William Le Queux

“ Nevertheless, I thought of Doris lying there so weak, helpless, and friendless; and I hesitated. I felt I had already stifled Love so often for Duty that I could repress it no longer. Indeed, I took a step in her direction to make myself known to her, but, misconceiving my object, thinking I had no idea but one—to flee—Leopardi seized me in a grip of iron. “You shall not go,” he panted—“never! You are a thief, and you shall pay for your crime.”
His touch, however, was quite enough. What Casteno had failed to accomplish it brought about in a flash. ”

“ And inasmuch as José 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. ”

“ Still, that was before José Casteno appeared on the scene in Stanton Street, WC. Afterwards things, as you will see, were different.
Now, of course, there are always plenty of people who do not believe that the great and wonderful things that happen in life come heralded by a sky angry with the glow of blood or by a storm in which the wind seems to range from end to end of the gamut of all human emotion, and to sob and shriek and sigh as though it were possessed by some fugitive spirit stricken with mortal pain. ”

“ Don José Casteno, as he called himself, had warned me, of course, to expect treachery, and also to be cautious about some mysterious, far-reaching, and sensational intrigue—but not even I, in my wildest moods, could have expected that I should be caught up in a London auction market in broad daylight by a band of foreign mercenaries and that my bids would be put out of competition just at the second that my client demanded all my shrewdness, my intelligence, and my power to fix a hard deal. ”

“ For myself, I own, I should have been strongly tempted to yield to that joyous sensation of peace and safety again, and have done like Doris, the hunchback, and Professor Leopardi, and dropped promptly into blissful unconsciousness, had not Casteno fought his way towards me as soon as the excitement and the mob permitted and caught me tightly by the arm.
“Look here,” he whispered. “This, remember, is the real time of our trial, not up there above the clouds. Make one false move here and you’ll ruin everything.” ”

“ After all, it was quite possible that the lust of murder had seized him in those seconds, the desire to make good his own words both to the colonel and to myself. It would appear so easy to commit a crime when all London slept; and, alas! it had been easy, painfully, pitilessly easy, to put an end to that gallant old soldier as he lay slumbering in his bed. Certainly one great damning fact stood out against Casteno—the killing of the colonel’s dog Fate. ”

“ Should I now hear who Don José Casteno really was, if he were really a friend of Lord Cyril Cuthbertson, and why he was a resident at that home of mystery, St. Bruno’s. Alas! no. I was doomed to disappointment.
“We decline to tell you,” said my companion with great firmness.
“I shall find out for myself,” roared the dwarf.
“Do, if you can,” returned the man coolly. “For the present, stick to the point we are discussing. Who else have we to fear?”
“The cut-throats who did this,” snarled the hunchback, stepping quickly across the room and taking down a cloak from the walls. ”

“ We were simply surrounded with clouds, which seethed about us in white, clinging vapour and wrapped themselves about our clothes and faces as though we had been overtaken in a mist on some Scottish moor.
“Something will have to be done,” said the professor sternly, turning suddenly to Casteno and myself, his sole travelling companions in that car. “We can expect no assistance from that old hunchback or that girl, Miss Napier, in the other compartment. Do either of you gentlemen understand anything about air-ships?” ”

“ The beautiful grounds of the Quarry were black with thousands upon thousands of anxious spectators, and at a signal from the aeronaut Casteno and I, amidst loud cheers from the mob in the enclosure, took our places first in the car. There was room for a third passenger, and for a few seconds the Spaniard and I debated eagerly whether we should have Doris or the hunchback as the last party in the trio, and, if so, what line we ought to take with them lest they should suspect we were not those harmless members of a curious section of the public which we had given ourselves out to be. ”

“ I am determined that everywhere she goes, in everything she does, my own Motherland should triumph, and as long as I have breath, as long as I can stretch out my hands or use my brains, I will never, if words or deeds of mine can avail her anything, suffer her to fall behind her enemies, but everywhere, in everything, I will cherish one ideal—“God prosper England.”’”
“Indeed I am,” I cried in eager enthusiasm.
“Then you may safely advance to the first stage of your initiation!” said the old monk, but, to my surprise, his face was now very grave. ”

