The Hunchback of Westminster

Preface

A Word Before Reading.

For many years I have busied myself making a collection of rare and valuable historical documents, and strange indeed are some of the stories and scandals which these ancient, crinkled parchments whisper to me in my hours of leisure.

In France, in Italy, in Russia, in Germany, in Belgium, in all corners of England, this craze of mine has led me, through many adventures, free but captive; and, looking back now, I realise that it has been really through this little-known hobby of mine, the hobby of palaeography, that there have come some of the most suggestive and magical hours I have ever spent in a wandering, erratic life that has never been wholly free from movement, but has often held its time of danger and its resistless, restless passion for change, romance, and adventure.

Perhaps, then, it is not really wonderful that this love of mine for the records of the dead-and-gone ages colours my later stories. Yet, in a sense, it would be strangely odd if it did not, for when an author hears so weird and thrilling a narrative of hidden treasure as this I have here striven to recount it would surely be more than human of him to fail to put it into print.

This “Hunchback of Westminster” is really no idle fiction spun for the entertainment of an idle hour. In many ways, indeed, it is tragically true – particularly that portion which tells how men only a few months ago in this prosaic London of ours fought for a certain treasure worth several millions of pounds.

Chapter One.

How Don José Baited His Trap

It was in the second year of my practice as a private detective that young José Casteno came to my office in Stanton Street, WC, and entrusted me with that strange and terrible mission in regard to which I have really hesitated, in all sincerity, for some days before I could actually nerve myself to take the public into my confidence.

Up to that time, I remember, my big brass plate, with the legend “Mr Hugh Glynn, Secret Investigator,” had only succeeded in drawing a very average and ordinary amount of business. True, I had had several profitable cases in which wives wanted to know what happened to their husbands when they didn’t come home at the usual hours, and employers were anxious to discover certain leakages through which had disappeared a percentage of their cash; but for the most part my work had been shockingly humdrum, and already I had begun to regret the whim that had prompted me, after reading certain latter-day romances, to throw up my career as a barrister in Gray’s Inn to emulate the romancer’s heroes in real life.

Indeed, at the rate of progress I was making then, I calculated that it would be exactly forty-seven and a half years before I could save 1000 pounds out of my expenses, and, with that as a nest-egg, dare to ask pretty Doris Napier to marry me; and hence, as such long engagements were no more fashionable then than they are now, I can assure you I often felt a trifle despondent about my future.

Still, that was before José Casteno appeared on the scene in Stanton Street, WC. Afterwards things, as you will see, were different.

Now, of course, there are always plenty of people who do not believe that the great and wonderful things that happen in life come heralded by a sky angry with the glow of blood or by a storm in which the wind seems to range from end to end of the gamut of all human emotion, and to sob and shriek and sigh as though it were possessed by some fugitive spirit stricken with mortal pain. On the contrary, they argue, the biggest things have the smallest beginnings, and hence one never knows what tiny affair betokens crisis. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t noticed, I own, any peculiar association of sympathy between Man and Nature until this particular night I write of, but then I do recollect very well it did so happen that I was very late indeed at the office, that there was a most terrifying thunderstorm in London, and that, just about midnight, the darkness was both cavernous and oppressive.

As I close my eyes I can recall the whole scene again – that black, deserted street, the flickering gaslights, the vague suggestion, in the swirl of the rain, of a mighty, impalpable presence that was sweeping through the metropolis rent by passion and terrors which no human imagination could ever give shape to. Then, all at once, a great calm seemed to fall over the night, and as I swung my chair round from the fireplace to see what had happened I became suddenly conscious of a white, haggard face pressed to the window-pane staring at me with wide, dilated eyes that dogged my every movement and seemed to hypnotise all my senses.

For a moment, I admit, I paused, paralysed by a nameless horror. Immediately afterwards the utter absurdity of any serious cause for fright on a ground floor in a thoroughfare not a dozen yards from the never-dying turmoil of the Strand broke upon me. With one bound I sprang to my office door, which I instantly flung far open, and there immediately entered to me, without a word being uttered on either side, a tall, thin, foreign-looking man of about twenty-five. His was the face which I had seen staring at me so eagerly through the window-pane!

