The Hunchback of Westminster

“Now,” cried Casteno to me immediately I had seen that Doris was safe and was comfortably placed on a great heap of hay, “understand, we have not a moment to lose. Any second they may return, or some daring and inquisitive journalist may force his way in to interview us or to describe our battered condition. You pretend to be holding your flask to my father’s lips, whilst I search his clothes. Then if one of them comes to their senses or one of our newly-made friends return it won’t look at all suspicious.” And, as half mechanically I did as he had directed, he flung himself on his knees beside the prostrate hunchback and passed his hands rapidly over his clothes.

Evidently he knew a good deal of Peter Zouche’s methods, for I don’t think his search lasted ten seconds. All at once his fingers closed over a tiny bag, something like a Catholic scapular, that had been slung around the hunchback’s neck. With trembling fingers he tore this open, and disclosed to view the three precious manuscripts, which he instantly seized and packed away in his pocket.

Then he made the bag look as natural as he could, and restored it to its position under the old man’s singlet. As he rose to his feet again I saw that his face was ghastly white, and his teeth chattered like a man stricken with ague.

“My God,” he muttered, wiping the great beads of perspiration that had gathered about his temples, “isn’t this chase stern – awful? I doubt if even I should have dared to have tried a terrible move like this had I not known that there, at St. Bruno’s at Hampstead, was the key to these documents awaiting me. But I felt I could not falter now when Camille Velasquon had braved so much in bringing it from Mexico to London for me. But, bah! what cowards we are all of us sometimes.” And he reeled, and I am sure he would have fainted had I not instantly caught him myself and pressed the flask to his lips.

“Now to be off – to be off,” he said wildly a moment later, pushing me aside and staggering towards the exit from the tent. “I feel I can’t breathe here now that I have got these documents. Every nerve I have seems standing on end urging me to be off.”

I turned to look at Doris lying so peacefully in that corner, and then, half distracted, turned to follow him, but as I did so somebody started up and confronted us. It was the Professor Stephen Leopardi! His aspect now was wild and threatening, but we thought merely that the terrible experiences he had been through above the clouds had temporarily disturbed the balance of his senses and that we could soothe him like a child.

“You must not go,” he panted, his eyes rolling and his fingers clawing the empty air. “You must stay with me, I want you. I have seen you. There is much to explain.”

“Quite so,” I returned lightly, “but just now we are not in a mood for conversation, are we? Wait until our companions recover themselves and my friend and I have had a little fresh air, will you? Then we can all meet and discuss things, but at present – ”

“At present you would steal from that poor man the most precious things he has,” thundered the old fellow, and to our horror he sprang between us and the exit and then pointed to the prostrate form of the hunchback. “Oh! never, never shall you escape like that.” And before we realised what he was up to he raised his voice and shrieked: “Help! help! help!”

Chapter Seventeen.

The Mysteries of St. Bruno’s

There was not a second to spare. Casteno shot at me a look of mingled entreaty and command to leave the frenzied professor to do his worst. The persons we had to fear were not, he motioned, in that tent at all but outside, scouring the grounds for medical assistance, and spreading everywhere news of our wonderful appearance out of the rain-clouds. Only let them hear this maniac’s wild cries for assistance and they would hasten back to us, and then all hope, all chance of escape, for either of us would be cut off.

Nevertheless, I thought of Doris lying there so weak, helpless, and friendless; and I hesitated. I felt I had already stifled Love so often for Duty that I could repress it no longer. Indeed, I took a step in her direction to make myself known to her, but, misconceiving my object, thinking I had no idea but one – to flee – Leopardi seized me in a grip of iron. “You shall not go,” he panted – “never! You are a thief, and you shall pay for your crime.”

His touch, however, was quite enough. What Casteno had failed to accomplish it brought about in a flash. All the hot, strenuous instincts of my manhood rose in rebellion at this degradation.

“You are mad,” I hissed, and with one huge effort I sprang on the scientist and, catching him by the middle, whirled him over my head and sent him crashing a moment later on to some grain bags that stood piled up in a corner.

As I did so his wig fell off and with it his beard, and I staggered backward in amazement. The so-called expert from the Meteorological Office was, as the Spaniard had contended, a spy – perhaps sent by the Foreign Office, for it was a man we instantly recognised – no other than Colonel Napier himself.