“ Whence next day Chantry Road, Hampstead, was reached in an incredibly short time, and once again I found myself standing at the tiny door in the wall with its suggestive peep-hole. Only this time there seemed to be no delay in answering our summons, and we passed with great rapidity from the public street into the courtyard that shut the home of St. Bruno’s off the porter’s box at the entrance, and then we made our way, without any black-robed guide, to the huge hall with its great flower-decked statue of a woman, heroic in size but incommunicably fair. ”

“ If a man is a monk—a Dominican, a Franciscan, a Norbertine—ay, of any Order you like, even of one of the great silent, enclosed orders like the Trappists or the Cistercians—he does not hesitate to admit his kind and to explain under what rule he lives. Why should you people, here in the very heart of a busy modern city like London, not practise the same candour? Why should you cloak yourselves in mystery, in doubt, in veiled hints, in suspicion? ”

“ When England is startled, as she will be one day ere long, by the announcement of the recovery of the enormous treasure of Tangikano, the emeralds and rubies unequalled in the world, and the wonderful images and utensils of solid gold that have been hidden for ages in the slime beneath those silent waters, then will you, perhaps, recollect the chapters of an eventful history which I have recorded in the foregoing pages, and remember what part in the modern drama of London life was played by the man once known to connoisseurs and collectors as the Hunchback of Westminster. ”

“ He lives simply to become the idol of the mob in such a way as England’s history with all her Gladstones, her Beaconsfields, and other political leaders of real note, has never known—never. Even the popularity of the throne is not safe with so terrible a pride as his! He cares nothing for any personage or any institution. His one colossal lust is to lift himself so high that no man shall be his equal, but that his word shall travel through the Empire with a power which Bismarck never aimed at and even the German Emperor has never felt competent to aspire to. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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 so much idle lumber in garret and cellar and office. Nobody in London, indeed, knows better; and I will track this precious secret of yours down—”
“Enough,” struck in Cooper-Nassington in his most terrible tones. “You, Glynn, have now justified yourself. It’s the hunchback’s turn. Once again I demand of him: What has he deciphered from those three queer-looking manuscripts which he purchased this afternoon?” ”

“ Bruno had got its point of view about you, was anxious to have you in the midst of it, and so it sent Casteno to you, and not a thing you have said to him, not a deed you have done with him, has it failed to hear and to weigh.
“Why do I tell you these things? you may perhaps ask. Is it to frighten you? Is it to make you wish to join a body that can, in a time when nearly every man throws out his hands like a wild beast and grabs what seems to him to be the largest, the finest thing and the best, lay its plans with so much patience, far-sightedness, and care? ”

“ It is, we know, an easy thing, to feel patriotic when one is shouting the national anthem or reading the carefully-turned periods of a party leader; and quite another, and a different thing, to be a real, copper-bottomed, oak-through-and-through kind of patriot whom no storm can disturb and no question of family, money, or self-interest can alter, but with whom ‘God’ and ‘Fatherland’ are the only two watchwords that matter, and all the other facts of life are mere subsidiary shadows of the two same great all—dominant themes. ”

“ Let the Government try to get them first, then we can act. We can either side with your father, the hunchback, or with the authorities; but, for heaven’s sake, don’t worry about it now, here amongst all this crowd who want to treat us like conquering heroes or half-dead voyagers, and who won’t be put off with a bow, but will want to hear all about us, and all about our adventures, and how the deuce we managed to arrive in safety at this point at all.”
“They must be tricked,” whispered Casteno, with a savage oath. ”

“ We all of us do many things for England in our public capacity that we should not dare, or even wish, to do for ourselves in our own private business. His sole blunder was to get Zouche to help him, because Zouche is really a villain who would dare any crime or fraud to help his country, Spain. So it, of course, has happened as might have been expected. Zouche has repudiated the earl, and unless you can give us a hand England is going to lose this sacred lake and its millions and Zouche. ”