“Pardon me coming at this unseasonable hour,” he said, with a profound gesture of humility, yet in a gentle, refined accent that suggested the student and the scholar. “Permit me to introduce myself,” and, with a flourish, he handed me a large-sized card, on which was engraved the name, in a distinctly foreign hand, “Don José Casteno,” but the address was scratched out.

For an instant his eyes met mine in one long, keen, lingering gaze of scrutiny – in that fatal instant, indeed, which follows the coming together of all men destined to do much in common, and which I have always found, in my experience, invariably decides whether we trust or we hate. Strange as his arrival had been, I will say, frankly, I took a liking to him even in that ghostly glare of the firelight; and, motioning him to a chair opposite to my desk, I turned up the gas. Then as he removed a wide-brimmed felt hat and unfastened a shabby black coat with a kind of Inverness cape, most often seen in use by foreign priests, I noticed his pale, intellectual-looking, clean-shaven face, with a mouth as tender and expressive as a girl’s.

“My business,” he began in a low voice of explanation as soon as he saw me seat myself and take up a pen to follow him, “is by no means a piece of common detective work which I am anxious that you should undertake in my behalf. On the contrary, it deals, Mr Glynn,” and now his voice became very grave, “with much that is startling and mysterious – much that spells ugly words like ‘treachery’ even in London – striking, as it does, at the root of at least one far-reaching unprincipled, foreign intrigue. First of all, then, I must ask you to tell me quite openly and frankly, are you free and prepared to undertake a series of difficult and dangerous missions?”

“I am,” I replied after a moment’s pause; “but it must be on terms.”

“And what are those terms?”

“First, that I am well and punctually paid,” and, in spite of myself, I smiled, for I found quite suddenly I had grown quite mercenary after my bitter reflections about Doris.

“Certainly, you shall be promptly remunerated,” he returned, and, thrusting a hand into a breast pocket, he withdrew a letter case stuffed with bank notes. “Pray let me put you right on that point at once by placing that in your safe,” he added. “Take from it as the work progresses any sums you may reasonably require. When all is over I will call on you to account for the amount. To-night it stands at 750 pounds.”

I counted the notes. They were quite new, but perfectly genuine, and of the amount he had stated, and I promptly locked them up in the small strong room that adjoined my office, which, alas! had hitherto seen too little of all such valuables. Then I faced Don José again.

“My next condition,” I said slowly, “is that you give me your entire confidence. There must be nothing kept from me. You must tell me all – absolutely all.”

“Ah, but – that is impossible,” he replied gently. “I simply dare not reveal the details of the secret, which I want you to work on, to any single soul. If I did, my life would be taken within the following four and twenty hours.” And all at once he shivered, as though he had himself caught instinctively some eerie presentiment of his doom.

“But how can I hope to work successfully in the dark?” I cried, throwing up my hands.

“Easily enough,” he returned. “All you have to do is to carry out my instructions, then nothing need be feared. For instance, here is the first task which I desire you should undertake.” And again he put his hand in his breast pocket, and this time he did not produce a pocket-book, but a tiny cutting which he explained came from that evening’s Globe, and which set out this odd notice:

To be sold – without Reserve – the Library and Effects of a Refugee Spanish priest, lately deceased. Contains many early printed Books, Horae, Liturgical, and other Manuscripts. By Auction to-morrow (Friday) at 3 PM. The Bromley Mart, King’s Street, Covent Garden, WC.

Now, almost in spite of myself, I felt flattered by this quaint and unexpected turn of negotiations which dropped so suddenly a mystery and touched on concrete things.

