The Hunchback of Westminster. Le Queux William
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