Chapter Twelve.What the Papers Said.With a startled exclamation I began to search up and down.At first, I own, I did not know what to do.True, the mystery of how that carriage door had been unlocked was quickly elucidated, for directly I looked out I saw that the engine had drawn us along a single set of metals to a point in the station where platforms stood quite close to the solitary track. There were plenty of porters on either side of the compartment, and it was no doubt the easiest thing in the world for the girl to beckon one to her assistance and to slip off as I was seeking to discover what became of that sham warderess from Broadmoor and her confederates.But why should she go at all? At that point she was perfectly safe. I had beaten off the attempt to abduct her. So far as either of us could foresee she would be able to go to her refuge at the headquarters of the Order of St. Bruno with perfect safety and ease. And yet, just as I had secured this, she had vanished! What excuse could I make to José Casteno? And could it have been a sudden freak or, after all, had somebody got the better of me when my back was turned, and, in spite of the woman Hand, had kidnapped the girl in the flash of a moment?For my own part, I confess I could not believe that in a busy and crowded station like Vauxhall she could have been whipped off so suddenly through a locked carriage door without a sound if only she had had any desire to remain. Perhaps, too, her secret instructions from Casteno were to travel to South London only and then to part company with me. Now I came to think of it I remembered how very vague the Spaniard had been about the entire business, particularly as to what was to happen when the journey was over.In the end I seemed compelled to decide that the girl had gone off through her own free will, but in order to make quite certain that no mischief was afoot I leaped out of the train just as the whistle sounded for its departure and searched the station through and through. Not a sign of my charge could I discover.Then I did what, perhaps, I ought to have done in the first place. I bribed one of the porters to interrogate his comrades on the subject, and finally got word from one of the station hands what appeared to be the real truth. A portly but distinguished looking stranger, who carried himself with a military air and was exceedingly well dressed, was observed to step forward to the carriage in which Miss Velasquon was seated as soon as the train drew to a standstill and to pass her a small card on which he had written something in very great haste. The girl nodded instantly she read his message. Thereon, the man whipped out a a train key, and in a flash threw open the doorway, through which the girl slipped like a shadow, linking her arm in the stranger’s as though he were some old, intimate, and highly-trusted friend. Next instant they were lost in the maze of people on the platform; but a news lad, who sold papers outside the main exit close to the trams, came forward, and he declared that he recollected seeing the couple quite well, and that they entered a carriage that was waiting near at hand and drove off in the direction of Victoria.With that I had to be content. Whether itwasgood or bad I had no means then to determine. I could only hope that things had turned out as well as they ought to have done. Inwardly, however, I registered a vow that I would get more at the mind of my employer the next time he sent me tearing half across England to the rescue of a girl, no matter how fascinating she might be, or in what peril. Then I bought a copy of one of the evening papers, and hailing a hansom directed the driver to take me back to my offices in Stanton Street, where Don José had promised to telegraph to me.For a time I sat well back in the soft, well-upholstered cab and let my thoughts run riot on the extraordinary series of adventures that had befallen since I had made that fierce fight in the auction room. Have you ever noticed that there is something mysterious in the mere fact that one has purchased a copy of the last edition of a paper that makes one a prey to retrospect? Nine times out of the ten on which I purchase an evening journal I never glance at the columns. But once let me omit to provide myself with a damp, evilly-folded sheet, and I am wretched. All my nerves are on the alert. I can think of nothing to interest me. The shortest journey seems of intolerable length. I finish up fagged, irritable, and stupid.As a matter of fact, I am certain I should never have looked at that particular copy that particular night had not two leather-lunged paper “runners,” who live on Metropolitan sensations, suddenly loomed up on either side of the cab as we rattled past the site of the old Millbank Prison and waved their papers in front of me. “Horrible tragedy in Whitehall Court!” they roared.The driver whipped up his horse, and the hansom shot past them into the gathering blackness, but the echo of their words rang through my brain. “Horrible tragedy in Whitehall Court.” Why, I recollected suddenly that was where Doris lived! Could something—oh, no, it was ridiculous; this flight of Camille Velasquon had made me nervous. None the less, I made a frantic grab at my paper—it was aGlobe, I remember—somehow one always notes such trifles in a supreme crisis—and with trembling fingers I turned to the fifth page, where, I knew from old experience, I should find the latest and most important intelligence given.Ah! I was not mistaken. Here it was:MURDER IN WHITEHALL COURTANOTHER MYSTERIOUS CRIMEBut what was that? Familiar names? People, scenes, circumstances I recalled as though they were my own! With a great gasp I held the pink sheet close to the cab lamp, and as we were whirling madly along Parliament Street, close to the actual scene of the crime itself, I read this account of what had happened whilst I that morning had tried to snatch but a few hours of broken slumber.“About half-past six this morning a murder of a peculiarly atrocious character was discovered in that block of flats known as Embankment Mansions in Whitehall Court. It seems that Colonel Napier’s valet, a man named Richardson, who was early awake in consequence of an attack of toothache, was startled by hearing what he believed was a shout for help proceeding from his master’s room. He went at once to the door and knocked, and, on getting no reply, he turned the handle and entered, when he was horrified to see Colonel Napier stretched on the bed, with a great dagger-thrust in the region of his heart, and quite dead. An open window showed at once the means chosen by the murderer to effect an entrance, which was rendered all the more easy by the fact that an iron pipe ran past it on its way from the roof to the earth. The valet sprang at once to the window, but he could see no sign of any person, and darting to an inner room he turned on a district messenger-call for the police. Then he ran back to the bedroom. The colonel could not then have been dead many seconds. Everything pointed to that. Nor was it clear why the crime had been committed. Nothing had been removed from the bedroom—nothing at all. Detective-Inspector Naylor and other officers were quickly on the scene, but although they searched they could not find any trace of the murderer or of the weapon with which the terrible deed was accomplished. At the time of writing, indeed, the crime is enveloped in mystery, for Colonel Napier, who was formerly Member of Parliament for Hereford, and had won high recognition for services on the Indian frontier, was considered by all a most popular man. He was a widower, and leaves only one child, a daughter, who, luckily, at the time of the tragedy was away on a visit.”For a few moments after reading this I confess I felt at a loss to speak, to move, even to think—the thing was so hideous, so appalling, so complete. The horror of it all seemed so acute that it crushed me beneath its weight.I could only sit with eyes that, look where they would, perceived nothing but the dread scene in the death chamber—that man I had a keen affection for stricken to the heart.Maybe some of us who suffer such awful shocks get curiously clairvoyant in the moments of our greatest trial. I cannot tell. I only know I descended from that cab, paid the man his fare, and entered my office in Stanton Street, like one in a trance. All the time my brain was beating through a cloud of horror, doubt, and suspicion; but, finally, as I flung myself into a chair in front of the fire, every point appeared to clear for me as though by magic. Then one terrible question stared up at me with awe-inspiring distinctness:Was this crime the work of José Casteno?Somehow the problem, when I had once stated it to myself and had taken it for ever out of that dim region of intangible speculation, did not surprise me very greatly. Instinctively I recalled how significant had been the Spaniard’s appeal to the colonel when he threatened to compel Doris to hold no further communication with me. “I beg you withdraw that, withdraw it this day, or you will regret your determination.” Then I saw again Don José as he had looked when he knelt, just where I was sitting at that moment, with the sullen glare of the flames on his upturned face and his dagger poised to catch the light on the edge that he had just finished sharpening with so much intensity and precision.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. Who else could have any interest in the stabbing of that poor, faithful brute than the murderer of his master? And who else could have made that ugly gash in his side save José Casteno?Nor, indeed, was that the only solid link in the chain of guilt I was forging against the Spaniard. All at once I recalled how carefully he had avoided the passage where the spaniel had been stricken down. Was that accident—or conscience? Also the agility he had shown in scrambling up that iron pipe outside the hunchback’s shop when we went to spy on Zouche from that upstairs room. He had told me, of course, he had learned the trick at sea. He may have done that; but might he not also have acquired some recent practice outside Embankment Mansions which it seemed pretty clear the murderer entered by the same method?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. Ay, let the Jesuits send their most trusty spies, I at least would take no hand in the struggle again until I had torn the mask from this villain.Rising impatiently, I began striding rapidly up and down the room. Hitherto the minutes had gone by on the wings of the wind. I had not been conscious of the flight of time, although the hands on the travelling clock in front of me had travelled round the dial two, if not three, times. Now the seconds seemed made of lead. They would not pass. They hung about me, and fretted me. Again and again I asked myself: “Why does not José Casteno telegraph me as he had promised and tell me where he is and how he has fared since he slipped off on the track of the hunchback?” It was no good. No answer came, and bit by bit there formed in my mind a new suspicion, a new dread. What if the Spaniard had taken fright at the publicity the crime had obtained and had left his chase of Zouche to secure his own safety in some far-off land, where he would never be suspected and where he could never be found? I might wait, then, until the crack of doom: Colonel Napier would remain unavenged.Feverishly I tore out into the streets and bought up all the late editions of the evening papers which I could lay my hands on. This mysterious crime had impressed the stolid imagination of Londoners so well accustomed to horrors that end in nothingness to a degree that was quite unusual; and all the journals had launched out into lurid descriptions of the dead man and the manner of his passing so that a horrid sense of nausea seized on me, and I cursed journalism and all its loathsome enterprise; albeit it I was most eager myself at the same moment to take advantage of its discoveries.One paper, however, had got a paragraph that threw a new light on the occurrence—theStar—and I read it with throbbing eagerness:A STARTLING THEORY“Latest inquiries