Let me explain the reason. As a matter of fact, if there was one hobby at that moment that appealed to me more than another it was that connected with old books, old furniture, old silver, old deeds, and charters. Indeed, I admit freely, I had attained already some certain amount of notoriety amongst the well-informed in this direction, acting as I had done for the young Earl of Fotheringay before I became a secret investigator, and at a time when I had leisure to roam from auction mart to curiosity shop, and thence to old country mansions on the eve of important sales – where more bargains in antiques are picked up than most wealthy curio-collectors dream of. But how Don José could have guessed I had any specialist knowledge of this sort I was powerless to explain. None the less, the probability of some romance, or some rare discovery in this sale, tempted me sorely, and the Spaniard, who had been narrowly watching my features, seemed to divine that, to recognise that I was then almost as good as won to his cause, for all at once he lowered his eyes before me, but not before I caught in their deep, dark depths the glint of some conscious triumph.

“So you wish me to bid for these things,” I at length suggested tentatively, laying the cutting on the table and tapping it interrogatively. “All of them or some?” I asked after another moment’s pause.

“One lot. Number 82, a bundle of manuscripts. These are very valuable.” And again his eyes flashed.

“What limit may I go to?”

“2500 pounds,” he answered promptly, and at this I started, for there are few old records in evidence worth so sensational a sum as this. “If the things are knocked down to you,” he went on eagerly, “a draft on a bank to the required amount will be put into your hands at once. As a matter of fact, the Bank of South and Central America have promised to send a special messenger to the mart itself to watch you and to take all the financial responsibilities off your shoulders.” He paused, and looked at me. “But you will never get them,” he added the next second, “of that I am certain,” and, half unconsciously, he gave a low, desponding sigh.

“Oh, that’s absurd,” I cried, although my own brain reeled at the magnitude of the commission, “we must not lose heart at the start. After all, an auction is an auction; money has money’s power the world over. Pay enough – and I feel sure you are bound to triumph.”

“So it would seem. But then you don’t know the secret foes whom you will have against you. Their power – their daring – their resources are marvellous.”

And he rose and paced my office, as though he could not bear even to think.

None the less, I made one further effort. “Why,” questioned I, “should they, or you for the matter of that, struggle for a few old parchment documents of an obscure Spanish priest? What are they to you, or to anyone?”

“Ah, that’s precisely what I cannot tell you. Rest assured, however, that they are, that we shall strive to buy them, and that they are almost practically certain to beat you. Nevertheless, fight for the things just as long as you have the strength. Afterwards, should you be out-classed in the actual sale, fix your mind on the next point in our quest – to discover where those documents are taken. Even if you can only find that simple fact out for me you will, in one sense, amply repay me.”

“But after the sale where shall we meet? Where will you come that I may report to you?” I asked, still in much confusion of mind.

“Here,” said he; “I’ll come to-morrow night at the same hour. Till then, I must beg you, have two watchwords – and two watchwords alone – ‘secrecy’ and ‘dispatch.’” And moving forward suddenly he picked up his hat and, with a low bow, crossed to the door.

I, too, rose, but I was not in time. He was too quick for me. All at once he gave me another profound bow, and with a sharp turn of the wrist threw open the door, through which he passed again as swiftly and as mysteriously as he had come.

Not to be beaten, though, I followed him instantly into the street. A thousand questions called to me for answers. I felt I could not let him go in that manner.

By this time the storm had completely died down, the sky had cleared, and was now cloudless and studded with stars. Yet, look where I would, I could not catch a trace of his fleeing shadow, although, by all rules of time and distance, he could not then have covered seven or eight yards at the most. It seemed, indeed, as though the pavement must have opened suddenly and swallowed him up.

Just, however, as I was about to turn indoors again another strange thing happened.

Chapter Two.

Lot Eighty-Two

Just at that moment a man’s form emerged from the darkness on the opposite side of the street, and a familiar voice called to me in a loud but commanding whisper: “Glynn! Glynn! Is that you? You’re here late, aren’t you?” I wheeled round suddenly, and recognised the speaker. It was Detective-Inspector Naylor of Scotland Yard, with whom in times past I had been engaged in several joint investigations in which society and crime played parts of equally unpleasant prominence.

“Hullo!” I said, puzzled to know what to say, and still bewildered by the unexpected climax to my last interview. “What the deuce are you doing here at this ungodly time of night? Got something good professionally on, eh?”

