William Le Queux (continued 3)

“And the documents you asked her to bring?” I cut in suddenly, “what of those? Are they love letters?” And a quiet smile of derision showed itself at the corners of my mouth. “Do you want them, or are they to go into the archives of the Order of St. Bruno as quaint but interesting curiosities?”

“Neither,” said Casteno simply. “They are more important, much more important, than lovers’ effusions. They give the keys to various ciphers used by the Jesuits in the early days of their Order in Mexico. Is there anything else you would like to ask?” Then seeing he had put me to some confusion he went on with great earnestness: “Look here, man, why don’t you trust me a little more? Don’t you see that there must, in a quest like this we are engaged upon, be a hundred details about which I cannot give you my confidence? Why not be content to labour in the dark until the time for the light comes? As it is just at present, I satisfy you for a day easily and perfectly enough, but it is only for a day. Something you don’t expect happens, and lo! I find about me a cloud of distrust, suspicion, and unpleasant suggestion that takes out of me every bit of heart and pluck.”

“Is not that your own fault?” I blurted out. “Are not your actions calculated to excite distrust? Carry your memory back to the last time you were in my office in Stanton Street. What happened then?”

“Nothing of great account.” But now he went very pale.

“Are you quite sure of that?” I queried in the gravest tones. “Think again. Examine your conscience again. What about that dagger of yours? Why did you get up and sharpen it on the hearthstone directly you thought I should not see you?”

The Spaniard started, and recovered himself with an effort. “Because I had had a fright,” he stammered. “In an idle moment I had looked through the window and there I saw a man who had vowed to take my life.”

“I cannot believe you,” I cried. “You must convince me. Tell me who was this foe?”

“My own brother,” he muttered, turning away from me with an impatient gesture and quickening his steps. “You have seen him yourself. The hunchback called him Paul—”

“Then,” I gasped in amazement, “you—you are the hunchback’s son?”

“Of course I am,” he retorted. “I thought you guessed that directly you saw Paul when we were up in that recess watching my father put on his disguise. The relationship seemed so evident that I did not feel there was any necessity to explain it.”

“But you call yourself Casteno?”

“No; I changed my name after I had quarrelled with my father some years ago and got employment in the Royal Household of Spain. I purchased the right to do so—”

“Then you talk English like a native.”

“So does the hunchback.”

“And when that morning you saw your brother,” I went on, breaking away on a new tack, “why did you go after him?”

“To make peace if I could. As it was doubtful I prepared myself also for war.”

“And did you find him?”

“No; he was too quick for me. I slipped as hard as I could to his chambers in Embankment Mansions in Whitehall Court, but he was not in them. They were closed and locked.”

“Embankment Mansions in Whitehall Court,” I repeated. “That is where Colonel Napier lives.” And as I uttered the name of the dead officer I scrutinised every line on Casteno’s face.

“Of course it is,” he responded, and not the smallest sign of excitement did he exhibit. “Paul, for some years, has had a set of chambers over the flat occupied by Colonel Napier. He has got one of those wild, hopeless passions that sometimes seize the lowly born for girls in the higher ranks of life, for Miss Napier.”

“Not Miss Doris Napier!” I interjected.

“Oh yes, Miss Doris. The thing is almost laughable—except for Paul, who is absolutely crazy on the subject, and who has often told me that on the day you are formally engaged to her he will shoot you like a dog.”

“Pleasant for me,” I observed, “extremely pleasant. Your father and I are old friends; how is it he didn’t warn me?”

“He always hoped that Paul would come to his senses. He was ashamed of the lad’s madness. He trusted that some other girl would appear on the scene to fascinate Paul. Besides, he did tell Colonel Napier about it. The colonel and he are related, as a matter of fact. Both of them married step-sisters; but my mother died many years ago.”

“I had no idea of this.”

“No doubt,” returned the Spaniard courteously. “Lovers don’t usually trouble to inquire as to the relations of the girls they love until after marriage. If they did, cynics say that they would spare themselves a good many highly unpleasant surprises. The colonel, of course, was equally annoyed about this infatuation, and I am told that only a few days ago he met Paul on the stairs of the flat and gave him a good beating with his cane for daring to send Miss Napier a bunch of flowers. Perhaps, however, this is only idle gossip. I heard it from a servant whom my father had recently dismissed. He said that Paul was so incensed at this outrage that he would have stabbed the colonel dead on the spot if he had had his dagger with him. Luckily, he had forgotten that morning to fasten it on—”

“I am not so sure about that,” I answered slowly and with great distinctness, “although, now I came to think of it, I did recollect that in the old days Doris had told me a good deal about the persecutions she had suffered from the ridiculous attentions of a foreign boy who lived in the set of rooms above theirs—attentions, I am sorry to say, I had only laughed to scorn.”

“Not so sure!” echoed my companion in tones of genuine disgust and horror. “Why, would you, Mr Glynn, have liked my brother to make an attempt on his uncle’s life?”

“That would have been better than what happened,” I returned meaningly.

“Why, what was that?” cried the Spaniard in alarm.

“Somebody crept into his bedroom as the colonel slept and stabbed him to the heart—to be precise, the exact hour you left me to search for Paul.”

“Good heavens!” gasped Casteno, falling back. “Then the wretched boy has broken loose from his reason and carried out his insane idea of revenge! Ah! now I see it all. That was why I caught him lurking about your office! He had tracked Colonel Napier there earlier, and had no notion that he had returned to Whitehall Court until he saw a strange figure at your door.”

“Even that doesn’t explain who killed the clumber spaniel Fate.”

“I think it does,” urged Casteno stoutly. “The dog knew, somehow, he had done wrong to his master and would not leave him. In a fit of passion and terror Paul whipped out his knife and stabbed him.”

“But that would happen near Whitehall Court. How came the dog to die in a passage near Stanton Street?”

“He must have been making for your office: remember all dogs have odd gleams of foresight at times.”

For a few moments we walked on in silence. The duel had been a sharp one and a long one, but already I was possessed with an uncomfortable suspicion that the Spaniard had won. Even as I surveyed the ruins of my theories I was conscious that little was left to connect Casteno with the murder.

“But do you think your brother Paul will be discovered?” I asked.

“I cannot tell,” said Casteno, and I could see now he was sincerely grieved at the disastrous intelligence I had communicated to him. “There are sure to be plenty of people in Embankment Mansions who will remember the caning which the lad had from the colonel on the stairs. They will be certain, when they recover their wits, to give the police the details of that affray; also there is that discharged servant I spoke of—the man Butterworth. He hates Paul like poison. He will leave no stone unturned, I am certain, to connect the lad with the crime.

“Still, mere suspicion is one thing, and evidence strong enough to warrant arrest is another,” he added after a moment’s careful consideration. “Perhaps, after all, I am wrong. Somebody else may have done it. We shall see.”

“Whoever it is I shall do my best to bring them to justice,” I cried hotly. “I don’t care whether it is Paul Zouche—”

“Of course not,” replied Casteno with much dignity. “I have no doubt you will communicate all I have repeated to you to Scotland Yard. Indeed, I never had any two opinions on that score. At the same time you must excuse me if I don’t evince any keen desire to debate the matter further.”