to-night tend to show that there is a good deal behind the death of Colonel Napier. The police are certain that the murderer has some other object than theft, at which task it was said that he must have been disturbed by the sudden tapping on the door by the valet, Richardson. It is rumoured that the appearance of Detective Naylor on the scene was of set design. Naylor, as was stated in the papers a few days ago, has the warrant in hand for the arrest of the murderer of young George Sutton, a man who, it will be remembered, fled to this country from a monastery in Mexico after he had committed the deed. Now the two crimes are connected in the minds of the police for some reason they will not divulge; and it is whispered freely at Scotland Yard that a man who puts his hands on the murderer of Sutton will at the same time arrest the assassin of brave Colonel Napier. Unfortunately, the quest is highly complicated, and at the clubs there are some wild, romantic stories afloat, which connect the deaths with stories of vast, hidden treasures and diplomatic intrigues, party jealousies, and mystery-loving Mexicans. For our own part, we advise the public to take little heed of these wild romances until they contain something which looks a trifle more substantial. A milkman, for instance, has been found who declares he was passing Whitehall Court about the time the murder must have been committed, and he swears positively that he saw a young, dark-looking foreigner, aged about twenty-five, run from the direction of Embankment Mansions and disappear up Northumberland Avenue. He says, also, that he saw the man’s features quite distinctly, and that he will be able to recognise them again in any circumstances and after any lapse of time. Now clues like these are worth a thousand of the utterly preposterous yarns they are whispering in Clubland to-night about Jesuits and parliamentary personages who are much too busy to be mixed up with all the numberless scandals and tarradiddles that affect the House of Commons under its present partyrégime.”Surely, if this theory pointed to anyone it did most certainly to José Casteno!Further speculation, however, was cut short by the arrival of a telegraph messenger. With trembling fingers I tore open the envelope, and found that, after all, the Spaniard had kept his word and had wired me, most fully, news of his whereabouts and wishes:To Hugh Glynn, 99 Stanton Street, London, WC.“Have accompanied our good friend to Green Dragon Hotel, Shrewsbury. At Birmingham he met a clever but needy aeronaut named Captain Sparhawk. This man has invented a flying machine which he has arranged to show at Great Shropshire Floral Fête here on Monday. Z. has promised to finance him and to ascend with him to test the machine’s capacities. Two other seats were on sale in the town at twenty pounds each. I have bought them, and propose you and I ascend with them disguised as military men in undress uniform of engineers; otherwise fear, if the machine travels far, Z. may do a bolt to some other district. If you don’t wire me, c/o Post Office, shall assume you will come.—C.”“Certainly I will come,” I said to myself grimly as I folded up the message and placed it in my pocket-book. “It would be a pity for you, Master José, to undertake any fresh adventures without my personal assistance. You might come to some harm before we had cleared up the mystery of the death of Colonel Napier, and that would be a pity, a great pity, indeed.”And snatching up the travelling-bag which I always kept ready packed for such emergencies I dashed off to a costumier I knew who lived near, in Wellington Street. Then I made for Euston, and catching the night mail to the Midlands, contrived such a good use of my time, that, before church time, I found myself in Shrewsbury, scrambling up the hill that led from the main railway station to the far-famed Green Dragon Hotel, where I understood both Zouche and Casteno were.On the way down, however, I had effected certain changes in my appearance. A dark wig was on my head. A black moustache hid my mouth. My plain civilian clothes had given place at the costumier’s to the uniform of a sergeant of royal engineers. I had done this to deceive the hunchback, and to satisfy Casteno I had brought no disguise for the Spaniard.I did not think he would need one after I had finished my first conversation with him!And as I turned into the courtyard of the hotel he came out and met me with outstretched hand.
With a startled exclamation I began to search up and down.
At first, I own, I did not know what to do.
True, the mystery of how that carriage door had been unlocked was quickly elucidated, for directly I looked out I saw that the engine had drawn us along a single set of metals to a point in the station where platforms stood quite close to the solitary track. There were plenty of porters on either side of the compartment, and it was no doubt the easiest thing in the world for the girl to beckon one to her assistance and to slip off as I was seeking to discover what became of that sham warderess from Broadmoor and her confederates.
But why should she go at all? At that point she was perfectly safe. I had beaten off the attempt to abduct her. So far as either of us could foresee she would be able to go to her refuge at the headquarters of the Order of St. Bruno with perfect safety and ease. And yet, just as I had secured this, she had vanished! What excuse could I make to José Casteno? And could it have been a sudden freak or, after all, had somebody got the better of me when my back was turned, and, in spite of the woman Hand, had kidnapped the girl in the flash of a moment?
For my own part, I confess I could not believe that in a busy and crowded station like Vauxhall she could have been whipped off so suddenly through a locked carriage door without a sound if only she had had any desire to remain. Perhaps, too, her secret instructions from Casteno were to travel to South London only and then to part company with me. Now I came to think of it I remembered how very vague the Spaniard had been about the entire business, particularly as to what was to happen when the journey was over.
In the end I seemed compelled to decide that the girl had gone off through her own free will, but in order to make quite certain that no mischief was afoot I leaped out of the train just as the whistle sounded for its departure and searched the station through and through. Not a sign of my charge could I discover.
Then I did what, perhaps, I ought to have done in the first place. I bribed one of the porters to interrogate his comrades on the subject, and finally got word from one of the station hands what appeared to be the real truth. A portly but distinguished looking stranger, who carried himself with a military air and was exceedingly well dressed, was observed to step forward to the carriage in which Miss Velasquon was seated as soon as the train drew to a standstill and to pass her a small card on which he had written something in very great haste. The girl nodded instantly she read his message. Thereon, the man whipped out a a train key, and in a flash threw open the doorway, through which the girl slipped like a shadow, linking her arm in the stranger’s as though he were some old, intimate, and highly-trusted friend. Next instant they were lost in the maze of people on the platform; but a news lad, who sold papers outside the main exit close to the trams, came forward, and he declared that he recollected seeing the couple quite well, and that they entered a carriage that was waiting near at hand and drove off in the direction of Victoria.
With that I had to be content. Whether itwasgood or bad I had no means then to determine. I could only hope that things had turned out as well as they ought to have done. Inwardly, however, I registered a vow that I would get more at the mind of my employer the next time he sent me tearing half across England to the rescue of a girl, no matter how fascinating she might be, or in what peril. Then I bought a copy of one of the evening papers, and hailing a hansom directed the driver to take me back to my offices in Stanton Street, where Don José had promised to telegraph to me.
For a time I sat well back in the soft, well-upholstered cab and let my thoughts run riot on the extraordinary series of adventures that had befallen since I had made that fierce fight in the auction room. Have you ever noticed that there is something mysterious in the mere fact that one has purchased a copy of the last edition of a paper that makes one a prey to retrospect? Nine times out of the ten on which I purchase an evening journal I never glance at the columns. But once let me omit to provide myself with a damp, evilly-folded sheet, and I am wretched. All my nerves are on the alert. I can think of nothing to interest me. The shortest journey seems of intolerable length. I finish up fagged, irritable, and stupid.
As a matter of fact, I am certain I should never have looked at that particular copy that particular night had not two leather-lunged paper “runners,” who live on Metropolitan sensations, suddenly loomed up on either side of the cab as we rattled past the site of the old Millbank Prison and waved their papers in front of me. “Horrible tragedy in Whitehall Court!” they roared.
The driver whipped up his horse, and the hansom shot past them into the gathering blackness, but the echo of their words rang through my brain. “Horrible tragedy in Whitehall Court.” Why, I recollected suddenly that was where Doris lived! Could something—oh, no, it was ridiculous; this flight of Camille Velasquon had made me nervous. None the less, I made a frantic grab at my paper—it was aGlobe, I remember—somehow one always notes such trifles in a supreme crisis—and with trembling fingers I turned to the fifth page, where, I knew from old experience, I should find the latest and most important intelligence given.
Ah! I was not mistaken. Here it was:
MURDER IN WHITEHALL COURT
ANOTHER MYSTERIOUS CRIME
But what was that? Familiar names? People, scenes, circumstances I recalled as though they were my own! With a great gasp I held the pink sheet close to the cab lamp, and as we were whirling madly along Parliament Street, close to the actual scene of the crime itself, I read this account of what had happened whilst I that morning had tried to snatch but a few hours of broken slumber.
“About half-past six this morning a murder of a peculiarly atrocious character was discovered in that block of flats known as Embankment Mansions in Whitehall Court. It seems that Colonel Napier’s valet, a man named Richardson, who was early awake in consequence of an attack of toothache, was startled by hearing what he believed was a shout for help proceeding from his master’s room. He went at once to the door and knocked, and, on getting no reply, he turned the handle and entered, when he was horrified to see Colonel Napier stretched on the bed, with a great dagger-thrust in the region of his heart, and quite dead. An open window showed at once the means chosen by the murderer to effect an entrance, which was rendered all the more easy by the fact that an iron pipe ran past it on its way from the roof to the earth. The valet sprang at once to the window, but he could see no sign of any person, and darting to an inner room he turned on a district messenger-call for the police. Then he ran back to the bedroom. The colonel could not then have been dead many seconds. Everything pointed to that. Nor was it clear why the crime had been committed. Nothing had been removed from the bedroom—nothing at all. Detective-Inspector Naylor and other officers were quickly on the scene, but although they searched they could not find any trace of the murderer or of the weapon with which the terrible deed was accomplished. At the time of writing, indeed, the crime is enveloped in mystery, for Colonel Napier, who was formerly Member of Parliament for Hereford, and had won high recognition for services on the Indian frontier, was considered by all a most popular man. He was a widower, and leaves only one child, a daughter, who, luckily, at the time of the tragedy was away on a visit.”