“Oh, rather a queer job,” he answered lightly, bending down and pretending to strike a match on a shop front, wherewith to light the cigar he was carrying. “I’m after a young foreign chap who has just escaped from the monastery where he was a novice, and is accused of the murder of a well-known English nobleman in peculiarly atrocious circumstances. Good-bye. Take care of yourself. I’m a bit late as it is, although I think I’ve got a splendid clue.”

And he, too, vanished just as suddenly into the night.

Luckily my business as a professional investigator of the odd, the queer, and the misunderstood in life had given me a stout nerve and an obedient brain, so, crushing down all the flood of idle speculation that rose in me as to the reason and connection of those two most extraordinary coincidences, I patiently retraced my steps, locked up my rooms, and turned into my bed.

“Enough for the day is the worry thereof,” I told myself as I mixed a glass of steaming grog. “I’ve got the money from this Spaniard, and I’ve got the commission to go to that auction, and when I am able to answer any or all the puzzling questions that this mysterious visit of Don José Casteno has suggested to me I’ll ask them quickly enough – but not before. As for Mr Naylor, well, he’s got his troubles. So have I. ‘One dog, one bone,’ as my old groom used to say when any of the other servants tried to interfere with his prerogatives. I’ll stick to my own lines, and that, at present, is nothing more formidable, in spite of his dark hints and tall talk, than the acquisition of these old manuscripts for Don José.” And gulping down the hot jorum I had prepared I resolutely threw the bedclothes over my head, and soon was fast asleep.

Next day, however, I turned up punctually at the mart in Covent Garden just before the hour the advertisement specified.

To say I was not anxious about the result of my action would be foolish. I was – for always behind my business, you must remember, lurked those soft, shy, tender eyes of Doris Napier, which I wanted to shine on me alone. All the same, I had no idea of the strange and bewildering acts of trickery in which, contrary to my best efforts, I was destined to become a central figure. Had I known, of course, the sequel to them might have been very different, and maybe, too, this story would never have been written. As it was – but there! let the affair speak for itself. It happened like this:

Directly I arrived in King’s Street I found the huge wooden apartment, with its familiar roof of green opaque glass and its big staring advertisements in colour on the walls, known to curio lovers all over the world as the “Brom,” crowded from end to end and door to door with foreigners. Now this was extremely unusual. In an ordinary way the same dealers and amateurs turn up at these functions time after time – these people fall into methods of their own of quick and agreeable acquaintance – and the bidding is conducted with certain airs of old-world politeness and decorum, which men who love the work find very delightful and refreshing in themselves, and yet conducive to the best business results.

To-day, however, the whole atmosphere and method of the place were changed as if by magic. A crowd of Jews, Spaniards, and Italians had practically taken entire possession of this huge and rambling mart, and their eager, polyglot conversation recalled nothing less than the Tower of Babel as they chattered, twisted, turned, elbowed, and gesticulated with as much animation as though they had met to devour the effects of a Rothschild instead of the books and goods of a poor, unnamed, dead refugee priest.

Indeed, it was just as much as I could do to elbow my way into the place at all. The crowd didn’t actively impede my progress, but they showed no desire to move out of my path; but finally I did, with a free use of my shoulders and knees, squeeze myself into a good position on a packing case, which lifted me high above the crowd, and yet which also gave me a splendid view of the rostrum upon which, as it happened, the auctioneer had just taken his seat.

Even he seemed rather stupefied by this vast, unexpected, and quite unusual assemblage, for no sooner had he called silence with a touch of his mallet on the table than he cleared his throat and said:

“I hope, gentlemen, that you have not been drawn here this afternoon under any misapprehension. This is not really one of the days of our big sales; all we have to dispose of are some two hundred books, a few vestments, and some quaint, old manuscripts belonging to a priest – a father – ”

He turned despairingly to his clerk, who consulted his ledger, and supplied the name needed.

“I mean a Father Alphonse Calasanctius, who, I am told, arrived quite mysteriously in Southampton late last week by the royal mail steamer Tartar, and was, unfortunately, found dead in the room he took in a private hotel in the Adelphi only the night afterwards.

