Like shadows we crossed the road, inspected the shutters, and gently but noiselessly tried the handle of the door. We soon saw that there was no chance of gaining admission by these methods, but a moment later I caught sight of a long iron pipe that ran from the roof to the ground by the side of the door.
“Can you climb?” I whispered to the Spaniard, recalling, all at once, the favourite method of the portico thief.
He nodded. “I served as a sailor once,” he returned.
“Then follow me,” I said, and seizing this pipe I travelled up by hands and knees until I reached the level of the first-floor window-sill. Then out I whipped my knife, and, forcing back the catch, I raised the sash, with the result that in less than twenty seconds after I had hit on this ruse the window had been closed again, and both of us stood inside the hunchback’s stronghold in perfect freedom and safety.
“This is better than waiting until the assistant comes to open the shop,” I said. “After all, he might have given us some trouble, whereas here we are landed all right before he appears at all. Now to explore and to get into position where you can see, without being seen, all that Master Zouche is up to.”
And we turned and picked our way carefully through the maze of curios with which the place was littered—the antique chests, the old carved cabinets, dainty pieces of Chippendale and Sheraton, with here and there a heathen idol or an Egyptian mummy case flanked by vessels and candelabra torn from holy places in Christian churches. All were flung pell-mell together, as though the man who owned them despised them, and had deposited them there as so much lumber, instead of being, as they really were, worth thousands and thousands of pounds.
Right at the back part of the room we were delighted to find a trap-door let into the floor, and raising this we dropped into a clean, if small, recess, which in times past had doubtless been used for storing valuable old pictures, for in different places we found several canvases that had been taken out of their frames and carefully deposited and packed with their faces to the wall. From the position of a tiny window that had been let into the far end I gathered that at length we had reached a position over the parlour in which I felt sure we should come upon the hunchback. So, closing the trap-door upon us, we went down on our hands and knees and set to bore experimental holes between the rafters, to see whether we could distinguish our exact whereabouts.
After two or three disappointments we succeeded in locating the room I was in search of, and, to our delight, found Peter Zouche there, curled up in the great chair-bedstead which he ordinarily used as an arm-chair near the fire. He had evidently just awoke and lit his fire, for he sat huddled over the burning sticks near a tiny kettle which was steaming merrily, his eyes fixed blankly in space, as though his mind were lost in the maze of some profound speculation.
For some minutes he did not move at all. Then suddenly he seemed to come to some rapid decision, for he sprang out of the chair and went hurriedly to an old Dutch cupboard in a recess, from which he took a big square steel box, like a Foreign Office despatch box, painted mahogany colour, with heavy brass clamps at the corners.
“The manuscripts!” whispered Casteno excitedly as he saw the old man thrust a long skinny hand into his trouser pocket and produce therefrom a bunch of jangling keys. But I shook my head. I remembered the hunchback’s boast to Mr Cooper-Nassington that he had hidden those precious documents in a place where they could be found only by himself. That ordinary-looking safe would attract the attention of the most careless and superficial of burglars.