The Hunchback of Westminster — Inside the Classic

Half unconsciously I rose from my crouching posture in the box and placed my hands high above my head. As I did so I was startled to catch the bright gleam of a chisel, that just then was being inserted from the outside, and all at once I heard some fresh blows from a hammer, which made me hope that at length the expected time of my deliverance had come, and that the lid of the case was in process of being forced open to set me free.

A moment afterwards the wooden framework yielded with a crash. A flood of light poured into the box, rendering me for the time quite blind, for the interior of the case had been perfectly dark. Directly, however, I recovered myself from this I sprang out, and, to my chagrin, found that I was only partially released, for I was now in a cellar about twenty feet square, lit in the centre by a ship's lantern which depended from the ceiling by an iron chain. Unfortunately, too, I was not quick enough to see who it was that had struck off the lid, for almost the same second as I emerged an iron door at the far end of the apartment closed with a crash, a key turned in the lock, and I heard a man's footsteps die away in the distance.

Not to be baulked, I seized the hammer which he had dropped in his excitement, and with this beat upon the door.

"Let me out," I shouted. "Let me out at once."

A reply came more quickly than I expected.

Almost immediately there followed the sounds of returning footsteps, and to my utter astonishment I heard a familiar voice cry: "Hugh! Hugh!" And the door was flung open, and no other than Doris Napier herself rushed to my arms.

Laughing and crying alternately, she could give me no coherent word of explanation then, but half led, half dragged me out of this strange hiding-place to a large apartment on the floor above, which, from the specific kind of curiosities it contained, I recognised at once as one of the showrooms of Peter Zouche, the Hunchback of Westminster.

"By heaven!" I cried in amazement as I stopped suddenly close to the open door near the street; and almost stupefied I surveyed the apartment in Tufton Street in which I had been so often an honoured visitor, "and so this is the place of the man who has dared to abduct me in the open-- is it? The Hunchback of Westminster! Well, now I know with whom I shall have to reckon. He shall not find I am remiss." And I set my teeth hard.

"Don't talk like that," pleaded Doris, laying a gentle detaining hand on my arm and trying to lead me in the direction of the pavement. "Remember Mr Zouche and Lord Fotheringay are both friends of yours, and realise for once that you have had a very narrow escape with your life. You can have no idea of the peril you have been in."

"No doubt," I returned grimly. "But that's scarcely the point just now, is it? You can leave me to deal with them--`friends' as you call them-- or foes. What, dearest, I want to hear from you is this"--and I smiled into her eyes--"On what mad pretext were you lured here? How did you, of all the sweet and helpful souls on God's earth, come to learn that I had been kidnapped--"

"Father told me," she replied, with a blush--and she bent her head.

"Colonel Napier! Your father told you," I ejaculated. "But how in the name of fate did he come to be mixed up in this affair, which may end anywhere--even an assize court."

"Lord Fotheringay came and had a private chat with him in our flat at Whitehall Court," she explained. "That was about half-an-hour ago. I don't know, of course, what passed between them, but suddenly father came to me and said that you were in great danger and had been rescued by Mr Zouche's cleverness and the earl's quickness. He added, too, that somehow you had mixed yourself up in some terrible conspiracy which he had promised the earl, when he told him about it in confidence, that he would not reveal to a soul, but that I might, if I cared for you as much as ever, and did really wish to help you, take a hansom here and release you from this cellar and tell you from him that, whatever you do, you must instantly drop all connection with some man he called Jose Casteno?"

"Thanks, but that's not enough," I answered hotly. "The truth is, I've undertaken certain work for Casteno, and I shall carry it through. Believe me that, after all has been said and explained, it is Colonel Napier who has been made a puppet and not myself."

"Yes," I went on; "I mean Lord Fotheringay and Peter Zouche," and I saw the girl start and her face blanch. "Bah! you can never know what they have dared to do to me." And in a few graphic but incisive sentences I recounted to her all my humiliating and baffling experiences in the mart that afternoon.

