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The Closed Book: Concerning the Secret of the Borgias

by William Le Queux · English · Gutenberg #40828 · 526,270 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Closed Book: Concerning the Secret of the Borgias

Author: William Le Queux


        
Release date: September 22, 2012 [eBook #40828]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CLOSED BOOK: CONCERNING THE SECRET OF THE BORGIAS ***

The Closed Book
Concerning the Secret of the Borgias
By William Le Queux
Published by The Smart Set Publishing Company, 452 Fifth Ave, New York.
This edition dated 1904.

The Closed Book, by William Le Queux.

________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________
THE CLOSED BOOK, BY WILLIAM LE QUEUX.

CHAPTER ONE.

WHICH MAINLY CONCERNS A HUNCHBACK.

These strange facts would never have been placed on record, nor would
this exciting chapter of an eventful life have been written, except for
two reasons: first, because the discovery I made has been declared to be
of considerable importance to scientists, bibliophiles, and the world at
large; and, secondly, because it is my dear wife's wish that in order to
clear her in the eyes of both friends and foes nothing should be
concealed, misrepresented, or withheld.

It was, indeed, a memorable day when I halted before the white, almost
windowless house of the prior of San Sisto and knocked twice at its
plain, green-painted door.  The sun-blanched, time-mellowed city of
Florence lay silent, glaring, and deserted in the blazing noon of a July
day.  The Florentines had fled to the mountains for air.  The
persiennes, or sun-shutters, were everywhere closed, the shops shut, the
people slumbering, and the silence only broken by the heat-song of the
chirping cicale in the scorched trees at the end of the Lung Arno.

Like many another Tuscan town, it stood with long rows of high,
frescoed, and sculptured palaces facing the brown river, its magnificent
Duomo and campanile, its quaint fourteenth-century streets, and its
medieval Ponte Vecchio all forming a grim, imposing relic of long-past
glory.  In many places its aspect was little changed since the old
quattrocento days, when it was the centre of all the arts and the
powerful rival of Venice and Genoa, although its trade has decayed and
its power departed.  The Lion and Lily of Florence upon a flag is no
longer feared, as it once was, even by the bloodthirsty corsairs, and
the rich Florentine brocades, velvets, and finely tempered arms are no
longer in requisition in the markets of the world.

Save for the influx of scrambling tourists, it is one of the dead towns
of Europe.  Modern trade passes it by unnoticed; its very name would be
forgotten were it not for those marvellous works of art in its galleries
and in its very streets.

I had always loved the quaint old city, ever since a boy, when my
father, a retired English naval officer, lived in that ancient house
with the brown frescoes in the via di Pinti in the days before the
shrieking steam trams ran to Prato or the splendid Palazzo Riccardi had
been desecrated by the Government.  At fourteen I left those quaint,
quiet streets, with their cool loggias and silent, moss-grown
courtyards, for the whirl of Paris, and subsequently lived and worked in
London.  Then, after an absence of nearly twenty years, I found myself
living again in my beloved Tuscany by the Mediterranean, at Leghorn,
forty miles distant from the medieval city of my childhood.  Was it,
therefore, surprising that the mood often seized me to go and revisit
the old places I had known as a boy?  I found them all unchanged--
indeed, nothing changes in "Firenza la Bella" save the fortunes of her
ruined nobility and the increase of garish hotels for the accommodation
of the foreigner.

I was something of an antiquary, and through many years had been
collecting medieval manuscripts on vellum, ancient chapters, diplomas,
notarial deeds, and such-like documents, none being of later date than
the fifteenth century.  To decipher the work of the old scribes is, I
admit, a dry-as-dust occupation; nevertheless, it is a work that grows
on one, and the palaeographist is an enthusiast always.  In one's
hobbies one should always join advantage to amusement, and seek to
gather profit with pleasure.

My collection of musty-smelling parchments and rolls of folded vellum
documents, with their formidable seals of wax or lead; of heavy vellum
books bound in oaken boards and brass bosses, or tiny illuminated books
of hours, so minutely written that a microscope was almost necessary to
read them, appeal to very few people.  Most of my friends regarded them
as so many old and undecipherable books and rolls, without interest and
without value.  They wondered that, being continually occupied at my
desk writing novels, I should take up such an essentially dry study.

Yet it was this love of collecting that first brought me into contact
with Francesco Graniani, a queer little old hunchback, who was a kind of
itinerant dealer in antiques.  Unshaven, very shabby, and not
particularly clean, he dressed always in the same faded drab suit, and,
summer or winter, wore the same battered, sun-browned straw hat through
all the years I knew him.

Often this strange, rather tragic figure would meet me in the sun-baked
streets of Leghorn, raise his battered hat respectfully, and, taking me
aside, produce mysteriously from his pocket a parchment charter with its
seal, some leaves from a medieval psalter, or perhaps an illuminated
codex, or a book of hours with painted miniatures.  Where le obtained
such gems I have never to this day discovered.  None knew who the old
fellow was, or where he lived; he was a complete mystery.

One morning while crossing the great square I encountered him, and he
informed me in his strange, mysterious manner of the existence of a very
rare and interesting manuscript in the possession of the prior of the
ancient church of San Sisto, at Florence.

"If the signore goes to Firenze, Father Landini will no doubt allow him
to have sight of the parchment book," he said.  "Tell him that Francesco
Graniani wishes it."

"But what is the character of the manuscript?"

I inquired.

"I know nothing of it," he replied evasively, "except that I believe it
once belonged to the Monastery of the Certosa.  I heard of it only last
night, and thought perhaps it might interest you."

It certainly did.  Any discovery of that kind always attracted me--ever
on the lookout as I was for a single folio of the original Dante.

With the object of inspecting the palaeographic treasure I next day took
train to Florence, and an hour after my arrival knocked in some
trepidation at the prior's green door.

The long grey church, one of the oldest in that ancient city, stood in
its little piazza off the via San Gallao, and adjoining it the prior's
house, a long, low, fourteenth-century building, with high, cross-barred
windows, and a wonderful old-world garden in the rear.

In answer to my summons there appeared a thin, yellow-faced,
sharp-tongued house-woman, and on inquiry for the father I was at once
invited into a big stone hall, cool and dim after the sun-glare outside.

"Body of a thousand anchovies!  Teresa, who has come to worry me now?"
I heard a man demand angrily from a door at the end of a darkened
corridor.  "Didn't I tell you that I was not at home until after mass
tomorrow?  Plague you, Teresa?"

To the wizen-faced woman I stammered some apology, but at the same
moment I saw a huge, almost gigantic figure in a long black cassock and
biretta emerge from the room.

"Oh, signore?" he cried apologetically, the instant he caught sight of
me.  "Do pray excuse me.  I have so many of my poor people here begging
that I'm compelled to be out to them sometimes.  Come in!  Come in?"
Then he added reproachfully, turning to his housekeeper, "Teresa, what
manners you have to leave this gentleman standing in the hall like a
mendicant!  I'm ashamed of you, Teresa!  What must the signore think--
and a foreigner, too!"

In an instant the Very Reverand Bernardo Landini and I were friends.  I
saw that he was thoroughly genuine, a strange admixture of
good-fellowship and piety.  His proportions were Gargantuan.  His
clean-shaven face was perfectly round, fresh, and almost boyish in
complexion, his dark eyes twinkled with merriment, his stomach was huge
and spoke mutely of a healthy appetite, his hand big and hearty in its
shake, and in his speech he aspirated his "e's," which showed him to be
a born Florentine.

After I had explained that my name was Allan Kennedy, and that I was
introduced by the _gobbo_ of Leghorn, he took out his great horn
snuff-box, rapped it loudly, and offered me a pinch.

"Ah!" he remarked.  "The signore is English, yet how well he speaks our
Tuscan?"

I thanked him for his compliment, and went on to explain that I had
passed the years of my youth in Florence, and was at heart almost a
Florentino.

This pleased him mightily, and from the moment I hinted at my
antiquarian tastes he began to chatter as an enthusiast will.

The apartment wherein I sat, darkened by its closed sun-shutters, was
certainly a strange one, small, and so crammed with antiques of every
kind and description that one could scarcely move in it.  Upon the old
Empire writing-table at which he had seated himself stood a small brass
crucifix of exquisite design, while all around hung ancient pictures of
a religious character--saints, pietas, pictures of the Redeemer, and
several great canvases reaching from floor to ceiling, evidently from
church-altars.  The very chairs were of the fifteenth century, heavy,
massive, and covered with stamped leather; the tables were of the
Renaissance; and the perfect chaos of valuable objects of art stored
there was to me, a collector absolutely bewildering.

And amid it all, seated at his table, was the ponderous, beaming cleric,
mopping his brow with his big red handkerchief from time to time, and
leaning back in his chair to laugh and talk with me.

Yet when I mentioned that I had been sent by the mysterious old
hunchback of Leghorn his face instantly grew serious, and with a low
sigh he said: "Ah, poor Francesco! poor fellow?"

"You know him well, _signor priore_," I said.  "Tell me about him.  I'm
very anxious to know who and what he really is.  To me he has always
been a mystery."

But the stout prior shook his head, replying in a rather hard voice:
"No, signore.  I regret that my lips are closed."

His response was a strange one, and led me at once to suspect that my
new friend was a party to some grave secret.  Therefore, seeing that his
manner was firm, I dropped the subject, although more than ever
interested in the queer, deformed old fellow who had so long mystified
me.

My friend the priest took me around his wonderful collection, and showed
me a veritable confusion of valuable antiques: a Madonna by Andrea del
Sarto, a Holy Family by Tintoretto, a tiny but exquisite specimen of
that lost art of della Robbia, and a quantity of old tapestries,
medieval ironwork, and old, carved furniture.

In a room beyond was stored a splendid collection of Florentine armour:
helmets, breastplates, gauntlets, and lances, with a heap of ancient
swords, rapiers, and poniards.  I took up several to examine them, and
found that they were without exception splendid specimens of the Spanish
armourer's work, mostly bearing upon the finely tempered blades the
well-known marks of Blanco, Martinez, Ruiz, Tomas, and Pedro de Lezama.

Some of the work was wonderfully inlaid with brass and copper; and the
collection appeared to be a representative one, ranging from the rusty
crosshilts of the Etruscas down to the thin Spanish rapiers of the
seventeenth century.

A third room, still beyond, was the priest's bedchamber, and even this
was so packed with curios and bric-a-brac that there was scarcely room
to enter.

Above the narrow little bed was an antique bronze crucifix, mounted upon
a carved wooden background covered with old purple brocade, while the
whitewashed walls were almost hidden by the profusion of religious
pictures.  The red-brick floor was carpetless, as were all the other
apartments; but the furniture was all old, and upon the chairs were
heaped quantities of silks and velvets from the Genoese looms of the
seventeenth century--truly an amazing profusion of relics of Italy's
past glory.

The prior smiled at my exclamations of surprise as I enthusiastically
examined object after object with keen and critical eye.  Then, when I
remarked upon the value of the objects of art with which his
unpretentious house was filled, he answered:

"I am delighted that you, signore, should feel so much interest in my
few things.  Like yourself, I am an enthusiast, and perhaps by my
calling I am afforded unusual facilities for collecting.  Here, in my
poverty-stricken parish, are quantities of antiques stored in the
cottages as well as in the palaces, and the _contadini_ from all the
countryside, even beyond Pistoja, prefer to bring me their treasures in
secret rather than to offer them openly to the pawnbroker."

"But Graniani told me that you have discovered a manuscript of
remarkable character.  I possess a small collection; therefore may I be
permitted to examine it?"  I asked, carefully approaching the subject.

"Most certainly," he replied, after a moment's hesitation, it seemed.
"It is in the safe in my study.  Let us return there."  And I followed
his ponderous form back to the small apartment wherein stood his
writing-table with the crucifix and heavily bound Bible and missal upon
it.

But as I walked behind him, unable to see his face, I was surprised at
the tone of the remark he made as though speaking to himself:

"So Francesco told you of the book, did he?  Ah!"

He spoke as though in suppressed anger that the queer old hunchback had
betrayed his confidence.

CHAPTER TWO.

THE PRIEST AND THE BOOK.

The prior mopped his round face again with his red handkerchief, and
taking a key from his pocket fumbled at the lock of the small and
old-fashioned safe, after some moments producing the precious manuscript
for my inspection.

It proved to be a thick folio, bound in its original oaken boards
covered with purple leather that had faded and in parts disappeared.
For further protection there were added great bosses of tarnished brass,
usual in fifteenth-century bindings, but the wood itself was fast
decaying; the binding presented a sadly tattered and worn appearance,
and the heavy volume seemed held together mainly by its great brass
clasp.

He placed it before me on the table, and with eager fingers I undid the
clasp and opened it.  As soon as my eyes fell upon the leaves of
parchment I recognised it to be a very rare and remarkable
fourteenth-century manuscript, and a desire at once seized me to possess
it.

Written by the monk Arnoldus of Siena, it was beautifully executed in
even Gothic characters, with red and blue initials, and ornamented with
a number of curious designs in gold and colours representing the seven
deadly sins.  Upon the first page was a long, square initial in gold;
and although written with the contractions common at the time, I managed
to make out the first few lines in Latin as follows:

"Arnoldus Cenni de Senis, professus in monasterio Viridis vallis canon
regul.  S.  Augustini in Zonie silva Camerac. dioec.  Liber Gnotosolitos
de septem peccatis mortalibus, de decem praeceptis, de duodecim
consiliis evangelicis, de quinque sensibus, de simbolo fidei, de septem
sacramentis, de octo beatitudinibus, de septem donis spiritus sancti, de
quatuor peccatis ad Deum clamantibus," etc.

Across the top of the first page, written in a cursive hand in brown ink
of a somewhat later date, was the inscription:

"Liber canonicor. regul. monasterii S.  Maynulfi in Bodeke prope
Paderborn.  Qui rapit hunc librum rapiant sua viscera corvi."

The introduction showed that the splendid manuscript had been written by
the old Sienese monk himself in the Abbey of Saint Paul at Groenendale.
The date was fixed by the "Explicit": "Iste liber est mei Fris Arnoldi
Cenni de Senis Frum ordis B'te Marie carmelo.  Ouem ppria manu scripsi i
anno dni MoCCCoXXXIX. die.  XXVIII.  Maij.  Finito libro Reseram' gra
Xo."

I really don't know why I became so intensely interested in the volume,
for the ornamentations were evidently by a Flemish illuminator, and I
had come across many of a far more meritorious character in the work of
the Norman scribes.

Perhaps it was owing to the quaintness of the design; perhaps because of
the rareness of the work; but more probably because at the end of the
book had been left fifty or so blank leaves, as was often the case in
manuscripts of that period, and upon them, in a strange and difficult
cursive hand, was inscribed a long record which aroused my curiosity.

As every collector of manuscripts knows, one sometimes finds curious
entries upon the blank pages of vellum books.  In the days before the
art of printing was discovered, when the use of paper was not general,
and when vellum and parchment were costly, every inch of the latter was
utilise and a record meant to be permanent was usually written in the
front or back of some precious volume.  Therefore, the sight of this
hundred pages or so of strange-looking writing in faded brown ink,
penned with its many downward flourishes, uneven and difficult as
compared with the remarkable regularity of the old monk's treatise upon
the Seven Sins, awakened within me an eagerness to decipher it.

Horaes, psalters, offices of the Virgin, and codexes of Saints
Augustine, Bernard, Ambrose, and the others are to be found in every
private collection; therefore it was always my object to acquire
manuscript works that were original.  The volume itself was certainly a
treasure, and its interest was increased tenfold by those pages of
close, half-faded handwriting, written probably a century later, and
evidently in indifferent ink to that used by the old monk.

"Well, signore," inquired the prior after I had been bending over the
ancient volume for some minutes in silence, "what is your opinion?  You
are of course an expert.  I am not.  I know nothing about manuscripts."

His frankness was pleasing.  He did not seek to expound its merits or to
criticise without being able to substantiate his statements.

"A most interesting codex," I declared, just as openly.  "I don't
remember ever having met with Arnoldus before; and, as far as I can
recollect, Quain does not mention him.  How did it come into your
possession?"

Landini was silent.  His huge, round face, so different from the
pinched, grey countenances of most priests, assumed a mysterious look,
and his lips pursed themselves up in an instant.  I noticed his
hesitation, and, recollecting that he had told me how many people in the
neighbourhood came to him in secret and sold him their most treasured
possessions, saw that my question was not an exactly fair one.  Instead
of replying, he merely remarked that if I desired to acquire the volume
he was open to an offer.  Then he added:

"I think, my dear signore, that when we become better acquainted we
shall like each other.  Therefore I may as well tell you at once that,
in addition to the holy office which I hold, I deal in antiques.
Probably you will condemn me, just as half Florence has already done.
But surely it is no disgrace to the habit I wear?  From the sacriligious
Government I receive the magnificent stipend of one thousand lire [forty
pounds] annually;" and he laughed a trifle bitterly.  "Can a man live on
that?  I have both father and mother still living, dear old souls!
Babbo is eighty-one, and my mother seventy-eight; they live out at the
five ways in the Val d'Ema, in the old farmhouse where I was born.  With
the profits I make on dealing in antiques I manage by great economy to
keep them and myself, and have just a trifle to give to the deserving
poor in my parish.  Do _you_ blame me, signore?"

How could I?  His charming openness, so like the Tuscan priest, and yet
so unlike the Tuscan tradesman, gave me an insight into his true
character.  The extreme simplicity of his carpetless, comfortless house,
the frayed shabbiness of his cassock, and the cracked condition of his
huge buckled shoes all spoke mutely for a struggle for life.  Yet, on
the other hand, his face was that of a supremely contented man.  His
collection was such that if sold at Christie's it would fetch many
thousands of pounds; yet, an antiquary himself, he clung, it seemed, to
a greater portion of it, and would not part with many of his treasures.

I told him that I had admiration rather than reproach at his turning
dealer, when he frankly explained that his method of selling was not to
regard the marketable value of an object, but to obtain a small profit
upon the sum he gave for it.

"I find that this method works best," he said, "for by it I am able to
render a service to those in straitened circumstances, and at the same
time gain sufficient for the wants of my family.  Of the real value of
many things I am utterly ignorant.  This manuscript, for instance, I
purchased for a hundred francs.  If you give me a hundred and
twenty-five, and you think it is worth it, I shall be quite contented.
Does the price suit you?"

Suit me!  My heart leaped to my mouth.  If he had suggested fifty pounds
instead of five I should have been prepared to consider it.  Either
Quaritch in London, Rosenthal in Munich, or Olschki in Florence would, I
felt certain, be eager to give at the least a hundred pounds for it.
Such manuscripts were not offered for sale every day.

"The price is not at all high," I answered.  "Indeed, it is lower than I
expected you would ask; therefore the book is mine."  And taking my
wallet from my pocket, I counted out and handed to him a dozen or so of
those small, well-thumbed notes that constitute the paper currency of
Italy, for which he scribbled a receipt upon a scrap of waste-paper
which he picked up from the floor--a fact which showed him to be as
unconventional as he was frank and honest in his dealing.

Dealers in any branch of antiques, whether in pictures, china,
furniture, or manuscripts, are--except well-known firms--for the most
part sharks of the worst _genus_; hence it was pleasant to make a
purchase with such charming openness of purpose.

When he handed me the receipt, however, I thought I detected a strange,
mysterious look upon his big, beaming countenance as he said, "I thank
you, my dear Signor Kennedy, for your patronage, and I hope that you
will never regret your purchase--never."

He seemed to emphasise the words in a tone unusual to him.  It flashed
across my mind that the manuscript might, after all, be a clever German
forgery, as a good many are, and that its genuineness had already been
doubted.  Yet if it were, I felt certain that such a man would never
disgrace his office by knowingly deceiving me.

Still, the mystery of his manner puzzled me, and I am fain to confess
that my confidence in him became somewhat shaken.

