The Hunchback of Westminster

by William Le Queux

me."

  He raised his hand to tap on the door, but I stopped him. "Just onequestion," I muttered, "before I go in--only one. Why _Saint_ Bruno ifyou have no religious object and significance? Why didn't you callyourselves something less Catholic, more indicative of your realobject?"

  "Oh! we had nothing to do with it," retorted Casteno lightly."Delganni, I'm told, was a Catholic, and he christened the Order afterhis own notion. His institutes say that he had a great devotion to hisname saint, and so he called the Order after him to pay him honour, andperhaps, what is more to the point to-day, to throw inquisitive personsoff the scent as to our real motive, for they jump at once to the ideathat we are some very wicked yet very religious brotherhood, and,therefore, leave us severely alone."

  I nodded. Almost in spite of my own subtle, suspicious self I wassatisfied. The next moment the door was flung open and Casteno marchedme through an avenue of black-habited brethren to a dais at the far endof the room, on which the Prior stood with hand outstretched to greetme.

  "Welcome, brother Hugh, welcome!" he cried in those rich sonorous tonesof his. "My duty to-day is a very simple yet a very pleasant one; againI bid you welcome. Here in this book I hand to you are the institutesof the Order of St Bruno, the rules which govern our organisation, andthe explanation thereof as supplied by our founder, good Bruno Delganni,on whom, we say, may the earth rest very lightly, for he has doneEngland much good! Take them; study them at your convenience. Theywill prove to you we are not quite so black here as our habit would seemto indicate. Here, also, is the scroll which testifies that this dayyou have become a member with us and are entitled to all the rights,privileges, and appurtenances of that distinguished and cherishedposition. It is written in cypher numerals, as you will observe--another idea and protection of our founder's--but if you take page oneof the institutes you will find that is the key to the riddle and thatthe numbers stand as references to the particular letters of the firstfew lines.

  "Thus you will observe the first word on page one is `The.' Hence inthe cipher document the letter `t' will be marked by the number `one,'the letter `h' by the number `two,' and the letter `e' by the number`three.' Indeed, this is the cipher code we always make use of when wewrite to our members and communicate with each other in confidence, so Iadvise you, if you don't want to carry the institutes about with youconstantly, to learn by heart the first few lines of the handbook, andthen you will have in your mind the key to the cryptic language we makeuse of.

  "Here, also, is a small spring gold bracelet which I must ask you towear on your right arm above the elbow," he went on. "It serves variouspurposes--for one, to remind you that you are a Bruno-ite, and of yourceaseless duty of high and dignified patriotism. Its catch, also, is,as you may observe, key shape, and can be used as a key to penetrate themost secret archives of the Order, should you ever feel suspicious, orfancy that you have any ground for discontent, or that you are not beingas fairly treated as your fellow-members, for in this Order we are allequal, and only take personal favours from the Council of Three. Anyday or hour you are free to overhaul our records and to call thebrethren together should you find any ground of complaint. Should yoube away some time from the house and want to know whether the strangeryou meet is a Bruno-ite or not, take the bracelet off your forearm andput it on your wrist. Then call the man's attention to the inscriptionengraved on it: `For God and England.' If he be a Bruno-ite he willanswer immediately: `May we be worthy of both.' If he does not, pass itoff with some jest, and at the right moment return the bracelet to itsoriginal place. Other tests you will find in the institutes. Theyconsist of phrases to learn and answers to give to them, but all thesemust be disclosed with discretion. We in the Order have no fear of you,your courage, or your zeal. On the contrary, we believe you will be ashining light of patriotism, and so we receive you with open arms andsay:--"

  "Welcome! Ten thousand welcomes!" cried the brethren in one unitedvoice.

  "And now," said the Prior, beckoning to two assistants, who came forwardwith the habit, "it only remains for me to garb you as becometh a goodand loyal follower of Bruno Delganni." And in a few moments I foundmyself arrayed like my companions in the uniform of a black friar, andmonstrously comfortable, I own, I found it.