“ Stung to desperation at my own foul success in linking my employer up with this awful crime I resolved that I would lose no time in tracking the man down, and his guilt. What did the Lake of Sacred Treasure in far-off Mexico matter to me in an hour red with blood as that was—the blood of one of my best and truest friends? Let the Earl of Fotheringay and Lord Cyril Cuthbertson plot and plan. Let Mr Cooper-Nassington ferret out Peter Zouche and drag from him the secret of the cipher manuscripts. ”

“ I said, gazing very determinedly at the two men in front of me, “is nothing more and nothing less than a round-table conference between the lot of us—Lord Cyril Cuthbertson, Earl Fotheringay, the Napiers, the hunchback, ourselves!”
“Why, that’s preposterous!” snapped the Prior, and his eyes flashed, but I would not be gainsaid.
“I am sure it is not,” I retorted with great firmness. “After all, what is it, really, that makes them all so bitter against us? It is no mere dream of making themselves rich—no stupid desire to rob anyone. ”

“ It often happens. The whole truth is, the earl and I are both in love with Camille Velasquon. She prefers me, hence his quest for the documents is mixed up in a thirst for personal revenge.”
“And the documents you asked her to bring?” I cut in suddenly, “what of those? Are they love letters?” And a quiet smile of derision showed itself at the corners of my mouth. “Do you want them, or are they to go into the archives of the Order of St. Bruno as quaint but interesting curiosities?”
“Neither,” said Casteno simply. “They are more important, much more important, than lovers’ effusions. ”

“ Peter Zouche faltered; to my astonishment I saw that he had been conquered.
“You know well enough what they contain,” he snarled, “or you would not be here at this hour, and in this mood!”
“And so do you, you wicked old cripple,” roared my friend, “or you would never have spent all that money on packing that auction mart with your gang of foreign mercenaries to effect a knock-out of the manuscripts; you are not the kind of philanthropist who throws away two or three thousand pounds on the relatives of a poor Spanish priest whom you have never set eyes on. So speak out without any more fuss. ”

“ The Hunchback Tries a New Ruse. Fortunately, or unfortunately, as the sequel must determine, Don José Casteno’s attack of faintness was not of long duration. Almost, indeed, as I snatched up a flask of brandy from my travelling case and darted across the office to his assistance, he gave a long deep sigh, his eyelids fluttered, and the next moment he sat up, gazing in a bewildered fashion round the room. ”

“ After all, an auction is an auction; money has money’s power the world over. Pay enough—and I feel sure you are bound to triumph.”
“So it would seem. But then you don’t know the secret foes whom you will have against you. Their power—their daring—their resources are marvellous.”
And he rose and paced my office, as though he could not bear even to think.
None the less, I made one further effort. “Why,” questioned I, “should they, or you for the matter of that, struggle for a few old parchment documents of an obscure Spanish priest? What are they to you, or to anyone?” ”

“ I’m a creature of flesh and blood like yourself. I have feelings and a sense of honour just as you have. I have not gone into this business simply to feather my own nest. I have not fought my father—Fotheringay—Cuthbertson—I have not besought powerful assistance, such as Cooper-Nassington’s, to sell this country to some Continental enemies—no.”
“I take your word—I believe you have not,” I replied slowly. “The point is whether the Order of St. Bruno has, for it seems to me that they are the principals in this treasure hunt and not yourself.” ”

“ We are not one of us as black as the others pretend to make out. Naturally, perhaps, we all want to shine and to become famous over the discovery and translation of those manuscripts. But at present we are all engaged in the amiable task of cutting each other’s throats. Why go on? After all, if England is going to get hold of all those millions and millions now lying in treasure at the bottom of that sacred lake, we must really pull together. The task, even from the diplomatic standpoint, is no easy one. ”

“ There are two assistant warders. I am the principal.”
“Women, I suppose?”
“Both women!”
“Both women! Where do they come from?”
“From Broadmoor, like myself.” And she turned her head in the direction of the carriage window, as though she were tired of the conversation and desired me for the rest of the time to mind my own business.
Camille Velasquon now plucked me nervously by the arm. “This woman’s story is a tissue of lies,” she whispered. “I am no criminal and no lunatic. Why, I never set foot in England till I got off the ship on to Southampton Dock with you a few minutes ago!” ”

“ 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. ”