His refusal to tell me anything of the ugly old hunchback whose orders
he had obeyed in showing me the book, and his disinclination to tell me
whence he had procured it, were both curious circumstances which
occupied my mind.  It also occurred to me as most probable that Graniani
was merely an agent of the clerical antique-dealer, which accounted for
his pockets being ever filled with precious manuscripts, bits of
valuable china, miniatures, an such-like odds and ends.

Nevertheless, if the "Book of Arnoldus" were actually genuine I had
secured a gem at a ridiculously low price.  I did not for one moment
doubt its authenticity; hence a feeling of intense satisfaction overcame
everything.

He showed me several other manuscripts, including a fifteenth-century
Petrarca _De Vita Solitaria_, an illuminated Horae of about the same
date, and an _Evangelia quatuor_ of a century earlier; but none of them
attracted me so much as the heavy volume I had purchased.

Then, at my request, he took me along the dark corridor and through a
side-door into the fine old church, where the light was dim and in
keeping with the ancient, time-mellowed Raphaels and the dull gilding of
ceiling and altar.  The air was heavy with incense, and the only sound
beyond the echo of our footsteps was the impudent chirp of a stray bird
which had come in for shelter from the scorching sun.  It was an ancient
place, erected in 1089 by the Florentines to commemorate their victories
on August sixth, the day of San Sisto.

For more than twenty years I had not entered there.  I recollect going
there in my youth, because I was enamoured of a dark-eyed little
milliner from the via Dante who attended mass regularly.  The past arose
before me, and I smiled at that forgotten love of my ardent youth.  The
prior pointed out to me objects of interest not mentioned in the red
guide-books, they being known to him alone.  He showed me the splendid
sculptured tombs of the noble houses of Cioni and of Gherardesca,
whereon lay the armoured knights in stone; the Madonna of Fra
Bartolommeo; the curious frescoes in the sacristy, and other objects
which to both of us were interesting; then, taking me back through his
house, we passed out into the tangled, old-world garden--a weedy,
neglected place, with orange and fig trees, broken moss-grown statuary,
and a long, cool loggia covered with laden vines.

Together we sat upon a bench in the welcome shadow, and at our feet the
lizards darted across those white flagstones hollowed by the tread of
generations.  Father Bernardo took the long Tuscan cigar which I offered
him; and, on his calling old Teresa to bring a candle, we both lit up,
for the ignition of a "Virginia" in Italy is, as you know, an art in
itself.  He confided to me that he loved to smoke--the only indulgence
he allowed himself--and then, as we lolled back, overcome by the heat
and burden of the day, we discussed antiques, and he told me some
strange stories of the treasures that had on various occasions passed
through his hands to the national galleries or the wealthy American
visitors.

A dozen times I tried to obtain from him the history of the fine old
parchment codex I had just bought, but without avail.  He made it a
rule, he told me frankly, never to divulge from whom he obtained the
objects he had to sell, and had he _not_ been a cleric I should really
have suspected him of being a receiver of stolen property.

Old Teresa, in blue apron and shuffling over the stones, returned to her
master presently, informing him that someone was waiting for confession;
therefore my friend, excusing himself, flung away his cigar, crossed
himself, and hurried back to his sacred duty.  He was a strange man, it
was true; charming, yet at moments austere, reserved, and mysterious.

Alone, still smoking, I sat where he had left me.  Opposite, the
overgrown garden with its wealth of fruit and flowers was bounded by the
ancient stucco wall of the church, around which, in a line above the
windows, ran a row of beautiful della Robbia medallions hidden from the
world.

When I had remarked upon their beauty to Landini he had sighed, saying:

"Ah, signore, if I only might sell them and pay for the restoration of
my church!  Each one is worth at least a thousand pounds sterling, for
they are even finer specimens than those upon the Foundling Hospital.
The Louvre Museum in Paris offered me a year ago twenty thousand francs
for the one to the right over there in the corner."  Yes; the old place
breathed an air of a bygone age--the age of the Renaissance in Italy--
and I sat there musing as I smoked, trying to fathom the character of
the ponderous, heavy-breathing man who had that moment entered the
confessional, and wondering what could be his connection with Francesco
Graniani.

Across, straight before me, was a small, square, latticed window of old
green glass, near which, I knew, stood the confessional-box; and
suddenly--I know not why--my eye caught it, and what I noticed there
riveted my attention.

Something showed white for a single instant behind the glass, then
disappeared.  But not, however, before I recognised that some person was
keeping secret watch upon my movements, and, further, that it was none
other than the forbidding-looking little hunchback of Leghorn.

In Italy one's suspicion is easily aroused, and certainly mine was by
that inexplicable incident.  I determined then and there to trust
neither Graniani nor his clerical friend.  Therefore, with a feeling of
anger at such impudent espionage, I rose, re-entered the prior's house,
and walked up the dark passage to the study, intending to obtain the
precious volume for which I had paid, and to wish my host a hurried
adieu.

On entering the darkened study, however, I discovered, somewhat to my
surprise, a neat-waisted, well-dressed lady in black standing there,
evidently waiting, and idling the time by glancing over the vellum pages
of my newly acquired treasure.

I drew back, begging her pardon for unceremonious intrusion, but she
merely bowed in acknowledgment.  Her manner seemed agitated and nervous,
and she wore a veil, so that in the half-light I could not well
distinguish her features.

She was entirely in black, even to her gloves, and was evidently the
person to whom Father Bernardo had been called, and after confession had
passed through the little side-door of the church in order to consult
him upon some matter of extreme importance, the nature of which I could
not possibly divine.  In all this I scented mystery.

CHAPTER THREE.

IN WHICH THE PRIOR IS MYSTERIOUS.

The prior entered his study behind me with a hurried word of excuse,
expressing regret that he had been compelled to leave me alone, and
promising to join me in a few moments.

Therefore I turned, and, retracing my steps along the stone corridor
wherein antique carved furniture was piled, went back again into the
garden, glancing up at the window whereat I had detected the hunchback's
face.

Landini had closed his study door after I had gone, thus showing that
his consultation with his visitor was of a confidential nature.  I
regretted that I had not passed through into the church and faced
Graniani, for I could not now go back and pass the closed door,
especially as the keen eyes of the reverend's house-woman were upon me.
So, impatiently I waited for the stout priest to rejoin me, which he did
a few moments later, carrying my precious acquisition in his hand.

Perhaps you are a collector of coins or curios, monastic seals or
manuscripts, birds' eggs, or butterflies?  If you are, you know quite
well the supreme satisfaction it gives you to secure a unique specimen
at a moderate and advantageous price.  Therefore, you may well
understand the tenderness with which I took my treasured Arnoldus from
him, and how carefully I wrapped it in a piece of brown paper which
Teresa brought to her master.  The priest's house-woman, shrewd,
inquisitive, and a gossip, is an interesting character the world over;
and old Teresa, with the wizened face and brown, wrinkled neck, was no
exception.  She possessed a wonderful genius for making a _minestra_, or
vegetable soup, Father Bernardo had already told me, and he had promised
that I should taste her culinary triumph some day.

Nevertheless, although the prior was politeness itself, pleasant yet
pious, laconic yet light-hearted, I entertained a distrust of him.

I referred to my intrusion in his study while he had a visitor, but he
only laughed, saying:

"It was nothing, my dear signore--nothing, I assure you.  Pray don't
apologise.  My business with the lady, although serious, was brief.  It
is I who should apologise."

"No," I said; "I've been enjoying your garden.  Enclosed here by the
church and by your house, right in the very centre of Florence, it is so
quiet and old-world, so full of antiquity, that I have much enjoyed
lingering here."

"Yes," he answered reflectively; "back in the turbulent days of the
Medici that remarkable figure in Italian history, Fra Savonarola, owned
this garden and sat beneath this very loggia, on this very bench,
thinking out those wonderful discourses and prophecies which electrified
all Florence.  Nothing changes here.  The place is just the same today,
those white walls on the four sides, only the statuary perhaps is in
worse condition than it was in 1498 when he concluded his remarkable
career by defying the commands of the Pope as well as the injunctions of
the signoria, and was hanged and burned amid riot and bloodshed.  Ah,
this garden of mine has seen many vicissitudes, signore, and yonder in
my church the divine Dante himself invoked the blessing of the Almighty
upon his efforts to effect peace with the Pisans."

"Your house is a truly fitting receptacle for your splendid collection,"
I said, impressed by his words and yet wondering at his manner.

"Do you know," he exclaimed a moment later, as though a thought had
suddenly occurred to him, "I cannot help fearing that you may have acted
imprudently in purchasing this manuscript.  If you wish, I am quite
ready to return you your money.  Really, I think it would be better if
you did so, signore."

"But I assure you I have no wish to return it to you," I declared,
astonished at his words.  If he believed he had made a bad bargain, I at
least had his receipt for the amount and the book in my hand.

"But it would be better," he urged.  "Better for you--and for me, for
the matter of that.  Here are the notes you gave me;" and taking them
from his pocket he held them towards me.

I failed utterly to comprehend his intention or his motive.  I had made
a good bargain, and why should I relinquish it?  Place yourself in my
position for a moment, and think what you would have done.

"Well, _signor reverendo_," I exclaimed, "I paid the price you asked,
and I really cannot see why you should attempt to cry off the deal."
Truth to tell, I was a trifle annoyed.

"You have paid the price," he repeated in a strange voice, looking at me
seriously.  "Yes; that is true.  You have paid the price in the currency
of my country; but there is yet a price to pay."

"What do you mean?"  I asked quickly, looking him squarely in the face.

"I mean that it would be best for us both if you gave me back my receipt
and took back your money."

"Why?"

"I cannot be more explicit," he replied.  "I am a man of honour," he
added, "and you may trust me."

"But I am desirous of adding the codex to my collection," I argued,
mystified by his sudden desire to withdraw from his word.  "I asked you
your price, and have paid it."

"I admit that.  The affair has been but a matter of business between two
gentlemen," he replied, with just a touch of hauteur.  "Nevertheless, I
am anxious that you should not be possessor of that manuscript."

"But why?  I am a collector.  When you come to Leghorn I hope you will
call and look through my treasures."

"Treasures?" he echoed.  "That is no treasure--it is a curse, rather."

"A curse!  How can a splendid old book be a curse in the hands of a
palaeographical enthusiast like myself?"

"I am a man of my word," he said in a low, distinct tone.  "I tell you,
my dear signore, that your enthusiasm has led you away.  You should not
have purchased your so-called treasure.  It was ill-advised; therefore I
urge you to take back the sum you have paid."

"And on my part I object to do so," I said a little warmly.

He shrugged his broad shoulders, and a pained look crossed his big
features.

"Will you not listen to me--for your own good?" he urged earnestly.

"I do not think that sentiment need enter into it," I replied.  "I have
purchased the book, and intend to retain it in my possession."

"Very well," he sighed.  "I have warned you.  One day, perhaps, you will
know that at least Bernardo Landini acted as your friend."

"But I cannot understand why you wish me to give you back the book," I
argued.  "You must have some motive?"

"Certainly I have," was his frank response.  "I do not wish you to be
its possessor."

"You admit that the volume is precious, therefore of value.  Yet you
wish to withdraw from a bad bargain!"

His lips pursed themselves for a moment, and a look of mingled regret
and annoyance crossed his huge face.

"I admit the first, but deny the second.  The bargain is a good one for
me, but a bad one for you."

"Very well," I replied with self-satisfaction.  "I will abide by it."

"You refuse to hear reason?"

"I refuse, with all due deference to you, _signor reverendo_, to return
you the book I have bought."

"Then I can only regret," he said in a voice of profound commiseration.
"You misconstrue my motive, but how can I blame you?  I probably should,
if I were in ignorance, as you are."

"Then you should enlighten me."

"Ah?" he sighed again.  "I only wish it were admissible.  But I cannot.
If you refuse to forego your bargain, I can do nothing.  When you
entered here I treated you as a stranger; and now, although you do not
see it, I am treating you as a friend."

I smiled.  Used as I was to the subtleness of the trading Tuscan, I was
suspicious that he regretted having sold the book to me at such a low
price, and was trying to obtain more without asking for it point-blank.

"Well, _signor priore_," I said bluntly a moment later, "suppose I gave
you an extra hundred francs for it, would that make any difference to
your desire to retain possession of it?"

"None whatever," he responded.  "If you gave me ten thousand more I
would not willingly allow you to have it in your possession."

His reply was certainly a strange one, and caused me a few moments'
reflection.

"But why did you sell it if you wish to retain it?"  I asked.

"Because at the time you were not my friend," he replied evasively.
"You are now--I know you, and for that reason I give you warning.  If
you take the book from this house, recollect it is at your risk, and you
will assuredly regret having done so."

I shook my head, smiling, unconvinced by his argument and suspicious of
his manner.  Somehow I had grown to dislike the man.  If he were
actually my friend, as he assured me, he would certainly not seek to do
me out of a bargain.  So I laughed at his misgivings, saying:

"Have no fear, _signor reverendo_.  I shall treasure the old codex in a
glass case, as I do the other rare manuscripts in my collection.  I have
a number of biblical manuscripts quite as valuable, and I take care of
them, I assure you."

My eye caught the ancient window where I had seen the white, unshaven
face of the old hunchback, and recollecting that there must be some
mysterious connection between the two men, I tucked my precious parcel
under my arm and rose to depart.

The prior knit his dark brows and crossed himself in silence.

"Then the signore refuses to heed me?" he asked in a tone of deep
disappointment.

"I do," I answered quite decisively.  "I have to catch my train back to
Leghorn; therefore I will wish you _addio_."

"As you wish, as you wish," sighed the ponderous priest.  Then placing
his big hand upon my shoulder in a paternal manner, he added, "I know
full well how strange my request must appear to you, my dear signore,
but some day perhaps you will learn the reason.  Recollect, however,
that, whatever may occur, Bernardo Landini is a friend to whom you may
come for counsel and advice.  _Addio_, and may He protect you, guard you
from misfortune, and prosper you.  _Addio_."

I thanked him, and took the big, fat hand he offered.

Then, in silence, I looked into his good-humoured face and saw there a
strange, indescribable expression of mingled dread and sympathy.  But we
parted; and, with old Teresa shuffling before me, I passed through the
house and out into the white sun glare of the open piazza, bearing with
me the precious burden that was destined to have such a curious and
remarkable influence upon my being and my life.

CHAPTER FOUR.

BY THE TIDELESS SEA.

When a man secures a bargain, be it in his commerce or in his hobbies,
he always endeavours to secure a second opinion.  As I hurried across to
hug the shadow of the Palazzo Pandolfini I glanced at my watch, and
found that I had still an hour and a half before the _treno lumaca_, or
snail-train, as the Florentines, with sarcastic humour, term it, would
start down the Arno valley for Leghorn.  Therefore I decided to carry my
prize to Signor Leo Olschki, who, as you know, is one of the most
renowned dealers in ancient manuscripts in the world, and whose shop is
situated on the Lung Amo Acciajoli, close to the Ponte Vecchio.  Many
treasures of our British Museum have passed through his hands, and among
bibliophiles his name is a household word.

Fortunately I found him in: a short, fair-bearded, and exceedingly
courteous man, who himself is a lover of books although a dealer in
them.  Behind those glass cases in his shop were some magnificent
illuminated manuscripts waiting to be bought by some millionaire
collector or national museum, and all around from floor to ceiling were
shelves full of the rarest books extant, some of the _incunabula_ being
the only known copies existing.

I had made many purchases of him; therefore he took me into the room at
the rear of the shop, and I displayed my bargain before his expert eyes.

In a moment he pronounced it a genuine Arnoldus, a manuscript of
exceeding rarity, and unique on account of several technical reasons
with which it is useless to trouble those who read this curious record.

"Well, now, Signor Olschki, what would you consider approximately its
worth?"

The great bibliophile stroked his beard slowly, at the same time turning
over the evenly-written parchment folios.

"I suppose," he answered, after a little hesitation, "that you don't
wish to sell it?"

"No.  I tell you frankly that I've brought it here to show you and ask
your opinion as to its genuineness."

"Genuine it is no doubt--a magnificent codex.  If I had it here to sell
I would not part with it under twenty-five thousand francs--a thousand
pounds."

"A thousand pounds?"  I echoed, for the price was far above what I had
believed the manuscript to be worth.

"Rosenthal had one in his catalogue two years ago priced at sixteen
thousand francs.  I saw it when I was in Munich, and it was not nearly
so good or well preserved as yours.  Besides--this writing at the end:
have you any idea what it is about?"

"Some family record," I answered.  "The usual rambling statements
regarding personal possessions, I expect."

"Of course," he answered.  "In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
they habitually disfigured their books in this way, as you know.  It was
a great pity."

Having obtained the information I desired, I repacked my treasured tome
while he brought out several precious volumes for my inspection,
including a magnificent French _Psalteriolum seu preces pia cum
calendario_, with miniatures of the thirteenth century, which he had
catalogued at four hundred and fifty pounds; and an Italian _Psalterium
ad usum ord.  S.  Benedicti_, of two hundred leaves, written at Padua in
1428, that he had just sold to the National Museum at Berlin for fifteen
thousand marks.  In addition to being an expert and dealer, he was a
true lover of books and manuscripts; and, knowing that my pocket would
not allow me to indulge in such treasures, he would often exhibit to me
his best volumes and gossip about them as every bibliophile will gossip,
handling them tenderly the while.

I caught my train and returned to the white villa facing the sea,
outside Leghorn, which was my bachelor home, entirely satisfied with my
visit to the Tuscan capital.

Three miles beyond the noisy seaport, close down where the clear waters
of the Mediterranean lazily lapped the shingly beach at the little
watering-place of Antignano, stood the square, sun-blanched house, with
its wide balcony, and its green sun-shutters now open to the soft breeze
that came across the water with the brilliant sundown.  The faithful
Nello, my old Tuscan man-servant, who was cook, housekeeper, and valet
all in one, had been watching for my arrival; and as I rang at the big
iron gate before my garden the old fellow came hurrying to admit me,
with his pleasant bow and words of welcome on his lips:

"_Ben tornato, signore; ben tornato_."

I thanked him, carried my precious parcel to the study upstairs, and
then, descending again, ate hurriedly the dinner he placed before me,
anxious to examine my purchase.

My old servitor moved noiselessly in and out as I ate, fidgeting as
though he wished to speak with me.  But I was looking through my
letters, and took but little notice of him.  Italian servants are always
a nuisance, being too loquacious and too ready to offer opinions or
advice.  I had suffered for years from a succession of unsatisfactory
men, until my friend Fra Antonio of the Capuchin monastery brought old
Nello to me.  He had little in exterior appearance to recommend him, for
his countenance was that of a Mephistopheles, and his attire neglected
and shabby.  He was an old soldier who had served Italy well in the days
of Garibaldi, and had for years been engaged as steward on board one of
the Prince line of steamers between Naples and New York.

Fra Antonio knew him well; therefore I took him on trial, and very
quickly discovered that even though he had a wife and family living high
up in one of the odorous back streets of Leghorn, to whom some of my
provisions secretly found their way, he was a treasure of a servant.

Although old in years, he was not decrepit.  His physical strength often
amazed me, and after three years of service his devotion to me was often
remarked by my friends.  His only vice was smoking; and as he consumed
the very rankest of tobacco, which clung about the house for days
afterwards, I had set apart an arbour in the garden beneath the vines
where he might poison the air whenever he wished.

Having dined, I ascended the wide marble staircase to my study, a big,
high room, with frescoed ceiling, that looked out across the open sea.
Houses are large and cheap in Italy--mine was far too large for a lonely
man like myself.  There were half a dozen rooms into which I never
entered, and I opened my drawing-room only when I had visitors, for I
have a man's dislike for silk-covered furniture, mirrors, and standard
lamps.

