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 fete 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--the _People, 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 the _Weekly
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:--