The Hunchback of Westminster. Le Queux William
lift it out. And they, too, I recollect very well, promptly busied themselves about troubles elsewhere.
Not a nice man, perhaps – not even a courteous man – but, at all events, a man whom the House and the country feared, and on whom nobody dared play any game or trick.
Yet here was evidently an urgent private communication to him from Don José Casteno. What was at the bottom of it? – a secret of State or of life?
Like a man in a dream I arose and approached one of those sturdy, well-fed constables who stand ever at the barriers that mark off the sacred corridors of the House from the vulgar footstep of the unelect public.
“Please give that to Mr Cooper-Nassington,” I said in a voice that I think had not the slightest resemblance to my natural tones.
My mood now was one of absolute indifference. Whatever happened, I recognised now that I was in for something extraordinary, and I felt I might as well get it over at once as sit on a lounge in that close, stuffy, noisy hall and speculate about a mystery to which I had no clue.
Even John Cooper-Nassington, millionaire, was no small legislative lion to tackle. In the days when South American industries were booming on the Stock Exchange he had appeared with the most wonderful options for railways in the different states – here, there, everywhere – and in three years he had emerged from the pit of speculation with hands cleaner and pockets heavier than most. Ever since he had been regarded as a great authority on things South American. Whenever Chili and Peru had a set-to, which they did regularly once in two years, or Venezuela grew offensive to its friends, or Mexico wanted to swell itself a little, John Cooper-Nassington was sent for by one side or the other; yet, alas, his enemies said he had more pleasure in putting down half-a-million to pay the expenses of a revolution in which five or six thousand innocent varlets were burnt or blown into eternity than he had in subsequently floating a costly war loan, three parts of which usually meandered into his own pocket.
Still, John Cooper-Nassington, when all was said and done, was but a penny pictorial paper kind of Boanerges compared with the quick, Napoleonic qualities of Lord Cyril Cuthbertson who, by the way, had a curious personal resemblance to the First Consul, and was certainly not more than thirty-five years of age. Nassington, now, was a big, heavy-jawed man of about fifty, with a head and beard of iron-grey hair and a brawny, hairy, massive fist that would have felled a man at a blow; yet, as he suddenly projected himself through the swing doors that divided the lobby from the hall to meet me, I saw that he was carrying the letter I had sent carefully closed in his hands still but that his face was white and his looks strangely agitated.
“Ah, Mr Glynn,” he said as I advanced to meet him, handing him my card, “this is an extraordinary business, isn’t it?” And he wrung my hand with a vigour that suggested a high degree of excitement and nervous tension.
“I am but an ambassador, sir,” I replied, falling into step with his, and commencing to pace up and down the corridor that led into the street. “I have no knowledge of the contents of the communication which I handed to you.”
“Quite so. Quite so,” he returned hurriedly. “I gathered as much from what was said by the writer to me. Still, I am told I can make what use of you I think fit, and, truth to say, that is one of the things that puzzle me. Shall I take you with me or shall I send you back?”
“Does that, sir, mean you decline?” I queried, remembering the superscription on the other envelope I was treasuring in a secret pocket within my vest.
“Good heavens, man, no!” he thundered. “Do you think I am a born fool or idiot, or what? Why, that terrible man Cuthbertson would give five years of his life, or one of his hands, to have a magnificent chance of a sensational coup such as this may prove to be if we are right and have a quarter of an ounce of luck. Just get this clear, will you? I accept – I accept – I accept.” And he enforced his words with a grip on my arm that almost crushed the flesh into the bones.
A pause followed; and then, stopping dead, he fixed me with his eyes. I could see that, shrewd, clever man of the world as he was, he was taking my measure before he came to any deliberate resolution, and I met his gaze with a glance as steadfast and as fearless as his own. After all, what had I to be ashamed of in six feet of lithe, clean figure, an athletic step, and features that my worst friends would say, although my mouth was hidden by a heavy black moustache like a cavalryman’s, were honest-looking and reliable?
“All right,” he said in that sharp, decisive way of his; “I won’t beat about the bush any longer. You shall go with me, and if, between us, we don’t make some of these fiends sit up, and do a fine stroke of business for the old flag, I’ll sit down and let that man I hate so cordially – Lord Cyril Cuthbertson – have a shot at it. But I won’t – I won’t – I won’t.” And once again he stretched out that vice-like hand of his to enforce his words on my over-slow imagination. But this time I was too quick for him – I slipped on one side – and he broke into a hearty laugh.
“You’ll do,” he said admiringly, giving me a hearty slap on the back. “Just meet me at the main entrance to the House in thirty minutes, will you? Then we’ll go straight on.”
But as he hastened back I could not help two questions recurring to me with startling distinctness: What “fiends” were those we had got to face?
And why should an insignificant-looking fellow like José Casteno so well understand the bitter personal rivalries that spring up between strong men on the same party side in the British Houses of Parliament as to be able to play what looked like a game of childish see-saw between two such redoubtable antagonists as Lord Cyril Cuthbertson, His Majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and John Cooper-Nassington, uncrowned Emperor of Greater South America?
Both problems, however, were destined to be answered much more rapidly and sensationally than ever I expected when I left the House that night. I drove my Panhard at break-neck rate back to its garage in St. Martin’s Lane, Charing Cross, snatched a hurried meal, and tore back in a hansom to St. Stephen’s.
One thing was soon evident – Cooper-Nassington was a man of his word. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t been waiting three minutes by those large and imposing gates that mark the main entrance to the Houses of Parliament before his coupé and handsome pair of bays clattered across the courtyard, and pulled up with a jerk close to the kerb, and he thrust his head out of the carriage and bade me enter.
In response, I took a vacant seat beside him, and without a word being exchanged between footman and master, the servant mounted the box again, and the carriage was driven rapidly away.
Now did I confess here that I was anxious as to our destination, worried as to what would happen, timid as to the safety of myself and my companion even after my grim and provoking experiences in the auction mart, I should not put down what was the fact. In truth, I never felt less concerned about the issue of any adventure in the whole course of my career. Indeed, one had only to be in the company of Cooper-Nassington to catch some of the wonderful vitality, assurance, and resource of this most extraordinary individual. The very presence of the man braced up the nerves, and insensibly one acquired some of that strong, masterful habit of mind and that breadth of outlook which seemed to make him feel that, whatever mischances befell some of God’s creatures, he, at least, was one destined to pass on – ever successful, always victorious.
As it happened, the journey we went was in itself short. Barely had we passed half-way along Millbank Street than we made a sharp turn to the left, and before I had time to utter an expression of recognition, the carriage drew up with a jerk outside the old, dingy curiosity shop in Tufton Street in which I had earlier in the day been imprisoned, – the retreat of that uncanny man, Peter Zouche, the Hunchback of Westminster.
Choking down any feeling of surprise I had on the subject, I meekly descended from the brougham at the heels of my companion and without a word of protest heard him tell his coachman: “Home.” It seemed to me then that we were both walking into the lion’s den together, and that, if anything untoward happened, much the same fate would befall us both.
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