The long windows of my study were open, and the place was at that moment
filled with the crimson afterglow.  I stood upon the balcony and
breathed the pure air from the sea, delightfully refreshing after the
stifling heat of the day.  Across, in the far distance, the islands of
Corsica, Capraja, and Gorgona loomed purple against the blood-red
sunset, while up from the beach the evening stillness was broken by a
young fisherman playing his mandolin and singing in a fine musical voice
the old love-song with that chorus which every one in Italy knows so
well:

  "Amarti soltanto
  Non basta al mio cor:
  Io voglio parlarti,
  Parlarti d'amor!"

Love!  Ah! those words he sang brought back to me, an exile, all the
bitterness of the past--all the bitterness of my own love.  A lump arose
in my throat when I recollected the might-have-been; but I crushed it
down just as I had done a hundred times before, and re-entered the room,
closing the windows to shut out the words of the song, and, sighing,
seated myself at my writing-table to occupy myself with the book I had
bought from the fat prior of San Sisto.

Old Nello--whose correct name was Lionello, although, as usual in
Tuscany, everyone had called him Nello ever since his birth, sixty years
ago--brought in my coffee and liqueur, setting it down at my elbow, and
afterwards crossed to reopen the window.

"I closed it, Nello," I snapped.  "Don't open it.  There's too much
confounded music outside."

"_Bene, signore_," he answered.  "I forgot to say that the _signor
console_ called at four o'clock."

"And what did the consul want?"  I inquired.

"He wishes to see you tomorrow to luncheon," was the old fellow's
response.  "And, oh!  I forgot--another man called to see the signore
only a quarter of an hour before his return--the _gobbo_; Graniani."

"Graniani!"  I echoed.  "And what did he want, pray?"

"To sell you some more old rubbish, I suppose," was Nello's blunt reply,
for he always looked upon my purchase of antiques as a terrible waste of
good money.  "He said he would return later."

I was very surprised at this.  He had probably returned to Leghorn by an
earlier train from Florence; but why he wished to see me after secretly
spying upon my movements I was at a loss to know.  One must, however, be
clever to comprehend the ingenuity of the Italian, with all his
diplomatic smiles and ingenious subtleties.

"If he comes I will see him," I responded; adding, "Do you know, Nello,
I don't like that man."

"Ah, signore!" answered the old fellow, "you should never trust a
hunchback."

"But when I asked you about him you knew nothing to his detriment.  I
look to you to make inquiries about such people."

"At the time I was in ignorance, signore," he said apologetically; "but
I have learned several things since."

"Things that are not very creditable, eh?"  I asked, regarding his
weird, almost grotesque figure in ill-fitting black coat and crumpled
shirt-front.

He hesitated as though unwilling to tell me the whole truth.  He was
always reserved regarding any person of bad character, and, generally
speaking, a Tuscan never cares to denounce his compatriots to a
foreigner.

"If I were you, signore," he said, "I'd have nothing to do with any
_gobbo_."

"But I've bought several good manuscripts from him," I argued.

"The signore must please himself," he remarked.  "I have warned him."

I really did not desire any warning, for the mysterious appearance of
the old hunchback's face at the church window was sufficient to cause me
grave suspicion.  But Nello for three years past had exercised a kind of
paternal care over me, seeming to regard with wonder that I could
scribble piles upon piles of paper and get paid for it.  It was really
wonderful how I wrote roman, he often declared.  He read two of them
translated into Italian and published serially in the _Tribuna_, and
kept the copies neatly tied in bundles, which he proudly showed to his
friends as the work of his _padrone_.

"Well, had I better see the _gobbo_?"  I asked.

"No, signore, I would not," was his prompt advice.  "He has no business
to come here.  His place is in the piazza, and it is impudence to call
upon a gentleman."

"Then tell him I'm engaged.  I'll want nothing more tonight.  Don't
disturb me."

"_Benissimo, signore; buona notte_."  And old Nello went softly out well
satisfied, leaving me to my coffee and my old manuscript.

I had not asked Nello to give his reason, because I knew that he would
refuse to be drawn.  He was a clever old fellow, and would, in argument,
get the better of me.

So, the music having ceased, I reopened the window, and in the fading
light settled myself to a pleasant hour with my latest acquisition.

Further acquaintance with the splendid volume was not disappointing.  It
was certainly a treasure; and having glanced casually at the coloured
miniatures and gilt initials, I turned to the first page of the record
written upon the blank pages at the end.

The cursive writing with its long flourishing was extremely difficult to
decipher, and the ink much inferior to that used by the old monk
Arnoldus, for it was faded and brown, having evidently been penned by
one who had no acquaintance with the Gothic or book-hand.  The writing
was undoubtedly that of the early sixteenth century.

The first line I was able to make out read as follows:

_Qui scripsit scripta manus eius sit benedicta_, while, as far as I
could decipher it, the record ended in the following manner:

  _Qui me scribebat Godefridus nomen habebat
  Godefridus Lupellus
  de Croylandia
  me scripsit anno
  domini 1542 in no
  no die mensis
  Janua rij_.

This final page was so ill-written and half-obliterated by a great
yellow damp-stain that I had not before noticed it.  But by it my
curiosity became further aroused, for, translated into modern English,
it showed that the addition had been made to the book by one Godfrey
Lupellus or Lovel, of Crowland, in Lincolnshire, probably one of the
monks of that once celebrated Benedictine abbey which is now but a
magnificent pile of ruins familiar to many by photographs.

The discovery that it had been penned by a person living in England
caused me to set to work at once to learn what was written there, so I
took a sheet of plain paper, and, assisted by that valuable little work
of reference, the "Dictionary of Abbreviations," commenced to
disentangle slowly the calligraphical riddle before me.

The task was extremely difficult; and, whether from the heat of the
evening or owing to the fatigue I had undergone, I felt a curious,
indescribable sensation slowly creeping over me.

It commenced with small shooting pains that paralysed the muscles of my
jaws, gradually increasing in intensity.  At first I believed that it
was merely a touch of neuralgia, until all in a moment a quick, sharp
pain shot down my spine, paralysing me so completely that I could
neither move nor utter a sound.

My head swam.  My jaws were fixed.  I tried to rise, but could not; I
tried to cry out for my faithful Nello, but my tongue refused to utter a
sound.

A curious drowsiness seized me, and I struggled against it vainly.
Never before had I experienced such a feeling.  Then a second pain ran
down my back far more acute and excruciating than the first, and I
believe I must have fainted.

At any rate, all became an utter blank.  The fat priest's solemn warning
was, it seemed, no idle one.

CHAPTER FIVE.

SHOWS SOMETHING SUSPICIOUS.

Life has no labyrinth but one's steps can track it, and mind acts on
mind though bodies be far divided.

Following the strange sensation that crept upon me while examining that
half-faded, uneven screed came a complete blank.  My muscles were
paralysed, my breathing difficult, my throat contracted, and my
manhood's energy utterly sapped, until I was helpless as a child.  It
seemed as though the unseen power had touched me with the finger of
death, and I had withered and fallen.

Yet slowly and painfully I struggled back to a sense of my hapless
position, and on opening my eyes, sore in their sockets, I found, to my
amazement, that I was lying in a heap on the carpet beside my overturned
chair, my head close to the carved leg of my writing-table.  The light
dazzled me, and I quickly became aware that I was lying full in the
morning sunshine which streamed in at the open window.

I had fallen from my chair and remained insensible the whole night.
Nello had not discovered me, as I had dismissed him, wishing to be
alone.

In Tuscany it is light early in summer, and the July sun soon gathers
power.  I glanced at the clock, and saw that it was already a quarter to
five.

Outside, a fisherman was singing a gay song as he unloaded his boat, and
children were already shouting as they bathed in the sunlit water; but
the brightness in the world beyond only jarred upon me, soured and
embittered man that I was.  Could that curious sensation be a precursory
sign of some terrible malady--epilepsy or paralysis, perhaps?

I struggled to my feet and stood beside the table, dazed, unbalanced,
and so weak of limb that my legs could scarcely bear me.  I felt as
though I had just risen from a sick-bed after months of suffering.

The book lay open at the final page whereon the writer of the record,
Godfrey Lovel, had inscribed his name and date as already reproduced
here.  My thoughts ran back to the moment when I had experienced that
sudden seizure, and I recollected how interested I had been in the few
lines I had succeeded in deciphering.

The unmistakable paralysis that had stricken me down at the very moment
my curiosity was aroused was certainly alarming, and even mysterious,
especially after the prior's hints as to the evil that would pursue me
if I determined to continue in possession of that fine old volume.

The fat priest's words recurred to me with a deep and hidden meaning,
and I admit that my spirit was mightily disturbed.  It seemed that I had
raised a foe where I might have won a friend.

I locked the book away in my safe, and went forth upon the balcony and
breathed the fresh air of morning.  Across the sparkling waters of the
tideless sea the islands stood grey and mysterious in the blue haze,
Gorgona, peopled only by its convict-gangs, showing most distinctly of
all.  A veil of mystery seemed to have fallen upon everything--upon all
save a mighty battleship, with black smoke belching from her three
yellow funnels and flying the white ensign of England as she approached
an anchorage outside the port.

A desire for fresh air seized me; therefore, feeling faint, I took a
liqueur glass of neat brandy, and then descended to the big marble
entrance-hall that always echoed so dismally to my lonely footsteps.
Recollect that I was a man without kith or kin, self-exiled for private
reasons over which I had been unable to exercise control, and although
living among a people that I loved because of their sympathy and charm,
I was yet homesick for England and suffering from the nostalgia that
those whose lot it is to spend their lives abroad know, alas! too well.

Outside I took the old sea-road--that shadeless road that runs with so
many windings away along the edge of the deadly Maremma and on to Rome.
I walked it often, for it led out along the edge of the brown cliffs
through a wild and uninhabited tract of country, a district which until
ten years ago had been dangerous on account of a band of lawless
brigands.  The latter had, however, all been exterminated by the
carabineers, and the loneliness of the country suited well my frame of
mind.

I met no one save an old barefooted fishwife whom I knew, trudging
onward with her basket poised on her head.  So I lit my pipe and gave
myself up to reflection, trying to account for my strange seizure.  I
hesitated to consult a doctor, for I entertained an Englishman's want of
faith in the Italian _medico_.  I longed to be able to consult my own
doctor in London, and ask his opinion whether the strange stupor were an
actual warning.

Although Italy possesses such distinct charm; although Tuscany was the
home of my youth; although I had hosts of friends among the fishermen
and honest _contadini_ about me; although my friends at the white old
monastery away among the olives on the side of the Black Mountain were
always warm in their welcome and eager to render me the very smallest
and humblest service, yet I was suddenly tired of it all.  Sweet as were
the pleasures of Tuscany, as Byron, Shelley, Smollett, and George Eliot
had found, yet I was English, and England was my home.

I threw myself down on the grass of the cliff-top and thought it all
out.  Through seven long years I had led that life of utter loneliness,
returning to London only for a fortnight or so each year, and then sadly
leaving Charing Cross again for another twelve months of exile.  I had
my work, the writing of romance, to absorb my attention, it was true;
but the writer of novels must live in congenial surroundings, otherwise
the influence of a solitary life must show in his work.

Letters I had received from home during the past few days showed, too,
that there was really no further reason why I should not return and live
in England among my friends; therefore, after long reflection and
carefully considering the whole question, I at length made up my mind to
pack up my collection of pictures, old furniture, manuscripts, and
antiques, and remove them to some country home in England.

I have a habit of acting with precipitation.  My father, full of
old-fashioned caution, used to chide me for it.  In his day there was no
such thing as smartness.  But in the profession, as in business,
old-fashioned stolidity has now passed away.  Today, if one sees the
legend, "Established 1792," over a shop, one avoids it, knowing that its
proprietor is not content with up-to-date small profits.  Time was when
the solid professional or business man was as black-coated and serious
as an undertaker; but it is all of the past.  The smart, speculative
man, who acts promptly and has the courage of his own convictions, is
the man who succeeds in the present scramble for daily bread.  In every
walk of life one must keep abreast of the flood; hence, with my mind
made up, I entered the consulate at eleven o'clock and announced my
immediate departure to my old friend and confidant, Jack Hutchinson, one
of the most popular of his Majesty's representatives abroad, and whose
name with every skipper up and down the Mediterranean is synonymous with
geniality of manner and kindliness of heart.

When I sank into a chair in his private room and announced to him that I
was going his face fell.  I knew well that he had no other English
friend there, and my departure would leave him utterly alone.  He was an
exile, like myself; only, there was for him a comfortable pension at the
end of it.

"Well," he exclaimed after a moment, "I'm awfully sorry you're going, my
dear old fellow--awfully sorry.  But I think you are acting wisely.
You've been here too long, and have grown misanthropic.  A little London
life will take you out of yourself.  Besides, of late you've been
working far too hard."

I told him of my strange seizure; and, having heard me, he said:

"Exactly.  Just what I expected.  Pellegrini, the doctor, feared a
collapse, and told me so weeks ago.  That I'm very sorry to lose you,
old chap, you know too well.  But you'll be better in England.  You're
homesick, and that never does in Italy, you know.  I and my wife both
were so when I was first appointed here twelve years ago; but we've got
over it--you never have."  Then he added: "By the way, have you seen old
Graniani to-day?  He stopped me half an hour ago in the Corso Umberto
and asked if I had seen you this morning."

It was on the point of my tongue to tell Hutchinson all that had passed
in Florence on the previous day, but I thought it useless to trouble him
with what seemed but vague suspicions.

"Why does he want to see me?"  I inquired.

"Oh, he has got something or other to sell you, I suppose," was the
consul's reply.  "Somehow, Kennedy, I don't like the old fellow.
Whether it's his ugliness, his deformity, or his manner, I can't tell;
only, I instinctively dislike him--and more than ever when I met him
just now."

"Why?"

"Well, to me his manner was as though he expected to hear some grave
news regarding you."

"Grave news?"  I echoed.  Then it occurred to me that the old hunchback
was, of course, privy to the mysterious evil following the possession of
the "Book of Arnoldus."

"What grave news did he expect?"

"How do I know, my dear fellow?  These Italians, and especially men of
his class, are so subtle and cunning that you can never get at the
bottom of their motives."

"But I've always given Graniani his price--with a little bargaining, of
course.  Why, I've paid him hundreds of francs.  You recollect what I
paid for that miniature of the missing dauphin of France?"

"But you obtained a gem, even though you had to pay heavily for it," was
my friend's answer.  "If it had been in old Confessini's hands you'd
have had to pay double, or he would have sent it to London."

"I know that," I laughed.  "Graniani has had some good things now and
then, and I've been a good customer; therefore I can't see why he should
entertain any hostile thought towards me."

"As I've already said, you never know the Italian character.  The man
who is your best friend today will be your worst enemy tomorrow.  That's
what makes life so insecure here and affrays with the knife so frequent.
All I can say is that I noticed about the old scoundrel a distinct
expectation to hear bad news of you, and I judged from his manner that
he was disappointed when I told him that for aught I knew you were all
right.  If I were you I wouldn't have any more dealings with him.  Now
you're leaving Antignano, cut him.  He has served your purpose well, and
you can't afford to be mixed up in any quarrel with a man of his stamp."

"Yes, I will," I answered.  "I don't like him myself.  Of late he has
been far from straight."

"And of late, it seems, he has been making secret inquiries of one of
the Italian clerks here about your antecedents in England."

"Whatever for?  How can my antecedents concern him?"

"Ah, that's the point, my dear Kennedy.  He's forming some ingenious
plot or other; therefore we must be on the alert.  When a man bribes one
of the clerks to obtain information about an Englishman's past, his
parentage, and all the rest of it, there's something devilish suspicious
about it."

"I should think so!  I wonder what the old scoundrel is up to?"

"Some blackmailing business or other, most probably.  If so, act with
discretion, and we'll have a chat with the chief of police.  The present
_questore_ is terribly down on blackmailers."

"But what can be the motive?"

"That's more than either of us can tell.  We must watch and form our own
conclusions," was the consul's reply, leaning back in his white linen
suit and stretching his arms above his head.  "You see now," he added,
"why I am in favour of your leaving Tuscany without delay."

"Yes, I see.  But there's some mystery about old Graniani, and we ought
to clear it up."

"Why should we trouble to do so?" he asked.

I had told him nothing about the incident which had occurred to arouse
my suspicions while I was waiting for the fat prior of San Sisto;
therefore, in a few words I briefly recounted what I had witnessed.

"Strange?" he exclaimed.  "Remarkably strange!  We must watch him,
Kennedy.  It almost looks as if, for some mysterious reason, he means
mischief."

We agreed as to this, and then fell to discussing the best means by
which I might get rid of my house and have my collection of antiques
packed for transmission to England.

Soon after noon I returned home to luncheon, and in crossing the Piazza
Vittorio Emanuelle to take the electric tram my eyes caught a glimpse of
a neat female figure in black, which struck me as strangely similar to
that of the dark-eyed woman who had been closeted with the fat prior in
Florence on the previous day.  My first impulse was to turn and follow
her, but not being sufficiently certain of her identity, I stepped upon
the tram, although sorely puzzled.  Was she in Leghorn for some secret
purpose?  I wondered.  Somehow I felt convinced it was she.

On my arrival home, however, my suspicion became more than ever aroused,
for I found old Nello in a terrible state of anxiety.  On getting up he
had discovered that my bed had not been slept in, and that I was absent.
Being Italian, he feared that some _disgrazia_ had happened to me.

Then, when I assured him that I had merely been out for a long walk
instead of sleeping, he said:

"The hunchback antique dealer is awaiting you, signore.  He says it is
most important that he should see you, so I have shown him upstairs to
the study."

His announcement took me aback.  The old scoundrel was the last visitor
I expected.  Nevertheless, I drew a long breath to steady my nerves, and
with calm resolution mounted the stairs.

CHAPTER SIX.

THE OPENING OF THE BOOK.

"Scusi, signore!" exclaimed the ugly, disreputable-looking old man,
holding his battered straw hat behind him, and bowing with as much
studied grace as his deformity would allow.  The Tuscan, always the
essence of politeness, is a marvellous diplomatist.  "I regret to
disturb the signore," he went on in his soft, musical speech; "but I was
anxious to know if he met yesterday in Florence the prior of San Sisto?"

"I did," I replied, amused at his ingenious attempt to affect ignorance
of our meeting.

"And did you make any purchases?"

"I bought one book--a rare Arnoldus."

"In manuscript?"

"Yes."

"Bound in original oak boards, with an old brass clasp--eh?" he
inquired, with a queer smile about the corners of his mouth.  "May I be
permitted to see it?"

His demand aroused my suspicions at once.  It was evident that the prior
had regretted having sold it to me, and had sent his agent to endeavour
to get it back at any cost.  Therefore, knowing the unscrupulous ways of
some Italians in a cosmopolitan city like Leghorn, I did not intend to
give the cunning old fellow sight of it.

"Why do you wish to inspect it?  I've packed it away, and it would give
me great trouble to get at it again."

"Then the signore does really send things to England to sell again, as I
have heard the people say?" suggested the old man somewhat rudely.

"No, I'm not a dealer," I responded angrily.  "Who told you so?"

"It is common gossip, signore," replied the queer old fellow blandly.
"But if you wish it, I'll take steps to correct public opinion on that
point."

"Let the gossips say what pleases them," I snapped.  "I've never yet
sold anything I've bought.  I suppose they think that by the quantity of
my purchases I must be going to set up a curiosity shop.  But," I added,
"tell me, Graniani, why do you wish to see the manuscript I bought
yesterday?"

"Oh, mere curiosity," was his quick answer.  "You know I'm interested in
such things, and wanted to know how the prior treated you after my
recommendation."

"He treated me well enough, and I brought a bargain."

"A bargain?" he echoed, and I fancied I detected a strange curl in his
lip.  "The _reverendo_ does not sell many bargains.  How much did you
pay?"

"Ah!"  I laughed, "I suppose you want to charge him commission--eh?"

