reveal no intention on their part to be absent from home. Their servants also are astounded at their disappearance, and all the machinery of their social life has been brought suddenly to a standstill; while letters and telegrams of inquiry and visits from friends, who have read accounts which purport to explain Colonel’s Napier’s sudden demise, plunge their departure into a mingled atmosphere of tragedy and mystery, which it seems impossible to-night to break through. Meanwhile, everybody is asking: Who is the man who has been found stabbed to death in Colonel Napier’s bed? The police are certainly powerless to explain; while common people dare not suggest a most terrible answer which will occur to everybody who reads these lines for fear of the law of libel.”

Chapter Fifteen.

In Search of the Secret

For once Casteno was full of sympathy with me.

No sooner did I explain to him the extraordinary development of that mystery at Whitehall Court than he was all eagerness, all attention, all resource to prove to me that I must think the best and not the worst of Colonel Napier’s disappearance.

At first, I own, I was not at all inclined to take help from such a quarter; I had not forgotten those suspicious circumstances in which he left my office at the time the murder was committed. Nevertheless, before we had finished our dinner in that quaint old Shrewsbury hotel he had practically won me over to his way of looking at the occurrence.

“After all,” said he, as he drained his last glass of wine, “you can certainly rely on the impression that Colonel Napier has come to no harm. If he had, Miss Doris would not be here at all as she is, as bright and gay as a lark, and as keen as a hawk on getting the benefit of those manuscripts for Lord Cuthbertson. Neither he nor Lord Fotheringay would dare to keep bad news from her. They are, after all, both of them gentlemen, whatever may happen to be the Chauvinistic tactics they adopt to push themselves forward in their own particular little intrigues in politics. Silence in such a crisis would be monstrous – utterly monstrous.”

“But where can he be?” I cried helplessly. “What is he doing? Why doesn’t he come forward and tell the police as much as he knows of the affair?”

“Perhaps he has,” said Casteno significantly, dealing with my last question first. “Who knows? Naylor has dropped his part in the search, you see, and if that means anything at all it means that the murder has precious little to do with this wild chase after the old parchment records. My own impression is that the daughter is not the only member of the Napier family who has taken sides against us in this hunt for the submerged treasure. When the truth is told I think you will find both father and daughter have determined, in a perfectly friendly way, to work against me, just to prove to you how foolish and futile you have been not to take their advice. Hence Colonel Napier may have been despatched in one direction to circumvent us and Miss Doris in another. That disposition of their forces would be quite fair, you know, and might have most important results.”

“And the man found dead in the colonel’s bed?”

“Any theory could account for his presence,” said the Spaniard, shrugging his shoulders and walking towards the window as though heartily tired of my objections. “One is that he was some burglar who had got the office that the colonel had left the flat, and had disguised himself to resemble the master, had walked in at the front door and personated him over-night, and had been assassinated in error. Such cases of impersonation are much more common than people imagine, but they have such ludicrous, as well as tragic, results that they seldom, if ever, get into the police courts. Another theory – and to me not at all a bad one – is that the whole business has been engineered by some secret society for a purpose that will eventually become apparent. As you know, there are plenty of secret organisations in London that do not content themselves with mystic signs and passwords and occasional extravagances in the shape of nitro-glycerine and dynamite. I know there is a branch of the Spanish ‘Friends of Liberty’ in England, for instance; and I am sure if they have got some hint from Mexico about the discovery of those manuscripts they will stop at nothing – not even a crime like this – to frighten off Colonel Napier.”

“Well, I had better leave it,” I said at last, with a sigh, throwing the paper on to the floor and joining my companion at the casement. “After all, you are really the leader of this expedition, and you have a right to require of me that I shall pay some attention to your conclusions.”

“Yes; leave it,” repeated Casteno. “Remember, you are only one man with one brain and one pair of hands. You can’t do everything in a maze that has such extraordinary ramifications as this. I tried alone, remember, and failed; and, first, I had to get your help, and then Mr Cooper-Nassington’s, and heaven alone knows where we shall end. But this brings me to another point, Glynn,” he went on, with increasing earnestness. “I want you not to approach Miss Doris until this flying machine experiment is over. It is quite natural of you to wish to do so, I admit, but I want you to consider my interests a little for a day or two, and to refrain.”

“I see,” I said meditatively. “You are afraid something might happen, some injudicious word of hers, some careless act, which might scare off some of the people we want to keep blind to our movements, eh?”

“Yes,” answered Casteno; “but that’s not all. You must recollect, too, that the people who are not for us are against us. It is not really to the Napier interest that your side should win. They are fighting, in my opinion, on the side of the authorities as represented by the Foreign Secretary and the earl. Well, let them, that’s all, and only when we’ve won let us put our heads above the hedge.”

