Читать книгу The Hunchback of Westminster - William Le Queux - Страница 11

Thus began my powerful fight for Don José Casteno’s rights!

Looking back to-day I, of course, can see quite clearly how very foolish and headstrong I then was, how I refused to be warned, even by the best friend man ever has—the woman who loves him. But there! we can all be wise after the event, can’t we?

Oddly enough though, I did not meet Casteno in my offices that day at midnight as we had both so carefully arranged. True, I immediately made my way to Stanton Street, and by then eight o’clock had actually boomed forth from Big Ben, but no sooner did I reach my desk than I found thereon a telegram which had been despatched at 4:30 PM from the Charing Cross Telegraph Office by the mysterious Spaniard, cancelling the appointment, and calling upon me to:

“Come immediately to St. Bruno’s, Chantry Road, Hampstead. I know all.—Casteno.”

As a consequence of this I was soon speeding half across London in that swift ten-horse Panhard of mine, which had been given to me a month previously in a burst of generosity by a foolish client, an old man, whom I had succeeded in delivering from a gang of needy blackmailers without scandal. Indeed, in less than an hour from receipt of his message, I had reached the long, winding, and secluded thoroughfare which he had specified.

As a matter of fact, too, if anybody sought a spot where he could hide effectually from police and public in London, he could never choose a better or a more suitable district than the aristocratic portions of Hampstead. Much of the wild character of the heath still lingers in those avenues, and the dwellers in those parts are curiously few, select, and quite indifferent to what goes on outside their own ken.

St. Bruno’s, I discovered, was one of the finest of the many fine but solitary-looking mansions that still exist in Chantry Road. It stood at the far end of the thoroughfare in a cul de sac, in which but one gas lamp burned feebly, throwing into more striking relief the dense, dark character of the surrounding trees and moss-grown pavement. The only entrance to the place I could find was a small oaken door in a lofty wall of stone, like those we see built so often for the vestries of our parish churches, and when I pulled an old and rusty iron bell-ring there was a disquietening pause of some minutes before I heard the movement of any servant. Even then the door itself did not open, but a small panel about nine inches square was thrust apart at a point about the height of the average man and commanding a good view of the stranger’s face and form.

“What seek you, my son?” asked a clear, refined voice like a priest’s, but when I answered; “Don José Casteno—he has sent for me,” all was changed. The space beyond seemed flooded with light—the door itself was thrown open wide—and I found myself being escorted by a man in the habit of a Benedictine monk, across a flagged courtyard to a fine building, the entrance to which was commanded by two huge wooden doors.

“This is the home of the Order of St. Bruno,” said my guide, who was old and decrepit, apparently about sixty years of age. His tones were those of courteous conversation as used by a man of culture, and he swung to and fro an old lantern he was carrying to light my path as we both waited patiently for somebody inside the building to unbar this formidable-looking entrance. “We St. Bruno-ites,” he added, “have houses in many quarters—in Delhi for instance, in Sydney, in America—but this is our principal place.”

“Roman Catholic, of course,” I remarked, buttoning up my overcoat, for I felt chilled after my brisk ride. “Or High Church?” I ventured as I saw his bright eyes frown.

“Not at all,” the man returned with some asperity. “We are of neither of those sects.” But he never explained what their religion was. Just then the doors of the main house opened and we were ushered into a magnificent hall, decorated with dark oak panels, and relieved half-way by a finely-wrought gallery which ran on three sides of this spacious apartment. On the fourth wall was a wrought-iron bracket on which stood an immense statue of a woman carved out of white marble, decorated with rare exotic flowers, and cunningly lit by a series of candles, with reflectors which depressed all the light on features beautiful only with the passionless splendour of a Venus de Milo.

Down the centre of the hall was placed a long table, flanked on either side by forms, and headed by a chair or a small throne fashioned like an abbot’s.

As a matter of fact, I had barely time to take these details in before the brother who had first admitted me turned with a low bow and left me. My new guide who had now ushered me in was much younger—about thirty I guessed—but he also was dressed in the same sombre habit of black as the one who had first received me, save that his hood and girdle were white.

No words passed between us, but, in a silence that was almost oppressive in so brilliantly illuminated and furnished a place, he escorted me down a long, richly-carpeted passage, hung with valuable classical pictures of a modern school, to a room at the far end, the door of which stood invitingly open. Here I was left, but as I turned to examine my new surroundings, which suggested the rich, well-furnished library of some bibliophile of a generation ago, I was conscious of somebody stealing up behind me.

I turned quickly.

It was Casteno, who, this time, was dressed in an ordinary Roman cassock, and carried a biretta.

“I’m glad that you have come so quickly,” he said in those smooth, even tones, motioning me to a chair on the opposite side to one in which he sat close to the fireplace. “As I wired you, I was at the auction. I saw you had failed.”

“Then why ever didn’t you bid for the manuscripts yourself?” I cried in amazement. “Why did you let them go without a protest?”

“I didn’t,” he answered quietly. “As a matter of fact, I was the man who was got up to personate you, and I stopped the mad rush of bids, for I was satisfied, when I saw beyond all doubt that it was the Hunchback of Westminster into whose hands those precious documents would fall, we should win our way through in the end. At first I feared it would be the other man.”

“Fotheringay?” I asked.

He nodded.

“But they are intimate friends. They are acting together, hand and glove.”

“They may now, but they won’t long,” he returned significantly, fixing his eyes in a dreamy way upon the fire.

Then he roused himself with an effort.

“Look here,” he went on quickly, as though he had suddenly arrived at a momentous decision, “don’t let’s beat about the bush. Let me come at once to business. Don’t bother me with a lot of questions. I can now see that you are simply exploding to put a lot of interrogatories to me, beginning with a demand for the reason why I came to you at all; how I dared to dress myself up exactly like yourself; what on earth has Colonel Napier to do with this business; and ending with a perfectly legitimate request for my true reasons for having so strong and deadly a hatred against this man Fotheringay, whom I know, before he went out big game shooting, you always believed was your most firm and ardent friend.

“Well, just don’t ask me, that’s all. If you do, I can’t answer you. If you persist it will inevitably mean that you and I will have to part. In the latter case you will never get any nearer the solution of that mystery of lot eighty-two—the three manuscripts which were found in the effects of the dead Father Alphonse Calasanctius—than you are to-night.

“As a matter of fact, I want your aid in deeds, not words. Now, say at once—are you prepared to trust me, and to help me, and not to bother me for a lot of utterly needless explanations that will really—take my word for it—leave you in a bigger fog than ever, or do you feel that you absolutely must have my confidence or turn up the work now, at once? Speak out quite plainly. Don’t be influenced by the thought of cash. Consider the seven-fifty I have handed to you as yours—whatever happens. Now, bed-rock fact!”

For a moment I reflected. My enthusiasm was stirred by his speech, and in turn I mentally defied Doris, the colonel, and even the weird old hunchback.

“I am prepared to trust you,” I answered, holding out my hand, which he clasped with the firm touch of a straightforward, honest man.

“Then take this letter for me,” he said, fumbling in the pocket of his cassock and producing therefrom a formidable-looking document done up with big splashes of red legal-looking wax. “Go to the House of Commons with it, and do not open it until you reach the hall in which Members of Parliament meet any strangers who desire to speak to them. Then read the instructions you will find therein and—” and all at once he stopped and looked confused.

“And what?” I queried, rising from my seat and fixing his eyes with mine.

“Well—you will see,” he answered, with a strange smile, touching a bell, which warned me that our interview was at an end.