The hunchback grinned, displaying his toothless gums, whereupon I took
up the receipt and showed him the amount I had paid.

Again he expressed a desire to be allowed to see the book; but, feeling
certain that he had come to me with some hidden motive, and at the same
time wondering what plot against me the evil-looking old fellow was
forming, I point-blank refused.  I did not tell him that I knew of his
presence in Florence on the previous day, deeming it best to reserve the
knowledge to myself.  Without doubt he had seen the book in Landini's
possession, and the desire to inspect it again was only a clever ruse.

"I think, signore, that hitherto my dealings with you have shown me to
be trustworthy," he said in a tone of complaint, "and yet you refuse to
allow me to see a volume that I understand is most interesting."

"And rare," I added.  "It has already been valued by Olschki, who
declares it to be a unique specimen, and worth very much more than I
gave for it."

"I know, I know," he replied with a sly wink.  "The person who sold it
to the prior knew its value and told me.  But it is not a bargain,
signore--depend upon it that you never get a bargain from the _signor
reverendo_."

"To whom, then, did it originally belong?"

"Ah, that I regret I am not at liberty to say, signore.  I gave my word
not to divulge the name.  Our nobility who become so poor that they are
compelled to sell their treasures to the rich foreigners, like yourself,
are naturally very reticent about allowing themselves to be known as
needy."  True, I had believed that the old fellow himself was a
broken-down noble, some count or marquis who had a knowledge of antiques
and who had fallen upon evil times; but the events of the last couple of
days had caused me to change my opinion, and to regard him rather as a
clever and crafty adventurer.

I could see by his manner that he was ill at ease, and after some
conversation regarding an old Montelupo plate he had offered me at a
fabulous price, I waited for him to speak.

"I really wish, signore, you would show me the manuscript," he blurted
forth at last.  "Believe me, I have always acted in your best interests,
and surely you will not refuse me such a small favour?"

"But why are you so desirous of seeing it?"  I demanded.

"In order to verify a suspicion," was his response.

"Suspicion of what?"

"A suspicion which I entertain, and of which, if true, you should be
warned."

I was surprised at his words.  Had not the actual seller of it warned me
by strange hints?

But an instant later, on reflection, I saw the cunning of the two men,
who, acting in collusion, wished to repossess themselves of the book,
and I resolved to combat it.

"I have no use for any warning," I laughed.  "I suppose you'll tell me
some fairy story or evil pursuing the man in whose possession the volume
remains--eh?"

The hunchback raised his shoulders and exhibited his grimy palms,
saying:

"I have come to the signore as a friend.  I regret if he should seek to
treat me as an enemy."

"Now, look here," I exclaimed, rather warmly, "I've no time to waste
over useless humbug like this!  I've bought the book at the price asked,
and neither you nor the prior will get it back again.  Understand that!
And further," I added, "I shall not require anything more that you may
have to sell.  I've finished buying antiques in Leghorn.  You can tell
all the touts in the piazza that my purse is closed."

Again the ugly old man raised his shoulders expressively and opened out
his hands--this time, however, in silence.

I rang the bell for Nello to show the fellow out.  Then, when I had done
this, he turned to me with knit brows and asked:

"Does the signore refuse absolutely to show me the `Book of Arnoldus'?"

"Absolutely."

"Then it must be at the signore's peril," he said slowly, with a
strange, deep meaningness and a curious expression on his brown,
wrinkled face.

"I don't believe in prophecy," I cried in anger.  "And if you mean it
for a threat--well, only your age saves you from being kicked
downstairs."

The old fellow muttered beneath his breath some words I did not catch,
then bowed as haughtily as though he were a courtier born, and, turning,
followed the silent Nello through the long white door.

I believe it was a threat he uttered at the moment of parting; but of
that I was not quite sure, therefore was unable to charge him with it.

Still the strange warning caused me to reflect, and the old hunchback's
movements and his secret inquiries about my antecedents all combined to
induce within me a vague sense of anxiety and insecurity.

Through an hour in the blazing, breathless afternoon I dozed with
cigarettes and my three-day-old English newspaper, as was my habit, for
one cannot do literary work when the sun-shutters are closed and the
place in cooling darkness.  I was eager now to get back to England, and
had already ordered Nello to make preparations for my departure.  He was
to go into town that afternoon and inform the professional packer to
call and see me with a view to making wooden cases and crates for my
collection of old furniture and pictures, all of which I intended to
ship direct to London.  Italy was a lovely country, I reflected, but,
after all, England was better, especially when now, through no fault of
my own, I had stumbled into a slough of mystery.

The faithful old man was heart-broken at my sudden decision to leave.

"Ah, _signor padrone_," he sighed, when he returned to report, "this is
a sorry day for me!  To think--the signore goes to England so far off,
and I shall never see him again!  I have told them in the town, and
everyone regrets."

"No doubt," I answered, smiling.  "I suppose I've been a pretty paying
customer to the tradespeople.  They must have made good profit out of
me--eh, Nello?"

"They did, _signor padrone_, before I came to you; but of late it has
been different.  I've continually threatened to tell you when I've found
them attempting to cheat.  They don't like to be thought thieves by an
Englishman, signore."

[A section of five lines missing, page 52.]

Faltered the white-haired old man.  "Ah, signore, you don't know--indeed
you don't.  You have always been so good to me that somehow--well, to
tell the truth, I've served you as though you were my own son.  Could
you not take me with you to England?"

"Impossible!"  I said.  "You don't know English, in the first place;
besides, you have your family here.  You'll be far better off in Leghorn
than in England, with its grey skies and damp climate.  You, a Tuscan,
couldn't stand it a month."

"But Beppo Martini, from the Hotel Campari, went to London, and now he's
one of the head-waiters at the Hotel Carlton--a splendid post, they
say," urged Nello.

"I know.  But he was younger, and he'd been in Paris years before," I
answered decisively.  "I regret, Nello, but to take you to England is
utterly impossible.  When I am gone, however, I hope to hear of you
often through the _signor console_."

"But you do not know," he urged.  "You can't know.  All I can tell you
is that when we part you will be in peril.  While I am at your side
nothing can happen.  If you discharge me, then I fear for your safety."

I laughed at him, deeming his words but a blundering attempt to compel
me to keep him.  Italians are experts in threats and insinuations of
evil.

"Well, Nello, I haven't any fear, I assure you," I replied.  "You've
been a most excellent servant to me, and I much regret that we should be
compelled to part; but as for evil falling upon me during your absence,
I must say frankly that I don't anticipate anything of the kind."

"But will not the _signor padrone_ be warned?"

"Warned of what?"  I cried, for everyone seemed to have some warning in
his mouth for me.  "Of what I have told you?"

"You want to go to England as my personal body-servant and guardian--
eh?"

"I do," replied the old man gravely.

"And because of that you've hit upon an exceedingly clever ruse by which
to induce me to let you have your way," I laughed.  "No, once for all,
Nello, you cannot go with me."

He stood in silence for a few minutes, as still as though he were turned
to stone.

Tears stood in the eyes of the affectionate old servitor.  A lump had
arisen in his throat, and I saw that with difficulty he swallowed it.

"You do not know my fears, _signor padrone_," he said huskily.  "It is
for your own sake that I ask you to keep me as your servant--for the
sake of your own future.  If, however, you have decided, so it must be.
Nello will leave you, signore; but he will not cease to be your humble
and devoted servant."

Then he turned slowly, and went out, closing the doors after him.

I felt sorry that I had jeered at him, for I had not known how deeply he
was attached to me.  Still, to take a man of his age to England would be
an utter folly, and I could not help feeling that the warning he had
uttered was a false one, spoken with a motive.

At last I rose, and, ascending to the study, where the windows were
still closed against the heat and sun-glare from the sea, took forth my
treasured Arnoldus, and seated myself at my writing-table with the
determination of deciphering at least some of that record written at the
end.

The first line only of the uneven scrawl was in Latin, as I have already
given, and for a long time I puzzled over the next, so sprawling and
faded was it; but at length I discovered to my utter surprise and
satisfaction that the rest was not in Latin, but in the early
sixteenth-century English.

Then slowly and with infinite pains I gradually commenced to transcribe
the mysterious record, the opening of which read as follows:

"For soe much as the unskilfull or the ungodly cannot of themselves
conceyve the use of thys booke, I have thought it good to note unto them
what fruite and comoditie they maye tayke thereof in soe plane forme of
manner as I can devise.

"Fyrst, therefore, they maye here lerne who and what manner of man I am.
Next, they maye knowe of mi birthe and station, of mi lyfe at the
Courte of mi Lorde Don Giovanni Sforza, Tyrant of Persaro, of mi
confydences wyth mi ladie Lucrezia, of my dealynges with the greate
Lorde Alexandra P.P.  VI., the terryble Pontiff, of mi adventures among
the fayre ladyes of Pesaro and Rome, and of dyvers strange thynges in
Yngolande."

Written in rather difficult sixteenth-century English, which I have
modernised somewhat, it continued:

"Then may they further mark the deep significance of this my secret
record, and of how with speed I made amends for my slowness beforetime.
Lastly have I here noted at the request of certain that by their own
labour and without instruction or help they cannot attain the knowledge
of The Secret Hidden.  The studious man, with small pains, by help of
this book, may gather unto himself such good furniture of knowledge as
shall marvellously enrich the commonplace.

"Do you, my reader, think of death?  The very thoughts disturb one's
reason; and though man may have many excellent qualities, yet he may
have the weakness of not commanding his sentiments.  Nothing is worse
for man's health than to be in fear of death.  Some are so wise as
neither to hate nor fear it; but for my part I have an aversion to it,
for it is a rash, inconsiderate thing that always cometh before it is
looked for; always cometh unseasonable, parteth friends, ruineth beauty,
jeereth at youth, and draweth a dark veil over the pleasures of life.
Yet this dreadful evil is but the evil of a moment, and that which we
cannot by any means avoid; and it is that which makes it so terrible for
me, sinner that I am; for were it certain, hope might diminish some part
of the fear; but when I think I must die, and that I may die every
moment, and that too in a thousand different ways, I am in such a fright
the which you cannot imagine.  I see dangers where perchance there never
were any.  I am persuaded 'tis happy to be somewhat dull of mind in this
case; and yet the best way to cure the pensiveness of the thoughts of
death is to think or it as little as possible.

"Let him that learneth this my secret, and surviveth, seek and so gain
his just reward.  But if thou, my reader, hath terror of the grave seek
not to learn the contents of this closed book.  Tempt not the hidden
power that lieth therein, but rather let the clasp remain fastened and
the secret ever concealed from thy knowledge and understanding.

"I, Godfrey Lovel, one time of the Abbey of Croylande, brother of the
Order of the Blessed Saint Benedict, warneth thee to stay thy curiosity,
if thou fearest death as I do fear it.

"TO SEEK FURTHER IS AT THINE OWN PERIL."

CHAPTER SEVEN.

FORBIDDEN FOLIOS.

The words of warning inscribed there in large, uneven letters, shaky in
places as though penned by an aged hand, stood out from the time-stained
vellum page like capitals of fire.

It really seemed absurd to heed them, and yet on every side I seemed to
be warned by those whom I believed to be in ignorance that any endeavour
to open the Closed Book would result in disaster.  Surely the manner in
which the precious volume had come into my possession was romantic
enough, yet why should even the faithful old Nello be apprehensive of
impending evil?  There was something uncanny about the whole affair--
something decidedly unsatisfactory.

Italy is a land of superstition, shared alike by count and _contadino_,
hence I at first put it down to some vague belief in the evil eye, of
which I was in ignorance.  During my residence in Tuscany I had often
been surprised by the many popular beliefs and terrors.  Our true Tuscan
sees an omen in everything, and an exhortation to the Virgin or to good
Sant' Antonio is ever upon his lips, while his first and last fingers
are ever outstretched when he sees a _gobba_, or female hunchback--the
harbinger of every evil.

Whether the warnings uttered to me were the outcome of mere
superstition, or whether part of one of those ingenious conspiracies
which he who lives among the suave Italians so often has to thwart, one
fact remained--namely, that in the almost undecipherable record itself a
further warning was plainly penned.  And this, instead of creating fear
and hesitation within me, only further aroused my curiosity.

I was determined to possess myself of the secret at all hazards.

The pale, tragic face of that dark-eyed woman whom I had discovered in
the fat prior's study, and whom I had afterwards seen in the noisy,
crowded city, haunted me.  Yes, there was a calm sweetness in that proud
and beautiful countenance, Tuscan most certainly, and yet mystery and
tragedy were written there but too plainly.

How I longed to question Father Bernardo about her; for, strange as it
may appear to you, my reader, her strange, subtle influence seemed upon
me, and I felt myself helplessly beneath a kind of spell which, even to
this day, I cannot define.

In turning those vellum leaves listlessly, I paused and gazed across my
half-darkened room, deep in thought.  Outside, the cicala in the dusty
tamarisks kept up their cricket-like song, and in the far distance from
the blue hills came the clanging of a village bell.  Beyond that all was
quiet--the world was hushed and gasping beneath that summer heat that
ripened the maize in the fields and the grapes and oranges in my garden.

But I was sick of it all--yes, heartily sick.  Italy had charmed me
once; but over my heart its white dust had accumulated, and I longed for
the fresh, green fields of England, longed for my own friends and my own
tongue.  Nostalgia had seized me badly, and I was world-weary and
homesick--longing now for the day of my departure.

Presently I returned again to the study of the ill-written script before
me, half-fearful of the strange warning inscribed upon the page; but
slowly, and with considerable difficulty, I deciphered it as follows:

  "This be the causes following why that
  I, Godfrey Lovel, have made
  labour to write this secret record.

"First, immediately after my birth at Winchelsea, my father, Sir Richard
Lovel, baron of the King's Exchequer, died of plague, and my mother in
brief time married my lord of Lincoln.  The goode monks of Winchelsea
learned me, but at fifteen I left their habit and religion, crossed unto
France, and became a soldier of fortune with the army of the King of
Navarre.  Full many a strange adventure had I in those days of youth
with the mercenary bande in Italy, untill, in the year of God's grace
1495, I was in Pesaro, where I entered the service of my lord Don
Giovanni Sforza and his lovely lady Donna Lucrezia, who was daughter of
His Holiness the Pope.  At firste I was made captain of my lord duke's
gentlemen-at-arms, but afterwardes my lady Lucrezia, of her gracious
bounty, found me worthy to be her grace's secretary.  Furthermore,
pleaseth it you to understand that in the palace of the Sforza Tyrant I
saw that which was not a little to my discomforte; nevertheless I must
be content recording it briefly.

"But now, as touching my own part, I most humbly beseech you to bare
with me, for of a verity I saw and knew what no man did; and you, my
reader, who make bold sufficient after my warning and admonition, will
find herein a chronicle of fact that will astound you.  God be thanked
there are not such thynges done in England as in Italy under the red
bull of the Borgias.

"As concerning the revelations, these be the things that I have heard
and have knowledge in.  At the beginning thereof, the which was in the
ember week of 1496, the Pope's Holiness the lord Alexander P.P.  VI.
sent his son the boy-cardinal to our Court at Pesaro.  From the firste
tyme I saw him dysmounting from hys hors in the corte-yard of the palace
I dysliked hym.  Although but eighteen years of age, his father had made
him cardinal-deacon of Santa Maria Nuova, a vain and sinful elegaunt
whose ambition knew no bounds.  He had come on secret mission from the
Vatican to his sister, my lady Lucrezia, and to her he spake in privy
during my lord duke's absence.  The lord Don Giovanni was a brutal and
ill-living man, cruel to his golden-haired, beautiful wife, that I
vouch; but even to my lady Lucrezia, whose life was so unhappy that she
had shed tears unto me, her man of confidence and humble servitor, the
object of the Cardinal Cesare's secret mission was appalling.

"At the downe of the sun on the same day my lord, having returned from a
visit to the Malatesta at Rimini, welcomed the cardinal warmly and
entertained him in the great banquet-hall, wherein four hundred persons
supped.  The revels did not end with midnight, but my lorde and his
guest retired at that hour.  Some tyme later I had occasion to pass
along the great corridor where the chamber of my ladie Lucrezia was, and
herd the sound as of a woman crying within.  It was my ladie; and,
obtaining permission, I entered and found her plunged in grief and
remorse.  Most humbly desiring her grace to accept mi poor mind towards
her most noble self, I induced her to tell me the truth.

"She tore her hair in desperation as she confessed unto me, with promise
of secrecy, that her brother the cardinal had been sent by her father
His Holyness in order to envenom her husband the duke, because the
Terrible Pontiff wished to marry her more advantagiosly for the increase
of the Borgia power.  Never in my life have I seene a beautiful woman in
such despair, and I, her grace's confidential servitor, chamberlain, and
secretarie, did I in my moste humble wise seeke to assist her, whereupon
did she tell me with tears that she feared to disobey the will of His
Holiness.  I suggested that her grace should separate from her lord, and
that the marriage should be annulled by His Holyness; but in desperation
she told me that her brother Cesare had already poisoned him secretly
with a certaine deadly and irrevealable compound only known to her
father, her brother, and herself.

"My lord Don Giovanni Sforza, the Tyrant of Pesaro, whose reign was one
of oppression, murder, bloodshed, and infamy, was doomed.  In a few
houres he must die.  Notwithstanding that my ladie hated hys evil ways
she yet wished that he should live.  But she feared the wrath of His
Holiness if she went unto him and told him what the lorde-cardinall his
guest had done, the lord-cardinal being then wyth him discussyng the
best menes of suppressing the rebellious Orsini.  At last, however, my
lady, makinge me give my bonde to help her, did resolve to leave Pesaro
for Rome.  First, being desirous of carrying wyth her the costly jewels
given her on her marriage, she unlocked her jewel-chest and caused me to
fill my pouch and doublet with those the most precious.  Whereupon this
having been done, she took from a golden caskett preserved wythin the
chest a small cross-hilted poignard with perforated blade, telling me to
go unto her lord the duke and strike him with it in a part not mortal.
The lorde-cardinal being present, and believing that it was an
assassinacion, would make no effort to secure me; therefour, having
struck the blow, I was to escape at once to Rome and there await her.
Within the golden caskett were three delicate tubes of greeny-white
glasse, sealed carefully, the which my lady told me in confidence
contained the secret and all-powerful venom of the Borgias.  They had
beene given her by her father as a marriage-gift, together with the
poignard with thin, hollow blade containing the secret antidote.

"Concerning the Casket: This casket aforementioned, with its three glass
tubes, each the length of the first joint of a man's little finger, the
which place in one's hands the power of secret death, and the one tube
containing the antidote, did she gyve into my safe keepinge, as well as
her wondrous jewels, the like no man had before seen.

"I took the poignard, kissed my lady's hand in pledge of servitude
devout, and flew to do her bidding, entering to where my lorde duke sat
drinkynge with his treacherious guest, stryking hym in the arme wyth the
knife bearing the antydote--thus saveing hys life, although he believed
it to be an attempt at assassination--and then escaping by the Gate of
the Rocchetta under cover of night, arriving in Rome at sundown on the
sixth, daye following.  Wherefore wyll it be seen that not only did I
carry the priceless emeralds of my ladie Lucrezia and the secret venom
of the Borjas--the presence of the which cannot be detected--but I also
held in my possession the antidote.

"In Rome I did hide away the treasures given into my safe keepinge in a
place whereof no man knewe; while mi ladie, having fled from Pesaro,
entered the convent of San Sisto; while the lorde Alexander P.P.  VI.,
finding that his poison sent by the worshipfull cardinal had been
unavailing, issued a decree annulling the marriage.  Now, His Holiness
had lost by death many friends in Rome, including several members of the
Sacred College, and by their decease had become goodly enriched and
empowered; hence the failure of the banal substance to take effect in
the case of Don Giovanni must have caused him much surprise.

