William Le Queux - The Hunchback of Westminster

A pause followed; and then, stopping dead, he fixed me with his eyes. I could see that, shrewd, clever man of the world as he was, he was taking my measure before he came to any deliberate resolution, and I met his gaze with a glance as steadfast and as fearless as his own. After all, what had I to be ashamed of in six feet of lithe, clean figure, an athletic step, and features that my worst friends would say, although my mouth was hidden by a heavy black moustache like a cavalryman’s, were honest-looking and reliable?

“All right,” he said in that sharp, decisive way of his; “I won’t beat about the bush any longer. You shall go with me, and if, between us, we don’t make some of these fiends sit up, and do a fine stroke of business for the old flag, I’ll sit down and let that man I hate so cordially – Lord Cyril Cuthbertson – have a shot at it. But I won’t – I won’t – I won’t.” And once again he stretched out that vice-like hand of his to enforce his words on my over-slow imagination. But this time I was too quick for him – I slipped on one side – and he broke into a hearty laugh.

“You’ll do,” he said admiringly, giving me a hearty slap on the back. “Just meet me at the main entrance to the House in thirty minutes, will you? Then we’ll go straight on.”

But as he hastened back I could not help two questions recurring to me with startling distinctness: What “fiends” were those we had got to face?

And why should an insignificant-looking fellow like José Casteno so well understand the bitter personal rivalries that spring up between strong men on the same party side in the British Houses of Parliament as to be able to play what looked like a game of childish see-saw between two such redoubtable antagonists as Lord Cyril Cuthbertson, His Majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and John Cooper-Nassington, uncrowned Emperor of Greater South America?

Both problems, however, were destined to be answered much more rapidly and sensationally than ever I expected when I left the House that night. I drove my Panhard at break-neck rate back to its garage in St. Martin’s Lane, Charing Cross, snatched a hurried meal, and tore back in a hansom to St. Stephen’s.

One thing was soon evident – Cooper-Nassington was a man of his word. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t been waiting three minutes by those large and imposing gates that mark the main entrance to the Houses of Parliament before his coupé and handsome pair of bays clattered across the courtyard, and pulled up with a jerk close to the kerb, and he thrust his head out of the carriage and bade me enter.

In response, I took a vacant seat beside him, and without a word being exchanged between footman and master, the servant mounted the box again, and the carriage was driven rapidly away.

Now did I confess here that I was anxious as to our destination, worried as to what would happen, timid as to the safety of myself and my companion even after my grim and provoking experiences in the auction mart, I should not put down what was the fact. In truth, I never felt less concerned about the issue of any adventure in the whole course of my career. Indeed, one had only to be in the company of Cooper-Nassington to catch some of the wonderful vitality, assurance, and resource of this most extraordinary individual. The very presence of the man braced up the nerves, and insensibly one acquired some of that strong, masterful habit of mind and that breadth of outlook which seemed to make him feel that, whatever mischances befell some of God’s creatures, he, at least, was one destined to pass on – ever successful, always victorious.

As it happened, the journey we went was in itself short. Barely had we passed half-way along Millbank Street than we made a sharp turn to the left, and before I had time to utter an expression of recognition, the carriage drew up with a jerk outside the old, dingy curiosity shop in Tufton Street in which I had earlier in the day been imprisoned, – the retreat of that uncanny man, Peter Zouche, the Hunchback of Westminster.

Choking down any feeling of surprise I had on the subject, I meekly descended from the brougham at the heels of my companion and without a word of protest heard him tell his coachman: “Home.” It seemed to me then that we were both walking into the lion’s den together, and that, if anything untoward happened, much the same fate would befall us both.

The carriage rolled away, and as its red lights disappeared round the bend of the street, which seemed strangely silent and deserted, I was rather startled to hear my companion muffle something uncommonly like a sigh of regret. To think, of course, that he was a bit nervous about the upshot of our mission was nothing short of treason. None the less, as he advanced to the side door, and gave three peculiar taps on the woodwork, I found my hand travelling instinctively to that small pocket of mine in which rested a revolver.

Almost instantly his summons was answered, and there appeared, framed in the entrance, the grotesque figure of the hunchback, a man about four feet high, with a tiny head and face that instinctively recalled the profile of an eagle. He was carrying a candle in a heavy brass candlestick, and as he raised this above his head the light streamed full upon our features.

For a second he paused, uncertain what to do. Then a derisive smile curled around his toothless gums, and, with a sneer that I knew only too well from old and bitter experiences meant mischief, he said:

“Oh, it’s you, Nassington, also Glynn – is it? Well, come in. It’s as cheap inside as out, and not so deuced unpleasant.” And he backed up against the wall as we picked our way through the passage into a tiny parlour at the back of the shop.

The hunchback closed, locked, and bolted the door and followed us into the room, placing the candle, with great deliberation, on the mantelpiece. Then, rubbing his hands together and still sneering, he turned and faced us.

“And now, gentlemen,” he said, never attempting to ask us to be seated, “perhaps you will be as good as to tell me to what I owe the honour of this visit? Myself, I should have thought that my young friend here, Hugh Glynn, had had enough of Peter Zouche and his shop and of his way of paying out silly fellows who try to upset his plans.”

Cooper-Nassington took a step forward and interposed his big brawny frame between myself and the hunchback.

“Look here, Zouche,” he said in that strong, masterful way of his, “leave those tricks of nastiness for children, who may, perhaps, fly into a temper over them, and lose sight of the object of their visits, but we sha’n’t.” And he flung his hat deliberately on the table, and, dragging forward the most comfortable chair in the room, he coolly seated himself therein, pulled out a cigar case, extracted a weed therefrom, and began to smoke.

“As for you, Glynn,” he cried to me in a pause between the puffs, “you make yourself at home too. Have a cigar,” handing me the case and a box of vestas, “but don’t let that old scoundrel, Zouche, have one. It all depends on his behaviour whether we ever leave him again now we’ve taken up our quarters in this musty old den of his.” And he reached for a decanter of whiskey and a glass which were standing near, but the hunchback, who was now pallid with rage, made a grab for him and dragged them out of his grasp.

“You brute!” he hissed. “The same old brute too. Tell me your business, and get you gone.”

“Ah, now you’re talking sense,” said my companion, whose object evidently had been to get the hunchback into a rage, “and I’ll repay your compliment by emulating your example and talking to the point too. As you guess, I have come about those three old manuscripts which you purchased at the sale of the effects of a certain Father Alphonse Calasanctius. You have had time to decipher them since, and you know they are of precious importance to the gentleman who is employing Mr Glynn here, to that young idiot, Lord Fotheringay, and, also incidentally, to myself. Now, what did they contain?”