“I will, I will,” replied the hunchback. “And now for those manuscripts. Have you prepared those dummies?”
“Yes,” answered Paul. “Here they are—the three of them—and I’ve taken so much pains with the writing which I have faked on them that I would defy anybody to tell, under a day’s examination with microscope and acid, that they are not the real, genuine article you bought for one thousand eight hundred pounds at the sale of Father Calasanctius’ effects at the auction mart.”
“Good,” cried Zouche, rubbing his hands together in the most approved method of the Jewish pedlar. “Pass them over to me.” And the youth produced from a leather case which he had been carrying unperceived by his side three documents so exactly like the real thing I had fought for that I could have sworn myself that they were in real truth the three coveted manuscripts of the sacred lake!
The hunchback, however, did not pass them lightly. He took each one over to the window and examined it with great care, and only when he had assured himself that certain marks were present on each one of them, that all alike presented the same appearance of age and use and treatment, did he place them carefully in the steel box from which he had taken his wig and beard. Then he turned the keys in the locks, and, mounting a chair, he thrust open a secret panel in the rafters, pushed inside this hiding-place the box with the forged documents—as it happened, within two feet of the exact spot where we were stretched, full length, listening to his conversation.
Then he got down and turned again to Paul. “That is all right,” he said gaily. “That is a good thing done, and I shouldn’t be surprised if in a critical moment it doesn’t save both my life and my fortune. Now you have got your lesson by heart, haven’t you? You know what to do when any of those men like Hugh Glynn or the Earl of Fotheringay, or any of those Jesuit spies, come pottering about here! You play the avaricious fool, do you see? Pretend that you know a lot, and that you could tell them a lot if it were only made worth your while, and bleed each one of them for all the cash you can, in return for the information that I have vanished, and also for permission to turn this shop upside down to find the manuscripts, which you can hint you are certain are concealed somewhere about here.”
“All right, I’m game,” said the youth, and his eyes gleamed with malice and wickedness.
“When you’ve made all you can out of the dolts sell those forgeries to the highest bidder. My own idea is that the Jesuits will pay you better than anybody else, but perhaps Lord Cyril Cuthbertson may play you up too closely with the aid of some Scotland Yard detectives. In that case, let him have the honour of buying the spurious deeds, do you see? It’s a pity these foolish Britishers don’t roll over in the mud of their own cleverness sometimes.”
The conversation ended, and I turned rapidly to the Spaniard.
“It’s no good for you to stay here, as we have arranged,” I whispered to Casteno, who now gazed at me appealingly with eyes large with nervousness and apprehension. “The hunchback won’t be seen at Westminster for some time to come. He intends to disappear—as you’ve heard, the same as myself—but he must disappear in company with one of us. Now, who is it to be? You or I?”
“I must go,” quickly returned the Spaniard. “Don’t you remember you have to rush off this afternoon to Southampton to meet the royal mail steamer Atrato and to escort in safety to London a girl named Camille Velasquon, who is bringing some valuable papers from Mexico for me and for the Order of St. Bruno? I have already telegraphed to her to Plymouth to expect you. It is impossible for you to back out.”