The Hunchback of Westminster

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.

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 COURTWHO 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.”