Read Ebook: The Hunchback of Westminster by Le Queux William

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Ebook has 602 lines and 46998 words, and 13 pages

mfortable suspicion that the Spaniard had won. Even as I surveyed the ruins of my theories I was conscious that little was left to connect Casteno with the murder.

"But do you think your brother Paul will be discovered?" I asked.

"I cannot tell," said Casteno, and I could see now he was sincerely grieved at the disastrous intelligence I had communicated to him. "There are sure to be plenty of people in Embankment Mansions who will remember the caning which the lad had from the colonel on the stairs. They will be certain, when they recover their wits, to give the police the details of that affray; also there is that discharged servant I spoke of--the man Butterworth. He hates Paul like poison. He will leave no stone unturned, I am certain, to connect the lad with the crime.

"Still, mere suspicion is one thing, and evidence strong enough to warrant arrest is another," he added after a moment's careful consideration. "Perhaps, after all, I am wrong. Somebody else may have done it. We shall see."

"Whoever it is I shall do my best to bring them to justice," I cried hotly. "I don't care whether it is Paul Zouche--"

"Of course not," replied Casteno with much dignity. "I have no doubt you will communicate all I have repeated to you to Scotland Yard. Indeed, I never had any two opinions on that score. At the same time you must excuse me if I don't evince any keen desire to debate the matter further."

"I never asked you to do so," I retorted, anxious not to be outdone in courtesy by the Spaniard. "All your statements to me were practically volunteered."

"True," said Casteno. "As a matter of fact, I felt they were honestly due to you. I saw that my absence from your rooms at the time when the colonel was murdered looked very ugly for me. Very ugly, indeed."

"Particularly after you had warned the man only an hour previously that if he didn't do a certain thing, which he subsequently declined to do for you, he would regret his action before four and twenty hours had passed."

"Quite so. Quite so. All the same, that was but a figure of speech. Myself, I had no idea of violence or revenge. My sole impression was of his gross injustice to yourself, which I felt Time himself would most quickly avenge.

"Still," he went on, and now his tones were particularly grave, "don't let us go on debating this business further. It is very awful--it is dreadfully tragic--and it seems to strike right at the heart of the family life of us both. Let us leave it where it stands. I am sure myself a crime like that, in the heart of London, can't remain hidden for many days, particularly with such assistance as you will be able to give the police when you have a few moments to spare to write or to wire to the headquarters staff at Scotland Yard. Therefore don't pursue the matter with me any longer. Realise that you, and I too, are engaged on a business of gigantic international importance. Aren't you curious to hear what I have arranged since I sent you that telegram informing you my father, as I suppose I must now call the hunchback when I speak of him to you, had picked up with this flying machine inventor, Sparhawk, and had actually determined to go on a journey through the air with him to-morrow in a brand new flying machine?"

"I am very curious," I admitted. "I had no idea old Peter had such adventurous tastes."

"Nor have any of his friends. Yet such is the fact. He has really two natures--the student's and the explorer's,--always at work within him; and I never knew him have a big job on, like the deciphering of those three manuscripts relating to the Lake of Sacred Treasure, that he has not eased the strain on his brain, caused by the hours of close attention which the work demands, by going on some wild excursion of this sort. Curiously enough, too, he has always believed in flying machines. It has been one of the dreams of his life to patent one which he could present to Spain for use in warfare. Indeed, all the time Santos-Dumont was making those daring ascents of his in Paris he haunted the French capital in the hope he might pick up some tips for his own models, which he keeps in a disused stable near the Crystal Palace, and which he works on every Sunday after he has heard Mass in that impressive-looking church in Spanish Place."

"But how about his studies?" I asked.

"Oh, he doesn't find Shrewsbury hotel life agree with him. He and Sparhawk are only waiting here until the fete to-morrow, and then they'll career off; and wherever they drop, even if it is only in a village seven miles away, they will not trouble to come back here. They've quite resolved to cut off to some other part of England, but where, I can't for the life of me find out. Still, I think I have done very well to book up the only two seats they offered for sale to the public, don't you? We shall have to be careful, of course, or they will see through our disguises. At all events, they'll find it hard to shake us off--"

"Unless the apparatus goes wrong and drops us to earth."

"He may have discovered something startling and strange," I answered, a great fear now in my heart. "Those documents may have yielded up their secret to him. See! he's going in the direction of the railway station. He may be going back to town."

"Or to the shed where Sparhawk keeps his flying machine. It lies in this direction--in a street parallel with the railway station. Luckily, we have not far to go before we shall see what they are up to. Personally, I don't like the look of things at all." And we both of us quickened our pace.

Outside a fence that skirted a long and rambling garden they were joined by a third companion--a girl attired in a bright summer costume, who chatted with them gaily as they marched steadily forward.

"Who can that be?" cried Casteno, much puzzled. "I did not know my father had any woman friends."