Personally, I would have stood my ground then and defied him; but Casteno was too quick for me. As I reeled back breathless from the impact he caught me by the shoulder and with a quick turn twisted me through the narrow door of the barn.

“This is no time for heroics, Glynn,” he whispered. “We have won. Now let us be off.” And he doubled behind some other buildings and then dived headlong into a clump of bushes, through which he wriggled his way on hands and knees like a snake.

Almost instinctively I followed him, for on the still summer breeze I could hear Colonel Napier’s voice raised in angry shouts, the thunder of hurrying feet, and all the mysterious sounds and movements which betokened that at last the crowd had taken alarm, and that an organised pursuit of us could, at the most now, be only a matter of a few seconds.

The branches tore our clothes and made sad havoc of our disguises, but this last accident proved a blessing in disguise, for it made us stop at a pond and restore to our faces their natural resemblance.

“But we must not be caught,” I returned, deftly rolling up the wigs and secreting them in the branch of a tree, where they looked like a new kind of bird’s nest. “Look through that opening there between those willows. Don’t you see the molten gleam of water under the summer sun?”

“Yes,” replied Casteno joyously, rising on his knees and stretching his neck. “It’s a stream sure enough – perhaps a river – with plenty of water space, for I am sure I distinguish a current in it running steady and strong.”

“Now let us make for that, then,” I urged, “and hail the first boat that passes. Let us pretend we are soldiers, and have overstayed our leave, and that we shall get fined if we don’t hasten pell-mell back to the town.”

“What town?” queried Casteno ruefully; whereat we both laughed. It certainly did seem preposterous for us not to know the name of the country we were in. Yet, truthfully enough, we didn’t – we hadn’t the ghost of an idea.

As luck would have it, however, we found several boats moored close to the trees by the side of the water, and in charge of them was a sharp-looking lad about fourteen years of age.

“Got any tubs for hire, sonny,” said Casteno cheerfully, walking up to the youngster and tapping him familiarly on the shoulder.

“What does your mother want to wash?” promptly returned the lad, and in a moment the three of us were on the best of terms.

Acting on an impulse of my own I took charge of the conversation, and pretended that we were soldiers who had got sick of barrack life, and had deserted from some important depot, and were anxious to get into hiding in the nearest town. Now in most lads there exists a very genuine sympathy with the hunted of all descriptions, and a loyalty, too, which no ordinary bribe or threat would cause them to break. As a consequence, he promised to take us off in one of the boats and to hide us under some cushions and sail sheets as he punted us down stream to “a capital nest I know,” he explained, “behind the kilns of the porcelain works.”

“But the town – what is its name?” I queried, with a grimace.

“Why, Worcester, of course,” the lad replied. “Didn’t you see it on the milestones?”

“We were in too great a hurry to look,” chimed in the Spaniard at once. “Why, we don’t even know what all those thousands of people are doing here in these grounds. We have simply bolted as hard as we could through the streets.”

“Then you didn’t even see the flying machine fall?” cried the lad, his eyes wide with excitement.

“Not a bit of it,” returned I, with more truth than the boy possibly could have expected.

“Then I’m sorry for you,” observed the lad slowly, “for it was the most lovely thing I ever saw in my life. Four men and one girl were dashed to pieces, and they’ve had to stop the race meeting – for this is Worcester Races on the Pitchcroft – whilst they look for the remains of the poor victims who are supposed to have come all the way from the Crystal Palace with Mr Santos-Dumont, who, luckily, made his escape in the parachute before the thing fell.”

Neither Casteno nor I, however, troubled to enlighten the lad as to the true facts. For one thing, it amused us slightly to discover for ourselves how strangely the news of our arrival had travelled, and in what a small degree the good citizens of Worcester were wont to mix the naked truth with their carefully-compounded stories of breathless adventure. For another, we were desperately anxious to get away from the neighbourhood of that racecourse. Any second the hue-and-cry might spread to the point at which we were. Indeed, it seemed little short of madness to loiter, and we sprang into the punt immediately we could get the lad to cast her off, and almost before he quite understood how quickly we had acted we had got ourselves concealed and the boy hard at work punting us down the stream.