“I never asked you to do so,” I retorted, anxious not to be outdone in courtesy by the Spaniard. “All your statements to me were practically volunteered.”

“True,” said Casteno. “As a matter of fact, I felt they were honestly due to you. I saw that my absence from your rooms at the time when the colonel was murdered looked very ugly for me. Very ugly, indeed.”

“Particularly after you had warned the man only an hour previously that if he didn’t do a certain thing, which he subsequently declined to do for you, he would regret his action before four and twenty hours had passed.”

“Quite so. Quite so. All the same, that was but a figure of speech. Myself, I had no idea of violence or revenge. My sole impression was of his gross injustice to yourself, which I felt Time himself would most quickly avenge.

“Still,” he went on, and now his tones were particularly grave, “don’t let us go on debating this business further. It is very awful—it is dreadfully tragic—and it seems to strike right at the heart of the family life of us both. Let us leave it where it stands. I am sure myself a crime like that, in the heart of London, can’t remain hidden for many days, particularly with such assistance as you will be able to give the police when you have a few moments to spare to write or to wire to the headquarters staff at Scotland Yard. Therefore don’t pursue the matter with me any longer. Realise that you, and I too, are engaged on a business of gigantic international importance. Aren’t you curious to hear what I have arranged since I sent you that telegram informing you my father, as I suppose I must now call the hunchback when I speak of him to you, had picked up with this flying machine inventor, Sparhawk, and had actually determined to go on a journey through the air with him to-morrow in a brand new flying machine?”

“I am very curious,” I admitted. “I had no idea old Peter had such adventurous tastes.”

“Nor have any of his friends. Yet such is the fact. He has really two natures—the student’s and the explorer’s,—always at work within him; and I never knew him have a big job on, like the deciphering of those three manuscripts relating to the Lake of Sacred Treasure, that he has not eased the strain on his brain, caused by the hours of close attention which the work demands, by going on some wild excursion of this sort. Curiously enough, too, he has always believed in flying machines. It has been one of the dreams of his life to patent one which he could present to Spain for use in warfare. Indeed, all the time Santos-Dumont was making those daring ascents of his in Paris he haunted the French capital in the hope he might pick up some tips for his own models, which he keeps in a disused stable near the Crystal Palace, and which he works on every Sunday after he has heard Mass in that impressive-looking church in Spanish Place.”

“But how about his studies?” I asked.

“Oh, he doesn’t find Shrewsbury hotel life agree with him. He and Sparhawk are only waiting here until the fête to-morrow, and then they’ll career off; and wherever they drop, even if it is only in a village seven miles away, they will not trouble to come back here. They’ve quite resolved to cut off to some other part of England, but where, I can’t for the life of me find out. Still, I think I have done very well to book up the only two seats they offered for sale to the public, don’t you? We shall have to be careful, of course, or they will see through our disguises. At all events, they’ll find it hard to shake us off—”

“Unless the apparatus goes wrong and drops us to earth.”

“Well, we must take all those risks, mustn’t we? And, by Jove, talking of angels, here we can see two of them—at least, there are Captain Sparhawk and the worthy hunchback walking off together up the street yonder. Let’s follow them. By the way in which they’ve put their heads together they’re up to no good I am certain. Just before you came I peered through the keyhole of my father’s room, and I saw him hard at work on the manuscripts. Now, what on earth can have happened to have made him give it up so suddenly and dress himself up as though he were going for a long journey?”

“He may have discovered something startling and strange,” I answered, a great fear now in my heart. “Those documents may have yielded up their secret to him. See! he’s going in the direction of the railway station. He may be going back to town.”

“Or to the shed where Sparhawk keeps his flying machine. It lies in this direction—in a street parallel with the railway station. Luckily, we have not far to go before we shall see what they are up to. Personally, I don’t like the look of things at all.” And we both of us quickened our pace.

Outside a fence that skirted a long and rambling garden they were joined by a third companion—a girl attired in a bright summer costume, who chatted with them gaily as they marched steadily forward.

“Who can that be?” cried Casteno, much puzzled. “I did not know my father had any woman friends.”

“Well, let’s slip to the other side of the street,” I suggested. “Then we can catch a glimpse of her face. The figure certainly seems very familiar to me, although my short sight often plays me the strangest of pranks.”

We stepped quickly across the road, and with a few strategic movements materially lessened the space between us and the trio in front.

A moment later the girl turned her face in the direction of the hunchback, evidently to exchange some jest with him, for her features were wreathed in smiles.

I stopped short in astonishment.

It was no other than Doris Napier!

Casteno recognised her almost at the same moment that I did. The effect upon him was just as great, for he, too, halted and gazed at me with an expression of vague but sincere concern.

“This is odd—very odd!” he muttered. “I had no idea that Miss Napier was out of London. I wonder, now, how she came to have missed all news of her father’s death? Can she have mixed herself up in this manuscript hunt—under pressure from Lord Cyril Cuthbertson or the Earl of Fotheringay, for instance? I remember, now, that she was a great patriot at one time—used to speak for the Primrose League and organisations like that. It would have been a masterly stroke on their part to get hold of her—to work on my father—for he has had always a very soft corner in his heart for her, and in the old days the colonel used to say there was nothing he would refuse her. What do you think, Glynn?” he added, turning suddenly to me. “Is it your idea that she has come under some lofty notion that England’s interests are in peril both from the Jesuits and from Spain, and if she doesn’t circumvent these enemies the Lake of Sacred Treasure will be lost to this country for ever?”

But I refused to be drawn. Her appearance was sudden, too unexpected. “I don’t know,” I answered. “I can’t even guess. The thing may be a ruse on the part of the wretch that killed her father. He may fear the effect of her disclosures. I must wait; just now I cannot see.”

“At all events, I am sure the hunchback is no partisan to any move like that last one you mention,” returned Casteno stoutly, with something resembling offended family pride vibrating through his voice. “Indeed, I am certain that as yet he knows nothing, absolutely nothing, about the tragedy at Whitehall Court. He has been too busy trying to decipher the manuscripts to have had any time or strength to glance at the Saturday night or Sunday morning papers. As for Captain Sparhawk, like all enthusiastic inventors, he is a man of one idea. He can think of nothing, talk of nothing, dream of nothing, read of nothing but the flying machine which he is going to try to-morrow in the Quarry at the great floral fête.”

With a nod that might mean anything or nothing I fell into step with my companion. By this time Doris, the hunchback, and the aeronaut had got quite a considerable distance ahead. As a matter of fact, I was just then struggling with a fierce desire to rush forward—to see Doris face to face—to speak with her—to tell her all that had happened—to warn her of her dangers—to assure her and myself that nothing on earth could part us. Hence it was I could not carry on any conversation no matter how important. I had first to conquer myself. Haste would ruin all.