"Praise be to God, who, of His infinite goodnes and mercy inestimable,
hath brought me out of darkness into light, and from deadly ignorance
into the quick knowledge of truth, from the which through the fiend's
instigation and false persuasion I have grately swerved, I was enabled
to save the life of mi lord, although he be a tyrant and a man of
ill-living.  The lord Cardinal Cesare returned to Rome, and six months
after the divorce of my ladie His Holiness brought her forth from the
convent, and gave her as wife unto the Lord Don Quadrata and Salerno,
and likewise gave them the palace of the Cardinal of Santa Maria in
Portico, by the Vatican, in the which to live.  And here again did I
return unto my ladie as her confidential chamberlain; for now, knowinge
how that she were but the innocent tool in the infamous hands of the
lorde Alexander and his creature the Cardinal Cesare, I resolved to
devote myself unto her protection.  I told unto my ladie the
hiding-place of her jewels; but she would not allow me to bring them to
the palace, lest they should remind her of her past unhappiness.  They
were best to remain where I had secreted them.  Again was my unfortunate
lady's marriage without love, her happiness constantly disturbed by the
terror in which she lived, being compelled by the Terrible Pontiff and
her ambitious brother to act in treachery and dishonour, to entice men
and women to their ruine, and to place death-trappes with the secret
venom."

Following this sentence was a blank space wherein was rudely drawn a
curious geometrical design, some of the shaky lines--intended most
probably to be straight--bearing numbers.  It was almost like a plan;
but careful inspection showed me that it was not, and for a long time I
tried to make out its connection with the old monk's remarkable record.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

CONCERNS A WOMAN'S SERFDOM.

After long examination I came to the conclusion that the rudely executed
sketch must have been placed there by another hand, as it seemed in
somewhat different ink, a trifle more faded than the writing.  As is so
often the case in old manuscripts, blank spaces were used by subsequent
posessors to note memoranda at a time when every inch of parchment or
other writing surface was precious.

It apparently had no connection with the text; therefore, placing it
aside for further examination, I turned the page and continued to
decipher this remarkable and forbidden document regarding the perfidy of
the terrible House of Borgia.

As an antiquary I had become intensely interested in the strange record,
for it apparently threw an entirely new light upon the notorious
Lucrezia Borgia, the woman who had brought secret poisoning to a fine
art.

And as I proceeded, I found it continued as follows:

"In my most humble wise I served my ladie Lucrezia, wrapping myself, I
fear, in manifold errors, and being privy to the detestable crimes of
the Cardinal Cesare.  Both my ladie and myself knew that it was Cesare
who, with his own hand, stabbed his elder brother Giovanni Duke of
Gandia and threw him into the Tiber on the night of the feast given by
his mother the Madonna Giovanni at San Pietro ad Vincula.  We knew, too,
of many dark and foul crimes beyond those in which my lady's father and
brother compelled here to partake.  After the assassination of the lord
of Gandia, the Cardinal Cesare threw aside his scarlet hat and became
capitain-general of the Church, with the title of the Lord Duke Cesare
de Valentinois.  He shrank from neither sacrilege or murder, readily
doffing the purple to assume the breastplate, and at head of his army
crushed the feudal power of the barons in the Romagna.

"For a short space, alas! did he tarry, and brief was my lady's respite
from the horrors thrust upon her.  You, mi reader, who hath noe fere OF
DEATH may still continue to scann this recorde; but I yet do warn and
beseache of you to stay thine inquisitiveness, or the gaining of the
secret, as it must be at thine own rysk and peril.  Truely I affirm unto
you that the thinges done in the palace of my lord Prince of Bisceglia
at instigation and order of the fat-faced, double-chinned Borgia Pope
were the foulest and blackest that ever man did conceive.  To His
Holiness's enemies the mere touch of my ladie's soft hand meant certain
death, and feastes were given at the which those singled out were swept
away like flies.  None who dared to thwart the Borgia Pope or the lord
Duke of Valentinois escaped swift and certain destruction.  For them,
death lurked at all times no matter how much care they took of their
personal safetie.  The fiendish ingenuity of Cesare Borgia showed itself
in divers and sundry ways all to encompass the death of rivals that the
House of Borgia became paramount, and its power overwhelming.

"Pleas it your goodness to understande that I be so bold as to put it to
writing that which I have seene that you who live after me shall know
and learn this my secret contained herein."

Here, again, was a second drawing, slightly more complicated than the
former, and at the bottom was written, evidently in old Lovel's hand,
the single and inexplicable word, in no language known to me, "_treyf_."

At one corner was a sketch of a circle with radiating lines which might
be intended to represent the sun; but so crude was the drawing that it
might be meant for anything.  Therefore, after a few minutes' minute
examination, I came to the conclusion that my first theory was wrong,
and that both had been drawn by the same hand that had inscribed the
curious record.

Continuing my task of deciphering, I suddenly became seized by violent
neuralgic pains in the head and back, attended by excruciating cramp in
the hands, similar to that I had once experienced through writing too
much.  Notwithstanding this, however, I further prosecuted my
investigation of the secret record which, as will be seen, proved a very
remarkable one.  After the inexplicable design, it continued:

"I suppose it to be the will of God that I remained the humble servante
of my ladie Lucrezia obstinately determined to suffer all extremities
rather than to leave her in the hands of those secret assassins.  Many
times did mi unhappie ladie seek my counsel, remorseful of the part she
was forced to bear by His Holiness and the lord Duke of Valentinois.  To
mine own knowledge many who visited at the palace were envenomed in
secret and went to their homes to die.  Of these, one was my lord Don
Ludovico Visconti, who had allied himself to the Doge and Senate of
Venice, and upon the hilt of whose sword, whych he unbuckled while he
sat at meat, was there placed a drop of the Borgia poison.  Another was
the lord Alessandro Farnese, cardinal-deaycon of San Cosina, who died
suddenly after leaving the presence of His Holiness and my lady
Lucrezia; a third victim was the Madonna Sancia, daughter of His Majesty
Don Alonso II., to whom my lady Lucrezia was forced by her father to
sende a ringe of gold, and who died one hour after plaicinge it upon her
finger.  Again, my lady Lucrezia was compelled to invite to a great
banquet the Don Oliverotto da Femo, Don Giovanni Fogliani, Don Vitellozo
of Citta di Castello, Don Paolo Orsini of Sinigaglia, Don Lorenzo
Manfredi of Faenza, the white-faced cardinal-chamberlain Riarjo, and Don
Juan Vera, cardinal of Santa Balbina.  His Holiness and the Duke Cesare
were both presente, the feaste beinge gyven in order to effect a peace
with the fiefs of the Romagna.  Myself I sat at the ende of the table
next my lord Orsini; but a foule treachery was practised, for every
guest, wythout exception, was secretely poisoned, and at breake of daye
not one was alive, although no effect was felt by anyone before they
left the palace.  By such means as these did the Romagna fall beneath
the power of the Borgias.

"Full many a woman hateful to the House of Borgia became envenomed by
dainty comfits handed to her by my lady's lisping child the Duke
Roderico, who was thus a poisoner at two years old, but of whose
sweetemeats the ladies were unsuspecting.  And be it known to you by
this my record that my lady's husband, my lord Prince of Bisceglia, was
but of the age of twenty and one years at this time, and helpless in the
venomous hands of the Duke Cesare.  Rome was filled wyth assassyns.
Myself, like every man who valued his safety, put on a mail-shirt when I
left my bed, and set no foote in the streetes till I had buckled a sword
or at least a poignard at my side.  But the red bull was rampant, for
the whole power of the Borgias was contained in the deadly potency of
those small phialls of glass and the impossibility of detection of the
fatal _cantarella_.

"Think you, my reader, that any indifferent man, knowinge these things,
and knowing also that the position of the lady Lucrezia was hateful unto
her, could but suffer himselfe to remain as her faithful chamberlain,
and seek to guard her from the fearsome perils that surrounded her.
Forthermore, one night at nine of the clock, my ladie came to me in
terror, saying that she having quarrelled with her father, His Holiness
had sent for her to his private apartment in the Vatican, where he spoke
unto her and took her hand in forgiveness.  As she withdrewe it she saw
that he wore the venome ring the which is hollow, like that in my
possession, and containeth the deadly _cantarella_!  Then did my lady
know that she had been victym of treachery, and was doomed.  Already her
beautiful face was pale, and upon her were the pains in the jaws and
tongue, the whych told us the truth.  Not loosing a moment of time, I
obtained the poignard containing the antidote, and with it struck deep
into her white forearm, and whych she held for me withoute flinching
untill the blood flowed, and by this meanes was her life, attempted by
His Holiness the lord Alexander P.P.  VI., given back unto her.

"Twyce myself was I envenomed by the Duke Cesare (accursed be his memory
for ever), and twice was I able to counteract the poison with the
antydote that my ladie Lucrezia had given me.  The Borgia poison lurked
in everything.  A flower could be so impregnated that its perfume was
rendered fatal; gloves were treated so that the wearer died wythin
twelve hours; the hat, the boots, the staff, the mail-shirt, the woman's
kirtle or the man's hose were all envenomed; nay, even unto the very
chair upon the which a gueste sat.  No poison was placed in the cup, it
beinge always external and impossible to detect; beside which its action
could be so regulated that I have known death to take place in an hour
in some cases, while in others the fatal conclusion would not arrive for
a week or even a month, according to the wishes of the Pope Alexander
and his ambicious son.  In very truth the possession of that secrete
venom gave to the house of the Borgias power over both Church, state,
and the riches and treasures of the world, all of whych they conquered
by the vilest treachery known unto man.

"My singular good reader, my duty presupposed, pleaseth it your good
readership to understande that as in the case of my lorde Sforza of
Pesaro, so in the case of my lorde Prince of Bisceglia, His Holiness
finding himself foiled in the attempt to kill his daughter, soon wished
to rid her of her husband, seeing that to marry her again unto one of
the new lords of the Romagna would support the papal power in those
parts.  The crisis occurred on the morrow after my lord prince had
returned from Naples, the VIIIth day of August in the year of grace
1500.  My lord had been secretely envenomed twice, and escaped death by
meanes of the antidote; but on the night afore named, at eleven of the
clock, he went forthe to Saint Peter's, but while ascending the steps
was greviously stabbed by a bande of masqued men in the pay of the Duke
Cesare.  Weak from loss of blood, he dragged himselfe unto the Pope's
apartmentes, where my ladie Lucrezia, chancing to be there, swooned at
sight of him.  There were fifteene wounds upon him, but his life had
been saved by his mail-shirte; yet for three weekes he lay ill in the
Borgia tower, my lady Lucrezia never leaving him, and, fearful of
poison, preparinge his food with her own hands.  None the less, before
my lorde had recovered, the Duke Cesare, accompanied by one Don
Michelotto, visited him one night, and havinge driven my lady and the
Madonna Sancia from the room, they remained alone with him.  My ladie
flew down to the chamber of the Segnatura, that had been set apart for
me duringe my lord's illness; and, hearinge what had transpired, I
rushed up to my lord's apartment only to discover he had been foully
strangled.  The bravo Michelotto aimed a blow at me; but his blade
turned by my mail-shirte, he made his escape.  When my brave lady came
and found her lord dead, her sorrow knew no bounds, for she saw that he,
like unto the others, had fallen at last a victim of the Borgia
treachery.  Both the lord Alexander P.P.  VI. and his son Cesare had the
habit of saying `That which is not done at noon can be done at sunset.'

"Reader, who darest to seek within this book, curb thy curiosity and
inquisitiveness, and stay thine hand, for herein is written strange
things, secrets which concern you not, and have remained hidden
mysteries from the world--things the knowledge of which must render you
among the greatest on earth, yet must bring evil and destruction unto
you.  Having gained knowledge so far, I do entreat of you, brave as thou
art, to seek no further to reopen this Closed Book.  Again, harken to
this warning of a dead man, and save thyself."

Again those extraordinary, excruciating pains cramped my brow and limbs,
while my throat once more became contracted, just as it had been on the
previous night when I had commenced to make investigation.

But with my brain reeling and my senses confused I turned the
time-stained page, and overleaf saw written there in capitals in the
centre of one blank folio the ominous words:

  "O AVARICIOUS READER
  WHO HAST HEEDED NOT THE WARNING!
  TRULY THOU ART ENVENOMED AND MUST
  DIE.  TO THEE NO POWER OF ANTIDOTE CAN
  AVAIL, NO HAND CAN SAVE.  THE SHARPNESS
  OF DEATH IS UPON THEE."

Then, for the first time, the terrible truth flashed upon me.

The vellum leaves of that secret record were impregnated by some unknown
and subtle poison, probably that secret compound of the House of Borgia
that could be used to envenom any object and render it deadly to the
touch; and I, disregarding the premonition, was poisoned.

I cast the heavy volume from me with a cry of horror and despair.  The
pain was excruciating.  The sting of death was already upon me.

I had reopened The Closed Book--an action that was fatal.

CHAPTER NINE.

DOCTOR PELLEGRINI'S OPINION.

I have very little recollection of what occurred immediately afterwards,
for I was far too confused and full of pain.

All I remember was that I rushed downstairs to old Nello, crying that I
had been suddenly taken unwell; and he, seeing my pale, distorted
features, was greatly alarmed.  I recollected at the moment that I had
an appointment with the wife of a wine-grower, with whom I was in treaty
for the purchase of an exquisite little fourteenth-century picture of
St Francis of Assisi; and, telling my faithful man that if a lady
called he was to ask her to wait, I dashed out, sprang into a cab, and
drove along the sun-blanched sea-road into Leghorn, where, in a high,
old palace in an unfashionable quarter, I discovered my friend, Doctor
Pellegrini, a short, stout, round-faced Italian, with iron-grey hair and
a pair of dark eyes which had a hard and severe expression.

"Why, my dear signore," he cried in Italian as I entered his big,
half-darkened study, the marble floor carpetless, and furnished barely
in Tuscan style, "whatever ails you?"

"I've been poisoned, _signor dottore_!"  I gasped.

"What are your symptoms?  Tell me quickly," he demanded, springing
towards me and taking my wrist quickly, being convinced that there was
no time to lose.

"I have great difficulty in breathing," I managed to gasp.  "And now
there seems to be a strange, biting taste as though I'd swallowed some
quinine.  My neck aches and seems to be bending back, and I am in great
agony."

"Very likely it is strychnine," the professor remarked.  "How did you
take it?  Was it an accident?"

"I will explain later," I responded.  "Do give me something to relieve
these terrible pains.  The poison, I can explain, is not strychnia, but
the fatal secret compound of the Borgias."

"The Borgias!  Rubbish!" he snapped.  "All imagination, most probably."

"But I tell you it is.  I have been envenomed by a poison, the secret of
which is unknown, and the antidote was lost ages ago."

The doctor smiled in disbelief, probably remarking within himself that
the English were a queer race, with all their fads, fancies, tea
drinking, and smart tailoring.

"Well," he said.  "I'll first give you a little chloroform, and then see
what we can do.  Don't upset yourself, my dear signore.  We shall find
an antidote somehow."

And he gave me some chloroform, which produced insensibility.  Then, on
recovering consciousness, I found myself on a bed in a room almost
totally dark, with blankets piled upon me until they had reduced me to a
state of profuse perspiration.

My head felt as though bound tightly with a band of steel, but I had no
further difficulty in breathing.  My limbs were no longer cramped, and
my neck was again movable.

I was better, and told Pellegrini, who was seated patiently by my side
watching me.

"Of course," he said, with that cool, cynical air of his which caused
one instinctively to dislike him on first acquaintance.

"But I was very bad," I declared.  "I've never experienced such
excruciating pains before in all my life."

"And I may tell you," he said in the same calm tone, "that you've never
been nearer death than you were an hour ago.  I certainly thought you
wouldn't pull through.  I telephoned to Cassuto at the hospital, and he
rushed round and helped me.  I didn't believe you had really been
poisoned.  It certainly was not strychnia after all, although the
symptoms were very like it.  Tell me how it happened."

I turned on my bed towards him and briefly related how I had purchased
the curious volume, and how, on two separate occasions, I had been
suddenly seized while examining the secret history written at the end.

"H'm!" he grunted dubiously; "very remarkable, especially as the record
mentions the unknown poison used by Lucrezia Borgia and her brother.  A
matter for investigation, certainly.  You must allow me to submit one of
the vellum pages to analysis; and perhaps we might clear up forever the
ingredients of the compound which has so long remained a mystery."

"Most willingly," I answered.  "We may make a discovery of the utmost
interest to toxicologists.  Hitherto they have declared that to produce
a substance sufficiently venomous to penetrate the skin and cause death
to those who touch it is impossible.  Here, however, I think we have an
illustration of it."

"It really seems so," he answered thoughtfully.  "I should strongly
advise you, when handling the book again, to wear gloves as a
precaution.  Having once narrowly escaped death, as you have, you cannot
be too careful."

"I'll take your advice, _signore dottore_," I responded.  "And I've to
thank you for saving me, as you've done today."

"You had a narrow escape--a very narrow one," he remarked.  "I do not
think that in all my experience I have seen a man come so near death,
and then recover.  When you first told me that your hands had become
impregnated with the Borgia poison I was, of course, sceptical.  You
English sometimes become so very imaginative when you live here in our
climate.  But I am compelled to admit that the symptoms are not those of
any known poison; and if what you tell me is correct, then it really
appears as though we are at last actually in possession of an object
envenomed with the ancient compound about which so much has been written
during the past three centuries.  For my own part, I am deeply
interested in the curious affair, and shall be only too happy to
investigate it analytically, if you will allow me.  My friend Marini,
the professor of chemistry at Pavia, is at present here for the
sea-bathing, and he will, I am sure, help me.  As you know, he is one of
the most expert analysts in Italy."

And so it was agreed that a chemical investigation should be made, in
order to discover, if possible, the secret of the Borgia poison which
was so subtle and could be so regulated that no effect might be felt for
half an hour or for a month, as the poisoner wished, but the end was
always the same--death.

By secret use of that fatal compound the Duke Caesar detto Borgia
undoubtedly swept away his enemies, and more than one old chronicler
alleges that his father, the Pope Alexander VI. himself, did not
hesitate to use it to rid himself of obnoxious cardinals who were
wealthy, or other persons who aroused his enmity.  He fully lived up to
his official title of Ruler of the World, and it is more than likely
that by the aid of this secret compound he broke the back of the
turbulent, selfish baronage which had ravaged the papal states for
centuries.  Certainly his reign was full of diabolical atrocities and
wanton, ingenious cruelty, documentary evidence of which is still
preserved in the secret archives of the Vatican and of Venice.  As to
the alleged crimes of the beautiful Lucrezia, a long tress of whose
yellow hair is still preserved in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, those
who have read Italian history know well how she has been represented as
placed outside of the pale of humanity by her wantonness, her vices, and
her crimes.  Yet what was written in that curious record of Godfrey
Lovel, soldier, courtier, and monk by turns, seemed to demonstrate that
in her youth, with no initiative, no choice permitted to her, she was
rather the too pliant instrument in the hands of Alexander and his son
Caesar.

Anyhow, the fact remained that the writer of that secret record was
absolutely in the confidence of Lucrezia Borgia, and also in possession
of some of the venom, with which, in all probability, he envenomed the
book in order that those who gained the secrets it contained should
never live to profit by them.

Knowledge of the secret written there, he alleged, would place its
possessor among the greatest upon earth.  Was not that sufficient to
arouse one's curiosity to proceed--to continue handling those envenomed
pages, unconsciously seeking his own doom?

Surely the secret must be an important one, placed on record upon
vellum, and yet so protected that the seeker after it must inevitably
die ere the entire truth could be revealed.

The whole affair was most puzzling.  As I sat in the swift, open cab
that took me back along the sea-road to Antignano, the crimson sun was
setting, and the gaily dressed Italian crowd was promenading under the
ilexes and acacias beside the Mediterranean.  Leghorn is a fashionable
bathing-place during July and August, and from the hour when the sun
sinks behind Gorgona until far into the night no fairer prospect than
the Viale Regina Margherita, as the beautiful promenade is called, with
its open-air cafes and big bathing establishments, can be found in the
south of Europe.

