"Not at all," the man returned with some asperity. "We are of neither of those sects." But he never explained what their religion was. Just then the doors of the main house opened and we were ushered into a magnificent hall, decorated with dark oak panels, and relieved half-way by a finely-wrought gallery which ran on three sides of this spacious apartment. On the fourth wall was a wrought-iron bracket on which stood an immense statue of a woman carved out of white marble, decorated with rare exotic flowers, and cunningly lit by a series of candles, with reflectors which depressed all the light on features beautiful only with the passionless splendour of a Venus de Milo. Down the centre of the hall was placed a long table, flanked on either side by forms, and headed by a chair or a small throne fashioned like an abbot's. As a matter of fact, I had barely time to take these details in before the brother who had first admitted me turned with a low bow and left me. My new guide who had now ushered me in was much younger--about thirty I guessed--but he also was dressed in the same sombre habit of black as the one who had first received me, save that his hood and girdle were white. No words passed between us, but, in a silence that was almost oppressive in so brilliantly illuminated and furnished a place, he escorted me down a long, richly-carpeted passage, hung with valuable classical pictures of a modern school, to a room at the far end, the door of which stood invitingly open. Here I was left, but as I turned to examine my new surroundings, which suggested the rich, well-furnished library of some bibliophile of a generation ago, I was conscious of somebody stealing up behind me. I turned quickly. It was Casteno, who, this time, was dressed in an ordinary Roman cassock, and carried a biretta. "I'm glad that you have come so quickly," he said in those smooth, even tones, motioning me to a chair on the opposite side to one in which he sat close to the fireplace. "As I wired you, I was at the auction. I saw you had failed." "Then why ever didn't you bid for the manuscripts yourself?" I cried in amazement. "Why did you let them go without a protest?" "I didn't," he answered quietly. "As a matter of fact, I was the man who was got up to personate you, and I stopped the mad rush of bids, for I was satisfied, when I saw beyond all doubt that it was the Hunchback of Westminster into whose hands those precious documents would fall, we should win our way through in the end. At first I feared it would be the other man." "Fotheringay?" I asked. He nodded. "But they are intimate friends. They are acting together, hand and glove." "They may now, but they won't long," he returned significantly, fixing his eyes in a dreamy way upon the fire. Then he roused himself with an effort.