The Hunchback of Westminster By William Le Queux Published by Methuen & Co, 36 Essex Street, London WC. This edition dated 1904. The Hunchback of Westminster, by William Le Queux. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ THE HUNCHBACK OF WESTMINSTER, BY WILLIAM LE QUEUX. PREFACE. A Word Before Reading. For many years I have busied myself making a collection of rare and valuable historical documents, and strange indeed are some of the stories and scandals which these ancient, crinkled parchments whisper to me in my hours of leisure. In France, in Italy, in Russia, in Germany, in Belgium, in all corners of England, this craze of mine has led me, through many adventures, free but captive; and, looking back now, I realise that it has been really through this little-known hobby of mine, the hobby of palaeography, that there have come some of the most suggestive and magical hours I have ever spent in a wandering, erratic life that has never been wholly free from movement, but has often held its time of danger and its resistless, restless passion for change, romance, and adventure. Perhaps, then, it is not really wonderful that this love of mine for the records of the dead-and-gone ages colours my later stories. Yet, in a sense, it would be strangely odd if it did not, for when an author hears so weird and thrilling a narrative of hidden treasure as this I have here striven to recount it would surely be more than human of him to fail to put it into print. This "Hunchback of Westminster" is really no idle fiction spun for the entertainment of an idle hour. In many ways, indeed, it is tragically true--particularly that portion which tells how men only a few months ago in this prosaic London of ours fought for a certain treasure worth several millions of pounds. William Le Queux. CHAPTER ONE. HOW DON JOSE BAITED HIS TRAP. It was in the second year of my practice as a private detective that young Jose Casteno came to my office in Stanton Street, WC, and entrusted me with that strange and terrible mission in regard to which I have really hesitated, in all sincerity, for some days before I could actually nerve myself to take the public into my confidence.