The Hunchback of Westminster. Le Queux William

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!

      Chapter Three.

      I Determine to Go Forward

      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