Happily, the Severn covers but a few hundred yards in its passage from the racecourse to the city of Worcester itself, and so excited were the crowd over the fall and appearance of our air-ship that we contrived to slip away quite unobserved, to glide under the bridge that cut off Worcester from its suburbs, and to float past the cathedral, close to which stand the grey, old monastic ruins. Here we insisted on disembarking, because we found these remains were walled in and really furnished an ideal place of concealment, but we did not dismiss our guide.

“Go, sonny, and buy us two suits of rough blue serge,” I said, handing the lad four glittering sovereigns. “If they ask you any inconvenient questions say they are for your father, who is employed on a coal barge, and has had his duds stolen, a thing that often happens, I’m told. If there is any change remaining over, keep it, but whatever you do, hurry – hurry like mad.”

The boy, who had now quite entered into the humour of the adventure, and thought what a fine thing it was to be outwitting the police under their very noses as it were, tore off, leaving us in charge of the punt. And such good use did he make of his time, his opportunities, and the shopping facilities of the immediate district that, in less than half-an-hour, he returned with the things we had ordered. Very soon we bade him good-bye and gave him half-a-sovereign for his trouble; and, waiting until he had disappeared round a bend of the river, we scaled the wall that shut off the cathedral school ground from the ruins, and then plunged into an ancient recess in the wall where, in the half darkness, we threw off our uniforms and put on our serge suits.

Nobody who has not stood in some deadly peril of this sort can guess the relief we felt as we got back once again into fairly decent clothes, that did not make us appear much different to what we really were, and gave us the advantage of our own speech and looks. One takes up a disguise glibly enough, even if at first it presents an arduous strain to the nerves; but after a time the thing becomes a veritable Frankenstein to one, and seems to absorb every ounce of one’s brain and strength. Casteno literally danced with joy as he flung his uniform into a corner as far as he could.

“Thank goodness, now we can walk and talk like other folk,” he cried. “For my own part, I don’t care who we meet or what is said to us. I feel powerful enough to deny anything.”

“But surely,” I gasped, “you don’t mean to show yourself in public until night is fallen? Think – think of the risks!”

“I have, and I mean to take them. Nobody in Worcester can identify us now with the two soldiers who took passages in the air-ship at Shrewsbury. Remember, even if Colonel Napier could be quite sure it was us who had played him such a scurvy trick, he dare not say so. In the first place, people will think the fall and the shock have given him softening of the brain if we stick up to him and deny him with all the lung violence we are capable of. Secondly, you forget he is Professor Stephen Leopardi, the expert of the Meteorological Office, to the world just at present. He is the fraud, not us, and we have only got to unmask him to the hunchback, or to get inquiries made about him in London, where the police want him for his mysterious disappearance from Whitehall Court, and where the Meteorological people would have him instantly arrested for his impersonation, to put him utterly to confusion. Hence we have no cause to fear him or anyone here. We are free – free as air.” And again he capered about the ruins, overcome with glee.

“Then you mean actually to walk off to the railway station with all the Worcester police on the alert and to take the next express up to town?” I questioned. “You think we shall escape without any trouble!”

“Of course I do. Is it not race time, and is not the city full of strangers? Besides, you seem to have forgotten the most important thing of all. I have these manuscripts in my possession, and Camille Velasquon has brought the key to them all the way from Mexico. Now all we have got to do is to compare the two – and then?”

He stopped and looked straight at me, as we stood with the ruins silhouetted against the old cathedral chapter-house. My gaze met his.

“And then?” I repeated; and I stopped, and instinctively my hands clenched.

“I will do what is right to England, Glynn,” he cried in tones of intense emotion, stretching out his hands to me. “Good heavens, man! don’t stare at me like that! I’m a creature of flesh and blood like yourself. I have feelings and a sense of honour just as you have. I have not gone into this business simply to feather my own nest. I have not fought my father – Fotheringay – Cuthbertson – I have not besought powerful assistance, such as Cooper-Nassington’s, to sell this country to some Continental enemies – no.”

“I take your word – I believe you have not,” I replied slowly. “The point is whether the Order of St. Bruno has, for it seems to me that they are the principals in this treasure hunt and not yourself.”

“Well, come with me and see,” replied Casteno, averting his eyes. “I have pledged myself, but you will not take my word. You doubt – you hint – you mistrust me.”

“I do,” I gasped. “I can’t help it.”