“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.