  Then a bell rang, and we all trooped into the refectory to a banquet.The place was certainly liberty hall, for, although I was placed in theseat of honour to the right of the Prior, everybody insisted on talkingto me, and to my intense amazement I found gathered in this Order manyof the most distinguished men I knew in the literary, the artistic, andthe legal life of London.

  Over all reigned a spirit of the uttermost joyousness, and not until themeal was quite over did Jose, the Prior, and I make our way to a studyin a far part of the building and spread out before us those threefateful manuscripts relating to the sacred treasures and the conflictingclaims of England and the Jesuits.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

  THE JESUITS' CIPHER.

  Directly I saw the half-faded parchments I recognised that the cipherwhich those early Jesuit writers had used was a very simple one. This,I may explain to the uninitiated, is not so difficult a matter toobserve as they might perhaps think. Some very simple considerationsguided me to this conclusion. For instance, unlike the cipher in use bythe founder of St Bruno, there were practically no figures in themanuscripts, and by that I gathered the cipher was complete in thealphabet in use, and did not refer to any book, like the institutes ofSt Bruno. The one thing that does puzzle and sometimes confoundexperts is to adopt a book, as Bruno Delganni had done, and then to putin the record simply figures that related to letters in this volume.

  That, however, is not always quite safe. The expert looks in themanuscript for the letter that appears most often, and he decides,perhaps, that that is "e," the second "i," and so on according to theletters that are most frequently used in the language in which hebelieves the document to be written, and by this simple means he canoften construct the entire code alphabet.

  On some such method I too proceeded with the inspection of themanuscripts in question, and found that the letter that appeared themost often therein was a certain letter that was not often used in anylanguage. I, therefore, turned the alphabet round thus:

  ZYXWVUTSRQP

  abcdefghijk

  It was, unfortunately, useless. Later I tried the alphabet inPortuguese form, and I saw with joy that we need not trouble at allabout the rolls of explanation which Camille Velasquon had brought, andwhich were laid on the table beside us, but that I had really hit on theright solution--at the very start--without a glance at those cipher keysthat had come to us from Mexico. The Jesuits had first merely reversedthe order of the letters, and instead of writing "A" when they shouldhave done, they had put "Z" in its place, and so on right through thealphabet, making the language of the base Portuguese, and not Spanish orEnglish, as we had all expected at first.

  The cunning old sons of St Ignatius of Loyola had, however, not lefttheir secret quite so plain as that. They had also added to it, todisguise it the better, a trick which most of us learn when we are boysat school. This consisted in adding to every syllable another rhymingwith it but beginning with "p." Thus to put "Venha Ca" (come here) theywrote "Venpenhapa Capa," or if in English, "comepum herepere," and this,when written to any extent, is really quite bewildering to any studentof manuscripts unaccustomed to it.

  Luckily, I was well up to it, and so there and then I caught hold of thefirst manuscript that came to hand, and although I was as ignorant ofPortuguese as the man in the street I managed in a very few hours towrite out the text of the documents, and this in turn was translated byMr Cooper-Nassington, who had, it seemed, learned the language when ayouth, his father having been consul in Lisbon.

  To our surprise the communication turned out to be a letter from theFather Provincial of the Monastery of St Stanislaus in the city ofMexico, and was addressed to a firm of merchants in the interior, atXingu, a settlement we found m
arked on a map. As it is a very goodspecimen of Jesuit composition and politeness I will give here theEnglish translation of it. Thus:

  "_AMDG_.

  "_Friends and Gentlemen, Loyal Sons of the Church_.

  "_From many years' experience of your methods, and from much pleasantand profitable intercourse with your honourable and honoured house, Iknow that it is always agreeable for you to have an opportunity ofshowing your hospitable and generous feelings towards strangers ingeneral, and more particularly to those who visit our country for thepurpose of making discoveries and of extending the sphere of theirknowledge. I do not hesitate, therefore, to take advantage of theopportunity which the journey of our good Father Thomas Bonaventure andhis three worthy companions presents to recommend them to