For a few moments after reading this I confess I felt at a loss to speak, to move, even to think—the thing was so hideous, so appalling, so complete. The horror of it all seemed so acute that it crushed me beneath its weight.
I could only sit with eyes that, look where they would, perceived nothing but the dread scene in the death chamber—that man I had a keen affection for stricken to the heart.
Maybe some of us who suffer such awful shocks get curiously clairvoyant in the moments of our greatest trial. I cannot tell. I only know I descended from that cab, paid the man his fare, and entered my office in Stanton Street, like one in a trance. All the time my brain was beating through a cloud of horror, doubt, and suspicion; but, finally, as I flung myself into a chair in front of the fire, every point appeared to clear for me as though by magic. Then one terrible question stared up at me with awe-inspiring distinctness:
Was this crime the work of José Casteno?
Somehow the problem, when I had once stated it to myself and had taken it for ever out of that dim region of intangible speculation, did not surprise me very greatly. Instinctively I recalled how significant had been the Spaniard’s appeal to the colonel when he threatened to compel Doris to hold no further communication with me. “I beg you withdraw that, withdraw it this day, or you will regret your determination.” Then I saw again Don José as he had looked when he knelt, just where I was sitting at that moment, with the sullen glare of the flames on his upturned face and his dagger poised to catch the light on the edge that he had just finished sharpening with so much intensity and precision.
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. Who else could have any interest in the stabbing of that poor, faithful brute than the murderer of his master? And who else could have made that ugly gash in his side save José Casteno?
Nor, indeed, was that the only solid link in the chain of guilt I was forging against the Spaniard. All at once I recalled how carefully he had avoided the passage where the spaniel had been stricken down. Was that accident—or conscience? Also the agility he had shown in scrambling up that iron pipe outside the hunchback’s shop when we went to spy on Zouche from that upstairs room. He had told me, of course, he had learned the trick at sea. He may have done that; but might he not also have acquired some recent practice outside Embankment Mansions which it seemed pretty clear the murderer entered by the same method?
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. Ay, let the Jesuits send their most trusty spies, I at least would take no hand in the struggle again until I had torn the mask from this villain.
Rising impatiently, I began striding rapidly up and down the room. Hitherto the minutes had gone by on the wings of the wind. I had not been conscious of the flight of time, although the hands on the travelling clock in front of me had travelled round the dial two, if not three, times. Now the seconds seemed made of lead. They would not pass. They hung about me, and fretted me. Again and again I asked myself: “Why does not José Casteno telegraph me as he had promised and tell me where he is and how he has fared since he slipped off on the track of the hunchback?” It was no good. No answer came, and bit by bit there formed in my mind a new suspicion, a new dread. What if the Spaniard had taken fright at the publicity the crime had obtained and had left his chase of Zouche to secure his own safety in some far-off land, where he would never be suspected and where he could never be found? I might wait, then, until the crack of doom: Colonel Napier would remain unavenged.
Feverishly I tore out into the streets and bought up all the late editions of the evening papers which I could lay my hands on. This mysterious crime had impressed the stolid imagination of Londoners so well accustomed to horrors that end in nothingness to a degree that was quite unusual; and all the journals had launched out into lurid descriptions of the dead man and the manner of his passing so that a horrid sense of nausea seized on me, and I cursed journalism and all its loathsome enterprise; albeit it I was most eager myself at the same moment to take advantage of its discoveries.
One paper, however, had got a paragraph that threw a new light on the occurrence—theStar—and I read it with throbbing eagerness:
A STARTLING THEORY
“Latest inquiries to-night tend to show that there is a good deal behind the death of Colonel Napier. The police are certain that the murderer has some other object than theft, at which task it was said that he must have been disturbed by the sudden tapping on the door by the valet, Richardson. It is rumoured that the appearance of Detective Naylor on the scene was of set design. Naylor, as was stated in the papers a few days ago, has the warrant in hand for the arrest of the murderer of young George Sutton, a man who, it will be remembered, fled to this country from a monastery in Mexico after he had committed the deed. Now the two crimes are connected in the minds of the police for some reason they will not divulge; and it is whispered freely at Scotland Yard that a man who puts his hands on the murderer of Sutton will at the same time arrest the assassin of brave Colonel Napier. Unfortunately, the quest is highly complicated, and at the clubs there are some wild, romantic stories afloat, which connect the deaths with stories of vast, hidden treasures and diplomatic intrigues, party jealousies, and mystery-loving Mexicans. For our own part, we advise the public to take little heed of these wild romances until they contain something which looks a trifle more substantial. A milkman, for instance, has been found who declares he was passing Whitehall Court about the time the murder must have been committed, and he swears positively that he saw a young, dark-looking foreigner, aged about twenty-five, run from the direction of Embankment Mansions and disappear up Northumberland Avenue. He says, also, that he saw the man’s features quite distinctly, and that he will be able to recognise them again in any circumstances and after any lapse of time. Now clues like these are worth a thousand of the utterly preposterous yarns they are whispering in Clubland to-night about Jesuits and parliamentary personages who are much too busy to be mixed up with all the numberless scandals and tarradiddles that affect the House of Commons under its present partyrégime.”
Surely, if this theory pointed to anyone it did most certainly to José Casteno!
Further speculation, however, was cut short by the arrival of a telegraph messenger. With trembling fingers I tore open the envelope, and found that, after all, the Spaniard had kept his word and had wired me, most fully, news of his whereabouts and wishes:
To Hugh Glynn, 99 Stanton Street, London, WC.
“Have accompanied our good friend to Green Dragon Hotel, Shrewsbury. At Birmingham he met a clever but needy aeronaut named Captain Sparhawk. This man has invented a flying machine which he has arranged to show at Great Shropshire Floral Fête here on Monday. Z. has promised to finance him and to ascend with him to test the machine’s capacities. Two other seats were on sale in the town at twenty pounds each. I have bought them, and propose you and I ascend with them disguised as military men in undress uniform of engineers; otherwise fear, if the machine travels far, Z. may do a bolt to some other district. If you don’t wire me, c/o Post Office, shall assume you will come.—C.”
“Certainly I will come,” I said to myself grimly as I folded up the message and placed it in my pocket-book. “It would be a pity for you, Master José, to undertake any fresh adventures without my personal assistance. You might come to some harm before we had cleared up the mystery of the death of Colonel Napier, and that would be a pity, a great pity, indeed.”
And snatching up the travelling-bag which I always kept ready packed for such emergencies I dashed off to a costumier I knew who lived near, in Wellington Street. Then I made for Euston, and catching the night mail to the Midlands, contrived such a good use of my time, that, before church time, I found myself in Shrewsbury, scrambling up the hill that led from the main railway station to the far-famed Green Dragon Hotel, where I understood both Zouche and Casteno were.
On the way down, however, I had effected certain changes in my appearance. A dark wig was on my head. A black moustache hid my mouth. My plain civilian clothes had given place at the costumier’s to the uniform of a sergeant of royal engineers. I had done this to deceive the hunchback, and to satisfy Casteno I had brought no disguise for the Spaniard.
I did not think he would need one after I had finished my first conversation with him!
And as I turned into the courtyard of the hotel he came out and met me with outstretched hand.
