The Hunchback of Westminster

“Quite so, brother Hugh, quite so,” repeated Casteno, with a triumphant grin. “You have guessed the melancholy truth the first time. They are detectives, engaged in preventing anyone leaving this noble mansion without their knowledge and permission. If you had remained at the window a trifle longer you would doubtless have seen for yourself their most noble leader. As a matter of fact, he is a friend of yours – ”

“And pray who is that?” I snapped, for I felt too tired to join in this vein of merriment. “What friend have I in the force?” I asked.

“A gentleman named Naylor, very much at your service,” replied Casteno.

“How? What do you mean?”

“Oh! nothing, nothing at all,” airily continued my companion. “Only at 5 AM he rang the bell at our gate, and after courteously wishing our janitor a very nice ‘good-morning’ he ventured to inquire whether you, brother Hugh, were within. On being told, with our customary truth, that you were he promptly disavowed all desire to interfere with your beauty sleep, and blandly offered to wait outside till it should please the fates to restore to you a sense of your own importance and the necessity for action. Our gate custodian, being a bit of a humourist, agreed that, on the whole, he would find it nicer and warmer outside St. Bruno’s than it was in, but vouchsafed to promise that, when you did arise, he would certainly inform you that so noble and so illustrious-looking a gentleman desired the honour of a few minutes private conversation with you.”

“Oh I shut up that rubbish,” I retorted pettishly, for I saw that Casteno’s florid periods really covered a move of a very grave and far-reaching importance. “The point is not a joke as you pretend. What we have got to decide is the best thing for me to do now Scotland Yard has put these men on my heels! I don’t want this round-table conference to-night to go wrong. I want to be free to be present at it. Indeed, we don’t want any scandal or newspaper publicity just at present. We should be able to imitate moles – moles that work in the dark.”

“That is true,” said a voice suddenly behind me, and wheeling round I found that we had been joined by the Prior. “Would you care to slip off?” he queried after a moment’s painful pause. “I could find you a good disguise as a woman, with a thick black veil, too. We have a passage that runs from this house to a little clump of bushes in a distant field. You could easily dart through that and make your way off without being caught.”

“I am afraid that would only leave you all here in a worse pickle,” I replied after some reflection. “Naylor, after all, will only wait a certain length of time, and if he finds then that I don’t materialise, as our brother at the gate promised, he will be quite wild enough to organise a raid on the place; and remember, after all, it does contain those three precious manuscripts. No; it looks as though I must face the worst after all.”

“But what on earth can he want with you?” cried Casteno petulantly.

“That’s just it,” I said. “I have got to go out and see. Well, it’s no good beating about the bush. If I have to face this unpleasant and inquisitive individual, I have to, I suppose, and the sooner I get it over the better for all of us. You two must keep a sharp watch on me, that’s all, and if you find I am hauled off to the police station on any pretence you must follow me up and try to bail me out.”

“And, failing all else, I will go down to the House of Commons this very afternoon and make a personal appeal for you to both Cuthbertson and the Home Secretary,” cried the Member of Parliament vigorously, for now he too seemed to be quite upset at the line things were taking.

“All right,” I said bravely. “I won’t thank you. We are all now too good friends, and too closely allied, to make use of conventional expressions of gratitude. I trust you – that’s sufficient – and I’ll step out and meet this turn of affairs with all the courage I can muster.”

With a curt nod I turned and left them and made my way down the staircase to the hall, and thence I passed rapidly to the door that shut off the monastery grounds from the public thoroughfare. This last was thrown open at my approach, and I proceeded to the roadway, which for a moment after I entered it looked quite deserted. Determined to carry the interview through with a high hand, however, I stepped out promptly, as though Whitehall at least was my destination, and then it was that Naylor, as I expected, found himself compelled to step from behind a tree and to show himself, which he did with an ugly twinkle of triumph in his small beady black eyes.

“Ah, you’ve come, then?” he said with a grunt, disdaining all conventional expressions of greeting.

“Yes; I’ve come,” I answered with equal discourtesy. “What do you want, eh?” And I stepped quite close to him and faced him.

Chapter Twenty Five.

Held in Bondage

Long afterwards, when the bitterness of that moment had ceased to rankle in my heart, the Prior and Casteno related how eagerly they had watched me from that long lancet-shaped window while I boldly advanced to the detective. For their own part, they were sure Naylor meant mischief to me, but as to the means he would employ they were all at sea, and so they were for the time all strain and attention.

Luckily, I, too, was well on my guard, and so I did not show any undignified haste in the negotiations. Indeed, I purposely asked the inspector to explain why he had sent so earnest a message to me, and, finally cornered, he began the serious part of the conversation.

“I suppose you guess,” he said, looking aimlessly first to one side of him and then to the other, “why I’ve brought a posse of men with me and surrounded that queer place I found you in?” And with a wave of the hand he indicated the monastery.

“In truth, I don’t,” I answered promptly, “unless,” and here I paused rather effectively, “unless, Naylor, you have taken leave of your senses.”

The man tried to smile, but it was a sickly effort, foredoomed to failure.

“Ah,” he observed, “you always were a hot ’un, Mr Glynn, in any game of ‘bluff’ but it won’t do this time – you’ve gone a bit too far for your own comfort – and we’re going to see you worsted.”

“Well, that’s all right,” I responded cheerfully. “You won’t object to that, will you? It isn’t love for me that’s making you look so precious uneasy, now, is it? Well, then, get on with your work, I shan’t object.” And producing my cigarette case I opened it and passed it carelessly to my companion, who pushed it rather petulantly on one side.

“I don’t want to smoke – I am much too serious for that,” he snapped.

“Oh,” I rejoined. “Well, I am not.” And I struck a match and lit a cigarette.