“My idea, to-day, is to get things over as quickly as possible, and so I will put up the manuscripts first. I confess I don’t know myself whether certain of them are of any value, or whether they are some mere monkish jests of some centuries ago when men had more leisure to penetrate long legal-looking hoaxes. I ought to tell you, though, that I took several of them myself to an expert at the British Museum yesterday afternoon, and he was inclined to think they might be exceedingly precious, for he found that they related to some extraordinary secret which certain Jesuit monks in Mexico had taken that means of putting on record. All the same, he said quite frankly, he could not pledge himself on the point, for, as it happened, he could make nothing out of the greater part of the writing on them, which seemed to him, read in the ordinary fashion, mere gibberish, which might take years of patient study and research to unravel, and then be worth nothing in the end.”

The sale commenced, and the prices realised by some of the codices that comprised the first lots were ridiculously low. Whoever bought them made magnificent investments. For instance, a fourteenth-century English manuscript of Sower’s “Confessio Amantes” on vellum, with eighty-five miniatures – a perfect gem, worth at least the fifteen hundred pounds which the Fountaine copy realised – went for eighteen pounds ten. A French manuscript of the Bible of the same period with a number of ornamental initials and miniatures fetched only sixteen pounds, although, as a collector, I knew it to be worth three hundred at least; while a thirteenth-century manuscript, “De Regimen Principium” of Egidius, written on vellum in double columns, with a beautifully illuminated border on the front page, and bearing the stencil mark of the well-known collector, Sir Thomas Phillips, fetched only twenty-one pounds ten; while a twelfth-century “Decretales Gregorii,” an eleventh-century Latin Bible, and a “Biblia Versificata” of the twelfth century, once the property of the Jesuits’ College at Heidelberg, fetched equally low prices.

Presently the three manuscripts comprising lot eighty-two were held up for inspection. Each was about a foot square, and was intolerably dirty and stained by damp and time.

“Now, gentlemen, what offers?” cried the auctioneer, and again he brought his hammer down on the table with a sharp knock.

“I’ll give ten pounds for them,” instantly shouted a voice in the crowd, and all at once I caught sight of the face of the owner thereof, which, to my intense astonishment, proved to be no other than my friend Peter Zouche, that odd-shaped, deformed person who is familiarly known to the rich and learned everywhere as “The Hunchback of Westminster.”

Now, how had Peter Zouche, who was reputed to spend his life between Sotheby’s, Quaritch’s, Dobell’s, and Maggs’s, and that mysterious den in which he lived, under the shadow of the Houses of Parliament, got wind of these treasures.

Instinctively I felt there was something more in these documents than even Don José had hinted, and so with a quick turn I caught the eye of the auctioneer and nodded briskly again.

“Twenty pounds offered,” he said, and he pointed his hammer straight at me, whereat all the crowd appeared to turn and stare suddenly and openly at me with fierce and malevolent looks.

Then, almost in a flash as it were, the real excitement of the gathering broke out.

Before I quite knew what had happened bids had poured in from a hundred eager voices, and the figures had miraculously climbed up, up, up with the rapidity of lightning, so that before I had interposed five times I believe they were actually all trembling on the brink of a thousand pounds!

And this for three dirty, crisp rolls of parchment!

All the same, I must admit that my determination to get possession of those records seemed to have been carefully noted by my rivals. In fact, I was continually made conscious of those looks of veiled hostility which continued to be shot at me from every direction as time after time I topped the bids. Meanwhile, too, a steady hubbub began to arise around me, above which I found it was increasingly difficult to make oneself heard or noted. Also, during a lull in the contest, the crowd appeared to sway and part, and all at once, to my astonishment, I found that the Hunchback of Westminster himself was standing beside me, and with him the dearest friend and fellow-collector I had ever had, the Earl of Fotheringay, and when I came to examine them I was stupefied to find that both men’s faces were deadly white.

“For God’s sake, for your own sake, Glynn,” whispered Lord Fotheringay in my ear impressively, “end this mad rivalry with us; you have no idea what terrible havoc you are making of things by your wild bids at this momentous juncture. Stand down, man, stand down, or you’ll ruin all.”