"But perhaps," suggested Doris timidly when I had finished my passionate outburst, "they did not mean anything unkind to you after all. Look at the affair outside yourself. Perhaps great issues hang on the recovery of those three old manuscripts, and it is really you who are, as they assert, being made a tool of--to ruin them."

"I don't care whether I am or not." I retorted savagely, pulling my hat tightly across my temples. "I have seen Casteno, and I, who am usually reputed a fine judge of character by voice and face, like him, and I shall not cease my association with him until I prove conclusively that he is not worthy of my trust or assistance.

"Besides, Doris," I went on earnestly, "this particular commission of his means everything that I really value in life--it means you! Don't you recollect, as keenly as I do, how the colonel has forbidden us to be formally engaged until I can point to at least a thousand pounds, which I can tell him truthfully that I have made out of this new fantastic profession of mine as a secret investigator? Well, listen to me. If all goes well I see my way now quite easily to make this amount out of Casteno alone. Already he has handed me seven hundred and fifty pounds, and I can quickly run out other work on his behalf amounting to that extra two fifty. As for Lord Fotheringay, he'll never be of any professional use to me. Ever since he got back from America he's been quite a different man to all of us who were his old friends. Something dreadful must have happened to him there. He's changed hideously for the worse."

And then I stopped suddenly. This casual reference to America recalled something to me (like casual references often do to all of us) that I had quite forgotten. It was nothing less than a connection with America which both Lord Fotheringay and the dead priest, Father Alphonse Calasanctius, had in common. Could it--I now asked myself--could it really happen that Don Jose Casteno had also come from that same South American Republic--the Republic of Mexico? And could those faded parchment rolls relate to some secret which the Earl of Fotheringay had discovered whilst he was in Mexico, and in regard to which he had procured the assistance of Zouche, one of the finest, most noted palaeographists and experts in mediaeval cypher that the British Museum has ever employed?

"I don't care," put in Doris firmly, "I don't care about this point of view of yours. I've a strong intuition that no good will come to you or to me by your association with this foreigner, Casteno. Believe me at least in this, that my father is not a man to speak or to act lightly, and he who really knows all, remember, says most solemnly that you must give this man's friendship up now--at once."

"I won't," I snapped decisively.

"For my sake," she pleaded, and her eyes were lustrous with unshed tears.

"I have given my word," I repeated, throwing my shoulders back with an effort.

"Break it. It was obtained from you by fraud," suggested this gentle casuist. "'Twould be no sin."

"But the money," I cried, and the thought restored my determination to its full strength.

Even Doris wavered. The temptation was indeed cruel.

"The money will do us no good," she replied at length. "I prefer we should wait."

"But I don't," I retorted, setting my chin firmly and clenching my fists. "I am tired of being treated as a little less than your friend, dear heart, and a little more than an acquaintance. I want you--your father--ay, all the world," I went on wildly, "to recognise me as your accepted lover. And inasmuch as Jose Casteno assists me to that end, I say now, once and for all, that I will not give him up for your father or anybody else. Besides, aren't we told there's a tide in the affairs of men? Well, I now put my intuition boldly against yours--against Colonel Napier's--even against the vamped-up stories of the ugly old Hunchback of Westminster--and I say that this tide of fortune has at last come to me, and that I will take it at the full flood no matter who may raise their hand in protest."

"You are quite determined?" gasped poor Doris, with a little shiver.

"Quite," I answered, and my teeth again closed with a snap.

"Then," said she, with a little gulp of terror, turning towards the door, "I--I must hurry back. I promised father that I would leave you at once if you refused, and I too must keep my word. Let me, however, whisper one word to you."

And still burning with self-righteousness I bent down.

"Mizpah," said she in a low voice, almost like a prayer: "The Lord watch between you and me when we are absent one from the other. Only He can protect us both. Please heaven He will." And kissing me hurriedly on the cheek she darted away.