Unfortunately, we had not proceeded many yards before the worst we could have anticipated happened. All at once the three whom we were pursuing stopped at a gate which led, by way of a drive, up to a large, superior-looking house. A tall, interesting stranger with the clear-cut features of a typical barrister, who has not been down long enough from ’Varsity life to forget all the graces, stepped up to them, and then the entire party moved round and went into the house, the door of which closed behind them.

“Confound it! we shall learn nothing like this,” snapped Casteno, biting his lips in his annoyance. “I thought I knew my father’s habits and methods pretty well, but ever since I have been down here at Shrewsbury he has managed to throw me out of my reckoning continually. Now, what are we to do, Glynn? Had we better grin and bear it, or ought we to try if we can’t find out for ourselves what is happening in this place?”

I turned round stolidly and motioned to a boy who was passing, his eyes fixed in admiration on the uniform I was wearing—that of a sergeant in the Royal Engineers. “Who lives in this house?” I asked, and a sixpenny piece travelled from my palm to his.

“Nobody—often,” answered the lad, with a smile. “As a matter of fact, it belongs to the Earl of Fotheringay, like the most of the property does hereabout. He came down here late last night. I know, because I serve him with milk.” And with a self-conscious nod the juvenile tradesman pulled himself together and passed on.

“There! What did I tell you?” asked Casteno. “Didn’t I suggest Miss Napier had been inveigled into this business to help Lord Fotheringay out of his difficulties? You mark my words. This walk of theirs—this meeting—this encounter outside these gates—are all a plant—a trap designed to get the hunchback into the Government’s clutches. Our duty now is clear. We must find our way inside and checkmate any of their moves at once.”

“Steadily,” I replied, “steadily,” pulling the excited Spaniard down a long, narrow, leaf-covered passage that ran by the side of a wall which skirted the limit of the grounds attached to the house. “It is all very well to pull up these theories in this fashion; but there is one great helper of ours always ready to checkmate both Fotheringay and Cuthbertson, and him you have quite forgotten. Now, remembering the existence of Mr Cooper-Nassington, why should we go and put our necks in jeopardy, eh?” And out of the corner of an eye I shot a quick glance at Casteno. It had been long on my mind to find out what that Honourable Member was up to, and I realised that this was a most favourable chance. After all, we had to wait for a decent interval. There was just a possibility that the trio might re-appear and return to the Green Dragon.

Casteno, however, seemed to be on this occasion perfectly frank. “Cooper-Nassington,” he explained, “is by no means idle. He is as hard at work as you or I. As a matter of fact, he has run up to Whitby, in Yorkshire, where he has an interest in a shipbuilding yard and an iron mine, and he is fitting out an expedition for Mexico, which will leave immediately we get wind of the exact spot where the Lake of Sacred Treasure may be found.”

“And he does all this for England, and so do you?”

“Yes—in a way—yes,” the Spaniard replied hesitatingly. “There is a lot of things to explain which I can’t explain yet. But that’s the substantial fact.”

“Then why do you fight the hunchback, you a Spaniard,” I queried, “when all the benefit will go to England if you succeed, not to Spain?”

Casteno never flinched. “That’s another thing which I can’t make clear to you just now; but perhaps it may be enough for you if I say the whole thing turns on my quarrel with my father and my love for Camille Velasquon. But stop,” he went on in a different voice; “we can’t go on exchanging confidences like this or we shall never get down to business at all. What do you say to slipping over this wall and stealing across the grounds? Often most valuable clues can be picked up by spies who get beneath windows and peer in at the corners at critical times.”

“All right. Time presses. Let’s see what we can manage,” I said. After all, I had now no love for Lord Fotheringay. I was just as glad of an opportunity of upsetting his little schemes as was Casteno. Besides, did not every move I made then take me just a little nearer to the solution of that mysterious appearance of Doris?

Selecting a point where the wall stood but seven or eight feet from the ground we quietly scrambled to the top by the aid of some projecting stones and then dropped on the other side to the turf at that extremity of the garden. Between ourselves and the house lay a belt of thick, high shrubs, then a long stretch of greensward, and afterwards two or three terraces flanked by urns, in which geraniums and other gaudily-coloured flowers had been planted. In the deepening shadows we flitted like two spectres—swiftly and silently—until at length we found beneath our feet the beds of plants which blossomed outside the quaint old mullioned windows in the front of the house.

Stealthily we crept from point to point, intent on hearing the voices of the trio we sought, or at least of catching some token of their presence. Time after time we raised our heads above the level of the window-sills and peered into the interiors, so cool, so fresh, so tastefully furnished. Nothing but disappointment seemed to dog our footsteps. We could not catch a glimpse of a single living person in the entire ground floor of that house.

At last Casteno stopped. “Look here!” he said in that quick, decisive way of his. “We can’t go on like this. The more I examine this place the more convinced I am that there is something radically wrong about it and in that arrangement between Fotheringay and the hunchback. Now the point is this: will you make a bold stand if I do? You are in disguise; so am I. If we are caught, let us pretend that we are sweethearts of two of the servants who, we regret to find, have left—but, at all events, let us slip through these rooms and see what we can discover.”

“Very well,” I answered. “But if we are to have any success, we must have no pride. First of all, we must take off our boots and carry them.”

Chapter Fourteen.

Which Contains a Fresh Development.

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 fête 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:—

THE MYSTERY OF WHITEHALL COURT

WHO IS THE DEAD MAN?

STRANGE STORY OF A VALET

“Quite a new turn has been given to the tragedy in Embankment Mansions, full particulars of the discovery of which appear on an inside page. Firstly, the valet Richardson has now had time to examine the body which was found in Colonel Napier’s bedroom, and he says unhesitatingly that it is not that of his master at all but of a stranger who at first sight resembles him strongly. This view is borne out by two old friends of Colonel Napier who have also seen the corpse—the Rev. Richard Jennings, the vicar of St. Helen’s, Palace Street, Westminster, and Colonel Goring-Richmond, who some years ago was on the most intimate terms with the deceased and spent the summer with him in the Austrian Tyrol. Secondly, if this be true, there is no doubt that not only Colonel Napier, but also his daughter Doris, have suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. All their affairs, it seems, have been left in the uttermost confusion, and it looks as though, if there has not been foul play in their lives in one direction, there has been in another. Close inquiries amongst their friends reveal no intention on their part to be absent from home. Their servants also are astounded at their disappearance, and all the machinery of their social life has been brought suddenly to a standstill; while letters and telegrams of inquiry and visits from friends, who have read accounts which purport to explain Colonel’s Napier’s sudden demise, plunge their departure into a mingled atmosphere of tragedy and mystery, which it seems impossible to-night to break through. Meanwhile, everybody is asking: Who is the man who has been found stabbed to death in Colonel Napier’s bed? The police are certainly powerless to explain; while common people dare not suggest a most terrible answer which will occur to everybody who reads these lines for fear of the law of libel.”

Chapter Fifteen.

In Search of the Secret.

For once Casteno was full of sympathy with me.

No sooner did I explain to him the extraordinary development of that mystery at Whitehall Court than he was all eagerness, all attention, all resource to prove to me that I must think the best and not the worst of Colonel Napier’s disappearance.

