"'tis not the habitthat bespeaks the monk," and that often under the most simple andimpressive guises there lurked secret forces that meant treachery andvillainy of the worst description.
"One thing I do promise myself," I thought to myself rather firmly, "Iwill not rest whilst I am at St Bruno's until I have got to know allabout these mysterious people--_all_. Senor Casteno may try as he willto put me off with explanations that only leave things more difficultand puzzling and hard to understand, but this time I will stand myground. I will be the spy on this occasion, and if I find the Spaniardor his friends in the Order up to any mischief I will not hesitate asecond--I will strike for England, cost what it will."
Sinking back, I took up one of the papers I had purchased, and began toglance carelessly down its columns. I had not forgotten that these newssheets might contain some further news about that discovery of amurdered man in the Napiers' flat, but seeing that I had had a Sundayspecial edition of a London paper I was not expecting to learn anythingreally new just then about the tragedy that had stricken the West Endwith a sense of painful impotence and danger; I felt the police and thepress had not had sufficient time.
Nevertheless, something fresh had been discovered by one of the mostenterprising of the younger papers--the _Daily Graphic_--which, unlikeits contemporaries, did not reprint the old story about a man unknownbeing found stabbed to the heart in the colonel's bed, but boldlyventured forth into big type with this extraordinary statement:
THE MYSTERY AT WHITEHALL
IDENTITY OF THE DEAD MAN
STORY OF A SECRET VENGEANCE
"The man who was found murdered in Colonel Napier's flat in EmbankmentMansions has been identified by an official of the Foreign Office from adescription and photograph that were hurriedly circulated by ScotlandYard last night. The victim is no other than a gentleman occupying aresponsible position in the Treaty Department of the Foreign Office, andthe papers found in his desk tend to show that the crime was the work ofsome secret society which has its headquarters in London, and which haddecreed his end because he, as a member, was supposed to havecommunicated some of its secrets to Lord Cyril Cuthbertson, theSecretary for Foreign Affairs. How he came to be in Colonel Napier'sflat--and bed--remains, however, to be explained. He certainly bears anextraordinary resemblance to the missing colonel."
By this time the day had begun to close in. The sun had sunk, leaving,as it sometimes does, even in the height of an English summer, the skygrey with mystery and suggestion of on-coming disaster. The paperitself slipped from my fingers as I dropped back into my seat and let myeyes wander over the landscape that, all of a sudden, seemed to havetaken on itself the colour of my own thoughts, which were now troubledand perplexed with a dozen doubts and emotions which ever evaded me butnone the less filled me with unrest and pain.
With an effort I recovered myself and looked curiously at Jose Casteno.He had curled himself up in an attitude that struck me as being toostrained and unnatural to be comfortable, but, to all appearances, hewas sleeping gently like an over-tired child. Strangely enough, it wasthe first time that I had seen his features in such absolute repose, andI caught myself examining each one of them with that careful minutenessand patience a geologist may bestow on a half-identified specimen--thelines at the corners of his mouth, the shape and setting of his chin,the high yet thin cheek-bones, the curl of the nostrils, and thosehollow jaws of his, that seemed to be accentuated by curves of balefulbut elusive significance. I had lived quite long enough, and hadsuffered disillusion sufficient, not to make the error into which fallso many earnest amateur disciples of Lavater, to pin my faith on any oneof these features. In imagination I tried to add each point ofelucidation to another, so that I might arrive at a just estimate of thetrue balance of his vices and virtues, for, believe me, no man iswithout some vice held in abeyance or left to flourish in riotousluxuriance.
On the whole, I realised that the head, large and powerful as it was,had qualities that might make for the highest intelligence and ambition,but now the face seemed weighed down with anxiety and grief of mind, andin its present expression there was just a touch of remorse, or was itsome hidden consciousness of guilt? Keen observers who have lived muchin solitude, and have not been perplexed by the sight of too manystrange, eager, and passionate faces, say that every human being'scountenance resembles in some degree some animal's. I tried to applythis rough-and-ready method of mental measurement to the Spaniard,fettered as I was by the fact that those two great glowing eyes of his,like twin black lamps that flashed so often with suppressed fire, wereclosed, and could not, therefore, give me any clue. Somehow I caughtthe impression of a panther, forest bred, highly strung, but held inleash by some strong sentiment: was it love for Camille Velasquon?
