Читать книгу The Hunchback of Westminster - Le Queux William - Страница 4

How long I remained imprisoned in that box whilst the sale of the dead priest’s effects went steadily onward I have no knowledge. Certainly, for a time, rage deprived me of all power of reason, and I know I fought and struggled like a madman in those stout wooden walls before I recognised that I was, in truth, fairly beaten, and that the best thing I could do, in such futile circumstances as these, was to wait with what fortitude I could summon for that dramatic moment when it would please my so-called “friends,” the Earl of Fotheringay and the hunchback, to arrange my release.

As to their extraordinary conduct, I could not, I admit frankly, bring myself to think. It was, it appeared to me, so brutal, so unfair, so absolutely diabolical. Don José Casteno, as he called himself, had warned me, of course, to expect treachery, and also to be cautious about some mysterious, far-reaching, and sensational intrigue – but not even I, in my wildest moods, could have expected that I should be caught up in a London auction market in broad daylight by a band of foreign mercenaries and that my bids would be put out of competition just at the second that my client demanded all my shrewdness, my intelligence, and my power to fix a hard deal. And the abduction seemed only the more bitter to me because it had been so cunningly engineered by two of my own most particular and intimate “friends!”

Eventually, however, some sounds did penetrate the box wherein I had been concealed. I was conscious of heavy weights being moved along the same floor and of a thump and rattle of noisy chains. Then I heard a sharp crack, as if nails were being driven into the lid of the case in which I had been confined, and the whole structure began to quiver and creak and groan under these blows, until, at length, so loud and terrifying was the noise that my head seemed to split with the rush of blood and the pain.

Fortunately, the hammer ceased sooner than I anticipated, and I became conscious of the case being hoisted through the air, to fall swiftly on to some springy cart or waggon that was doubtless in waiting outside the mart. A few minutes later the box itself began to shake, jolt, and rattle, and then I knew that I was being carried over some of the rough cobbled streets around Covent Garden. In the end, lulled by this movement, that by-and-by became more regular and even, and also worn out by exhaustion from the struggle I had passed through, I must have slept, for when I next came to note my experiences I found that every movement had ceased and that all now was dull and silent as the grave.

What had happened?

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

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

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

“Let me out,” I shouted. “Let me out at once.”

A reply came more quickly than I expected.

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

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

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

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

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

“Father told me,” she replied, with a blush – and she bent her head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I won’t,” I snapped decisively.

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

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

“Break it. It was obtained from you by fraud,” suggested this gentle casuist. “’Twould be no sin.”

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

Even Doris wavered. The temptation was indeed cruel.

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

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

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

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

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

And still burning with self-righteousness I bent down.

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

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