Chapter Thirteen.The Two Brothers.There was nothing in the way Casteno received me to suggest a man with a guilty secret. On the contrary, as I advanced through the doorway that led to the Green Dragon he stepped out boldly towards me the instant he recognised me beneath the disguise which he himself had suggested. “Welcome, my good friend,” he said in a bluff and hearty fashion, stretching out his hand; “Welcome!”I took the greeting he proffered, although I turned my head away and would not let him detect my real feelings. At first I was sorely tempted to take him by surprise and to denounce him there and then as the man who had stolen into Whitehall Court in those early morning hours, climbed through that open bedroom window, and had killed poor Colonel Napier, one of the truest and most loyal soldiers that ever lived. But I crushed all those temptations down. There was much for me to discover before I could show my suspicions so plainly as that. I had to go very slowly and carefully to work.“I am glad to see you,” I answered at length, and that sentiment, indeed, was true. I was glad—more glad than he could guess. “Let the porter carry my luggage in, and let you and I have a walk.”“Excellent,” said he, “that was just what I was going to propose if you were not too tired.” And giving the necessary directions to the hotel servants he calmly linked his arm in mine, and led me down the street towards the river, whither all the passers-by seemed to be hastening on their way homeward after service at church.“Well, and how did you get on with Miss Velasquon?” he asked later.“Very badly,” I returned. “I lost her at Vauxhall Bridge Station.”“Oh, never mind about that,” he replied lightly. “Your duty ended as soon as you arrived with her in London. As a matter of fact, I sent a friend to intercept her at that point. He didn’t quite understand whether he could trust you or not, so he hit on that ruse by which she slipped out of the carriage whilst you were looking out at an opposite platform. She wired me, however, that you had had some extraordinary adventure on the way up. What was that?”“Oh, merely some women tried to lure her off to Broadmoor Lunatic Asylum,” I snapped. “Why on earth didn’t you tell me I was safe when we reached town? Do you know, I searched the station from top to bottom before I decided your friend had come to no harm.”“No, I don’t. In fact, I am very sorry about what the man whom I sent did. I was, however, under the impression that I had told you not to worry after she had reached town. The real danger existed on the way up. I had most specific warning that it was on the actual journey from Southampton Lord Fotheringay would make the semi-criminal effort he did to get her out of my hands.”“Why should he?” I demanded, stopping suddenly and gazing fixedly at the speaker.“Why should two men ever strive after the same sweetheart?” Casteno answered, his features flushing crimson. “Call it Life—Fate—Providence—Luck—Destiny—what you like. There it is. 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. They give the keys to various ciphers used by the Jesuits in the early days of their Order in Mexico. Is there anything else you would like to ask?” Then seeing he had put me to some confusion he went on with great earnestness: “Look here, man, why don’t you trust me a little more? Don’t you see that there must, in a quest like this we are engaged upon, be a hundred details about which I cannot give you my confidence? Why not be content to labour in the dark until the time for the light comes? As it is just at present, I satisfy you for a day easily and perfectly enough, but it is only for a day. Something you don’t expect happens, and lo! I find about me a cloud of distrust, suspicion, and unpleasant suggestion that takes out of me every bit of heart and pluck.”“Is not that your own fault?” I blurted out. “Are not your actions calculated to excite distrust? Carry your memory back to the last time you were in my office in Stanton Street. What happened then?”“Nothing of great account.” But now he went very pale.“Are you quite sure of that?” I queried in the gravest tones. “Think again. Examine your conscience again. What about that dagger of yours? Why did you get up and sharpen it on the hearthstone directly you thought I should not see you?”The Spaniard started, and recovered himself with an effort. “Because I had had a fright,” he stammered. “In an idle moment I had looked through the window and there I saw a man who had vowed to take my life.”“I cannot believe you,” I cried. “You must convince me. Tell me who was this foe?”“My own brother,” he muttered, turning away from me with an impatient gesture and quickening his steps. “You have seen him yourself. The hunchback called him Paul—”“Then,” I gasped in amazement, “you—you are the hunchback’s son?”“Of course I am,” he retorted. “I thought you guessed that directly you saw Paul when we were up in that recess watching my father put on his disguise. The relationship seemed so evident that I did not feel there was any necessity to explain it.”“But you call yourself Casteno?”“No; I changed my name after I had quarrelled with my father some years ago and got employment in the Royal Household of Spain. I purchased the right to do so—”“Then you talk English like a native.”“So does the hunchback.”“And when that morning you saw your brother,” I went on, breaking away on a new tack, “why did you go after him?”“To make peace if I could. As it was doubtful I prepared myself also for war.”“And did you find him?”“No; he was too quick for me. I slipped as hard as I could to his chambers in Embankment Mansions in Whitehall Court, but he was not in them. They were closed and locked.”“Embankment Mansions in Whitehall Court,” I repeated. “That is where Colonel Napier lives.” And as I uttered the name of the dead officer I scrutinised every line on Casteno’s face.“Of course it is,” he responded, and not the smallest sign of excitement did he exhibit. “Paul, for some years, has had a set of chambers over the flat occupied by Colonel Napier. He has got one of those wild, hopeless passions that sometimes seize the lowly born for girls in the higher ranks of life, for Miss Napier.”“Not Miss Doris Napier!” I interjected.“Oh yes, Miss Doris. The thing is almost laughable—except for Paul, who is absolutely crazy on the subject, and who has often told me that on the day you are formally engaged to her he will shoot you like a dog.”“Pleasant for me,” I observed, “extremely pleasant. Your father and I are old friends; how is it he didn’t warn me?”“He always hoped that Paul would come to his senses. He was ashamed of the lad’s madness. He trusted that some other girl would appear on the scene to fascinate Paul. Besides, he did tell Colonel Napier about it. The colonel and he are related, as a matter of fact. Both of them married step-sisters; but my mother died many years ago.”“I had no idea of this.”“No doubt,” returned the Spaniard courteously. “Lovers don’t usually trouble to inquire as to the relations of the girls they love until after marriage. If they did, cynics say that they would spare themselves a good many highly unpleasant surprises. The colonel, of course, was equally annoyed about this infatuation, and I am told that only a few days ago he met Paul on the stairs of the flat and gave him a good beating with his cane for daring to send Miss Napier a bunch of flowers. Perhaps, however, this is only idle gossip. I heard it from a servant whom my father had recently dismissed. He said that Paul was so incensed at this outrage that he would have stabbed the colonel dead on the spot if he had had his dagger with him. Luckily, he had forgotten that morning to fasten it on—”“I am not so sure about that,” I answered slowly and with great distinctness, “although, now I came to think of it, I did recollect that in the old days Doris had told me a good deal about the persecutions she had suffered from the ridiculous attentions of a foreign boy who lived in the set of rooms above theirs—attentions, I am sorry to say, I had only laughed to scorn.”“Not so sure!” echoed my companion in tones of genuine disgust and horror. “Why, would you, Mr Glynn, have liked my brother to make an attempt on his uncle’s life?”“That would have been better than what happened,” I returned meaningly.“Why, what was that?” cried the Spaniard in alarm.“Somebody crept into his bedroom as the colonel slept and stabbed him to the heart—to be precise, the exact hour you left me to search for Paul.”“Good heavens!” gasped Casteno, falling back. “Then the wretched boy has broken loose from his reason and carried out his insane idea of revenge! Ah! now I see it all. That was why I caught him lurking about your office! He had tracked Colonel Napier there earlier, and had no notion that he had returned to Whitehall Court until he saw a strange figure at your door.”“Even that doesn’t explain who killed the clumber spaniel Fate.”“I think it does,” urged Casteno stoutly. “The dog knew, somehow, he had done wrong to his master and would not leave him. In a fit of passion and terror Paul whipped out his knife and stabbed him.”“But that would happen near Whitehall Court. How came the dog to die in a passage near Stanton Street?”“He must have been making for your office: remember all dogs have odd gleams of foresight at times.”For a few moments we walked on in silence. The duel had been a sharp one and a long one, but already I was possessed with an uncomfortable 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 fête 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.”“Well, we must take all those risks, mustn’t we? And, by Jove, talking of angels, here we can see two of them—at least, there are Captain Sparhawk and the worthy hunchback walking off together up the street yonder. Let’s follow them. By the way in which they’ve put their heads together they’re up to no good I am certain. Just before you came I peered through the keyhole of my father’s room, and I saw him hard at work on the manuscripts. Now, what on earth can have happened to have made him give it up so suddenly and dress himself up as though he were going for a long journey?”“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 fête.”With a nod that might mean anything or nothing I fell into step with my companion. By this time Doris, the hunchback, and the aeronaut had got quite a considerable distance ahead. As a matter of fact, I was just then struggling with a fierce desire to rush forward—to see Doris face to face—to speak with her—to tell her all that had happened—to warn her of her dangers—to assure her and myself that nothing on earth could part us. Hence it was I could not carry on any conversation no matter how important. I had first to conquer myself. Haste would ruin all.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.Casteno, however, seemed to be on this occasion perfectly frank. “Cooper-Nassington,” he explained, “is by no means idle. He is as hard at work as you or I. As a matter of fact, he has run up to Whitby, in Yorkshire, where he has an interest in a shipbuilding yard and an iron mine, and he is fitting out an expedition for Mexico, which will leave immediately we get wind of the exact spot where the Lake of Sacred Treasure may be found.”“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.At last Casteno stopped. “Look here!” he said in that quick, decisive way of his. “We can’t go on like this. The more I examine this place the more convinced I am that there is something radically wrong about it and in that arrangement between Fotheringay and the hunchback. Now the point is this: will you make a bold stand if I do? You are in disguise; so am I. If we are caught, let us pretend that we are sweethearts of two of the servants who, we regret to find, have left—but, at all events, let us slip through these rooms and see what we can discover.”“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.”
There was nothing in the way Casteno received me to suggest a man with a guilty secret. On the contrary, as I advanced through the doorway that led to the Green Dragon he stepped out boldly towards me the instant he recognised me beneath the disguise which he himself had suggested. “Welcome, my good friend,” he said in a bluff and hearty fashion, stretching out his hand; “Welcome!”
I took the greeting he proffered, although I turned my head away and would not let him detect my real feelings. At first I was sorely tempted to take him by surprise and to denounce him there and then as the man who had stolen into Whitehall Court in those early morning hours, climbed through that open bedroom window, and had killed poor Colonel Napier, one of the truest and most loyal soldiers that ever lived. But I crushed all those temptations down. There was much for me to discover before I could show my suspicions so plainly as that. I had to go very slowly and carefully to work.
“I am glad to see you,” I answered at length, and that sentiment, indeed, was true. I was glad—more glad than he could guess. “Let the porter carry my luggage in, and let you and I have a walk.”
“Excellent,” said he, “that was just what I was going to propose if you were not too tired.” And giving the necessary directions to the hotel servants he calmly linked his arm in mine, and led me down the street towards the river, whither all the passers-by seemed to be hastening on their way homeward after service at church.
“Well, and how did you get on with Miss Velasquon?” he asked later.
“Very badly,” I returned. “I lost her at Vauxhall Bridge Station.”
“Oh, never mind about that,” he replied lightly. “Your duty ended as soon as you arrived with her in London. As a matter of fact, I sent a friend to intercept her at that point. He didn’t quite understand whether he could trust you or not, so he hit on that ruse by which she slipped out of the carriage whilst you were looking out at an opposite platform. She wired me, however, that you had had some extraordinary adventure on the way up. What was that?”
“Oh, merely some women tried to lure her off to Broadmoor Lunatic Asylum,” I snapped. “Why on earth didn’t you tell me I was safe when we reached town? Do you know, I searched the station from top to bottom before I decided your friend had come to no harm.”