Next instant she had sprung into a passing hansom and had vanished from my sight, leaving me for a second quite dumbfounded.

THE HOUSE AT HAMPSTEAD.

Thus began my powerful fight for Don Jose Casteno's rights!

Looking back to-day I, of course, can see quite clearly how very foolish and headstrong I then was, how I refused to be warned, even by the best friend man ever has--the woman who loves him. But there! we can all be wise after the event, can't we?

Oddly enough though, I did not meet Casteno in my offices that day at midnight as we had both so carefully arranged. True, I immediately made my way to Stanton Street, and by then eight o'clock had actually boomed forth from Big Ben, but no sooner did I reach my desk than I found thereon a telegram which had been despatched at 4:30 PM from the Charing Cross Telegraph Office by the mysterious Spaniard, cancelling the appointment, and calling upon me to:

"Come immediately to St Bruno's, Chantry Road, Hampstead. I know all.--Casteno."

As a consequence of this I was soon speeding half across London in that swift ten-horse Panhard of mine, which had been given to me a month previously in a burst of generosity by a foolish client, an old man, whom I had succeeded in delivering from a gang of needy blackmailers without scandal. Indeed, in less than an hour from receipt of his message, I had reached the long, winding, and secluded thoroughfare which he had specified.

As a matter of fact, too, if anybody sought a spot where he could hide effectually from police and public in London, he could never choose a better or a more suitable district than the aristocratic portions of Hampstead. Much of the wild character of the heath still lingers in those avenues, and the dwellers in those parts are curiously few, select, and quite indifferent to what goes on outside their own ken.

St Bruno's, I discovered, was one of the finest of the many fine but solitary-looking mansions that still exist in Chantry Road. It stood at the far end of the thoroughfare in a _cul de sac_, in which but one gas lamp burned feebly, throwing into more striking relief the dense, dark character of the surrounding trees and moss-grown pavement. The only entrance to the place I could find was a small oaken door in a lofty wall of stone, like those we see built so often for the vestries of our parish churches, and when I pulled an old and rusty iron bell-ring there was a disquietening pause of some minutes before I heard the movement of any servant. Even then the door itself did not open, but a small panel about nine inches square was thrust apart at a point about the height of the average man and commanding a good view of the stranger's face and form.

"What seek you, my son?" asked a clear, refined voice like a priest's, but when I answered; "Don Jose Casteno--he has sent for me," all was changed. The space beyond seemed flooded with light--the door itself was thrown open wide--and I found myself being escorted by a man in the habit of a Benedictine monk, across a flagged courtyard to a fine building, the entrance to which was commanded by two huge wooden doors.

"This is the home of the Order of St Bruno," said my guide, who was old and decrepit, apparently about sixty years of age. His tones were those of courteous conversation as used by a man of culture, and he swung to and fro an old lantern he was carrying to light my path as we both waited patiently for somebody inside the building to unbar this formidable-looking entrance. "We St Bruno-ites," he added, "have houses in many quarters--in Delhi for instance, in Sydney, in America-- but this is our principal place."

"Roman Catholic, of course," I remarked, buttoning up my overcoat, for I felt chilled after my brisk ride. "Or High Church?" I ventured as I saw his bright eyes frown.

"Not at all," the man returned with some asperity. "We are of neither of those sects." But he never explained what their religion was. Just then the doors of the main house opened and we were ushered into a magnificent hall, decorated with dark oak panels, and relieved half-way by a finely-wrought gallery which ran on three sides of this spacious apartment. On the fourth wall was a wrought-iron bracket on which stood an immense statue of a woman carved out of white marble, decorated with rare exotic flowers, and cunningly lit by a series of candles, with reflectors which depressed all the light on features beautiful only with the passionless splendour of a Venus de Milo.

Down the centre of the hall was placed a long table, flanked on either side by forms, and headed by a chair or a small throne fashioned like an abbot's.

As 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.

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.

"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.

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.