Through the little wood that lies between the fashionable village of
Ardenza and the sea, where the oleanders were in the full blaze of their
glory, my cab sped homeward; and having left the gaiety of the outskirts
of Leghorn behind, I fell to reflecting upon the future, and wondering
what, after all, was the hidden truth contained in The Closed Book--the
knowledge that would place its possessor among the greatest on earth?

I thought of the strange circumstances in which I had purchased the old
tome, of the inexplicable manner of Father Bernardo, of the old
hunchback's evil face at the church window, and, most of all, of that
singularly handsome young woman in black whom I had encountered in the
prior's study--the woman with whom the fat priest had spoken in private.

Why should Father Bernardo have urged me to relinquish my bargain?  Why
should Graniani have come to me on the same errand, and have warned me?
Surely they could not be aware that the pages were envenomed, and just
as surely they could have no motive in preventing my falling a victim!

If they were acting from purely humane motives, they would surely have
explained the truth to me.

Besides, when I reflected, it became apparent that the vellum leaves at
the end whereon was inscribed old Godfrey's chronicle had not been
opened for many years, as a number of them had become stuck together by
damp at the edge, and I had been compelled to separate them with a
knife.

At last I sprang out, paid the driver, passed through the echoing marble
hall of the _villino_, and up the stairs towards my study.

Old Nello, who followed me, greeted me with the usual "_Ben tornato,
signore_," and then added, "The lady called to see you, waited about a
quarter of an hour in your study, and then left, promising to call
tomorrow."

"She said nothing about the little panel of St Francis?"

"Nothing, signore.  But she seemed an inquisitive young lady--from
Bologna, I should say, from her accent."

"Young lady!"  I exclaimed.  "Why, the winegrower's wife is sixty, if a
day.  Was this lady young?"

"About twenty-six, signore," was his reply.  "Hers was a pretty face--
like a picture--only she seemed to wear a very sad look.  She was
dressed all in black, as though in mourning."

"What?"  I cried, halting on the stairs, for the description of my
visitor tallied with that of the woman I had seen in the priest's study
in Florence and afterwards in Leghorn.  "Had she black eyes and a rather
protruding, pointed chin?"

"She had, signore."

"And she was alone in my study a quarter of an hour?"  I exclaimed.

"Yes.  I looked through the keyhole, and, seeing her prying over your
papers, I entered.  Then she excused herself from remaining longer, and
said she would call again."

"But that's not the woman I expected, Nello?"  And with a bound I rushed
up the remaining stairs into the room.

A single glance around told me the truth.

The Closed Book had disappeared!  It had been stolen by that woman, who
had been following me, and whose face lived in my memory every hour.

I rushed around the room like a madman, asking Nello if he had placed
the volume anywhere; but he had not.  He recollected seeing it open upon
my writing-table when he had ushered the visitor in, and had not thought
of it until I now recalled the truth to him.

My treasure had been stolen; and as I turned towards my table I saw
lying upon the blotting-pad a sheet of my own note paper, upon which was
written in Italian, in an educated feminine hand, the axiom of Caesar
Borgia as chronicled in the missing book:

"_That which is not done at noon can be done at sunset_."

CHAPTER TEN.

ACROSS EUROPE.

The Closed Book had been filched from me at the very moment when I was
about to learn the secret it contained.

I put a few well-directed questions to Nello, and became confirmed in my
suspicion that the woman who had stolen it was actually the same whose
face had so attracted me that it had lived within my memory every moment
since our first meeting.

Curious how the faces of some women haunt us, even when we have no
desire for their affection!  The fascination of a woman's eyes is one of
the unaccountable mysteries of life, being far beyond human ken or human
control, and yet one of the most potent factors in man's existence.

In the half-open drawer of my writing-table were certain private papers
that I had taken from my despatch-box two days before, intending to send
them to my solicitors in London, and these the unknown in black had
apparently been examining.  She had called with a fixed purpose, which
she had accomplished--namely, to pry into my private affairs, and to
gain possession of my treasured Arnoldus, the Book of Secrets.

As I knew Tuscany and the Tuscans so well, this ingenious conspiracy was
scarcely surprising.  The little plots, often harmless enough, that I
had detected about me during my residence by the Mediterranean had shown
me what a cleverly diplomatic race they were, and with what patient
secretiveness they work towards their own ends.  It annoyed me, however,
to think that I should thus fall a victim to that handsome woman's
ingenuity.  Veiled as she had been in Father Bernardo's study, I had
judged her to be much older than I found she was when I had noticed her
in the streets of Leghorn.  Who could she be, and what could be her
motive in stealing my property if she were not in league with the prior
himself?

My old servant Nello, standing there beside me, knew something more than
he would tell.  Of that I felt convinced.  Possibly he had participated
in the plot, admitting her, well knowing her errand.  He had warned me;
therefore he must know something.  What was the object of it all I
utterly failed to conceive.

"That woman is a thief?"  I exclaimed angrily a few moments later.  "Who
is she?"

"I--I do not know her, _signor padrone_," stammered the old man.

"She gave no name?"

"None.  She said that you expected her."

"But she could not have taken away a big book like that without your
noticing it?"  I pointed out suspiciously.

"She had on a big black cloak, signore," was the crafty old fellow's
response.

I closed my writing-table and locked it, for in that moment I had
decided to go straight to Florence and charge Bernardo Landini with
being a party to the theft.  Having sold the book to me, he wished to
repossess himself of it, and on my refusal, had, it seemed, put in
motion a kind of conspiracy against me.

The old hunchback was undoubtedly the director of it all.

I thrust a few things into a kit-bag, placed some money in my pocket,
and put on an overcoat; and telling Nello that I should not return for a
couple of days, perhaps, gave orders that no one was to be admitted to
the house except my most intimate friend, Hutchinson, the British
consul.

At the big, bare railway station, wherein the feeble gas-jet had just
been lit, I saw, lounging beside the ticket-collector, the detective
attached to that post, whose duty it was to notice all arrivals and
departures; and, knowing him, I called him aside and briefly described
the lady who had visited me.

"Yes, signore, I saw her.  She left for Pisa an hour ago; she purchased
a first-class ticket for London."

"For London!"  I gasped.  "Had she any baggage?"

"A crocodile-leather dressing-case and a small flat box covered with
brown leather."

"By what route was she travelling?"

The detective walked to the booking-office, and in response to his
inquiries I learned that she had taken a direct ticket by way of Turin,
Modane, Paris, and Calais.  The train which caught at Pisa the express
to the French frontier had left an hour ago; therefore I had no chance
of overtaking her.

Still, something prompted me to take the next train to Pisa, for Italian
railways are never punctual, and there was just a chance that she might
have missed her connection.  So half an hour later I sat in the dimly
lit, rickety old compartment of that branch-line train, pondering over
the events of the past day, and determined to run down the thief at all
hazards.

At Pisa I quickly learned that the Leghorn train had arrived in time to
catch the express; therefore the woman in black was now well on her way
towards the frontier.

I purchased a railway-guide, and entering the waiting-room, sat down to
study it calmly.  After half an hour I decided upon a plan.  The
homeward Indian mail from Brindisi to London would pass through Turin at
9:10 on the following morning, and, if I caught it, would land me at
Calais three hours in advance of the express by which she was
travelling.  But from Pisa to Turin is a far cry--half-way across Italy;
and I at once consulted the station-master as to the possibility of
arriving in time.

There was none, he declared.  The express for the north, which left in
two hours' time, could not arrive in Turin before 9:20, ten minutes
after the departure of the Indian mail.  Therefore it was impossible.

I paced the long, deserted platform full of chagrin and utterly
bewildered.

Of a sudden, however, a thought occurred to me.  I knew the manager of
the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits at Turin station, a most
courteous and hard-working Englishman named Nicholls.  I would telegraph
to him, urging him in the strongest terms to detain the Indian mail for
me ten minutes.

This I did, and just before midnight stepped into the Rome-Turin express
on the first stage of my stern-chase across Europe.

Through the hot, stifling July night I stretched myself out along the
cushions and slept but little during the slow, tedious journey through
those eighty-odd roaring tunnels that separate Pisa from Genoa, for the
line is compelled to run so close to the sea in places that the waves
lap the very ballast.  I was excited, wondering whether I should succeed
in catching the mail and arresting the woman's progress.

In those past few days I had trodden a maze of mystery.  My love for the
antique had brought into my life one of the strangest episodes
experienced by any man, yet in those breathless moments, as I tore
across Europe, I thought only of regaining possession of my remarkable
treasure, and of obtaining the forbidden knowledge contained therein.

Hour after hour dragged slowly by.  At Genoa, long after the sun had
risen, I got out for a cup of coffee in that ugly and rather dirty
buffet which travellers in Italy know so well.  Then re-entering, we
started off up the deep valleys and across the broad wine-lands of Asti
towards Turin.

As we approached the capital of Piedmont my anxiety increased.  To delay
the Indian mail for ten minutes was surely a sufficient courtesy, and I
knew that after that lapse of time my friend Nicholls dared not assume
further responsibility.  The overland mail once a week between Brindisi
and Charing Cross is ever on time; a contract that must be kept whatever
the cost; hence, as I frequently glanced at my watch, I grew anxious as
to my success in catching it.

If I did I should arrive at Calais harbour in advance of the mysterious
woman, and could on board the steamer single her out and demand the
restoration of my property.

We halted at Novi, and the time lost in taking water seemed an eternity.
At Alexandria we were ten minutes late--ten minutes!  Think what that
meant to me.

At Asti there was some difficulty about an old _contadina's_ box; and
when the train started at last for Turin we were nearly fourteen minutes
behind time.  I threw myself back with a sigh, feeling that all hope had
vanished.  We could never make up time on that short run; and the
English mail, after waiting for me, would leave ten minutes or so before
my arrival.  Could any situation be more tantalising?

At last, however, we ran slowly into the great arched terminus of Turin;
and as we did so I hung half my body from the carriage window, and was
delighted to see the train of long, brown sleeping-cars still standing
in the station.

My heart gave a bound.  On the platform my friend Nicholls was awaiting
me, and assisted me hurriedly to descend.

"Just in time, Mr Kennedy," he said.  "Another minute and I should have
been compelled to let her go.  Anything serious in London?"

"Yes," I answered.  "Very serious.  I'll write to you all about it.  But
I don't know how to thank you sufficiently."

"Oh, never mind about that," he laughed.  "I've got your berth for you.
Come along;" and, hurrying me over to the next platform, he put me into
one of the cars, wishing me _bon voyage_, waved his hand, and we moved
out towards Calais--the fastest express across Europe.

Upon the result of that hard race my whole future and happiness
depended.  I was not, of course, aware of it at the time.  I was merely
consumed by curiosity regarding the strange vellum record, and was eager
to obtain the knowledge that its writer had so successfully concealed--
barring it with certain death to those who sought the truth.

Could I but have looked into the future, could I have realised what it
all meant to me, I should never have dared to embark upon that chase;
but rather should I have been pleased that this unknown woman of the
sable habiliments had taken into her hands that which must sooner or
later encompass her death.

But we are creatures of impulse, all of us.  I found the circumstances
full of romance and interest; and, beyond, I saw the woman herself as
great a mystery as that written upon those envenomed pages.

My keen anxiety through those long hours while we sped through the Alps
and by way of Aix, Macon, and Dijon to Paris need not be told.  The
train by which the woman I was following had travelled was before us all
the way; but her delay would, I discovered, be in Paris; for while she
was compelled to cross the city by cab, and wait at the Gare du Nord
five hours, we travelled around the Ceinture railway, and left for
Calais with only twenty minutes' wait at the French capital.

Most of my fellow-travellers were Anglo-Indians, officers and their
wives home on leave, together with a few homeward-bound travellers from
the Far East, everyone eager to get aboard the Dover boat and to sight
the white cliffs of Old England once again after perhaps many years of
exile.  If you have travelled by the overland mail, you know well the
excitement that commences as one nears Calais; for once beneath the
British flag of the Channel steamer, one is home again.  Ah! that word
home--how much it conveyed to me!--how much to you, if you have
travelled in far-off lands!

We swung through Boulogne around that terrible curve that generally
throws over the plates and dishes of the _wagon restaurant_, and at last
slackened down through Calais-Ville, and slowly proceeded to the harbour
where the special boat awaited us, the train having done the long run
from Brindisi four minutes under the scheduled time even though Nicholls
had kept it behind for nearly a quarter of an hour.

It was now eleven o'clock in the morning, and until four o'clock in the
afternoon I remained in that most dismal of all hotels, the "Terminus,"
at Calais, awaiting the arrival of the ordinary express from Paris.  It
came at last, crowded with summer tourists from Switzerland and
elsewhere, business men, and that quaint, mixed set of travellers that
continually pass to and fro across the Channel.

In order to discover the woman, however, I took up a position near the
gangway that gave access to the steamer, and scrutinised each passenger
with all the eagerness of a born detective.  One after the other they
passed in array, each carrying the hand-luggage, while the big, rattling
cranes were at work faking aboard baggage and mails.

The stream grew thinner, until the last passenger had passed on board,
and yet she did not come.  My haste had been in vain.  She had probably
broken her journey in Paris.  And yet somehow I felt that she had some
motive in carrying The Closed Book to London without delay.

French porters with their arm-badges and peaked caps rushed to and fro.
There was shouting in two languages, not counting the third--or bad
language.  They were preparing to cast off, and I was undecided whether
to remain in Calais until two o'clock next morning for the arrival of
the night train or to go aboard and make further search.

But just as the gangway was about to be withdrawn I distinguished among
the bustling groups of passengers a face that was familiar to me, and my
decision was made immediately.  I rushed headlong on board, and my hopes
revived as I made my way quickly across the deck.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

THE OLD LADY FROM PARIS.

The man with whom I shook hands heartily was about thirty-five, tall,
spruce, clean-shaven, and merry-faced, wearing a black overcoat and
peaked cap that gave him the appearance of a naval officer.
Cross-channel passengers know Henry Hammond well, for he is one of the
most popular officials in his Majesty's customs, always courteous,
always lenient to the poor foreign immigrant, but always stern wherever
the traveller seeks to conceal contraband goods or that thing forbidden,
the pet dog; conscientious in his duty in examining the baggage of
incoming passengers, and always a gentleman--different, indeed, from the
prying _douaniers_ of our neighbours.

With his assistant it was his duty, turn by turn, to cross from Dover by
the midday service, and on the return of the steamer from Calais--the
vessel on which we were now aboard--to examine all the light baggage and
affix a kind of perforated stamp as certificate of examination.

As a constant traveller I had had many a pleasant chat with him during
trips across.  In the wildest winter tempest in Dover Straits he
remained unruffled, merely turning up the collar of his overcoat, and
remarking that the weather was not so bad as it might be.  But nearly
all of you have had your baggage examined on the boat on your return
from the Continent; therefore, no doubt, you know Mr Hammond, and have
answered his question whether you have "anything to declare."

"Why, Mr Kennedy," he cried, as he took my hand, "this is a surprise!
I saw in the paper the other day an announcement that you were returning
to live in England, but did not expect you across just yet.  Look at
them," he added, casting his glance around.  "Big crowd this afternoon:
Cook's and Gaze's weekly returns from Switzerland."

"Yes," I laughed.  "You'll be busy all the way over, I suppose."

"No, I'll be done in three-quarters of an hour or so; then we'll have a
chat.  My assistant is already getting on with hand-baggage forward."
By this time we had cast off, and were creeping slowly down the harbour.

"Well, Hammond," I said confidentially, "I'm in a dilemma;" and taking
him aside into one of the unoccupied deck-cabins I briefly explained the
circumstances of The Closed Book, and described its outward appearance
and binding.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, deeply interested; "it almost beats your own
romances, Mr Kennedy.  I've just been reading your last.  Neither my
wife nor I could put it down till we'd finished."

"You see, the woman ought to be on board this boat; but I've not yet
seen her.  I'm just going in search of her.  But if you should come
across any one answering the description I've given, you might tell me
at once."

"Of course.  You want to get this extraordinary book back again?"

"Certainly.  It is a valuable piece of property, apart from the secret
it contains and the mystery surrounding it;" and as I uttered those
words the slow roll of the vessel showed that we were already out in the
somewhat choppy sea, and warned my friend that it was time to commence
his duty.

So we parted, and I started a tour around the boat, commencing tactfully
at the stern, and passing in review each of the passengers.  The work
was by no means easy, for women when they lounge in deck-chairs assume
thick wrappings and thick veils to protect their faces when the Channel
is rough and the wind strong.  One always feels the breeze cold after
hours in a stuffy sleeping-car, and, therefore, women are prone to
suffer the horrors of the ladies' cabin rather than risk catching cold.

For nearly an hour I made frantic search hither and thither throughout
the whole ship, in all three classes.  I gazed at the piles of heavy
baggage, wondering whether my treasure were concealed there, registered
through to London perhaps, in which case it might go forward without my
mysterious visitor.  The only place forbidden to me was, of course, the
ladies' cabin, presided over by a stern stewardess; and if the woman of
whom I was in pursuit was on board, she had undoubtedly concealed
herself there.

She certainly had not embarked by the gangway I had watched; but there
was a second gangway to the fore-part of the ship by which baggage was
carried, and she might have slipped across there unnoticed, as people
sometimes do.

Already Shakespeare's Cliff was showing through the evening haze, as the
vessel steadily laboured in the rough sea.  The passengers were mostly
lying in deck-chairs _hors de combat_, and no one ventured to promenade
upon the unsteady deck.  I had taken up a sheltered position near the
door of the ladies' cabin, determined to remain there until every
passenger should have left, although I was compelled to admit that my
hope was a forlorn one, and that I should have to return again to Calais
by the night boat and resume my vigil on the other side.

The woman must have broken her journey in Paris, and would undoubtedly
come later; but on what day or by what service she would cross I was, of
course, in ignorance.  And as I sat shivering upon a stool in the rough
wind, with the salt spray dashing ever and anon into my face, I felt
that the probabilities of regaining my treasure were very few.

I had been the victim of an ingenious conspiracy.  More could not be
said.

Of a sudden, however, Hammond--his coat-collar up, and walking
unsteadily because of the heavy rolling of the boat--approached me,
saying:

"Well, I've just finished, Mr Kennedy.  Every passenger to-day seems to
have a double amount of hand-baggage; but we've been through it all.
I've seen nothing of the young lady you describe; but I've seen
something else--I've found your book."

"Found it!"  I cried excitedly.  "Who has it?  Tell me."

"Well, a few minutes ago, in the second-class, I was examining the
contents of a dilapidated leather bag belonging to a little, wizen-faced
old woman, very shabbily dressed, when I found down at the bottom a flat
brown-paper parcel, wrapped carefully, tied with string and sealed with
big blotches of black wax.  I'm always suspicious of sealed packets, for
they may contain anything from cigars to anarchists' bombs; therefore I
ordered her to break the seals and open it.  At first she refused; but
on my explaining the penalty incurred, she reluctantly obeyed, and
there, to my great satisfaction, I saw your old manuscript.  I looked
inside, and although I know little about such things, I recognised it
from your description to be the stolen volume."

"Did you make any remark?"

"None," was Mr Hammond's reply.  "I wished to consult you first.  I did
not put the usual label on the bag, so that when she passes ashore it
will be stopped and again opened.  What do you intend doing?"

I was puzzled.  It was satisfactory to know where The Closed Book
actually was, but, on the other hand, it would be difficult to regain
possession of it.  As my friend Hammond pointed out, I could give notice
to the harbour detective on arriving at Dover, and he would detain the
woman.  But I should be compelled to charge her with theft.  This I
could not do.  I could, of course, declare the book to be stolen
property; but matters were the more complicated because of the theft
having been committed in Italy.