“No, I don’t. In fact, I am very sorry about what the man whom I sent did. I was, however, under the impression that I had told you not to worry after she had reached town. The real danger existed on the way up. I had most specific warning that it was on the actual journey from Southampton Lord Fotheringay would make the semi-criminal effort he did to get her out of my hands.”
“Why should he?” I demanded, stopping suddenly and gazing fixedly at the speaker.
“Why should two men ever strive after the same sweetheart?” Casteno answered, his features flushing crimson. “Call it Life—Fate—Providence—Luck—Destiny—what you like. There it is. 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. They give the keys to various ciphers used by the Jesuits in the early days of their Order in Mexico. Is there anything else you would like to ask?” Then seeing he had put me to some confusion he went on with great earnestness: “Look here, man, why don’t you trust me a little more? Don’t you see that there must, in a quest like this we are engaged upon, be a hundred details about which I cannot give you my confidence? Why not be content to labour in the dark until the time for the light comes? As it is just at present, I satisfy you for a day easily and perfectly enough, but it is only for a day. Something you don’t expect happens, and lo! I find about me a cloud of distrust, suspicion, and unpleasant suggestion that takes out of me every bit of heart and pluck.”
“Is not that your own fault?” I blurted out. “Are not your actions calculated to excite distrust? Carry your memory back to the last time you were in my office in Stanton Street. What happened then?”
“Nothing of great account.” But now he went very pale.
“Are you quite sure of that?” I queried in the gravest tones. “Think again. Examine your conscience again. What about that dagger of yours? Why did you get up and sharpen it on the hearthstone directly you thought I should not see you?”
The Spaniard started, and recovered himself with an effort. “Because I had had a fright,” he stammered. “In an idle moment I had looked through the window and there I saw a man who had vowed to take my life.”
“I cannot believe you,” I cried. “You must convince me. Tell me who was this foe?”
“My own brother,” he muttered, turning away from me with an impatient gesture and quickening his steps. “You have seen him yourself. The hunchback called him Paul—”
“Then,” I gasped in amazement, “you—you are the hunchback’s son?”
“Of course I am,” he retorted. “I thought you guessed that directly you saw Paul when we were up in that recess watching my father put on his disguise. The relationship seemed so evident that I did not feel there was any necessity to explain it.”
“But you call yourself Casteno?”
“No; I changed my name after I had quarrelled with my father some years ago and got employment in the Royal Household of Spain. I purchased the right to do so—”
“Then you talk English like a native.”
“So does the hunchback.”
“And when that morning you saw your brother,” I went on, breaking away on a new tack, “why did you go after him?”
“To make peace if I could. As it was doubtful I prepared myself also for war.”
“And did you find him?”
“No; he was too quick for me. I slipped as hard as I could to his chambers in Embankment Mansions in Whitehall Court, but he was not in them. They were closed and locked.”
“Embankment Mansions in Whitehall Court,” I repeated. “That is where Colonel Napier lives.” And as I uttered the name of the dead officer I scrutinised every line on Casteno’s face.
“Of course it is,” he responded, and not the smallest sign of excitement did he exhibit. “Paul, for some years, has had a set of chambers over the flat occupied by Colonel Napier. He has got one of those wild, hopeless passions that sometimes seize the lowly born for girls in the higher ranks of life, for Miss Napier.”
“Not Miss Doris Napier!” I interjected.
“Oh yes, Miss Doris. The thing is almost laughable—except for Paul, who is absolutely crazy on the subject, and who has often told me that on the day you are formally engaged to her he will shoot you like a dog.”
“Pleasant for me,” I observed, “extremely pleasant. Your father and I are old friends; how is it he didn’t warn me?”
“He always hoped that Paul would come to his senses. He was ashamed of the lad’s madness. He trusted that some other girl would appear on the scene to fascinate Paul. Besides, he did tell Colonel Napier about it. The colonel and he are related, as a matter of fact. Both of them married step-sisters; but my mother died many years ago.”
“I had no idea of this.”
“No doubt,” returned the Spaniard courteously. “Lovers don’t usually trouble to inquire as to the relations of the girls they love until after marriage. If they did, cynics say that they would spare themselves a good many highly unpleasant surprises. The colonel, of course, was equally annoyed about this infatuation, and I am told that only a few days ago he met Paul on the stairs of the flat and gave him a good beating with his cane for daring to send Miss Napier a bunch of flowers. Perhaps, however, this is only idle gossip. I heard it from a servant whom my father had recently dismissed. He said that Paul was so incensed at this outrage that he would have stabbed the colonel dead on the spot if he had had his dagger with him. Luckily, he had forgotten that morning to fasten it on—”
“I am not so sure about that,” I answered slowly and with great distinctness, “although, now I came to think of it, I did recollect that in the old days Doris had told me a good deal about the persecutions she had suffered from the ridiculous attentions of a foreign boy who lived in the set of rooms above theirs—attentions, I am sorry to say, I had only laughed to scorn.”
“Not so sure!” echoed my companion in tones of genuine disgust and horror. “Why, would you, Mr Glynn, have liked my brother to make an attempt on his uncle’s life?”
“That would have been better than what happened,” I returned meaningly.
“Why, what was that?” cried the Spaniard in alarm.
“Somebody crept into his bedroom as the colonel slept and stabbed him to the heart—to be precise, the exact hour you left me to search for Paul.”
“Good heavens!” gasped Casteno, falling back. “Then the wretched boy has broken loose from his reason and carried out his insane idea of revenge! Ah! now I see it all. That was why I caught him lurking about your office! He had tracked Colonel Napier there earlier, and had no notion that he had returned to Whitehall Court until he saw a strange figure at your door.”
“Even that doesn’t explain who killed the clumber spaniel Fate.”
“I think it does,” urged Casteno stoutly. “The dog knew, somehow, he had done wrong to his master and would not leave him. In a fit of passion and terror Paul whipped out his knife and stabbed him.”
“But that would happen near Whitehall Court. How came the dog to die in a passage near Stanton Street?”
“He must have been making for your office: remember all dogs have odd gleams of foresight at times.”
For a few moments we walked on in silence. The duel had been a sharp one and a long one, but already I was possessed with an uncomfortable 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 fête 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.”
“Well, we must take all those risks, mustn’t we? And, by Jove, talking of angels, here we can see two of them—at least, there are Captain Sparhawk and the worthy hunchback walking off together up the street yonder. Let’s follow them. By the way in which they’ve put their heads together they’re up to no good I am certain. Just before you came I peered through the keyhole of my father’s room, and I saw him hard at work on the manuscripts. Now, what on earth can have happened to have made him give it up so suddenly and dress himself up as though he were going for a long journey?”
“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 fête.”
With a nod that might mean anything or nothing I fell into step with my companion. By this time Doris, the hunchback, and the aeronaut had got quite a considerable distance ahead. As a matter of fact, I was just then struggling with a fierce desire to rush forward—to see Doris face to face—to speak with her—to tell her all that had happened—to warn her of her dangers—to assure her and myself that nothing on earth could part us. Hence it was I could not carry on any conversation no matter how important. I had first to conquer myself. Haste would ruin all.
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.
Casteno, however, seemed to be on this occasion perfectly frank. “Cooper-Nassington,” he explained, “is by no means idle. He is as hard at work as you or I. As a matter of fact, he has run up to Whitby, in Yorkshire, where he has an interest in a shipbuilding yard and an iron mine, and he is fitting out an expedition for Mexico, which will leave immediately we get wind of the exact spot where the Lake of Sacred Treasure may be found.”
“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.
At last Casteno stopped. “Look here!” he said in that quick, decisive way of his. “We can’t go on like this. The more I examine this place the more convinced I am that there is something radically wrong about it and in that arrangement between Fotheringay and the hunchback. Now the point is this: will you make a bold stand if I do? You are in disguise; so am I. If we are caught, let us pretend that we are sweethearts of two of the servants who, we regret to find, have left—but, at all events, let us slip through these rooms and see what we can discover.”
“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.”