"Well, let's slip to the other side of the street," I suggested. "Then we can catch a glimpse of her face. The figure certainly seems very familiar to me, although my short sight often plays me the strangest of pranks."

We stepped quickly across the road, and with a few strategic movements materially lessened the space between us and the trio in front.

A moment later the girl turned her face in the direction of the hunchback, evidently to exchange some jest with him, for her features were wreathed in smiles.

I stopped short in astonishment.

It was no other than Doris Napier!

Casteno recognised her almost at the same moment that I did. The effect upon him was just as great, for he, too, halted and gazed at me with an expression of vague but sincere concern.

"This is odd--very odd!" he muttered. "I had no idea that Miss Napier was out of London. I wonder, now, how she came to have missed all news of her father's death? Can she have mixed herself up in this manuscript hunt--under pressure from Lord Cyril Cuthbertson or the Earl of Fotheringay, for instance? I remember, now, that she was a great patriot at one time--used to speak for the Primrose League and organisations like that. It would have been a masterly stroke on their part to get hold of her--to work on my father--for he has had always a very soft corner in his heart for her, and in the old days the colonel used to say there was nothing he would refuse her. What do you think, Glynn?" he added, turning suddenly to me. "Is it your idea that she has come under some lofty notion that England's interests are in peril both from the Jesuits and from Spain, and if she doesn't circumvent these enemies the Lake of Sacred Treasure will be lost to this country for ever?"

But I refused to be drawn. Her appearance was sudden, too unexpected. "I don't know," I answered. "I can't even guess. The thing may be a ruse on the part of the wretch that killed her father. He may fear the effect of her disclosures. I must wait; just now I cannot see."

"At all events, I am sure the hunchback is no partisan to any move like that last one you mention," returned Casteno stoutly, with something resembling offended family pride vibrating through his voice. "Indeed, I am certain that as yet he knows nothing, absolutely nothing, about the tragedy at Whitehall Court. He has been too busy trying to decipher the manuscripts to have had any time or strength to glance at the Saturday night or Sunday morning papers. As for Captain Sparhawk, like all enthusiastic inventors, he is a man of one idea. He can think of nothing, talk of nothing, dream of nothing, read of nothing but the flying machine which he is going to try to-morrow in the Quarry at the great floral fete."

Unfortunately, we had not proceeded many yards before the worst we could have anticipated happened. All at once the three whom we were pursuing stopped at a gate which led, by way of a drive, up to a large, superior-looking house. A tall, interesting stranger with the clear-cut features of a typical barrister, who has not been down long enough from 'Varsity life to forget all the graces, stepped up to them, and then the entire party moved round and went into the house, the door of which closed behind them.

"Confound it! we shall learn nothing like this," snapped Casteno, biting his lips in his annoyance. "I thought I knew my father's habits and methods pretty well, but ever since I have been down here at Shrewsbury he has managed to throw me out of my reckoning continually. Now, what are we to do, Glynn? Had we better grin and bear it, or ought we to try if we can't find out for ourselves what is happening in this place?"

I turned round stolidly and motioned to a boy who was passing, his eyes fixed in admiration on the uniform I was wearing--that of a sergeant in the Royal Engineers. "Who lives in this house?" I asked, and a sixpenny piece travelled from my palm to his.

"Nobody--often," answered the lad, with a smile. "As a matter of fact, it belongs to the Earl of Fotheringay, like the most of the property does hereabout. He came down here late last night. I know, because I serve him with milk." And with a self-conscious nod the juvenile tradesman pulled himself together and passed on.

"There! What did I tell you?" asked Casteno. "Didn't I suggest Miss Napier had been inveigled into this business to help Lord Fotheringay out of his difficulties? You mark my words. This walk of theirs--this meeting--this encounter outside these gates--are all a plant--a trap designed to get the hunchback into the Government's clutches. Our duty now is clear. We must find our way inside and checkmate any of their moves at once."

"Steadily," I replied, "steadily," pulling the excited Spaniard down a long, narrow, leaf-covered passage that ran by the side of a wall which skirted the limit of the grounds attached to the house. "It is all very well to pull up these theories in this fashion; but there is one great helper of ours always ready to checkmate both Fotheringay and Cuthbertson, and him you have quite forgotten. Now, remembering the existence of Mr Cooper-Nassington, why should we go and put our necks in jeopardy, eh?" And out of the corner of an eye I shot a quick glance at Casteno. It had been long on my mind to find out what that Honourable Member was up to, and I realised that this was a most favourable chance. After all, we had to wait for a decent interval. There was just a possibility that the trio might re-appear and return to the Green Dragon.

"And he does all this for England, and so do you?"

"Yes--in a way--yes," the Spaniard replied hesitatingly. "There is a lot of things to explain which I can't explain yet. But that's the substantial fact."

"Then why do you fight the hunchback, you a Spaniard," I queried, "when all the benefit will go to England if you succeed, not to Spain?"

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.

"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."

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 fete 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.

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