All the warnings I had had against this man, the impassioned appealDoris had made to me when she released me from the hunchback's, the hotscorn poured on my championship by old Zouche himself--the man's father,be it remembered--even Fotheringay's appeal to me to cease myassociation with him, lest worse befall me--all these things started upto bear witness against him. These had no reference to the tragicsequence of events--concrete things that had followed my engagement tohim and had culminated in this mystery in Whitehall Court with the cruelslaying of an unnamed official of the Foreign Office by some secretbrotherhood, which, as likely as not, might be the very order of StBruno, to whose headquarters I was hastening without a thought of my ownsafety or freedom.
Could I, therefore, trust him? Was I discreet to rely on him when greatstakes, not only mine but England's, hung in the balance?
On and on sped the train through hamlet, village and township. Thetwilight faded slowly into night, and as the gas lamps above my headflamed coarsely upward a terrible temptation assailed me and keptknocking on the doors of my brain in form something like this:
1. Why be a merely passive instrument in this great struggle betweennations and persons for this Lake of Sacred Treasure?
2. Casteno stole the documents from the hunchback as he lay in the tentat Worcester senseless; why don't you take them from Casteno now he issenseless? Then you would be quite certain England would get her justrights.
3. You need not fear what the Spaniard might say or do to you if hecaught you in the act. After all, you have got those clever imitationsof the real thing which the hunchback and Paul Zouche prepared, and at apinch you could substitute for the true manuscripts the false, and getclear away from St Bruno's to the protection of the Foreign Officebefore the fraud were discovered.
Everybody is a potential scoundrel in some great crisis of his career."Opportunity makes the thief," says one old school of cynics; and I was,I admit, sore beset to do this deed, with some excuse for my ownconscience that after all it was but the doing of a patriot and that ithad the sanction of a sacred national need.
But as I toyed with the temptation compromise came and sat beside me andtold me that, if I didn't do the trick then, I could do it some othermoment, when I was the more convinced of Casteno's _mala fides_. Fatealso took a hand in the struggle between conscience and duty and a senseof honour.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
LONDON AGAIN.
Suddenly Casteno roused himself and sat upright, and with him went quiteirrevocably all opportunity of taking the three fatal manuscripts fromhim by stealth during that journey up to Paddington. For his hunger wasinfectious and the meal he had provided excellent, and so it came aboutthat in quite a few moments the pair of us were devouring roast chickenand ham and pledging each other in glasses of quite passablerailway-station claret. Indeed, the tedium of the ride vanished likemagic, and before we had finished the commonplaces of conversation wefound ourselves back again in dear old smoke-begrimed London. Thatnight we slept at Paddington Hotel, for we had had an exciting day, anddid not feel inclined for a further journey to Stanton Street. Whencenext day Chantry Road, Hampstead, was reached in an incredibly shorttime, and once again I found myself standing at the tiny door in thewall with it
s suggestive peep-hole. Only this time there seemed to beno delay in answering our summons, and we passed with great rapidityfrom the public street into the courtyard that shut the home of StBruno's off the porter's box at the entrance, and then we made our way,without any black-robed guide, to the huge hall with its greatflower-decked statue of a woman, heroic in size but incommunicably fair.
Somehow I was conscious that our arrival had caused quite a thrill ofexcitement through the community, even in the various offices of thehouse itself. As Casteno and I stood there and waited for the prior,for whom he had asked immediately we had crossed the threshold, variousfigures of men and youths of various ages flitted in and out on obviousand childish pretexts to snatch the opportunity of a whispered word orhandshake with my companion, who seemed to me a most popular personage,and whose return now began to take the form of a kind of triumphalprogress. All these