“I don’t think I ought to beat about the bush any longer,” he proceeded after an irritated glance at my magnificent assumption of carelessness. “The fact is just this, I hold warrants for the arrest of yourself and that young Spanish adventurer, José Casteno, or to give him his proper name, Joseph Zouche.”

“Indeed,” said I, trying to look politely interested, “that’s news if you like. On what charge, pray?”

“Robbery, with violence, on Worcester Racecourse – three old manuscripts, the property of Mr Peter Zouche, the hunchback, who held them as bailee!”

“You surprise me,” I remarked. “Really, you do. Where does Worcester happen to be?” And I gave him a look of mild and innocent inquiry that I believe would have done credit to a child of six.

“You will find out all the geography you care to learn in the police station,” he said, stiffly repressing a very obvious temptation to swear roundly; “for the present you must consider yourself under arrest.” And he beckoned one of his men from a distance and told him to go to St. Bruno’s and to ask for José Casteno, who joined us a few moments later, clad in ordinary clothes, and was then told of the charge against us, whilst I perched myself on the root of a fallen tree and went on puffing away at my cigarette.

“Now,” said Naylor in conclusion, much impressed by the manner of his own eloquence, “if you two gentlemen don’t mind, one of my mates will fetch a four-wheeler, and we’ll drive off to Bow Street.”

“Do,” I put in, “it will be warmer there than it is here.” And I pretended to shiver as I added: “It seems to me, Naylor, there is always a cold streak in the air on Hampstead Heath; don’t you think so?”

The man shot me a look charged with malice and uncharitableness. But he did not take the bait. “I have,” he went on with a certain amount of hesitation, “a search warrant, duly executed to go over that house there – St. Bruno’s. Of course, I don’t want to make myself needlessly unpleasant, so if you would like to hand over the manuscripts, the subjects of the charge against you, I will not put it into execution.”

José looked at me, and I looked at him. We would both of us have dearly liked to have palmed off those forgeries upon this short-tempered individual; but it would not do.

“We know nothing about your business,” I said slowly, and, taking my cue, my friend nodded in support. “You must do really what strikes you as the best; but,” and the inspector’s eyes glittered, expecting some concession or admission, “don’t – don’t ask us any questions,” I added sweetly, “for that is beyond your duty and outside your place.”

With a muffled curse Naylor turned on his heel and despatched a messenger for the cab he had mentioned. Then he summoned two or three other constables, handed them certain documents, and whispered to them quickly certain instructions. Afterwards a four-wheeler drove up, and giving our words that we would make no effort to escape, the three of us stepped inside, and began that long and tedious journey to Bow Street.

The most weary rides, however, come to an end some time – and so did this. At length the police station was reached, and we all walked boldly into the charge office, where the warrant was read over to us, to which we made no reply, of course; and, pending our formal remand by a magistrate, I begged and obtained permission that we should be both placed in the same cell. In answer to the usual question: Did we wish to communicate with any legal advisers or friends? both Casteno and I said: “Yes.” After a whispered consultation we decided on this plan of action. I sent this telegram:

“Cooper-Nassington, House of Commons, SW.

“Casteno and I have been arrested on extraordinary charge of robbery with violence, and lodged at Bow Street. Please see hunchback and explain error, and do your best to secure our immediate release. – Hugh Glynn.”

“It will not, then, be my fault if the round-table conference fails to come off,” I reasoned. But at the bottom of my heart, I own, I felt strangely disturbed at the turn affairs had taken. I could not rid myself of some curious suspicion that Lord Fotheringay and his friends had got some new trick to work, and that, after all, we might be now, quite unconsciously, riding for a nasty fall.

Casteno himself elected to appeal to Lord Cyril, and after we had been both searched and had all our valuables taken from us he was permitted to take a sheet of notepaper and to write as follows: —

“Bow Street Police Station.

“Dear Lord Cyril, – The matter is too serious for me to stand on any ceremony with you, and, therefore, I write quite straightforwardly to you, to report what you will doubtless hear in the course of your official duties – that Mr Hugh Glynn, the Secret Investigator, and myself have been arrested, and are now detained at the above address on some trumped-up charge of stealing certain manuscripts from my father on Worcester Racecourse.

“This action of the authorities, of course, quite precludes all chance of our meeting you and Colonel and Miss Napier and Lord Fotheringay at Stanton Street to-night. I put it to you now quite pointedly whether it is to the welfare of England that this interview should not take place?

“I suggest that you see the Home Secretary and get this action quashed. Otherwise, please regard our offer to treat with you as withdrawn, and, if necessary, we shall appeal to His Majesty the King himself, to see that there is no party jugglery with so vital a national issue as this recovery of the sacred lake of Tangikano. As to the charge of theft and assault, that, of course, is absurd, and must fail.

“Yours obediently, José Zouche Casteno.”

This note was read very carefully by the officers in charge of the station. But they had evidently received some secret instructions about us, for they pretended to treat it quite as an ordinary and commonplace communication, and permitted Casteno himself to enclose it in an envelope and hand it to a constable to carry to the Foreign Office.

Then we were conducted to a cell and left to our own devices, and for a time we kept ourselves lively enough, speculating on what would be the issue of the strong commanding line we had taken.

But as hour after hour slipped by and we received no sign from the outer world our hearts began to sink within us. Maybe, too, the atmosphere of that small, tightly-barred cell, with its narrow walls and depressing suggestions, had its baneful effect upon us. At all events, a sensation of fear seemed to seize us. We felt caged – bound – removed from the live, throbbing world of action to which we had grown so accustomed, and then, thus deprived of movement, we insensibly began to languish. All at once we realised what freedom really means – that it yields of itself a thousand pleasures, as a fish is surrounded by the unconscious sustenances of the sea.