The Hunchback of Westminster

The carriage rolled away, and as its red lights disappeared round the bend of the street, which seemed strangely silent and deserted, I was rather startled to hear my companion muffle something uncommonly like a sigh of regret. To think, of course, that he was a bit nervous about the upshot of our mission was nothing short of treason. None the less, as he advanced to the side door, and gave three peculiar taps on the woodwork, I found my hand travelling instinctively to that small pocket of mine in which rested a revolver.

Almost instantly his summons was answered, and there appeared, framed in the entrance, the grotesque figure of the hunchback, a man about four feet high, with a tiny head and face that instinctively recalled the profile of an eagle. He was carrying a candle in a heavy brass candlestick, and as he raised this above his head the light streamed full upon our features.

For a second he paused, uncertain what to do. Then a derisive smile curled around his toothless gums, and, with a sneer that I knew only too well from old and bitter experiences meant mischief, he said:

“Oh, it’s you, Nassington, also Glynn – is it? Well, come in. It’s as cheap inside as out, and not so deuced unpleasant.” And he backed up against the wall as we picked our way through the passage into a tiny parlour at the back of the shop.

The hunchback closed, locked, and bolted the door and followed us into the room, placing the candle, with great deliberation, on the mantelpiece. Then, rubbing his hands together and still sneering, he turned and faced us.

“And now, gentlemen,” he said, never attempting to ask us to be seated, “perhaps you will be as good as to tell me to what I owe the honour of this visit? Myself, I should have thought that my young friend here, Hugh Glynn, had had enough of Peter Zouche and his shop and of his way of paying out silly fellows who try to upset his plans.”

Cooper-Nassington took a step forward and interposed his big brawny frame between myself and the hunchback.

“Look here, Zouche,” he said in that strong, masterful way of his, “leave those tricks of nastiness for children, who may, perhaps, fly into a temper over them, and lose sight of the object of their visits, but we sha’n’t.” And he flung his hat deliberately on the table, and, dragging forward the most comfortable chair in the room, he coolly seated himself therein, pulled out a cigar case, extracted a weed therefrom, and began to smoke.

“As for you, Glynn,” he cried to me in a pause between the puffs, “you make yourself at home too. Have a cigar,” handing me the case and a box of vestas, “but don’t let that old scoundrel, Zouche, have one. It all depends on his behaviour whether we ever leave him again now we’ve taken up our quarters in this musty old den of his.” And he reached for a decanter of whiskey and a glass which were standing near, but the hunchback, who was now pallid with rage, made a grab for him and dragged them out of his grasp.

“You brute!” he hissed. “The same old brute too. Tell me your business, and get you gone.”

“Ah, now you’re talking sense,” said my companion, whose object evidently had been to get the hunchback into a rage, “and I’ll repay your compliment by emulating your example and talking to the point too. As you guess, I have come about those three old manuscripts which you purchased at the sale of the effects of a certain Father Alphonse Calasanctius. You have had time to decipher them since, and you know they are of precious importance to the gentleman who is employing Mr Glynn here, to that young idiot, Lord Fotheringay, and, also incidentally, to myself. Now, what did they contain?”

And he fixed Peter Zouche with those terrible eyes of his.

To me, a plain onlooker, it was, of course, obvious that there must be some strong, secret bond between the hunchback and the millionaire. Nobody else, I was certain, would have dared to defy Peter Zouche like this, for, whatever might be his faults, the old curio dealer lacked neither position in the world, the respect of his fellows, nor wealth, that was sometimes spoken of as almost fabulous. True, he had all that petty spite, that malevolence, that ache for sinister mischief that somehow one almost always finds with people who have been deformed from birth, but that night none of these obvious defects were uppermost. His attitude, on the contrary, suggested a man who had been brought to bay much against his will – that of one who was faced by two dread alternatives – either to fight to the bitter end an associate of old who had some most uncanny and far-reaching hold over him, or to meekly yield up some secret which he valued almost as highly as his life.

Who would triumph?

One – two – three – four – five minutes went by. Half instinctively I watched the clock on the mantelpiece; and still the hunchback made no sign, but stood half huddled over the fire, his gaze obstinately fixed on the flames.

I remember now how breathlessly I watched that terrific conflict between those two men of extraordinary position, influence, and power, – and I remember, too, thinking how it was all the more deadly and impressive because it was all so silent. One heard nothing, absolutely nothing, in that old back parlour but the steady tick-tick of antique clocks in the shop adjacent, the puff of the MP’s cigar, and the quick, laboured breathing of the grotesque figure poised near the fender.

Chapter Six.

The Sacred Secret

Had I ever been tempted, indeed, to think that the mission which Don José Casteno had confided to me was some small matter of a collector’s gain, I should not have done so after the part I played as sole witness of this wordless drama. The very atmosphere of the room was pregnant with mysterious suggestion of the tremendous issues that were hanging then in the balance. I knew at last, with as much certainty as though I had read the documents themselves, that these manuscripts that had dropped so carelessly from the hands of a dead monk into all the hurly-burly of a commonplace auction room were precious records that affected the lives, the happiness, the fortunes of thousands.