Chapter Fourteen.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 fête 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.For a moment the object of all this attention eluded us, but only for a moment. Suddenly, the lawyer stopped, and Lord Cyril Cuthbertson looked up, an expression of annoyance on his firm but forbidding features. Then we saw the hunchback spring to the bottom of the table, on which he laid a fist trembling with passion.“This is monstrous,” he cried, “monstrous! I repeat, I am no more an Englishman than is the Holy Father at Rome or the Emperor Nicholas, or my own beloved King Alphonso. I, therefore, deny your right to detain me here—to threaten me with penalties—to torture me with the knowledge that you have determined to stop at nothing to gain possession of those three manuscripts relating to the Lake of Sacred Treasure.”“Then give them up, my good man,” replied Lord Cyril Cuthbertson suavely. “I have told you I will compensate you for them richly. It shall be no question of what they have cost you but of what they may mean to you.”“And I refuse,” repeated the man doggedly. “I refuse. I have refused—I shall always refuse!”“Why?” persisted the Foreign Secretary, fixing two piercing eyes on the Spaniard. “Don’t think we English politicians are fools, because, in a word, we are not. I know there is an idea abroad on the Continent that because our Secret Service Fund is so small it is utterly ineffective. But that is not true. We have been quite sharp enough to know that ever since you set foot in London you have acted as one of the spies of Spain, and in pursuance of instructions from Madrid you have often bribed some of our men to do worse things than even Alfred Dreyfus was accused of, and have often brought yourself within the meshes of our criminal law. Don’t presume too far on British complacency and good humour. We will go far, very far, to preserve the amenities of diplomacy, but over these manuscripts, with your bloodthirsty dreams of a great new Spanish empire that will sack London, you are pushing us a little too hard. Nor is that the worst. We have got your favourite son Paul in our hands at last. We have only to lift a finger and he, too, will be utterly crushed.”As it happened, however, the hunchback seemed to think but lightly of this threat against his favourite son, or he was certainly one of the cleverest actors in real life I had ever seen. “We are all in the hands of the British Government, Lord Cuthbertson,” he said, with a quick assumption of dignity that matched but ill with the Foreign Secretary’s high and overbearing tones. “Paul Zouche is no coward; and whatever blows Fate has in store for him he will meet them with a courage that befits a son of Spain in exile from his native land.”“No doubt, no doubt,” cut in Lord Fotheringay, as though he were anxious no more should be said on the subject of Paul’s guilt just at that moment. “We all of us trust that he will, although at present things which you don’t seem to have any knowledge of look very black against him. Still, that is not the point we invited you into this assembly hall of mine to discuss.”“Scarcely invited!” echoed the hunchback with an ill-repressed sneer. “Say, rather, tricked by the aid of a niece of mine. What did you do to poor Sparhawk when he got hot and angry and struck out in my defence?”“Well, say ‘tricked,’ then,” observed Lord Cuthbertson. “What of that? We are all of us playing for high stakes, and in a game affecting national interests we can’t rely on everyday rules that do very well for ordinary men at ordinary times. Will you answer our plain question?—will you give up those manuscripts to the British Government, or will you not?”“I will not,” retorted the hunchback proudly.“They are mine. I have bought them. I shall do with them exactly as I please.”“I am not so sure about that,” remarked the Foreign Secretary meditatively, bending forward and pressing the button of an electric bell fixed on the table in front of him. “At all events, for a time your movements must be hampered, for I see here, amongst the documents that have just been sent down from Downing Street to me for signature, is a copy of a warrant for your arrest from the Home Office on a charge of bribery of certain officials now employed at Woolwich Arsenal. My idea is that it ought to be put into effect at once.”“Oh, but that is preposterous!” snorted the hunchback, going very white. “I shall resist it. I shall appeal to the Spanish Ambassador. I will let the public know how I’ve been tricked here in Shrewsbury whilst I was engaged on one of the most peaceable of missions—the financing and development of a new flying machine.”“Quite so; I should,” said the Foreign Secretary, writing busily, as though he were utterly indifferent to what the hunchback said, did, or thought. “Our dear British public loves revelations of all sorts—the more sensational the better. I only hope the press won’t praise me for the part I have taken in the business and call me one of the nation’s patriots for setting the nation’s needs above the ordinary rules of criminal procedure. You really can have no idea of how keen they have become on stringing up traitors of all nationalities since some of our grim experiences in the South African War.”“I’m not a traitor,” thundered the hunchback. “No?” said Lord Cuthbertson, all the inquiry in his assent.“I am a Spaniard.”“Quite so.” And again there was silence, during which the hunchback shuffled uneasily, for, although he was brave enough in conflict, silence tried him, like it does all highly-strung men.Another footstep made itself heard, and through the keyhole Casteno and I caught sight of the burly proportions of Detective-Inspector Naylor standing in front of the Foreign Secretary, his hand raised at the salute.“What orders, my lord,” he asked.“Oh!” replied the Foreign Secretary carelessly, still going on with his correspondence, “I think you will find a man there at the end of the table standing quite close to you. His name is Peter Zanch or Zouch, or something foreign and uncanny like that. The Home Office has issued a warrant for his arrest on some serious charges. Put a pair of handcuffs on him and take him up to Bow Street, will you? Be very careful, too, how you search him. He has got three old, valuable manuscripts somewhere—either in his pockets, amongst his luggage at the Green Dragon Hotel, or hidden in the rooms in which he is in temporary occupation. Arrange for a careful search for those before you leave Shropshire.”“I will, my lord,” returned Naylor, stretching out a muscular hand and taking a firm hold of the hunchback. “As a matter of fact, I know this man very well. I have been to his shop in Westminster scores of times!” And he took a step forward, as though he would move Zouche promptly out of the room.Now, as I have hinted before, the hunchback had plenty of pride, and as he felt this coarse-grained Briton attempt to drag him unceremoniously away from the table at which Lord Cuthbertson, Lord Fotheringay, and the lawyer still sat immovable and unconcerned, as though no such person as himself existed within a radius of one hundred miles of them, his rage mastered him.“I will never go, never!” he shrieked, and he whipped out a revolver and actually levelled it at the officer and fired it, but Naylor was too quick for him, and in a flash knocked the muzzle of the revolver upward.“Humph! a dangerous customer, I see,” exclaimed the detective coolly. “Well, you can’t be left to go as a gentleman, that’s all. I must treat you as a criminal.” And whipping out his handcuffs he had them snapped on Zouche’s wrists in a couple of seconds.Oddly enough, what threats, persuasions, offers of bribes, actual violence had failed to win the touch of that cold steel accomplished. Personally, I have seen the same thing happen scores of times, but, to the general public, the moral power of the silent handcuff must ever rank as one of the greatest of the modern noiseless miracles. Certainly it was so in the case of the hunchback. No sooner did he find himself really captured than all his braggadocio left him—dropped from him like a moth-eaten mantle.“I give in, Lord Cuthbertson, I give in!” he cried. “Order this man to take off these absurd bracelets. I’ll do as you wish—throw in my lot with the British Government. Send him away, and let us discuss the terms.”The Foreign Secretary lifted his eyes lazily from his papers and pretended to yawn. “I beg your pardon,” he said politely. “I was busy putting the finishing touches to a despatch. What was that you said?”“I will sell the manuscripts to the British Government. I will give you the benefit of my services as translator,” repeated the hunchback.Lord Cuthbertson yawned again. “Make a note of that offer, Fotheringay, will you?” he said, turning to the earl, “and speak to me about it when I’ve got a little more time. At present I’m too busy to think of these things as carefully as I ought.” And, rising, he nodded to Naylor, but the hunchback stood his ground.“My lord,” said he warningly, “it’s now or never. Don’t play with me. Don’t push me too far. I will be with you now, but if not now I’ll be against you and your Government for ever, so be careful how you treat me.”To my mind there was no question that Lord Cuthbertson never meant to let the hunchback leave that chapel; thus, as an outsider watching every feint and move in that closely-contested duel of wit and nerve, I recognised that all he did was pose—bluff—strategy of the lowest bullying type. All the same, I am not sure whether, if I had been in Peter Zouche’s shoes, I should have seen through the sharp practice of this pinchbeck Napoleon so easily. Indeed, I might as easily have been taken in as he was, for was there not at work that strange, compelling moral suasion of the handcuff?“Very well, then,” said Lord Cuthbertson after a suitable pause. “I am, I repeat, very busy, very busy indeed, but I will see whether I can’t do as you ask. Naylor, take off those wristlets, and go out of the room for a few minutes; and you, Mr Zouche, come here quite close to us so that we can be quite certain that the terms of our understanding are not overheard by any of the other detectives we brought down from Scotland Yard to Shrewsbury last night.” The detective disappeared with the handcuffs, and the hunchback went close to the table and engaged in confidential conversation with the Foreign Secretary and the earl for nearly a quarter of an hour.In vain Casteno and I worked and edged and wriggled. All of the men round the table spoke so low and so earnestly that we could not catch a single word of what they were saying, and we might just as well have gone back to the hotel, and there awaited the hunchback’s return, as have prowled so uneasily on the far side of those doors for all the good we did to our cause, until I had an idea which I put immediately into effect.“Look here,” I whispered suddenly to my companion, “you come here instead of me and take a turn at peeping through the keyhole!”“Why?” he queried in a thin, complaining voice. “Your eyes are better than mine, and your ears. You hear things twice as quickly as I do!”“That isn’t it,” I returned. “I don’t want you to listen at all on this occasion.”“Well, my back is tired. I am sick of stooping down.”“But it won’t be for long,” I persisted. “Just take this turn at the keyhole to oblige me, will you? Directly you have discovered what I want you to find—and, mark! only you can find it out—we need not wait another minute. We can get off to the Green Dragon and eat our dinner in peace.”“Well, what is it?” he asked, bending down in front of the door, his curiosity at last faintly excited. “Don’t you see that the old man is on the point of selling us and that in a few minutes both Cooper-Nassington and I will be done as brown as the proverbial berries?”“That’s just it,” I replied. “I want you to study your father’s face very carefully whilst he is talking to Cuthbertson. Examine every feature in it, every turn, every line, in the light of all your previous experience of him, and see whether or not he is telling those men the truth.”