For some time we discussed the situation; then I accompanied him through
the second-class, where, on a chair in the gangway leading past the
engines, sat a queer, dried-up looking little woman of about sixty-five,
wearing a rusty black bonnet and cloak--a woman I had noticed during my
tour of inspection, but whom I had never suspected of being in actual
possession of my treasure.

The book had evidently been delivered to her in Paris, and she was
taking it to London--to whom?

That question I put to myself decided me, and when I was out of hearing
I told Hammond that I intended to follow her before claiming it, and
thus ascertain, if possible, the motive of the strange international
plot which was apparently in progress.

The short, wizened old lady was English: her face thin and yellow, with
a pair of dark eyes that had probably once been beautiful, and hair
still dark, though showing threads of grey.  She wore black cloth
gloves, worn out at the finger-tips, and was ponderous below the waist
on account of thick skirts put on to protect herself from the cold
sea-breeze.

Hammond declared that her speech was that of a well-born person, and
that her frayed glove concealed a diamond ring--a circumstance which he
viewed with considerable suspicion.  Yet he entirely agreed with me that
I should gain more by following her to her destination and watching
carefully than by arresting her on landing.  There was a deep,
inexplicable mystery about the book and its contents; and in order to
solve it I ought to be acquainted with those whom it interested.

"I can't understand the manner in which you were poisoned by touching
the leaves," Hammond said reflectively.  "That beats me altogether.
Perhaps somebody else will have a taste of it before long."

"I shall watch," I replied determinedly.

"In any case it is a most interesting circumstance," he declared.  "But
it's a good job your Italian doctor was able to save you.  Evidently you
had a very narrow shave."

"Very," I said.  "I shall never forget the agonies I suffered.  But," I
added, "I mean at all hazards to decipher all that the book contains.
That something very extraordinary is written there I'm absolutely
convinced."

"Well, it would really seem so," he agreed.  "Only, don't run any risks
and touch the thing with your bare hands again."

"Not likely," I laughed.  And then I fell to wondering what had become
of that dark-eyed, beautiful woman who had been the actual thief.

Why was the treasure wrapped and sealed so carefully?  Could it be that
those who had so cleverly conspired to obtain it from me were aware of
the venom with which certain parts of it were contaminated?  It really
seemed as though they were.

We passed and repassed the short-statured old lady, talking together and
appearing to take no notice of her.  Evidently she was not aware of my
identity; therefore I stood much greater chance in my efforts to watch
her.

The examination of her bag that Hammond had made had not disturbed her
in the least; but presently he returned to her, and, feigning to have
forgotten to affix the necessary customs stamp, did so.

At last we slowed up beside the Admiralty Pier at Dover, and next
instant all was bustle.  Passengers hitherto prostrated by the voyage
sprang up and pressed towards the gangway, each eager to get ashore and
secure a place in the draughty and out-of-date compartments of the
Joint-Railways.

With an old woman's dislike of crowds, the person we were watching
slowly gathered together her belongings, folded her shabby old
travelling-rug neatly, pulled her veil beneath her chin, shook out her
skirts, and then, carrying her precious bag, made her way to the gangway
after the first rush had passed.

Hammond's quick eye detected her to be an experienced traveller, who had
crossed many times before.  She sat quite unruffled and unconcerned amid
all the excitement of landing.

On the pier she inquired for the train for Charing Cross, and entered a
second-class compartment, where she purchased a cup of tea and a slab of
that greasy bread-and-butter which seems to be all the Joint-Railways
allow the jaded traveller on landing, while I took a place in the next
compartment to hers, and then retired some distance away in order to
consult further with Hammond.

To his astuteness and thoroughness as a searcher I owed the knowledge of
where my treasure was concealed; therefore I thanked him most warmly,
and just as the signal was given for departure stepped into the carriage
and waved him farewell.

The run to London was without incident, but on arriving at Charing Cross
I kept keen observation upon her.  She clung tenaciously to the bag
containing the book, refusing to let a porter handle it, and entered a
four-wheeled cab.  I followed to the corner of Holborn and Southampton
Row, where she alighted and walked quickly across Red Lion Square until
she reached a big, dingy house in Harpur Street,--a short, quiet turning
off of Theobald's Road,--a house that in the old days when Bloomsbury
was a fashionable quarter had no doubt been the residence of some City
merchant or man of standing.  The old extinguisher used by the linkmen
still hung beside the big hall door, the steps leading up to it were
worn hollow by the tread of generations, and under the flickering
gaslight the place, with its unlighted windows, looked dark, forbidding,
and deserted.

The old lady was apparently expected, for the instant she passed the
lower windows the door was flung open by some unseen person, showing the
big hall to be in total darkness; and she, having ascended the steps
with surprising alacrity, slipped in, the door falling to quickly and
quite noiselessly behind her.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

THE SIGN OF THE BEAR CUB.

The exterior of the house was by no means inviting.

The old lady had entered there in secret, without a doubt; otherwise she
would have driven up to the door instead of alighting at the corner of
Southampton Row.

I passed by on the opposite side, and as there was a street-lamp quite
near was enabled to examine it fairly well, even though darkness had now
set in.

All the blinds were drawn, and the inside shutters of the basement were
closely barred.  There was no light in any part, nor any sign of life
within.  In fact, the state of the windows and door-steps would lead to
a conclusion that the old place was tenantless, for the exterior
possessed a distinct air of neglect.  Other houses in the row were of
stereotyped exactness, but all more or less smarter, with steps
hearthstoned and lights showing in the windows here and there.  The one
into which the old woman had so quickly disappeared was, however, grim,
silent, forbidding.

As I strolled to the corner of Theobald's Road I wondered what next I
should do.  I wanted to secure possession of the book, but without
litigation, and, if possible, in secret.  Yet it was a very difficult
matter, as Hammond had pointed out.

Rain commenced to fall, and after my long journey from the Mediterranean
I felt cold and deadbeat.  Therefore, my eyes catching sight of a
glaring public house nearly opposite, I crossed and obtained some brandy
and the loan of the _London Directory_.

After some little search I therein found the name of the occupier of the
dingy old place, as follows: "106, Gardiner, Margaret."

London's mysteries are many and inscrutable.  Surely here was a strange
and inexplicable one.  Why, indeed, should a mere old book of no value
save to a collector be stolen from me in the far-off South and spirited
away at express speed across the Continent to that dark, grimy, unlit
place?  There was some deep, direct motive in it all, of course; but
what it was I could not conceive--except that the suspicion was strong
upon me that, written within The Closed Book, was some remarkable and
highly profitable secret, as indeed the writer himself alleged.

Again I strolled up Harpur Street past the silent house, keenly
examining its every detail.

I noticed, to my surprise, that during my brief absence the Venetian
blind of one of the first-floor windows had been drawn up half-way, and
that on a table quite close to it stood a small stuffed animal--a tiny
bear cub I made it out to be.  There was a feeble light within, as
though the big room was lighted only by a single candle, and it none of
the brightest.

At the end of the street I crossed and returned past the house, walking
on the opposite side of the way and re-examining the windows.

Yes, it was evidently a candle burning there, and as I passed I saw a
long shadow fall directly across the window, then suddenly disappear.

Could it be that the animal had been placed there as a signal to someone
who would pass outside?

Somehow I became convinced that this was so.  The blind had been raised
just sufficiently to show the small bear cub mounted on its hind-legs
and holding a card tray.  I recollected having seen one very similar on
the table of the Savage Club--a present from one of the members.

My natural cautiousness prompted me to wait and watch for the coming of
the person for whom the silent signal was intended--if signal it were;
therefore, I lit a cigarette and halted at the dark corner of East
Street, the short turning at the end of the thoroughfare wherein the
silent house was situated.

As I was dressed only in a thin suit of blue serge, which one generally
wears in summer in Italy when not in white ducks, the steadily falling
rain soon soaked me through.  My straw hat hung clammily on my head, and
the water dripped down my neck, rendering me most uncomfortable.  There
was every prospect of a soaking night--different, indeed, from that
clear, rainless sky that I had just left.  Ah! how dismal London seemed
to me at that hour, jaded, wet, and worn-out as I was!  Still, with that
dogged determination which some of my enemies have said is my chief
characteristic, I remained there watching for the coming of the unknown,
who must be privy to the plot.

Time after time as I stood back in the shelter of a doorway, compelled
ever and anon to go forth into the rain and keep my vigil, I wondered
whether the conclusion I had formed was actually the right one.

The feeble light flickered in the dark room, but showed not the
interior, because of the smoky lace-curtains, dingy and yellow.  Yet
there stood the stuffed bear cub clearly silhouetted, almost
startlingly--the only object visible upon that dark, forbidding facade.

More than once I heard footsteps coming from Theobald's Road, and rushed
from my hiding-place to encounter the passer-by.  But each time I was
disappointed.  The postman came on his last delivery, but only stopped
at the big offices of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Children, almost opposite the house I was watching, then swung round the
corner to Lamb's Conduit Street.

A policeman passed with heavy tread, flashing his bull's eye carelessly
down the areas and glancing at me inquiringly; then in the roadway
through the slush came a man and a woman, Italians, dragging a
street-organ wearily homeward to Saffron Hill.  I watched them and
wondered from what part of Italy they came.

As they went by I heard the man, a strong, black-browed fellow of
twenty-seven or so, exclaim, "_Accidenti_!" and knew that he was a
Tuscan.  The woman (old, brown-faced, and wrinkled) only sighed and
dragged harder.

They went forward, turned the corner into Theobald's Road, and a few
moments later the strident strains of "Soldiers of the Queen" rang out
amid the bustle of the thoroughfare and the roar of traffic.  They had
evidently stopped before the public-house where I had borrowed the
_Directory_, in the hope of earning a last copper or two before
relinquishing their day's work.

Attracted by the music, I strolled back towards the spot where they had
halted, and as I did so encountered two persons.  One was a tall,
grey-haired, rather sad-looking old gentleman, dressed somewhat
shabbily, wearing an old ulster, but without umbrella; the other was an
extremely pretty, fair-haired girl of perhaps twenty-two, pale-faced,
and evidently agitated, for she clung to his arm and was whispering
something to him as she walked.  She was apparently imploring him to
hear her; but he went on stolidly, heedless of her words.  Her dress was
plain, and, it seemed to me, betrayed the pinch of poverty.  Like her
companion, she had no umbrella, and her plain sailor-hat and black
jacket were sodden with the rain.

Her face, however, struck me as one of the most perfect I had ever seen
in all my life.  That woman whom I had met in the prior's study in
Florence was certainly handsome; but hers was of an entirely different
type of beauty, a face about which there certainly could be no two
opinions, but a face full of tragic force and energy.

This woman, however, bore a sweet expression, rendered the more
interesting by that earnest, imploring look as I passed her by
unnoticed.  Her companion was, it struck me, a broken-down gentleman,
while she herself possessed an air of refinement in face and figure, in
spite of her shabby attire, that caused me to set her down as no
ordinary girl.

Her extreme beauty made me turn after them.

The old man, with his thin, hard face, yet gentle eyes, was still
obdurate.  She held back, but without a word he closed her arm to his
and pulled her forward.  He seemed to walk mechanically, while she
appeared bent on arresting his farther progress.

Suddenly, as I strolled on behind them, they came in full view of the
window and its mysterious signal.

"Ah!"  I overheard the old fellow cry in a tone of satisfaction.  "See!
As I hoped.  At last--at last!"

"It means death--death!" the girl added in a tone more hoarse and
despairing than ever I have before heard in a woman.

I had been close enough to overhear the words that confirmed my
suspicion, and I must confess they held me dumbfounded.  I had expected
to meet some slinking thief or some hulking receiver of stolen property,
who would come to look for the bear cub in the window.  Certainly I had,
on first encountering the pair, never for a moment believed that the
signal had been placed there for them.

The man raised his head again, as though to make certain that his eyes
had not deceived him, and as he did so I caught a glance of the girl's
white countenance in the wind-blown light of the street-lamp.

Never, to my last day, shall I forget the terrible expression of blank
despair in those wonderful eyes.  All light and life had died out of her
fair face.  She looked as though her young heart had, at the sight of
that fateful sign, been frozen by some nameless terror.

I had seen plays in which a woman's despair was depicted, but never had
I witnessed real despair until that moment.  Hideous is the only word
that describes it.

At the end of the short thoroughfare they turned and walked back past
the house, feigning, however, not to notice the lighted window.  The
instant I had overheard these strange ejaculations I crossed the road
and hurried on round the corner out of sight, in order that they should
not detect me following them; but, watching their return, I turned again
and went after them into Theobald's Road.

On through the rain they trudged in the direction of Oxford Street, wet
to the skin, for the down-pour still continued without cessation, and
the pavements shone beneath the gaslights.  Neither tram-cars nor cabs
attracted them, for it seemed more than likely that their extreme
poverty did not allow them the luxury of a conveyance.

The girl's hand was held to her breast as she walked, as though to stay
the fierce beating of her heart, but her companion strode on steadily
with fixed purpose and deep-knit brows.

I had been loath to relinquish my vigil before that silent house,
fearing that the little old woman who had entered there might emerge
again and carry my precious Arnoldus with her.  Yet, on the other hand,
this strange pair, who had come there in secret and read the signal,
deeply interested me, and my curiosity impelled me to follow them.

The loud, ear-piercing runs of a street-piano suddenly recalled to my
mind the pair of Italians I had noticed ten minutes before; and as we
passed them playing before another public-house near Southampton Row I
halted for a moment, stepped aside, and spoke to the beetle-browed young
Tuscan in his own tongue.

"Listen.  I want you to assist me," I exclaimed quickly.  "There's no
time to lose, and you'll get half a sovereign if you do as I direct.  Go
back alone to Harpur Street--that short turning you came up ten minutes
ago--and watch a house with a stuffed bear in the upper window--Number
106.  If anyone comes out, follow her--especially a little old woman.
Wait there till I rejoin you.  Will you do it?"

"Certainly, signore," was the young fellow's prompt reply.  "Number 106,
you say?  Very well, trust me.  My mother, here, can hire somebody to
help her home with the _organino_."

"Very well.  What's your name?"

"Farini Enrico," he replied, placing the surname first, in Italian
style; "born at Ponte Moriano, Provincia di Lucca.  The signore knows
Tuscany--does he?"

"Yes," I answered.  "Wait for me near that house; but don't let anyone
see you are watching.  I'll return as soon as possible.  Lose no time."
And I hurried away after the old man in the long ulster and his
white-faced companion.

They had gained upon me considerably; but I soon overtook them,
satisfied that in any case my watch upon the house would not be
relinquished.  I had lived sufficiently long in Tuscany to be able to
read the Tuscan character, and I saw by the young man's manner that he
was not the usual _contadino_ who comes to London to grind an organ, but
from his speech of quite a superior class.  He wore his felt hat
slightly askew, and beneath a rather forbidding exterior I detected that
he possessed a keen sense of humour.  His black, shining eyes laughed
merrily when he mentioned his own village--a village I knew quite well,
a few miles beyond the quiet, aristocratic old town of Lucca, and I saw
that the very fact that I had spoken to him in his own tongue had at
once secured him my servant.  Italians are such children when you know
them thoroughly!

I had little time for reflection, however, for the traffic of Oxford
Street, although the night was wet, was considerable; and, while having
some difficulty in keeping the pair in sight, I was also compelled to
exercise a good deal of precaution in order to avoid recognition as the
man who had encountered them in Harpur Street.

On they went at the same pace, heedless of the drenching rain, turning
into Regent Street, then into Maddox Street, and across Grosvenor Square
into Grosvenor Street, the centre of the West End.  Suddenly, however,
to my amazement, they ascended the steps of one of the best houses in
the latter street; and the man, taking a latch-key from his pocket,
opened the door with an air of proprietorship, and a moment later both
disappeared from view, the door closing behind them.

Such a house, a veritable mansion in one of the most expensive
thoroughfares in London, was the very last place I would have suspected
to be their abode.

I repassed, and saw that it had been recently repainted, and presented a
smart and handsome exterior.  Flowers bloomed in the window-boxes, and a
striped awning was spread over the portico.  I noted that the number was
62A, and the next house I recognised as Viscount Lanercost's.  The
manner in which the shabby-genteel pair had slipped into the house
showed secrecy, and yet the confident way in which the old man opened
the door betrayed that he was no stranger to the place.

Again I had recourse to the pages of that book of revelation, the
_London Directory_--which I obtained in a bar at the end of Park Lane,
frequented mostly by gentlemen's servants--and there I found that the
occupier was the Earl of Glenelg, the wealthy Scotch peer and
ex-Under-Secretary, whose name had long been familiar to me, as no doubt
it was to my readers, through the columns of the newspapers.

Could it be possible that the man in the shabby ulster for whom that
mysterious signal had been placed in the window was actually his
lordship himself?

If so, who was his white-faced companion--the beautiful woman who was
terrorised?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

WHAT THE WATCHERS SAW.

Though utterly fagged out, I hailed a passing cab and drove back to the
corner of Harpur Street, where, in the shadow, about half-way along the
short thoroughfare, I discovered the young Italian keeping a watchful
eye upon the house with the sign of the bear.

"No one has emerged, signore," he said to me in Italian.  "I was here a
few minutes after you spoke to me."

The blind was still up, and the signal still exhibited, the inmates
evidently being unaware of the secret visit of the strange pair.

What connection could Father Bernardo and the old hunchback Graniani,
away in Italy, have with that mysterious household?

"Has anyone passed up the street during my absence?"  I asked the
merry-eyed Enrico.

"Several people, signore.  One man, well-dressed, like a gentleman,
stood for a moment looking up at the window yonder as though he expected
to see someone there.  But he was apparently disappointed, and passed
on."

"What kind of man?"  I inquired eagerly.  "Describe him."

"A signore with small, fair moustache, about forty.  He carried an
umbrella, so I could not see his face very well.  He was tall, and
walked erectly, almost like an officer.  A four-wheeled cab waited for
him up at the corner."

"He didn't actually pass the house?"

"No, signore.  He merely walked down here sufficiently far to obtain a
view of the window; then, having satisfied himself, turned back again."
In reply to my question, Enrico told me that he lived with his mother in
Kirby Street, Hatton Garden, the thoroughfare running parallel with
Saffron Hill.  They have been five years in London: five sad, despairing
years.  Ah, the English! they were not _cattiva_.  Oh, no!  It was their
amazing climate that made them what they were.  He pitied London people.
How happy they would all be if they only lived under the blue sky of
rural Tuscany!  And so he went on, just as every poor Italian does who
is doomed to the struggle and semi-starvation of life in our grey
metropolis.

I read the young fellow's character like a book.  He had served his
military service at Bologna, and had been waiter in the officers' mess.
Then he and his mother emigrated to London from Genoa, attracted by the
proverbial richness of the _Inglese_ and the report that waiters in
restaurants were well paid.  On arrival, however, he had soon discovered
that the supply of Italian waiters was much in excess of the demand;
therefore, he had been compelled to invest the ten pounds he had in a
second-hand organ, and he and his mother picked up a living as best they
could in the unsympathetic streets of London.

He seemed a good fellow, quite frank, and possessing that easy-going,
careless manner of the true Tuscan, which never deserts him even when in
circumstances of direst poverty.  Your true son of the Tuscan mountains
looks at the bright side of everything; a child in love, a demon in
hatred, over-cautious with strangers, but easy and tractable in
everything.  I chatted to him for some twenty minutes, at the end of
which time I resolved that he should assist me further in my
investigations.

I told him how I had only arrived from Italy a few hours ago, and he
grew at once excited.  My train had actually passed across the rippling
Serchio within a few miles of Ponte Moriano, his own village!  I told
him of my long residence in Tuscany, a fact which attracted him towards
me; for seldom your poor Italian of the curb becomes acquainted with an
Englishman who understands his ways and his language.  And when I
explained that I wished him to assist me in a very important and secret
undertaking he at once announced his readiness to do so.