Again the problem stated itself: Who would triumph? And again I had to wait, for neither Peter Zouche nor John Cooper-Nassington would make any sign.

Suddenly, though, the dwarf stood up and fixed his eager, burning, avaricious eyes on me. “You, Mr Glynn,” he snapped, “are a man who knows as much about old manuscripts as most folks. I have seen your collection, and, for one who has had no means to speak of, you have done exceedingly well. Why don’t you tell this big, bullying, aggressive friend of ours what those three deeds contained? You were employed by some peculiar people to get possession of them, no matter what the cost might be. You received very explicit instructions about them. You made a clever fight for them.”

“And,” I broke in sternly, “you, sir, filled the room with a ‘knock out’ of dirty, hungry aliens from Whitechapel; and, when I grew dangerous, you and your friends did not scruple to hound me down and kidnap me. That was the way you put me out of competition and snatched your beggarly triumph, but you know as well as I do that I am ignorant of the precise contents or qualities of the documents which I was employed to make such a strenuous battle for.”

“But, sir,” he sneered, rolling back his lips and showing his toothless gums, “think of that beautiful sign outside your office: ‘Mr Hugh Glynn, Secret Investigator!’ why, nothing should be hidden from you!” And he threw out his hands with a gesture of infinite comprehensiveness and burst into a loud and offensive mocking laugh.

“Nor will this thing be a mystery to me long,” I retorted boldly, rising and striking the top of the table with my clenched fist. “You, Peter Zouche, understand that! At present I am merely a private soldier obeying the orders of a superior officer, but, by heaven! if it were not so, and I were free to handle this affair in the manner that suited me best, do you fancy you would be able to play with me like you did at the auction mart in Covent Garden, that I would walk meekly out of your shop after I had been kicked and buffeted and imprisoned, and that I would come here almost immediately afterwards and let you do your level best to jeer at me and sneer at me and treat me as a dolt or a child? No!” I thundered, “ten thousand thousand times no!

“Luckily,” I went on in a more subdued voice, “fate has given me a share in this mystery, and as soon as I am free of all the honourable obligations which I have undertaken you may be sure I shall be here to be reckoned with. Sooner or later I will make you bitterly regret this cheap scoffing of yours at my qualifications as a professional detective. I know that wonderful secrets about buried treasures and compacts between states and churches and individuals, lie hidden in those old manuscript deeds that are often left kicking about as so much idle lumber in garret and cellar and office. Nobody in London, indeed, knows better; and I will track this precious secret of yours down – ”

“Enough,” struck in Cooper-Nassington in his most terrible tones. “You, Glynn, have now justified yourself. It’s the hunchback’s turn. Once again I demand of him: What has he deciphered from those three queer-looking manuscripts which he purchased this afternoon?”

Peter Zouche faltered; to my astonishment I saw that he had been conquered.

“You know well enough what they contain,” he snarled, “or you would not be here at this hour, and in this mood!”

“And so do you, you wicked old cripple,” roared my friend, “or you would never have spent all that money on packing that auction mart with your gang of foreign mercenaries to effect a knock-out of the manuscripts; you are not the kind of philanthropist who throws away two or three thousand pounds on the relatives of a poor Spanish priest whom you have never set eyes on. So speak out without any more fuss. Are they what I have been led to expect?”

“They are,” the hunchback muttered, licking his dry and feverish lips; “but it will take me two or three weeks to decode them. I was looking at them when you came and knocked at the door with that cursed all-compelling signal of yours. Why the deuce didn’t you leave me in peace for a time?”

“Because I wanted to be sure I had been correctly informed, of course,” retorted the Member of Parliament gaily, rising and brushing the cigar ash off his waistcoat. “In fact, in a word, I shall assume now that you have got possession of the documents that give the key to the position and the drainage of the Lake of Sacred Treasure in Tangikano, which was for centuries the depository of the treasures of the original tribes of Mexico, and which has been believed always, upon quite credible evidence, to contain gold and precious stones to the amount of many millions sterling.”

“Yes; that is so,” conceded Zouche, with a sigh.

“What!” I cried, unable to stifle my excitement at hearing this extraordinary piece of news. “Do you mean to say there has been discovered at last that wonderful Mexican lake over which England nearly went to war with Spain in the days of Elizabeth, a secret that was supposed to be known only to the Jesuits, who lost in some miraculous fashion all the documents bearing on the subject nearly three hundred years ago?”

“I do,” replied the hunchback. “What did you think when I took such extraordinary precautions at the auction this afternoon? – that I was simply playing up for some quaint and curious cryptogram? Bah! men of my reputation don’t fling one thousand eight hundred pounds about for childish puzzles like those.”

“So I might have guessed,” I added to myself a little bitterly. “I ought to have realised something of the sort was afoot, but, as you know, we collectors of manuscripts have known so long about these wonderful missing records that we have actually grown tired of looking out for them, and some of the best and wisest of us have gone so far as to doubt their very existence.”

