The Hunchback of Westminster by William le Queux

Suddenly Casteno roused himself and sat upright, and with him went quite irrevocably all opportunity of taking the three fatal manuscripts from him by stealth during that journey up to Paddington. For his hunger was infectious and the meal he had provided excellent, and so it came about that in quite a few moments the pair of us were devouring roast chicken and ham and pledging each other in glasses of quite passable railway-station claret. Indeed, the tedium of the ride vanished like magic, and before we had finished the commonplaces of conversation we found ourselves back again in dear old smoke-begrimed London. That night we slept at Paddington Hotel, for we had had an exciting day, and did not feel inclined for a further journey to Stanton Street. Whence next day Chantry Road, Hampstead, was reached in an incredibly short time, and once again I found myself standing at the tiny door in the wall with its suggestive peep-hole.

Only this time there seemed to be no delay in answering our summons, and we passed with great rapidity from the public street into the courtyard that shut the home of St Bruno'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 great flower-decked statue of a woman, heroic in size but incommunicably fair.