“By George! what a stupid I was not to think of that before? What a splendid idea! Of course, he has no love for them. It would be the most natural thing in the world for him to trick them. Look what careful preparations he made with Paul just before he left and how he hid those forged manuscripts in that steel box to throw every manner of inquiry off the scent! Why, he is the last man in the wurld not to burn to pay anybody out who gets the best of him. And yes!” he whispered, “I am certain he is lying to them. I can see it,” and the Spaniard dragged me down level with the keyhole so that I, too, could follow what was happening in the interior of the chapel. “Don’t you observe that very curious trick he is doing quite unconsciously—standing first on one foot and then on another and then rubbing the ankle of one with the toe of the other? Well, he always did that to customers in the old days when we were poor and he had not got such a fine sense of honour about the sale of a spurious antique as he had when times became more prosperous for us!”“Well, if you are satisfied, so am I,” I returned. “We need not spy about this creepy old mansion any longer. We have discovered all we have set out to find, and now I propose we get back to the Green Dragon Hotel, whither, doubtless, he and Captain Sparhawk will return.”“And how about Miss Napier?” queried Casteno slyly.“Oh! Miss Napier will probably come back with her uncle to the same place. He, doubtless, to keep up the deception that he is going straight now for England and English interests, will forgive her that piece of trickery which landed him right into Cuthbertson’s net; and she, to see that he does keep straight, will let herself be deceived by him, and will watch him as far as she dare without exciting his suspicions. At all events, it is useless for me to think of making any move with regard to her just at this moment. In the first place, she has her hands full watching her prisoner, Sparhawk, and if I showed up now in this disguise she might put a bullet through the pair of us. Certainly she would raise an alarm, and there would be endless trouble and difficulties before we managed to explain, at all satisfactorily, what we were doing here without an invitation when so many vital national issues were being settled. In the second place, I can’t make out her ignorance of the death of her father. Is it real, or assumed? Something very odd must have happened to make her behave like this at this mournful crisis in the family fortunes. Now, what can that be? So far as I can see there is only one source here in Shrewsbury which can possibly supply any sort of key to the mystery without asking the girl herself. That is, a Sunday special edition of one of the Sunday papers—thePeople, Lloyd’s, or some journal like that. The only place where we can find that with any degree of certainty is the Green Dragon, so, naturally, I am all eagerness to hasten back there and to look over its columns!”“I see you’re right,” replied Casteno, as, springing to his feet, he snatched up his boots and hastened as rapidly as he could down the stairs, with the result that in a few seconds we had crossed the lawn and reached the shelter of the belt of trees near the boundary wall by which we had effected our entrance. Here we set to work, and quickly removed all traces of our adventures; then, hoisting ourselves over the wall that divided us from the side lane, we raced back as hard as we could in the direction of the town.“We must eat,” he argued; “eat to live. Everything just now depends on us keeping in the pink of condition. To do that we must never neglect our food.”Happily, after moments that seemed as long as hours, the paper I sought did materialise at last. It was a newly-arrived copy of theWeekly Dispatch, I remember, and no sooner did I glance at the first page than I saw from the headlines that some startling developments in the case had occurred since I turned my face from London towards the west. As a matter of fact, quite a new complexion had been put on the tragedy, and the latest report now ran as follows:—THE MYSTERY OF WHITEHALL COURTWHO IS THE DEAD MAN?STRANGE STORY OF A VALET“Quite a new turn has been given to the tragedy in Embankment Mansions, full particulars of the discovery of which appear on an inside page. Firstly, the valet Richardson has now had time to examine the body which was found in Colonel Napier’s bedroom, and he says unhesitatingly that it isnot that of his masterat all but of a stranger who at first sight resembles him strongly. This view is borne out by two old friends of Colonel Napier who have also seen the corpse—the Rev. Richard Jennings, the vicar of St. Helen’s, Palace Street, Westminster, and Colonel Goring-Richmond, who some years ago was on the most intimate terms with the deceased and spent the summer with him in the Austrian Tyrol. Secondly, if this be true, there is no doubt that not only Colonel Napier, but also his daughter Doris, have suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. All their affairs, it seems, have been left in the uttermost confusion, and it looks as though, if there has not been foul play in their lives in one direction, there has been in another. Close inquiries amongst their friends reveal no intention on their part to be absent from home. Their servants also are astounded at their disappearance, and all the machinery of their social life has been brought suddenly to a standstill; while letters and telegrams of inquiry and visits from friends, who have read accounts which purport to explain Colonel’s Napier’s sudden demise, plunge their departure into a mingled atmosphere of tragedy and mystery, which it seems impossible to-night to break through. Meanwhile, everybody is asking: Who is the man who has been found stabbed to death in Colonel Napier’s bed? The police are certainly powerless to explain; while common people dare not suggest a most terrible answer which will occur to everybody who reads these lines for fear of the law of libel.”
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 fête 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.
For a moment the object of all this attention eluded us, but only for a moment. Suddenly, the lawyer stopped, and Lord Cyril Cuthbertson looked up, an expression of annoyance on his firm but forbidding features. Then we saw the hunchback spring to the bottom of the table, on which he laid a fist trembling with passion.
“This is monstrous,” he cried, “monstrous! I repeat, I am no more an Englishman than is the Holy Father at Rome or the Emperor Nicholas, or my own beloved King Alphonso. I, therefore, deny your right to detain me here—to threaten me with penalties—to torture me with the knowledge that you have determined to stop at nothing to gain possession of those three manuscripts relating to the Lake of Sacred Treasure.”
“Then give them up, my good man,” replied Lord Cyril Cuthbertson suavely. “I have told you I will compensate you for them richly. It shall be no question of what they have cost you but of what they may mean to you.”
“And I refuse,” repeated the man doggedly. “I refuse. I have refused—I shall always refuse!”
“Why?” persisted the Foreign Secretary, fixing two piercing eyes on the Spaniard. “Don’t think we English politicians are fools, because, in a word, we are not. I know there is an idea abroad on the Continent that because our Secret Service Fund is so small it is utterly ineffective. But that is not true. We have been quite sharp enough to know that ever since you set foot in London you have acted as one of the spies of Spain, and in pursuance of instructions from Madrid you have often bribed some of our men to do worse things than even Alfred Dreyfus was accused of, and have often brought yourself within the meshes of our criminal law. Don’t presume too far on British complacency and good humour. We will go far, very far, to preserve the amenities of diplomacy, but over these manuscripts, with your bloodthirsty dreams of a great new Spanish empire that will sack London, you are pushing us a little too hard. Nor is that the worst. We have got your favourite son Paul in our hands at last. We have only to lift a finger and he, too, will be utterly crushed.”
As it happened, however, the hunchback seemed to think but lightly of this threat against his favourite son, or he was certainly one of the cleverest actors in real life I had ever seen. “We are all in the hands of the British Government, Lord Cuthbertson,” he said, with a quick assumption of dignity that matched but ill with the Foreign Secretary’s high and overbearing tones. “Paul Zouche is no coward; and whatever blows Fate has in store for him he will meet them with a courage that befits a son of Spain in exile from his native land.”
“No doubt, no doubt,” cut in Lord Fotheringay, as though he were anxious no more should be said on the subject of Paul’s guilt just at that moment. “We all of us trust that he will, although at present things which you don’t seem to have any knowledge of look very black against him. Still, that is not the point we invited you into this assembly hall of mine to discuss.”
“Scarcely invited!” echoed the hunchback with an ill-repressed sneer. “Say, rather, tricked by the aid of a niece of mine. What did you do to poor Sparhawk when he got hot and angry and struck out in my defence?”
“Well, say ‘tricked,’ then,” observed Lord Cuthbertson. “What of that? We are all of us playing for high stakes, and in a game affecting national interests we can’t rely on everyday rules that do very well for ordinary men at ordinary times. Will you answer our plain question?—will you give up those manuscripts to the British Government, or will you not?”
“I will not,” retorted the hunchback proudly.
“They are mine. I have bought them. I shall do with them exactly as I please.”
“I am not so sure about that,” remarked the Foreign Secretary meditatively, bending forward and pressing the button of an electric bell fixed on the table in front of him. “At all events, for a time your movements must be hampered, for I see here, amongst the documents that have just been sent down from Downing Street to me for signature, is a copy of a warrant for your arrest from the Home Office on a charge of bribery of certain officials now employed at Woolwich Arsenal. My idea is that it ought to be put into effect at once.”
“Oh, but that is preposterous!” snorted the hunchback, going very white. “I shall resist it. I shall appeal to the Spanish Ambassador. I will let the public know how I’ve been tricked here in Shrewsbury whilst I was engaged on one of the most peaceable of missions—the financing and development of a new flying machine.”
“Quite so; I should,” said the Foreign Secretary, writing busily, as though he were utterly indifferent to what the hunchback said, did, or thought. “Our dear British public loves revelations of all sorts—the more sensational the better. I only hope the press won’t praise me for the part I have taken in the business and call me one of the nation’s patriots for setting the nation’s needs above the ordinary rules of criminal procedure. You really can have no idea of how keen they have become on stringing up traitors of all nationalities since some of our grim experiences in the South African War.”
“I’m not a traitor,” thundered the hunchback. “No?” said Lord Cuthbertson, all the inquiry in his assent.
“I am a Spaniard.”
“Quite so.” And again there was silence, during which the hunchback shuffled uneasily, for, although he was brave enough in conflict, silence tried him, like it does all highly-strung men.
Another footstep made itself heard, and through the keyhole Casteno and I caught sight of the burly proportions of Detective-Inspector Naylor standing in front of the Foreign Secretary, his hand raised at the salute.
“What orders, my lord,” he asked.
“Oh!” replied the Foreign Secretary carelessly, still going on with his correspondence, “I think you will find a man there at the end of the table standing quite close to you. His name is Peter Zanch or Zouch, or something foreign and uncanny like that. The Home Office has issued a warrant for his arrest on some serious charges. Put a pair of handcuffs on him and take him up to Bow Street, will you? Be very careful, too, how you search him. He has got three old, valuable manuscripts somewhere—either in his pockets, amongst his luggage at the Green Dragon Hotel, or hidden in the rooms in which he is in temporary occupation. Arrange for a careful search for those before you leave Shropshire.”
“I will, my lord,” returned Naylor, stretching out a muscular hand and taking a firm hold of the hunchback. “As a matter of fact, I know this man very well. I have been to his shop in Westminster scores of times!” And he took a step forward, as though he would move Zouche promptly out of the room.
