The Hunchback of Westminster. Le Queux William
a matter of fact, I had barely time to take these details in before the brother who had first admitted me turned with a low bow and left me. My new guide who had now ushered me in was much younger – about thirty I guessed – but he also was dressed in the same sombre habit of black as the one who had first received me, save that his hood and girdle were white.
No words passed between us, but, in a silence that was almost oppressive in so brilliantly illuminated and furnished a place, he escorted me down a long, richly-carpeted passage, hung with valuable classical pictures of a modern school, to a room at the far end, the door of which stood invitingly open. Here I was left, but as I turned to examine my new surroundings, which suggested the rich, well-furnished library of some bibliophile of a generation ago, I was conscious of somebody stealing up behind me.
I turned quickly.
It was Casteno, who, this time, was dressed in an ordinary Roman cassock, and carried a biretta.
“I’m glad that you have come so quickly,” he said in those smooth, even tones, motioning me to a chair on the opposite side to one in which he sat close to the fireplace. “As I wired you, I was at the auction. I saw you had failed.”
“Then why ever didn’t you bid for the manuscripts yourself?” I cried in amazement. “Why did you let them go without a protest?”
“I didn’t,” he answered quietly. “As a matter of fact, I was the man who was got up to personate you, and I stopped the mad rush of bids, for I was satisfied, when I saw beyond all doubt that it was the Hunchback of Westminster into whose hands those precious documents would fall, we should win our way through in the end. At first I feared it would be the other man.”
“Fotheringay?” I asked.
He nodded.
“But they are intimate friends. They are acting together, hand and glove.”
“They may now, but they won’t long,” he returned significantly, fixing his eyes in a dreamy way upon the fire.
Then he roused himself with an effort.
“Look here,” he went on quickly, as though he had suddenly arrived at a momentous decision, “don’t let’s beat about the bush. Let me come at once to business. Don’t bother me with a lot of questions. I can now see that you are simply exploding to put a lot of interrogatories to me, beginning with a demand for the reason why I came to you at all; how I dared to dress myself up exactly like yourself; what on earth has Colonel Napier to do with this business; and ending with a perfectly legitimate request for my true reasons for having so strong and deadly a hatred against this man Fotheringay, whom I know, before he went out big game shooting, you always believed was your most firm and ardent friend.
“Well, just don’t ask me, that’s all. If you do, I can’t answer you. If you persist it will inevitably mean that you and I will have to part. In the latter case you will never get any nearer the solution of that mystery of lot eighty-two – the three manuscripts which were found in the effects of the dead Father Alphonse Calasanctius – than you are to-night.
“As a matter of fact, I want your aid in deeds, not words. Now, say at once – are you prepared to trust me, and to help me, and not to bother me for a lot of utterly needless explanations that will really – take my word for it – leave you in a bigger fog than ever, or do you feel that you absolutely must have my confidence or turn up the work now, at once? Speak out quite plainly. Don’t be influenced by the thought of cash. Consider the seven-fifty I have handed to you as yours – whatever happens. Now, bed-rock fact!”
For a moment I reflected. My enthusiasm was stirred by his speech, and in turn I mentally defied Doris, the colonel, and even the weird old hunchback.
“I am prepared to trust you,” I answered, holding out my hand, which he clasped with the firm touch of a straightforward, honest man.
“Then take this letter for me,” he said, fumbling in the pocket of his cassock and producing therefrom a formidable-looking document done up with big splashes of red legal-looking wax. “Go to the House of Commons with it, and do not open it until you reach the hall in which Members of Parliament meet any strangers who desire to speak to them. Then read the instructions you will find therein and – ” and all at once he stopped and looked confused.
“And what?” I queried, rising from my seat and fixing his eyes with mine.
“Well – you will see,” he answered, with a strange smile, touching a bell, which warned me that our interview was at an end.
Chapter Five.
Introduces the Hunchback
I left St. Bruno’s and made as hard as my motor would go for Westminster. Under the new rules I knew that the House of Commons did practically no business at all on Saturdays, so that if I missed the opportunity afforded me that night I realised that I should have to wait until Monday afternoon before I broke the seal.
Luckily, the streets about that hour were practically free from traffic, and my Panhard went pounding along at a pace which, if it were horribly illegal, was certainly mightily pleasant and exhilarating so that by the time I was tearing through Westminster all my doubts as to the strangeness of my reception by this queer-looking monk had vanished and I was quite keen to put this new mission through with rapidity and success.
Now, as most people are aware, the House of Commons is about the most easy place in the world of access if any man or woman has the most flimsy pretext of business with any one of its six hundred or so solemn and dignified members. I sprang from my car, handed it over to the care of a loafer who quickly hurried up, and simply nodded to the constables in the entrance. Then I marched up that long passage, peopled with the statues of dead and gone Parliamentarians, with head erect and heart that beat high with anticipation at some good and sensational development.
As arranged, I stopped in the big hall, where some forty or fifty persons were waiting either for admission to the strangers’ gallery or intent on interviews; and, slipping on to one of the leather-covered lounges in a corner, I drew the precious missive from my pocket and broke the heavy seals with which it had been fastened.
As I expected, the package did not all at once yield up its secret. The outer wrapper, of a stout linen cloth similar to those used by the post-office for registered envelopes, merely fell off and revealed two other envelopes, also carefully stamped with red wax. On the top one was written in printed characters, as though the writer were afraid that his handwriting might be recognised:
“To John Cooper-Nassington, Esq, MP, St. Stephen’s, Westminster, SW.”
“The Bearer waits.”
On the other, to my astonishment, I discovered no less an address than this:
Urgent. Private.
“To the Most Hon. Lord Cyril Cuthbertson, His Majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.”
“Only to be delivered by Mr Hugh Glynn in case Mr Cooper-Nassington should decline.”
For a second, I confess, I felt too astonished to say, or to do, or even to think of anything at all. I sat, with these big legal-looking letters in front of me, gazing into space, trying vainly to interpret the meaning of all these extraordinary manoeuvres on the part of a youthful Spaniard who might, it was true, be really a most important envoy of some far-off foreign state, but equally might be also, and with more apparent reason it seemed to me, absolutely nobody at all.
For Lord Cyril Cuthbertson, as all England was aware (in common with our foreign enemies, no matter how big they might be or bullying in tone or aggressive), was the very last man to be trifled with. He it was who, when Lord Garthdown fell, told Germany so sharply to keep out of an African negotiation we had on hand just then or he would apply an English form of the Monroe doctrine to the entire continent of Africa and never allow them to acquire there another foot of space. He had also, when the United States raised some futile question about boundaries that ought to have been fixed up a century ago, told America that he had settled the matter in his own mind; their claim was preposterous; and that, if they wished to enforce it, they had