The Hunchback of Westminster by William le Queux

There are, of course, many strange and weird methods used for the initiation of novices into secret societies. As the years have rolled on it has fallen to my lot to belong to a large number of these quaint organisations; and I have been always impressed by one fact about them -- whether they were rowdy and very humanly convivial, or whether they were wholly serious and oppressed by a lot of ill-digested moral earnestness -- they all aimed at one thing in their entrance ceremonies. They strove to impress the new-comer by all the resources they had at their command with the majestic wonder and glory and weight of the brotherhood to which he had been privileged to enter on the payment of the usual entrance fees.

Now sometimes, of course, these resources I have mentioned are purely ridiculous, as witness that noble and ancient Order which directs its initiates, when they are blindfold, to crawl step by step up a flight of stairs, only to fall with a splash from the top into an artfully-arranged tank of lukewarm water at the bottom. Also, there is a body of apparently sane men in existence who have come together in the sacred name of charity and who find the climax of artistic realism in the disguise of themselves in long white beards and cloaks and in a profound darkness, which leaves them free to play practical jokes of the most stupid description on the strangers within their gates.