At first, I own, I was not at all inclined to take help from such a quarter; I had not forgotten those suspicious circumstances in which he left my office at the time the murder was committed. Nevertheless, before we had finished our dinner in that quaint old Shrewsbury hotel he had practically won me over to his way of looking at the occurrence.

“After all,” said he, as he drained his last glass of wine, “you can certainly rely on the impression that Colonel Napier has come to no harm. If he had, Miss Doris would not be here at all as she is, as bright and gay as a lark, and as keen as a hawk on getting the benefit of those manuscripts for Lord Cuthbertson. Neither he nor Lord Fotheringay would dare to keep bad news from her. They are, after all, both of them gentlemen, whatever may happen to be the Chauvinistic tactics they adopt to push themselves forward in their own particular little intrigues in politics. Silence in such a crisis would be monstrous—utterly monstrous.”

“But where can he be?” I cried helplessly. “What is he doing? Why doesn’t he come forward and tell the police as much as he knows of the affair?”

“Perhaps he has,” said Casteno significantly, dealing with my last question first. “Who knows? Naylor has dropped his part in the search, you see, and if that means anything at all it means that the murder has precious little to do with this wild chase after the old parchment records. My own impression is that the daughter is not the only member of the Napier family who has taken sides against us in this hunt for the submerged treasure. When the truth is told I think you will find both father and daughter have determined, in a perfectly friendly way, to work against me, just to prove to you how foolish and futile you have been not to take their advice. Hence Colonel Napier may have been despatched in one direction to circumvent us and Miss Doris in another. That disposition of their forces would be quite fair, you know, and might have most important results.”

“And the man found dead in the colonel’s bed?”

“Any theory could account for his presence,” said the Spaniard, shrugging his shoulders and walking towards the window as though heartily tired of my objections. “One is that he was some burglar who had got the office that the colonel had left the flat, and had disguised himself to resemble the master, had walked in at the front door and personated him over-night, and had been assassinated in error. Such cases of impersonation are much more common than people imagine, but they have such ludicrous, as well as tragic, results that they seldom, if ever, get into the police courts. Another theory—and to me not at all a bad one—is that the whole business has been engineered by some secret society for a purpose that will eventually become apparent. As you know, there are plenty of secret organisations in London that do not content themselves with mystic signs and passwords and occasional extravagances in the shape of nitro-glycerine and dynamite. I know there is a branch of the Spanish ‘Friends of Liberty’ in England, for instance; and I am sure if they have got some hint from Mexico about the discovery of those manuscripts they will stop at nothing—not even a crime like this—to frighten off Colonel Napier.”

“Well, I had better leave it,” I said at last, with a sigh, throwing the paper on to the floor and joining my companion at the casement. “After all, you are really the leader of this expedition, and you have a right to require of me that I shall pay some attention to your conclusions.”

“Yes; leave it,” repeated Casteno. “Remember, you are only one man with one brain and one pair of hands. You can’t do everything in a maze that has such extraordinary ramifications as this. I tried alone, remember, and failed; and, first, I had to get your help, and then Mr Cooper-Nassington’s, and heaven alone knows where we shall end. But this brings me to another point, Glynn,” he went on, with increasing earnestness. “I want you not to approach Miss Doris until this flying machine experiment is over. It is quite natural of you to wish to do so, I admit, but I want you to consider my interests a little for a day or two, and to refrain.”

“I see,” I said meditatively. “You are afraid something might happen, some injudicious word of hers, some careless act, which might scare off some of the people we want to keep blind to our movements, eh?”

“Yes,” answered Casteno; “but that’s not all. You must recollect, too, that the people who are not for us are against us. It is not really to the Napier interest that your side should win. They are fighting, in my opinion, on the side of the authorities as represented by the Foreign Secretary and the earl. Well, let them, that’s all, and only when we’ve won let us put our heads above the hedge.”

Some other conversation followed, but in the end I agreed to do as José Casteno wished. As a consequence, we kept quite quiet in our rooms until we had got word from a friendly waiter that the hunchback, Miss Doris, and Captain Sparhawk had returned to the hotel, apparently on good terms again, and then in the darkness of night we slipped off and had a good tramp about the ancient streets and by-ways of Shrewsbury, rising next morning as fresh and as sturdy as ever. For a time, it is true, we feared that after his compact to help Lord Cyril Cuthbertson the hunchback might deem it prudent to avoid the excursion. As a matter of fact, I was the one who thought so. Casteno didn’t, because, in the first place, he was sure that his father would never in any circumstances help England against Spain; and in the second, the dwarf was too keen on flying machines and their commercial and military possibilities to let Sparhawk slip through his fingers when he had got hold of a really serviceable invention that would take seven or eight people careering through the air at will. And, as it turned out, Casteno was correct, and I wasn’t. The hunchback did turn up in the flying machine enclosure at the great floral fête, all prepared for the expedition, and, oddly enough, he brought with him as companion—he seemed to have quite forgiven all her previous day’s tricks—my own Doris, who looked as bright and gay as though a trip in a flying machine were one of the most enjoyable things in existence.

Captain Sparhawk himself, now that the critical day of trial had dawned, looked, I must confess, very nervous and overwrought. Attired in a costume that proved to be a compromise between what is usually adopted by the driver of a fast motor car and the captain of a penny steamboat, he flitted about from point to point in the enclosure, the personification of anxiety and restlessness.

“First we must think of the weather, Miss Doris,” we caught him saying as, disguised in the uniform of sergeants in the Royal Engineers, we showed our tickets which entitled us to the trip in his company and joined the mob of experts and committeemen who buzzed about him like so many noisy and curious bees. As for our features, they were works of art—the art of the painter and the art of the wig-maker—while our voices had developed a military bluffness and roughness, which left our throats lined with something like sandpaper every time we opened our mouths.

“It all depends on the wind,” he repeated, and he directed her gaze anxiously to the sky, as though she could see at a glance whether the wind were likely at the time of the ascent to blow forty miles an hour, or four. “You see, I have got the inflation well advanced,” he went on, pointing to the huge, slowly-swelling monster, which lay like a gigantic but quarter-filled balloon of fishlike shape on the greensward as men in mechanics’ clothes hastened here and there pulling a hose straight, slackening a rope, or dragging out the folds of the silk as if they were so many sheets of lead. “This particular machine is Number 9 of my series, two ahead of Santos-Dumont. As you are going with us to-day,” at which news both Casteno and I started, for we had not bargained for that, “I crave your permission to name it the ‘Doris.’”

“By all means,” said the girl, beaming with pleasure; “and I trust it will have the best of good luck, and bring all connected with it fame and fortune!” Whereat the little mob I have mentioned broke into a loud cheer, which was taken up by the thousands who lined the ropes that marked off the enclosures, and amongst whom the news of the machine’s informal christening passed like so much wildfire.

At this point somebody—I think it was the chairman of the fête—appeared bearing three or four magnums of champagne, which were opened, and the contents passed amongst the select coterie gathered around the inventor. Thus encouraged, the gallant captain went further.