Some other conversation followed, but in the end I agreed to do as José Casteno wished. As a consequence, we kept quite quiet in our rooms until we had got word from a friendly waiter that the hunchback, Miss Doris, and Captain Sparhawk had returned to the hotel, apparently on good terms again, and then in the darkness of night we slipped off and had a good tramp about the ancient streets and by-ways of Shrewsbury, rising next morning as fresh and as sturdy as ever. For a time, it is true, we feared that after his compact to help Lord Cyril Cuthbertson the hunchback might deem it prudent to avoid the excursion. As a matter of fact, I was the one who thought so. Casteno didn’t, because, in the first place, he was sure that his father would never in any circumstances help England against Spain; and in the second, the dwarf was too keen on flying machines and their commercial and military possibilities to let Sparhawk slip through his fingers when he had got hold of a really serviceable invention that would take seven or eight people careering through the air at will. And, as it turned out, Casteno was correct, and I wasn’t. The hunchback did turn up in the flying machine enclosure at the great floral fête, all prepared for the expedition, and, oddly enough, he brought with him as companion – he seemed to have quite forgiven all her previous day’s tricks – my own Doris, who looked as bright and gay as though a trip in a flying machine were one of the most enjoyable things in existence.

Captain Sparhawk himself, now that the critical day of trial had dawned, looked, I must confess, very nervous and overwrought. Attired in a costume that proved to be a compromise between what is usually adopted by the driver of a fast motor car and the captain of a penny steamboat, he flitted about from point to point in the enclosure, the personification of anxiety and restlessness.

“First we must think of the weather, Miss Doris,” we caught him saying as, disguised in the uniform of sergeants in the Royal Engineers, we showed our tickets which entitled us to the trip in his company and joined the mob of experts and committeemen who buzzed about him like so many noisy and curious bees. As for our features, they were works of art – the art of the painter and the art of the wig-maker – while our voices had developed a military bluffness and roughness, which left our throats lined with something like sandpaper every time we opened our mouths.

“It all depends on the wind,” he repeated, and he directed her gaze anxiously to the sky, as though she could see at a glance whether the wind were likely at the time of the ascent to blow forty miles an hour, or four. “You see, I have got the inflation well advanced,” he went on, pointing to the huge, slowly-swelling monster, which lay like a gigantic but quarter-filled balloon of fishlike shape on the greensward as men in mechanics’ clothes hastened here and there pulling a hose straight, slackening a rope, or dragging out the folds of the silk as if they were so many sheets of lead. “This particular machine is Number 9 of my series, two ahead of Santos-Dumont. As you are going with us to-day,” at which news both Casteno and I started, for we had not bargained for that, “I crave your permission to name it the ‘Doris.’”

“By all means,” said the girl, beaming with pleasure; “and I trust it will have the best of good luck, and bring all connected with it fame and fortune!” Whereat the little mob I have mentioned broke into a loud cheer, which was taken up by the thousands who lined the ropes that marked off the enclosures, and amongst whom the news of the machine’s informal christening passed like so much wildfire.

At this point somebody – I think it was the chairman of the fête – appeared bearing three or four magnums of champagne, which were opened, and the contents passed amongst the select coterie gathered around the inventor. Thus encouraged, the gallant captain went further.

“You need not really fear the trip, Miss Napier,” he said, raising the glass with a proud gesture to his lips. “Nor you two gentlemen,” he added, nodding in the direction of Casteno and myself, who had been pointed out to him by the gatekeeper as his two paying fellow-passengers. “As for Mr Zouche here,” now he included the hunchback, “he is a practical aeronaut like myself. I always say, where he would lead I would follow; but, for to-day, we have reversed things a bit, although my opinion of his skill and knowledge remains just the same.”

“Then you think the machine is perfectly safe?” said a voice in the crowd.

“It’s as safe as going to heaven in a rocking-chair,” promptly answered the captain, like an oracle. “The fact is,” he proceeded in a lower tone, “I have had the thing well tested. In the first place, I had it filled with air and coal gas, for the purpose of arranging the rigging, and then I took a little trip with it myself with proper hydrogen, and the petroleum motor hard at work, and it sailed aloft like a bird. In form, of course, it is similar to the balloon, ‘La France,’ experimented with as long ago as 1834 by some French officers at Meudon – that is, it is shaped like a plaice – the front end being larger than the rear; while it is provided with a compensating ballonet, which is inflated with air by means of a fan controlled from the motor. The two cars, to hold three passengers each, like the motor, are supported by a pine framework, and are suspended at a distance of fifteen feet under the balloon. The propeller is an exceptionally large and strong one, and resembles a fish’s tail, a mackerel’s, for I contend we find all our true air affinities in the sea. It turns at the rate of two hundred and fifty revolutions a minute, and the whole apparatus is strong enough to let us take a fair amount of ballast; for the secret of my success in my invention does not turn on lightness, where so many flying-machine inventors have gone wrong of late, but on weight – weight to subdue the pressure of the wind, to conquer the dead force of the air, and to answer the power of the motor to get up anything approaching a decent speed.”