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 Jose 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 Jose." 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 Jose 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."
But, with my teeth set hard, I glared at him defiantly. "What was my
business to him?" Indeed, my blood was up--I knew I was bound in
honour--and I nodded again to the auctioneer, who saw me instantly, and
repeated aloud: "Mr Glynn says twelve hundred and fifty pounds. Is
there any advance?"
The hunchback now turned on me with a snarling expression like a
tiger's.
"Fool," he hissed, "you won't be warned," and, raising his arm, he made
a sign with his hand.
Almost instantly the crowd appeared to rise up _en masse_ and to roll
right over us, but as I stumbled backward, headlong from my foothold, I
was astonished to see a man, got up to resemble me exactly in every
feature, scramble on to my place on the upturned case, and in a voice
that seemed my very own, to cry out to the auctioneer: "That, sir, is
the most I can do. I now retire." And as a cheer broke out from the
crowd he too skipped down instantly out of sight.
"Ah, this is indeed treachery," I told myself. And, gripping my teeth
hard, I let my fists go; next, with a mighty effort, I sprang forward to
roll the surging human mob out of my path--to make my voice heard, to
regain my old position, to take command of the situation again, for I
heard the bids still mounting higher, higher, higher.
In vain.
Lord Fotheringay, who, I thought, loved me as a brother, was on me with
a bound like a lion's, and catching me by the throat exerted all his
force and hurled me backwards.
Next second I found myself caught up in other and even stronger arms,
and, before I could utter aught save a muffled curse, I was flung head
first into an empty piano case, the heavy lid of which was instantly
closed on me--but not before I heard the hammer fall and the auctioneer
call: "The deeds are Mr Peter Zouche's. The price is eighteen hundred
pounds." I had been tricked!