“You need not really fear the trip, Miss Napier,” he said, raising the glass with a proud gesture to his lips. “Nor you two gentlemen,” he added, nodding in the direction of Casteno and myself, who had been pointed out to him by the gatekeeper as his two paying fellow-passengers. “As for Mr Zouche here,” now he included the hunchback, “he is a practical aeronaut like myself. I always say, where he would lead I would follow; but, for to-day, we have reversed things a bit, although my opinion of his skill and knowledge remains just the same.”

“Then you think the machine is perfectly safe?” said a voice in the crowd.

“It’s as safe as going to heaven in a rocking-chair,” promptly answered the captain, like an oracle. “The fact is,” he proceeded in a lower tone, “I have had the thing well tested. In the first place, I had it filled with air and coal gas, for the purpose of arranging the rigging, and then I took a little trip with it myself with proper hydrogen, and the petroleum motor hard at work, and it sailed aloft like a bird. In form, of course, it is similar to the balloon, ‘La France,’ experimented with as long ago as 1834 by some French officers at Meudon—that is, it is shaped like a plaice—the front end being larger than the rear; while it is provided with a compensating ballonet, which is inflated with air by means of a fan controlled from the motor. The two cars, to hold three passengers each, like the motor, are supported by a pine framework, and are suspended at a distance of fifteen feet under the balloon. The propeller is an exceptionally large and strong one, and resembles a fish’s tail, a mackerel’s, for I contend we find all our true air affinities in the sea. It turns at the rate of two hundred and fifty revolutions a minute, and the whole apparatus is strong enough to let us take a fair amount of ballast; for the secret of my success in my invention does not turn on lightness, where so many flying-machine inventors have gone wrong of late, but on weight—weight to subdue the pressure of the wind, to conquer the dead force of the air, and to answer the power of the motor to get up anything approaching a decent speed.”

The enthusiast stopped. Some detail in the rigging as the great aerial monster rose higher and higher suddenly required his attention; and for the next few minutes none of us spoke at all, as the captain moved hither and thither, directing his subordinates, and getting everything into working order. Curiously enough, all his feverishness left him like magic directly there was any serious work to do. For that time he might have been quite alone in his workshop. He moved and spoke and acted as one who had perfect confidence in himself and in the issue of the daring experiment which he was about to undertake.

Chapter Sixteen.

Above the Clouds.

At last everything seemed in readiness.

The beautiful grounds of the Quarry were black with thousands upon thousands of anxious spectators, and at a signal from the aeronaut Casteno and I, amidst loud cheers from the mob in the enclosure, took our places first in the car. There was room for a third passenger, and for a few seconds the Spaniard and I debated eagerly whether we should have Doris or the hunchback as the last party in the trio, and, if so, what line we ought to take with them lest they should suspect we were not those harmless members of a curious section of the public which we had given ourselves out to be. Unfortunately, as it happened, we were destined to have as travelling companion a total stranger to both of us. All at once we saw Doris beckon to the captain, and when he approached she introduced him to a tall venerable-looking figure with a long white beard.

“This is the Professor Stephen Leopardi of the Meteorological Office, whom I mentioned to you,” she said in her clear, ringing tones. “He is an old friend of my father and myself from London, but just now he happens to be staying near the Wrekin, and he is very anxious, if you will take him, to make the ascent with you. He is a man of science too, of considerable reputation, and any testimony he can bear to the uses of your invention must, in the natural course of things, be very valuable to you.”

“Quite so! Quite so!” rejoined both Captain Sparhawk and the hunchback, whose eyes gleamed with avarice at the prospect of getting so famous an expert to go with them and to speak up for them without a fee. “We shall really be only too delighted if the professor will make the sixth in our party—if he will consent to do so. There is a very nice seat vacant in the car we have reserved for independent passengers. Will he honour us by occupying that?” And with a good many flourishes and bows on both sides the scientist, to our profound disgust, was hoisted on to a seat next to Casteno and myself, thus cutting off for good all chance of our carrying on any private conversation or of giving each other any confidential hints.

A few minutes later Doris and the hunchback entered the adjacent car. Captain Sparhawk shook hands warmly with some of his more prominent supporters and friends on the committee and followed them, and the next moment he blew a shrill call on a small whistle attached to the motor, close to which he had taken up his position, ready to set all the machinery at work.

There was a loud crash of cannon, an ear-splitting salvo of cheers as one by one the guide-ropes slipped out of their blocks, and finally the air-ship “Doris” rose free from her moorings and went sailing like a bird across the river Severn in the direction of Welshpool.

At first the sensation was delightful. The earth and its people and features dropped away from us, until we seemed to have risen out of the hollow of a basin. There was no sense of ascent at all. The world slipped away from us, and not we away from the world. One by one the sounds died out, until at last we could only catch the hoarse barking of some sheep-dogs which must have seen us with those keen eyes of theirs and thought mischief was astir. Clouds, too, began to rush swiftly towards us, and soon we found ourselves enveloped in a soft, clinging, whitish mist, which blotted out all sight of the earth we had left behind us.

We were now being carried upward with a terrific force, and insensibly all of us turned our eyes towards Captain Sparhawk to see how he was going to acquit himself and his machine now the time of real trial had come. After all, any balloon could rise like this had done. Indeed, all balloons had been able to accomplish as much since the days of the Brothers Montgolfier. It was on the steering—directing—descent that the fame of the “Doris” and all modern flying machines had to rest. How would the vessel behave in a wild upward dash like ours?

Alas! we had not long to wait for an answer.

All at once we saw Captain Sparhawk stagger and throw up his arms. The wind had blown his coat, which he had carelessly left unfastened, against the motor, and the petroleum ignition had set the dry woollen material on fire. In vain he tried to extinguish the flames. They spread with hideous rapidity, and at last, frantic with pain, he scrambled on to the framework, and dashed headlong to the earth, a seething mass of fire.

For a moment, I believe, all our hearts stood still with terror.

Freed, too, from the burden of Captain Sparhawk’s weight, the air-ship shot upward at a most amazing rate of speed. At first it gave two great violent lurches, as though the loss of that twelve or fourteen stone of ballast would send it heeling over, with its cars at a crazy angle ’twixt earth and heaven, but, luckily, in our consternation we all made various movements that served to right the vessel, and later we found ourselves safe, at all events for the moment, but perfectly helpless. By this time, too, there was not a trace of the world to be seen. We were simply surrounded with clouds, which seethed about us in white, clinging vapour and wrapped themselves about our clothes and faces as though we had been overtaken in a mist on some Scottish moor.

“Something will have to be done,” said the professor sternly, turning suddenly to Casteno and myself, his sole travelling companions in that car. “We can expect no assistance from that old hunchback or that girl, Miss Napier, in the other compartment. Do either of you gentlemen understand anything about air-ships?” And he gave a quick, scrutinising gaze at our uniforms, as though he could find thereon some badge which showed we belonged to the ballooning section of the Royal Engineers.

“We know nothing whatever,” replied José quietly, stamping up and down to keep his feet warm. “We have come, for pleasure we thought it, and here is the result.”