Now, as I have hinted before, the hunchback had plenty of pride, and as he felt this coarse-grained Briton attempt to drag him unceremoniously away from the table at which Lord Cuthbertson, Lord Fotheringay, and the lawyer still sat immovable and unconcerned, as though no such person as himself existed within a radius of one hundred miles of them, his rage mastered him.
“I will never go, never!” he shrieked, and he whipped out a revolver and actually levelled it at the officer and fired it, but Naylor was too quick for him, and in a flash knocked the muzzle of the revolver upward.
“Humph! a dangerous customer, I see,” exclaimed the detective coolly. “Well, you can’t be left to go as a gentleman, that’s all. I must treat you as a criminal.” And whipping out his handcuffs he had them snapped on Zouche’s wrists in a couple of seconds.
Oddly enough, what threats, persuasions, offers of bribes, actual violence had failed to win the touch of that cold steel accomplished. Personally, I have seen the same thing happen scores of times, but, to the general public, the moral power of the silent handcuff must ever rank as one of the greatest of the modern noiseless miracles. Certainly it was so in the case of the hunchback. No sooner did he find himself really captured than all his braggadocio left him—dropped from him like a moth-eaten mantle.
“I give in, Lord Cuthbertson, I give in!” he cried. “Order this man to take off these absurd bracelets. I’ll do as you wish—throw in my lot with the British Government. Send him away, and let us discuss the terms.”
The Foreign Secretary lifted his eyes lazily from his papers and pretended to yawn. “I beg your pardon,” he said politely. “I was busy putting the finishing touches to a despatch. What was that you said?”
“I will sell the manuscripts to the British Government. I will give you the benefit of my services as translator,” repeated the hunchback.
Lord Cuthbertson yawned again. “Make a note of that offer, Fotheringay, will you?” he said, turning to the earl, “and speak to me about it when I’ve got a little more time. At present I’m too busy to think of these things as carefully as I ought.” And, rising, he nodded to Naylor, but the hunchback stood his ground.
“My lord,” said he warningly, “it’s now or never. Don’t play with me. Don’t push me too far. I will be with you now, but if not now I’ll be against you and your Government for ever, so be careful how you treat me.”
To my mind there was no question that Lord Cuthbertson never meant to let the hunchback leave that chapel; thus, as an outsider watching every feint and move in that closely-contested duel of wit and nerve, I recognised that all he did was pose—bluff—strategy of the lowest bullying type. All the same, I am not sure whether, if I had been in Peter Zouche’s shoes, I should have seen through the sharp practice of this pinchbeck Napoleon so easily. Indeed, I might as easily have been taken in as he was, for was there not at work that strange, compelling moral suasion of the handcuff?
“Very well, then,” said Lord Cuthbertson after a suitable pause. “I am, I repeat, very busy, very busy indeed, but I will see whether I can’t do as you ask. Naylor, take off those wristlets, and go out of the room for a few minutes; and you, Mr Zouche, come here quite close to us so that we can be quite certain that the terms of our understanding are not overheard by any of the other detectives we brought down from Scotland Yard to Shrewsbury last night.” The detective disappeared with the handcuffs, and the hunchback went close to the table and engaged in confidential conversation with the Foreign Secretary and the earl for nearly a quarter of an hour.
In vain Casteno and I worked and edged and wriggled. All of the men round the table spoke so low and so earnestly that we could not catch a single word of what they were saying, and we might just as well have gone back to the hotel, and there awaited the hunchback’s return, as have prowled so uneasily on the far side of those doors for all the good we did to our cause, until I had an idea which I put immediately into effect.
“Look here,” I whispered suddenly to my companion, “you come here instead of me and take a turn at peeping through the keyhole!”
“Why?” he queried in a thin, complaining voice. “Your eyes are better than mine, and your ears. You hear things twice as quickly as I do!”
“That isn’t it,” I returned. “I don’t want you to listen at all on this occasion.”
“Well, my back is tired. I am sick of stooping down.”
“But it won’t be for long,” I persisted. “Just take this turn at the keyhole to oblige me, will you? Directly you have discovered what I want you to find—and, mark! only you can find it out—we need not wait another minute. We can get off to the Green Dragon and eat our dinner in peace.”
“Well, what is it?” he asked, bending down in front of the door, his curiosity at last faintly excited. “Don’t you see that the old man is on the point of selling us and that in a few minutes both Cooper-Nassington and I will be done as brown as the proverbial berries?”
“That’s just it,” I replied. “I want you to study your father’s face very carefully whilst he is talking to Cuthbertson. Examine every feature in it, every turn, every line, in the light of all your previous experience of him, and see whether or not he is telling those men the truth.”
“By George! what a stupid I was not to think of that before? What a splendid idea! Of course, he has no love for them. It would be the most natural thing in the world for him to trick them. Look what careful preparations he made with Paul just before he left and how he hid those forged manuscripts in that steel box to throw every manner of inquiry off the scent! Why, he is the last man in the wurld not to burn to pay anybody out who gets the best of him. And yes!” he whispered, “I am certain he is lying to them. I can see it,” and the Spaniard dragged me down level with the keyhole so that I, too, could follow what was happening in the interior of the chapel. “Don’t you observe that very curious trick he is doing quite unconsciously—standing first on one foot and then on another and then rubbing the ankle of one with the toe of the other? Well, he always did that to customers in the old days when we were poor and he had not got such a fine sense of honour about the sale of a spurious antique as he had when times became more prosperous for us!”
“Well, if you are satisfied, so am I,” I returned. “We need not spy about this creepy old mansion any longer. We have discovered all we have set out to find, and now I propose we get back to the Green Dragon Hotel, whither, doubtless, he and Captain Sparhawk will return.”
“And how about Miss Napier?” queried Casteno slyly.
“Oh! Miss Napier will probably come back with her uncle to the same place. He, doubtless, to keep up the deception that he is going straight now for England and English interests, will forgive her that piece of trickery which landed him right into Cuthbertson’s net; and she, to see that he does keep straight, will let herself be deceived by him, and will watch him as far as she dare without exciting his suspicions. At all events, it is useless for me to think of making any move with regard to her just at this moment. In the first place, she has her hands full watching her prisoner, Sparhawk, and if I showed up now in this disguise she might put a bullet through the pair of us. Certainly she would raise an alarm, and there would be endless trouble and difficulties before we managed to explain, at all satisfactorily, what we were doing here without an invitation when so many vital national issues were being settled. In the second place, I can’t make out her ignorance of the death of her father. Is it real, or assumed? Something very odd must have happened to make her behave like this at this mournful crisis in the family fortunes. Now, what can that be? So far as I can see there is only one source here in Shrewsbury which can possibly supply any sort of key to the mystery without asking the girl herself. That is, a Sunday special edition of one of the Sunday papers—thePeople, Lloyd’s, or some journal like that. The only place where we can find that with any degree of certainty is the Green Dragon, so, naturally, I am all eagerness to hasten back there and to look over its columns!”
“I see you’re right,” replied Casteno, as, springing to his feet, he snatched up his boots and hastened as rapidly as he could down the stairs, with the result that in a few seconds we had crossed the lawn and reached the shelter of the belt of trees near the boundary wall by which we had effected our entrance. Here we set to work, and quickly removed all traces of our adventures; then, hoisting ourselves over the wall that divided us from the side lane, we raced back as hard as we could in the direction of the town.
“We must eat,” he argued; “eat to live. Everything just now depends on us keeping in the pink of condition. To do that we must never neglect our food.”
Happily, after moments that seemed as long as hours, the paper I sought did materialise at last. It was a newly-arrived copy of theWeekly Dispatch, I remember, and no sooner did I glance at the first page than I saw from the headlines that some startling developments in the case had occurred since I turned my face from London towards the west. As a matter of fact, quite a new complexion had been put on the tragedy, and the latest report now ran as follows:—
THE MYSTERY OF WHITEHALL COURT
WHO IS THE DEAD MAN?
STRANGE STORY OF A VALET
“Quite a new turn has been given to the tragedy in Embankment Mansions, full particulars of the discovery of which appear on an inside page. Firstly, the valet Richardson has now had time to examine the body which was found in Colonel Napier’s bedroom, and he says unhesitatingly that it isnot that of his masterat all but of a stranger who at first sight resembles him strongly. This view is borne out by two old friends of Colonel Napier who have also seen the corpse—the Rev. Richard Jennings, the vicar of St. Helen’s, Palace Street, Westminster, and Colonel Goring-Richmond, who some years ago was on the most intimate terms with the deceased and spent the summer with him in the Austrian Tyrol. Secondly, if this be true, there is no doubt that not only Colonel Napier, but also his daughter Doris, have suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. All their affairs, it seems, have been left in the uttermost confusion, and it looks as though, if there has not been foul play in their lives in one direction, there has been in another. Close inquiries amongst their friends reveal no intention on their part to be absent from home. Their servants also are astounded at their disappearance, and all the machinery of their social life has been brought suddenly to a standstill; while letters and telegrams of inquiry and visits from friends, who have read accounts which purport to explain Colonel’s Napier’s sudden demise, plunge their departure into a mingled atmosphere of tragedy and mystery, which it seems impossible to-night to break through. Meanwhile, everybody is asking: Who is the man who has been found stabbed to death in Colonel Napier’s bed? The police are certainly powerless to explain; while common people dare not suggest a most terrible answer which will occur to everybody who reads these lines for fear of the law of libel.”