“Well, you need not,” observed the Member of Parliament genially, fixing his hat upon his head firmly. “Prescott, in his ‘Conquest of Mexico,’ sets out the facts about the Lake of Sacred Treasure in Tangikano with great clearness. I remember, very well, he explains that it must be somewhere about the centre of the uninhabited portion of Mexico and that its dimensions are not too formidable to tackle for unwatering, being about only one thousand two hundred feet long by one thousand feet wide on the surface, but the greatest depth has not been fathomed. It is known to stand at a height of about ten thousand feet above sea level. Indeed, its depths are reputed to have been regarded as sacred to their gods by a numerous aboriginal population long before the appearance of the Jesuits in that part of the world.”

“But why,” I queried, “is the value of its treasure always so firmly insisted on?”

“Because,” replied he, “in connection with their religious rites the aboriginals habitually made offerings to the deities of the lake in the form of gold dust, golden images, and emeralds, the most famous emerald mines of the world being situated in the heart of Mexico. Indeed, Prescott says that this particular gem was held as sacred by the early tribes inhabiting Mexico as being the emblem of the sun, they themselves being sun-worshippers. More than that, their king, who was also their pontiff, was in the habit of being completely covered with gold dust so applied as to cause him to shine with great lustre like the rays of the sun. In brief, he was the real ‘El Dorado’ of whom we have heard so much and seen so little; and, as his principal religious ceremony, he was wont to perform his ablutions from a raft in the centre of the lake, until the whole of the precious metal was washed away. This accomplished, the king, and the chiefs who were with him, made a rule of throwing costly offerings into the water.”

“Better than that,” struck in the hunchback, almost with enthusiasm, “I have just been turning over an article in the South American Journal on this very subject, and I read there that the multitude of worshippers, thereupon, likewise cast in their humbler contributions in the midst of singing and dancing and to the sound of such musical instruments as were available. When the ‘bearded men’ reached the country it is stated that the Indians, to put their treasure beyond the power of the ruthless invaders, threw it into the waters of the lake to a vast value; and, indeed, an attempt was made by the Spaniards to unwater it, so as to get at the submerged accumulation of gold dust and precious stones. They were not able to reach the bottom, but succeeded in lowering the water to such an extent as to expose a portion of the margins of the lake, whence they obtained sufficient to pay to the Spanish Government one hundred and seventy thousand dollars, equivalent to three per cent, on a total recovered of five millions six hundred thousand dollars. There were also emeralds, one of which realised seventy thousand dollars in Madrid. Further progress was arrested by the sides of the cutting on the lip of the lake-cup falling in with a tremendous crash. The water poured into the mouth of an adjacent volcano, and a terrible earthquake resulted, before which the Spaniards and their Jesuit friends fled in terror. A proper record was, however, made later on of the exact position of the lake, but, as Mr Cooper-Nassington explained, it was lost.”

“And you have recovered it,” I burst out.

“That is so; but although repeated expeditions were made to the district, which is largely of volcanic origin, to discover it without the key I possess, they all failed; and as the years slipped on they grew fewer and fewer in number until, as you have heard for yourself, the whole thing has just become a will-o’-the-wisp of the manuscript hunter who, of course, has mostly grown to feel he is as likely to discover the missing documents as he is to find the title-deeds of the temple of David.

“But,” said the hunchback, suddenly changing his tone and confronting my companion with an angry look, “none of this is to the point. It is, in a way, all so much ancient history and as familiar to men like yourself, who rule Mexico through the Stock Exchange or our British Foreign Office, as your alphabet. What I want to know is: What business is it of yours what I have bought and what I have discovered? You have no share in this find. You have no right to information. By what right do you come here demanding to know what I have learned, and shall learn, with infinite patience, expense, and labour?”

“All that in good time, my dear sir,” calmly returned Cooper-Nassington. “For the present it must be sufficient for you that I have a very real and vital stake in what you have found, and you had better treat me well over the business when I come to you again after you have deciphered the manuscripts, or you’ll live to regret the day I was born.”

For a second the two men stood glaring at each other in angry defiance, but again I saw that the millionaire won. Whatever was the mysterious hold he had over the hunchback there was no doubt but that it was a very potent and a very effective one, and that, however much Zouche might kick and threaten, in the end he was bound to come to the other’s heel.

“All right. Come to me in a fortnight’s time,” he growled, “and I’ll see then what can be done. Don’t fancy, though, that this business is simply fitting out a yacht with a party of Cornish miners and engineers and going to take possession of the loot.”

“I don’t,” said the Member of Parliament coolly; “there are the Jesuits to reckon with.”

“Yes; but that’s not the worst,” retorted Zouche; “there are others.”

“Others!” cried the man in astonishment. “What do you mean?”

“Well, first, who was the man that put you on the track of my discovery, eh? What, for instance, is the name or position of Mr Glynn’s employer?”

In spite of myself I flushed and started. Should I now hear who Don José Casteno really was, if he were really a friend of Lord Cyril Cuthbertson, and why he was a resident at that home of mystery, St. Bruno’s. Alas! no. I was doomed to disappointment.