“Besides, professor,” I cut in, “are not you really the one to take charge of operations at this juncture? I understand that you come from the Meteorological Office and that ventures like this fall under your review in your department. Surely you know enough of ballooning by which, even if you couldn’t make the machine perform like the inventor intended it should, you could at least take us back to the earth.”

“I am not so sure about that,” said the man quickly, and then all at once he stopped and bit his lip. It was obvious that he had said a little more than he intended, and a new suspicion about him gathered shape and force in my mind. Suppose he were not the Professor Stephen Leopardi that Doris had pretended but some other spy sent by Cuthbertson to keep an eye on the hunchback?

“Well, at all events, we can’t go blindly to death like this,” I snapped. “Look, there is Miss Napier making signals to us with her handkerchief? Where, though, is the hunchback? Ah! I see. The fright has been too much for him. He has collapsed, fainted, and dropped like a log to the seat on the side of the car. We must do something or she will grow frantic.” And waving a hand to her I, half unconscious of what I had myself resolved upon, scrambled on to the stays of the machine and began to crawl like a monkey towards the tiny platform from which poor Captain Sparhawk had fallen, and on which stood the motor and the different cords and levers that controlled the machine.

“Come back! Come back!” Casteno shouted. “Are you mad, man? Don’t you understand that in a cold, rarefied atmosphere like this the gas in the balloon is bound to condense, and that, as surely as an apple drops from a tree to the earth instead of the sky, by the law of gravitation, we must land on terra firma again?”

But his appeal fell on ears that were deaf to all save one voice. Above the swirl and the wind I had heard Doris call to us, and nought else mattered. Doris was frightened. Doris wanted somebody near to her besides that senseless Spaniard. Doris dreaded what might happen. That must not be, and so, with eyes fixed resolutely on her graceful figure standing silhouetted against the clouds, I shut my lips tightly and crept along that dizzy path that separated me from her. What if she did not know me in that disguise? I, at least, knew her, and, should the need come, I would, I swore to myself, cheerfully lay down my life to save her from harm.

That passage from the car to the platform could not have occupied more than seven or eight seconds. To me it seemed as though hours had passed before I got to that platform and stood up by that complicated series of levers, with hands firmly gripped to the steel rails that ran round on three sides, the bulky outline of the motor shutting in the fourth. At length, however, I stood there, and realised I had not reached it one instant too soon, for just at that moment the air-ship struck a warmer strata of atmosphere and began to move on a dizzy and bewildering course, now shooting upward like a rocket, then striking a cold wind, and collapsing like a stricken bird.

“Pull some of those levers, man. Get the rudder at work,” shouted the professor through his hands as the machine commenced to career sideways through the air like a torpedo. “These cars will be flattened out if you don’t accomplish something soon.”

But my blood was up after my dizzy crawl through space, and I felt I could not brook interference. “Throw that idiot out if he says another word,” I shouted to Casteno. Then I turned to Doris. “Don’t be frightened, Miss Napier,” I cried, “just trust me, and, if all goes well, we shall before five minutes are over be safe on land again.” And then I bent down and studied the machinery by which I was surrounded.

A ship’s compass warned me of the position of the levers that controlled the rudder, and after three or four experimental turns of the latter I got the great monster in hand. Indeed, so queerly constituted are we men who love adventure that, no sooner did I find the air-ship obey my movements, than I promptly forgot all the dangers of my position, and, almost with boyish joy, I began to manoeuvre the vessel, first in one direction and then in another, until in the end I found I could make it head on whatever course I wished.

Unfortunately, none of those movements brought the machine any nearer to the earth, and I had to turn to try other levers, the objects of which were not quite so apparent. My first experiment shut off the control of the motor. My second extinguished the electrical ignition altogether, and I found that as the screw ceased to revolve we began to fall to the earth at a tremendous pace.

What was I to do? For a second, I confess, I had the wildest thoughts of throwing everything portable overboard and trusting to luck to get everything started again. Then, all at once, something seemed to whisper to me: “The motor has stopped. Now the thing is no longer a flying machine but a balloon; treat it as a balloon. Find the cord that controls the valves in the top of the bag and pull those, and let all the gas escape, and come down to earth like a bird that is spent and tired.”

Like a man dazed I threw out my hands and gripped what ropes I could that looked at all like guide-ropes. The first I seized sent my platform heeling over sideways, and it was nothing less than a miracle that I did not fall off its inclined surface so sudden was the change of balance. Happily, the second I snatched controlled the valves in the top of the balloon. It answered to a touch, and the gas went roaring through the aperture like a typhoon.

“Throw yourselves into the bottom of the cars,” I shouted to the occupants of the two compartments. “We are racing towards the earth at a terrific pace. In a few seconds we shall reach it. We shall strike it gently enough because of the law of gravity and of the compensating ballonet we carry above the propeller, but I don’t want one of you to get frightened and to leap out of the ship before all the gas is exhausted, otherwise we shall go careering up again, and the entire ship then will fall and dash itself and us into pieces. Trust to its steady collapse.” And seizing an anchor that was fastened to the guide-rails of the platform I flung this over the side, and then crouched myself on a kind of huge buoy that hung just above the platform, through which all the different ropes of the machine seemed to pass.

Fortunately, everybody was too impressed by the way in which I had guided the ship in the first instance to have noticed how badly I had managed in the second in stopping the use of the motor, and so at my words they dropped down amongst the ballast in the bottom of the cars, and with teeth clenched and hands gripping the framework they awaited the inevitable crash.

Down—down—down we went—down into space!

The clouds shot past us as though they were driven out of our path by some tornado. The wind roared in our ears.

We caught sight of the earth, and it rushed up to meet us as if it would there and then pulverise us into a million atoms.

Next instant everything appeared to change like magic. Instead of one wild, dizzy, headlong flight to the ground we seemed to be upborne on some mighty pinions that were moving with great force but steadiness as we dropped, tired and glad, into our native sphere.

Slowly, steadily, like a bird coming to rest, we touched the earth again on a wide expanse of grassland. Then women and children started up about us, and, before we knew what had happened, we heard about us the thunders of British cheers, and found ourselves caught up in the arms of eager and excited admirers; whilst once again the good ship “Doris” lay on its side on the ground, slowly panting out from its shrunken ribs the gas that had lifted us to such dizzy dangers and heights.

For myself, I own, I should have been strongly tempted to yield to that joyous sensation of peace and safety again, and have done like Doris, the hunchback, and Professor Leopardi, and dropped promptly into blissful unconsciousness, had not Casteno fought his way towards me as soon as the excitement and the mob permitted and caught me tightly by the arm.

“Look here,” he whispered. “This, remember, is the real time of our trial, not up there above the clouds. Make one false move here and you’ll ruin everything.”

“How? What do you mean?” I muttered, blinking my eyes.

“Why, Leopardi is a spy, and so is Miss Napier. They are following the hunchback, and with good reason. They are keeping watch on those three manuscripts which he probably carries on his person. Neither Lord Cyril nor they intend that he shall keep them.”

“Well, what of that?” I murmured, for the fall through space had dulled the edge of my brain.

“Well, they will steal them at the first opportunity. The deeds no longer belong to my father, remember, but to the British Government, who have purchased them, and who are only letting him retain them now so that he may not give the fact of their existence away until they have got their other diplomatic arrangements complete. The pretence that they want him to translate them or to decipher them is all fudge. They have two or three experts in cipher at the Foreign Office whose business it is to decode all secret messages, plans, documents, and treaties of which the Secret Service obtains possession. Now, those are the men whom they will trust to handle them, not the keeper of a curiosity shop in Westminster.”

“Admitted,” I said testily; “but what’s that to do with us at this precise moment, when none of us know whether we are quite dead or alive? Let the Government try to get them first, then we can act. We can either side with your father, the hunchback, or with the authorities; but, for heaven’s sake, don’t worry about it now, here amongst all this crowd who want to treat us like conquering heroes or half-dead voyagers, and who won’t be put off with a bow, but will want to hear all about us, and all about our adventures, and how the deuce we managed to arrive in safety at this point at all.”

“They must be tricked,” whispered Casteno, with a savage oath. “Tricked, do you see? You and I have too big a job on just now to pose as popular heroes. We must take those manuscripts from the hunchback whilst he is unconscious, and we must get away with them before he or Miss Napier can have any idea that they or we have gone.”

“But that would be a theft,” I gasped.

“Not a bit of it,” returned Casteno. “Those documents never really belonged to the hunchback at all, for the dead priest in whose possession they were found had no title to them.”

“Then to whom do they belong?” I questioned.

“Why, to the Order in Mexico, of course,” replied the Spaniard. “Now you are warned, be ready, and keep close to me.” And he turned a smiling face to the crowd who had drawn back from us in respectful sympathy, thinking, doubtless, that we wished to condole with each other on the unfortunate state of our companions. In an instant, too, he seized on this last pretext and acted on it. “Will some of you gentlemen,” he cried in those clear, ringing tones of his, “carry our three senseless friends here to some place where they can be left in perfect safety and quietness? We have come on this flying machine trip from the floral fête at Shrewsbury, but, unfortunately, our leader got burned to death, and we have all had a terrible shock.”

“Poor things! Poor things!” murmured some of the bystanders nearest to us, and instantly the demeanour of the crowd changed, for they realised something of the horror of poor Captain Sparhawk’s end.

In silence an avenue was opened out for us, a waggonette with a pair of horses was driven up to the side of the fallen machine, and, tenderly and carefully, Doris, the hunchback, and the professor were lifted on to the sides and borne to a farm outbuilding about two hundred yards distant. Here the five of us were left alone, whilst the two or three strangers who had constituted themselves our chief helpers closed the place upon us as they sallied forth to find us doctors and some suitable refreshments.

“Now,” cried Casteno to me immediately I had seen that Doris was safe and was comfortably placed on a great heap of hay, “understand, we have not a moment to lose. Any second they may return, or some daring and inquisitive journalist may force his way in to interview us or to describe our battered condition. You pretend to be holding your flask to my father’s lips, whilst I search his clothes. Then if one of them comes to their senses or one of our newly-made friends return it won’t look at all suspicious.” And, as half mechanically I did as he had directed, he flung himself on his knees beside the prostrate hunchback and passed his hands rapidly over his clothes.

Evidently he knew a good deal of Peter Zouche’s methods, for I don’t think his search lasted ten seconds. All at once his fingers closed over a tiny bag, something like a Catholic scapular, that had been slung around the hunchback’s neck. With trembling fingers he tore this open, and disclosed to view the three precious manuscripts, which he instantly seized and packed away in his pocket.

Then he made the bag look as natural as he could, and restored it to its position under the old man’s singlet. As he rose to his feet again I saw that his face was ghastly white, and his teeth chattered like a man stricken with ague.

“My God,” he muttered, wiping the great beads of perspiration that had gathered about his temples, “isn’t this chase stern—awful? I doubt if even I should have dared to have tried a terrible move like this had I not known that there, at St. Bruno’s at Hampstead, was the key to these documents awaiting me. But I felt I could not falter now when Camille Velasquon had braved so much in bringing it from Mexico to London for me. But, bah! what cowards we are all of us sometimes.” And he reeled, and I am sure he would have fainted had I not instantly caught him myself and pressed the flask to his lips.

“Now to be off—to be off,” he said wildly a moment later, pushing me aside and staggering towards the exit from the tent. “I feel I can’t breathe here now that I have got these documents. Every nerve I have seems standing on end urging me to be off.”

I turned to look at Doris lying so peacefully in that corner, and then, half distracted, turned to follow him, but as I did so somebody started up and confronted us. It was the Professor Stephen Leopardi! His aspect now was wild and threatening, but we thought merely that the terrible experiences he had been through above the clouds had temporarily disturbed the balance of his senses and that we could soothe him like a child.

“You must not go,” he panted, his eyes rolling and his fingers clawing the empty air. “You must stay with me, I want you. I have seen you. There is much to explain.”

“Quite so,” I returned lightly, “but just now we are not in a mood for conversation, are we? Wait until our companions recover themselves and my friend and I have had a little fresh air, will you? Then we can all meet and discuss things, but at present—”

“At present you would steal from that poor man the most precious things he has,” thundered the old fellow, and to our horror he sprang between us and the exit and then pointed to the prostrate form of the hunchback. “Oh! never, never shall you escape like that.” And before we realised what he was up to he raised his voice and shrieked: “Help! help! help!”

Chapter Seventeen.

The Mysteries of St. Bruno’s.

There was not a second to spare. Casteno shot at me a look of mingled entreaty and command to leave the frenzied professor to do his worst. The persons we had to fear were not, he motioned, in that tent at all but outside, scouring the grounds for medical assistance, and spreading everywhere news of our wonderful appearance out of the rain-clouds. Only let them hear this maniac’s wild cries for assistance and they would hasten back to us, and then all hope, all chance of escape, for either of us would be cut off.

Nevertheless, I thought of Doris lying there so weak, helpless, and friendless; and I hesitated. I felt I had already stifled Love so often for Duty that I could repress it no longer. Indeed, I took a step in her direction to make myself known to her, but, misconceiving my object, thinking I had no idea but one—to flee—Leopardi seized me in a grip of iron. “You shall not go,” he panted—“never! You are a thief, and you shall pay for your crime.”

His touch, however, was quite enough. What Casteno had failed to accomplish it brought about in a flash. All the hot, strenuous instincts of my manhood rose in rebellion at this degradation.

“You are mad,” I hissed, and with one huge effort I sprang on the scientist and, catching him by the middle, whirled him over my head and sent him crashing a moment later on to some grain bags that stood piled up in a corner.

As I did so his wig fell off and with it his beard, and I staggered backward in amazement. The so-called expert from the Meteorological Office was, as the Spaniard had contended, a spy—perhaps sent by the Foreign Office, for it was a man we instantly recognised—no other than Colonel Napier himself.

Personally, I would have stood my ground then and defied him; but Casteno was too quick for me. As I reeled back breathless from the impact he caught me by the shoulder and with a quick turn twisted me through the narrow door of the barn.

“This is no time for heroics, Glynn,” he whispered. “We have won. Now let us be off.” And he doubled behind some other buildings and then dived headlong into a clump of bushes, through which he wriggled his way on hands and knees like a snake.

Almost instinctively I followed him, for on the still summer breeze I could hear Colonel Napier’s voice raised in angry shouts, the thunder of hurrying feet, and all the mysterious sounds and movements which betokened that at last the crowd had taken alarm, and that an organised pursuit of us could, at the most now, be only a matter of a few seconds.

The branches tore our clothes and made sad havoc of our disguises, but this last accident proved a blessing in disguise, for it made us stop at a pond and restore to our faces their natural resemblance.

“But we must not be caught,” I returned, deftly rolling up the wigs and secreting them in the branch of a tree, where they looked like a new kind of bird’s nest. “Look through that opening there between those willows. Don’t you see the molten gleam of water under the summer sun?”

“Yes,” replied Casteno joyously, rising on his knees and stretching his neck. “It’s a stream sure enough—perhaps a river—with plenty of water space, for I am sure I distinguish a current in it running steady and strong.”

“Now let us make for that, then,” I urged, “and hail the first boat that passes. Let us pretend we are soldiers, and have overstayed our leave, and that we shall get fined if we don’t hasten pell-mell back to the town.”

“What town?” queried Casteno ruefully; whereat we both laughed. It certainly did seem preposterous for us not to know the name of the country we were in. Yet, truthfully enough, we didn’t—we hadn’t the ghost of an idea.

As luck would have it, however, we found several boats moored close to the trees by the side of the water, and in charge of them was a sharp-looking lad about fourteen years of age.

“Got any tubs for hire, sonny,” said Casteno cheerfully, walking up to the youngster and tapping him familiarly on the shoulder.

“What does your mother want to wash?” promptly returned the lad, and in a moment the three of us were on the best of terms.

Acting on an impulse of my own I took charge of the conversation, and pretended that we were soldiers who had got sick of barrack life, and had deserted from some important depot, and were anxious to get into hiding in the nearest town. Now in most lads there exists a very genuine sympathy with the hunted of all descriptions, and a loyalty, too, which no ordinary bribe or threat would cause them to break. As a consequence, he promised to take us off in one of the boats and to hide us under some cushions and sail sheets as he punted us down stream to “a capital nest I know,” he explained, “behind the kilns of the porcelain works.”

“But the town—what is its name?” I queried, with a grimace.

“Why, Worcester, of course,” the lad replied. “Didn’t you see it on the milestones?”

“We were in too great a hurry to look,” chimed in the Spaniard at once. “Why, we don’t even know what all those thousands of people are doing here in these grounds. We have simply bolted as hard as we could through the streets.”

“Then you didn’t even see the flying machine fall?” cried the lad, his eyes wide with excitement.

“Not a bit of it,” returned I, with more truth than the boy possibly could have expected.

“Then I’m sorry for you,” observed the lad slowly, “for it was the most lovely thing I ever saw in my life. Four men and one girl were dashed to pieces, and they’ve had to stop the race meeting—for this is Worcester Races on the Pitchcroft—whilst they look for the remains of the poor victims who are supposed to have come all the way from the Crystal Palace with Mr Santos-Dumont, who, luckily, made his escape in the parachute before the thing fell.”

Neither Casteno nor I, however, troubled to enlighten the lad as to the true facts. For one thing, it amused us slightly to discover for ourselves how strangely the news of our arrival had travelled, and in what a small degree the good citizens of Worcester were wont to mix the naked truth with their carefully-compounded stories of breathless adventure. For another, we were desperately anxious to get away from the neighbourhood of that racecourse. Any second the hue-and-cry might spread to the point at which we were. Indeed, it seemed little short of madness to loiter, and we sprang into the punt immediately we could get the lad to cast her off, and almost before he quite understood how quickly we had acted we had got ourselves concealed and the boy hard at work punting us down the stream.

Happily, the Severn covers but a few hundred yards in its passage from the racecourse to the city of Worcester itself, and so excited were the crowd over the fall and appearance of our air-ship that we contrived to slip away quite unobserved, to glide under the bridge that cut off Worcester from its suburbs, and to float past the cathedral, close to which stand the grey, old monastic ruins. Here we insisted on disembarking, because we found these remains were walled in and really furnished an ideal place of concealment, but we did not dismiss our guide.

“Go, sonny, and buy us two suits of rough blue serge,” I said, handing the lad four glittering sovereigns. “If they ask you any inconvenient questions say they are for your father, who is employed on a coal barge, and has had his duds stolen, a thing that often happens, I’m told. If there is any change remaining over, keep it, but whatever you do, hurry—hurry like mad.”

The boy, who had now quite entered into the humour of the adventure, and thought what a fine thing it was to be outwitting the police under their very noses as it were, tore off, leaving us in charge of the punt. And such good use did he make of his time, his opportunities, and the shopping facilities of the immediate district that, in less than half-an-hour, he returned with the things we had ordered. Very soon we bade him good-bye and gave him half-a-sovereign for his trouble; and, waiting until he had disappeared round a bend of the river, we scaled the wall that shut off the cathedral school ground from the ruins, and then plunged into an ancient recess in the wall where, in the half darkness, we threw off our uniforms and put on our serge suits.

Nobody who has not stood in some deadly peril of this sort can guess the relief we felt as we got back once again into fairly decent clothes, that did not make us appear much different to what we really were, and gave us the advantage of our own speech and looks. One takes up a disguise glibly enough, even if at first it presents an arduous strain to the nerves; but after a time the thing becomes a veritable Frankenstein to one, and seems to absorb every ounce of one’s brain and strength. Casteno literally danced with joy as he flung his uniform into a corner as far as he could.

“Thank goodness, now we can walk and talk like other folk,” he cried. “For my own part, I don’t care who we meet or what is said to us. I feel powerful enough to deny anything.”

“But surely,” I gasped, “you don’t mean to show yourself in public until night is fallen? Think—think of the risks!”

“I have, and I mean to take them. Nobody in Worcester can identify us now with the two soldiers who took passages in the air-ship at Shrewsbury. Remember, even if Colonel Napier could be quite sure it was us who had played him such a scurvy trick, he dare not say so. In the first place, people will think the fall and the shock have given him softening of the brain if we stick up to him and deny him with all the lung violence we are capable of. Secondly, you forget he is Professor Stephen Leopardi, the expert of the Meteorological Office, to the world just at present. He is the fraud, not us, and we have only got to unmask him to the hunchback, or to get inquiries made about him in London, where the police want him for his mysterious disappearance from Whitehall Court, and where the Meteorological people would have him instantly arrested for his impersonation, to put him utterly to confusion. Hence we have no cause to fear him or anyone here. We are free—free as air.” And again he capered about the ruins, overcome with glee.