"Very well," I said, giving him the half-sovereign I had promised.  "Go
across to the public-house in Theobald's Road and get some supper
quickly, for I want you to remain on watch here all night.  I must rest
and sleep for a few hours; but we must ascertain who goes and comes
here.  Above all, we must follow anyone carrying a parcel.  A book was
stolen from me in Italy, and it has been taken there."

"I quite understand," was his response; and a few moments later he left
me alone while he went to obtain something to eat.

During his absence I took out a card and wrote upon it the name of the
hotel to which I had decided to go because it was in the vicinity and he
could call me, if necessary--the Hotel Russell.

When he returned a quarter of an hour later I gave him instructions,
telling him that if he wished to call me urgently during the night he
might run round to the hotel, where I would leave instructions with the
night porter, who would without a moment's delay bring up to my room the
card he held in his hand.

Then, jaded, wet, and hungry, I took a cab to the hotel, and sent down
to Charing Cross for my bag, which I had left in the cloak-room there.
In half an hour I had a welcome change of clothes and sat down to a
hearty supper.

In a flash, as it were, I had returned from the charm of Tuscany into my
own circle--the complex little world of literary London.  That night I
sat over a cigar prior to turning in, thinking and wondering.  Yes,
since that moment when I had bought the poisoned manuscript the world
had used me very roughly.  That there was a plot against me I felt
certain.

Midnight came, and from my balcony on the third floor I stood watching
the falling rain and the hansoms coming up from the theatres and
crossing the square on their way northward.  My presence in London again
seemed like a dream, sick as I was of the sun-glare of the
Mediterranean.  My natural intuition told me that I should never return
to Italy.  My old friend Hutchinson would see that my collection of
pictures, china, old furniture, and other antiques was packed and sent
to me.  He had rendered me many kindnesses in the past, and would do so
again, I felt sure, for he was one of my most intimate friends.

I was soundly asleep when, of a sudden, I heard a loud rapping at the
door.

"A man wants to see you, sir.  He's sent up your card," exclaimed a
voice in response to my sleepy growl.

I rubbed my eyes, and recollected that the voice was the night porter's.

"Very well," I replied.  "I'll be down at once;" and, rising, I slipped
on my things hastily, glancing at my watch and finding it to be five
o'clock--four o'clock in English time, as I had not altered my watch
since leaving Italy.

In the grey of dawn at the door below I met Enrico, who, speaking
excitedly in Italian, said:

"Something has happened, signore.  I do not know what it is; but half an
hour ago a little old lady came out of the house hurriedly, and called a
doctor named Barton, who has a surgery in Theobald's Road, next the
fire-engine station.  She seemed greatly excited, and the doctor hurried
back with her.  He's there now, I expect."

In an instant the truth became apparent.  Someone had attempted to open
The Closed Book as I had done, and had become envenomed.

I explained but little to Enrico; but together we hurried back through
the dim, silent thoroughfares to Harpur Street.

I felt a certain amount of satisfaction that the thieves should suffer
as I had suffered.  Like myself, they had opened The Closed Book at
their own risk and peril.

The house, like its neighbours, was in total darkness, save a flickering
candle-flame showing through the dingy fanlight, denoting that Doctor
Barton was still within.  I asked the young Italian how he knew the
doctor's name, and he replied that it was engraved on the brass-plate on
the door.

Within myself I reconstructed the whole story.  An unknown inmate of the
house had been poisoned, and the doctor--a friend most probably--had
been hurriedly summoned.  Was he aware of the antidote, as Pellegrini in
Leghorn had been?  Poisoning is not the usual recreation of the
law-abiding Londoner, and few general practitioners, even Harley Street
specialists, would care to undergo an examination upon Tanner's
"Memoranda on Poisons," nearly out of date as it may be.

My chief object was to regain possession of my property.  I had
discovered at least two persons interested in it--namely the old
gentleman and the sweet-faced young woman who had entered that smart
house in Grosvenor Street.  There only remained for me to fix the
identity of the unknown person within that dingy old house in Harpur
Street.

The doctor emerged at last when near five o'clock, and it was quite
daylight.  He was shown out by my fellow-passenger from Calais, who
thanked him profusely for his efforts, evidently successful.

For an hour or two I saw nothing could be done; therefore we both
relinquished our vigil: Enrico returning to his home behind Saffron Hill
to snatch an hour's sleep and some breakfast, and I back to the hotel.

In thinking over all the curious events, I resolved that it was
necessary to confide in one or other of my friends in London.  At
present no one knew that I was back in town; but when they did I knew
that a flood of invitations would pour upon me.

As I have already said, it was now my intention to settle down in
England, and I was eager to begin house-hunting, so as to have a fitting
place ready to receive my antiquarian collection when it arrived from
Italy.  Some months must elapse before I could be settled in a country
house, which I intended; therefore, on reflection, I resolved to accept
the hospitality of one of my best friends of the old London days,
Captain Walter Wyman, the well-known traveller and writer.  He was about
my own age, and had earned success and popularity by dint of
perseverance and intrepid exploration.  Inheriting an ample income from
his father, the late Sir Henry Wyman, Knight, the great Wigan
ironmaster, he had after a bitter disappointment in love devoted himself
to the pursuit of geographical knowledge, and as a result of his travels
in Asia and Africa the world had been considerably enriched by
information.  Fever, however, had seriously impaired his health, and he
was at present back in his comfortable chambers in Dover Street, where
he had only a few weeks ago invited me to stay if I came to town.

I decided to accept his hospitality in preference to the comfortless
hotel life, which, after some years of it in various places on the
Continent, I abominate.  Of all men in whom I might confide, Walter
Wyman would be the best.  He lived for adventure, and as the world is
well aware had had a considerable amount of it during his travels.

At ten o'clock that morning his white-headed old valet Thompson admitted
me.

"Why, my dear Allan!" my friend cried, jumping from his chair, where he
was enjoying his after-breakfast cigarette, "this is a surprise!  You're
back, then?"

"Yes," I replied.  "I came back suddenly last night, and am going to
accept your invitation to stay."

"Of course.  You know we wouldn't be friends any longer if you went
elsewhere.  How long are you over for?"

"For good.  I'm going to look out for a cottage or something in the
country.  I'm sick of Italy at last."

Wyman smiled, offered me a cigarette, and ordered Thompson to bring
brandy and soda.  Careless, easy-going cosmopolitan that he was, it
never struck him that strong drink so early in the morning was unusual.

He was dark, with a rather reddish complexion, tall, well-groomed,
well-dressed in a suit of dark blue, and well set-up altogether.
Although several touches of fever had played havoc with him, he
nevertheless looked the pink of condition--a fine specimen of English
manhood.

When I had lit my cigarette I spoke to him confidentially, and he
listened to my story with the utmost attention.  In that cozy room, the
walls of which were hung with savage arms and trophies of the chase, and
the floor covered with the skins of animals that had fallen to his gun,
I told him the whole of the strange circumstances, relating briefly the
incomplete story as written in The Closed Book and the remarkable
conspiracy that was apparently in progress.

When I had described the mysterious visit of the tall old gentleman and
the young woman to Harpur Street, and had related how I had followed
them to the Earl of Glenelg's house in Grosvenor Street, he jumped up,
exclaiming:

"Why, from your description, my dear fellow, he must have been the Earl
himself, and the girl was evidently his daughter, Lady Judith Gordon!
They've been abroad this two years, and to half London their whereabouts
has been a mystery.  I had no idea they had returned.  By Jove! what you
tell me is really most puzzling.  It seems to me that you ought to get
back that book at any cost."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

THE COUNSEL OF FRIENDS.

We discussed the best mode of regaining possession of the book, but our
conclusions were not very clear.

My friend Walter set about giving old Thompson orders to prepare my
room, for he was one of the few bachelors who could afford to keep a
spare guest-chamber in his flat.  It was a hobby of his that his
chambers should remain in just the same order during his absence as when
at home.  He had been travelling sometimes for two years at a stretch,
and yet when I had called there I found old Thompson just as prim as
usual, merely replying to callers, "Captain Wyman is not at home, sir."
Thompson was a wonderful servant, and had been old Sir Henry's right
hand until his death.  Indeed, he had been in the service of the Wymans
for a trifle over fifty years, and appeared to treat Walter more as a
son than as master.

My friend fully agreed with me that I had done right in engaging Enrico
as watcher.  He would be useful, and could act as spy in places where we
could not afford to be seen.  That there was some remarkable conspiracy
in progress Wyman was, like myself, convinced; but what it was he failed
to comprehend.

We carefully discussed the curious affair, and after an hour of anxious
discussion formed a plan of campaign which we promptly proceeded to
carry out.

While I remained there resting, he took a cab and called on the doctor
named Barton.

When he returned, he explained that he consulted the doctor, and
feigning the symptoms of poisoning which I had explained, the
unsuspecting medico had at once remarked that only a few hours before he
had been called to a similar case.  He suggested to Wyman that perhaps
both had eaten something unsound purchased at a shop in the
neighbourhood.

Then, after receiving a dose, and being compelled to swallow it in order
to keep up the fiction, my friend had commenced to chat with the doctor,
and learned that the patient he had been called to was a clean-shaven,
middle-aged man who had apparently about nine months ago come to live in
Harpur Street.  The name he gave was Selby, no profession--at least as
far as the doctor knew.  He had been struck by his rather mysterious
bearing.  The little old lady was probably a relation, but of that he
was not quite sure.  The name I had found in the _Directory_ was that of
the present tenant.  Wyman had also approached the subject of The Closed
Book; but it was apparent that neither Selby nor the doctor suspected
that its leaves were envenomed.  The patient had made no remark to the
doctor about the book.  Barton had found him suffering acutely, and
betraying all the symptoms of poisoning; but beyond that he knew
nothing.

Yet Wyman's visit had cleared up one or two points, and had given us the
name of the man into whose possession The Closed Book had passed.

Presently we went forth again in company, and at the corner of
Theobald's Road found the young Italian still vigilant, although
palpably worn out and very hungry.  Nothing had transpired, we learned.
No one had come out of the house; but the little old lady had come to
the door and taken in the milk and bread from the baker.  She apparently
acted as housekeeper.

We dismissed Enrico for four hours, and I took his place, while Walter
Wyman went down to the Naval and Military Club, where he declared he was
certain to meet a friend of his who was intimate with Lord Glenelg, and
from whom he might obtain some information.

"What connection they have with this affair is a profound mystery," he
remarked; "just as much of a mystery as the fact they are in London when
believed to be abroad.  Colonel Brock, my friend, only told me the night
before last that they were with friends up at Mussooree, in the north of
India."

"Well, it seems they're back again now," I remarked.

"So it appears," was his reply, and he stepped into a hansom and drove
down to the club to gather information, leaving me to lounge in the
vicinity of that rather dark and cheerless London street.

The weather was damp and muggy, and the continuous traffic in Theobald's
Road jarred upon my nerves.  Even in the broad daylight the exterior of
the house in Harpur Street was dingy, with an air of distinct mystery.
The shutters of the area window remained closed; but the stuffed bear
cub had now been removed from the upper window, having served its
purpose, whatever that might be.

Soon after noon Wyman met me again.  He had been active every moment,
had seen his friend, and had moreover called at Grosvenor Street under
some pretext, only to discover that the Earl and his daughter, having
returned unexpectedly from abroad two days ago, had left again that very
morning.

Was it that inexplicable signal that had caused the pair to flee from
London again?

The reason why they had been both dressed shabbily was now obvious.
They were in London in secret, and feared recognition.  Walter Wyman's
interest was now thoroughly aroused, and he declared his intention of
sifting the matter to the bottom.

The question now arose as to the means by which we should get back the
book stolen from me.  In the bar of the public-house where I had taken
refreshment on the previous night we further discussed the matter.  To
attempt to regain it by interviewing the man Selby would, we felt
assured, be in vain, for of such value was it and so widespread the
conspiracy that he would probably either deny that it was in his
possession or openly defy us.  On the other hand, it would be a
dangerous matter to commit a burglary there, and more dangerous still to
enter forcibly and demand my property.  Even Doctor Barton had confessed
that there was something puzzling and forbidding about the blustering
man's manner and antecedents.

Therefore, we found ourselves at a complete deadlock.

I wished heartily that I had ordered the old woman to be stopped on
landing at Dover pier.

Could the police assist us?  Wyman thought not, at least not in their
official capacity.  We should frighten this Mr Selby, and if so would
probably lose the precious volume altogether.

We both saw that it was a matter in which there must be no bungling.  My
friend Wyman was as shrewd a man as any in London, and this fighting
with conspirators was work just to his liking.  He was one of those men
who, in whatever tight corner they find themselves, either at home or
abroad, always managed to wriggle out of it.

In the first place, we had no knowledge of the character of the man with
whom we had to deal; while, in the second, we were utterly in the dark
as to the motive of the conspiracy against me from the moment when the
rare Arnoldus had passed into my hand.

That we should act promptly and with firm determination was imperative;
but what line to take we knew not.

The more we discussed it the more determined I became to act fearlessly
and go straight to the point by going to the police-station and
demanding the little old woman's arrest.  Such a course would bring
matters to a head, and yet I still hesitated to show our enemies our
hand.  At present they were unaware of my presence in London, and surely
their ignorance of this would be to our advantage, inasmuch as the
looker-on sees most of the game.

I felt that I wanted an expert opinion, and suddenly recollected that in
the old days, when I had lived in London before, I had been on friendly
terms with a detective-sergeant of the Criminal Investigation Department
named Noyes, who had been attached to the Hunter Street Police Station.
I had several acquaintances in the Metropolitan police, as most literary
men have; but to Noyes I had been indebted more than once for showing me
certain phases of unknown London.  Therefore I knew that if I sought his
advice he would willingly give it.

Leaving Wyman to watch, I therefore took a cab to Hunter Street, and
inquired of the inspector on duty for my friend, who, I was informed,
had been promoted to the rank of inspector, and was posted at the chief
station of the T Division at Hammersmith.

I returned in the cab to Wyman, and then lost no time in following out
my quest by going out to Hammersmith.

I found my friend, a loosely built, heavy-jawed man of middle-age,
sitting in his upstairs office; and when I entered he rose to welcome me
warmly.  Then, on telling him that I had come to seek his advice, he
settled himself at his plain writing-table to listen.

The story I related interested him just as much as it had Wyman; but now
and then he pencilled a note upon the sheet of paper he had
instinctively placed before him.  I related the whole facts from first
to last, concealing nothing.  The secret poisoning appealed to him,
clever detective that he was, for every man attached to Scotland Yard
will tell you that a good many more people die in London of poison
annually than ever doctors or coroner's juries suspect.

"Now, what I want is to get my property back again without these people
knowing," I explained at last.

"I quite see," he said.  "If they knew you had followed them up so
quickly it might put an end to their game without you ever knowing what
their motive has been.  Yes, you want that book back at all costs, but
in a secret way.  You can easily lay information before the magistrate;
and I could, on that, go and search for the stolen property.  But that's
hardly your game, Mr Kennedy.  We must use methods a trifle more--well,
artistic, shall we call it?" and his big face broadened into a grin.

"Well now, what do you suggest?"  I asked.

But, instead of responding, he asked me for a detailed description of
the rare and interesting volume.  Then, when I had given it to him, he
raised his eyes from the paper whereon he had made some memoranda, and
with a mysterious smile asked:

"Would you be willing to leave the affair entirely in my hands, Mr
Kennedy?  I have an idea that I might, with the assistance of a friend,
be able to get hold of the book without this person Selby knowing that
it has gone back into your possession.  If I attempt it, however, you
must not be seen anywhere in the vicinity.  Any observation kept upon
the old lady or upon this fellow Selby must be done by your friend,
Captain Wyman.  Would you be inclined to act under my directions and lie
low until I communicate with you?"

"Certainly," I answered, although not yet understanding his point.

"If there is a conspiracy, you'll very quickly be spotted if you remain
hanging about Harpur Street," he said.  "I think, if you're prepared to
pay a sovereign or two, that I can get hold of the book for you.  Only
it will have to be done secretly; and, in order that you should not be
suspected of regaining possession of it, you must go away into the
country and wait until you hear from me.  We don't want them to suspect
anything, otherwise we may not be able to solve the mystery of it all."

"I'll leave the whole affair in your hands, Noyes, of course," I
responded.  "When shall I go into the country?"

"Today.  Go where you like, to some place within easy reach of town, and
stay there till you hear from me.  Don't go back to Harpur Street,
because it's too dangerous.  You must be recognised sooner or later.
I'll find Captain Wyman and explain matters to him.  Why not run down to
somewhere on the Great Northern, to Peterborough, for instance.  It's on
the main line, and the first stop of the expresses to the north--an hour
and a half from King's Cross.  You see I could get down quickly if I
wanted to see you, or you could run up if necessary.  There's a good
old-fashioned hotel--the `Angel.'  I stopped there once when I was after
a German bank-note forger, and was very comfortable."

"Very well.  I'll go there.  That will be my address till I hear from
you.  Tell it to Captain Wyman, as he may want to write to me."

After some discussion, in which he steadily refused to enlighten me
further upon his scheme for getting hold of The Closed Book, we returned
together by the underground railway to Charing Cross, where we parted,
he to seek my friend Wyman, and I to hide myself in the small provincial
town of Peterborough, where I arrived that afternoon about half-past
four.

As Noyes had declared, the "Angel" was replete with old-fashioned
comfort, a relic of the bygone posting-days and a centre of agricultural
commerce on market-days.  Except the cathedral, there is very little of
interest in the town of Peterborough; for of late years it has been
modernised out of all recognition.  In itself it is ugly, although
situated in the centre of the rich green pasturage of the Nene Valley, a
busy place, where the hand of the vandal has been at work everywhere
save perhaps in Narrow Street, the small, old-fashioned thoroughfare
wherein the "Angel" is situated.

I spent the evening examining the interior of the cathedral, afterwards
taking a stroll as far as the village of Longthorpe, and after dinner
retired early, for I had not yet recovered from my swift journey across
Europe.

The following day passed, and still the next, yet I could only idle
there, chafing and anxious regarding the success of Noyes's undertaking.
Letters from Wyman showed that, aided by Enrico, he was still keeping
observation upon the house, although he had seen nothing further of my
friend the detective after his announcement of my departure.

I began to wonder if Noyes had broken faith with me.  Yet we had been
the best of friends in the old days when I had lived and worked in
London; and I thought I knew him well enough to be confident that he
would assist me in every way within his power.

Therefore I wandered the streets of Peterborough or lounged in the bar
of my hotel, in hourly expectation of some message from him.

His silence was ominous, and my uneasiness increased until, on the third
day, I determined to remain inactive no longer.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

THE OLD MONK'S SECRET.

To idle in a provincial town without friends and without occupation is
neither pleasant nor profitable.  In London one can always amuse one's
self and pass the time; but in dull Peterborough my principal
excitement, in addition to visiting the much-restored cathedral and the
local museum in the Minster Precincts, was to watch fat stock being sold
by auction.

Anxiety consumed me as to what had occurred at Harpur Street, and
whether The Closed Book was actually lost to me.  I had telegraphed
twice to Noyes, Hammersmith Police Station, but had received no
response.  His silence was in no way reassuring, therefore I resolved
that if I heard nothing by nine o'clock that night I would return to
London by the last train.

I dined at seven after a dismal day, and while at table the waiter
entered the coffee-room where I sat alone, saying that a gentleman
wished to see me.  Next moment Noyes, dressed like a commercial
traveller in dark-blue suit and bowler hat, entered the room.

There was a smile of triumph on his face, from which I gathered
instantly that he had been successful.  He carried a black leather bag
in his hand, and this he opened as soon as the waiter had gone out,
saying, as he produced a brown paper packet:

"I'm glad to say, Mr Kennedy, that I've been able to do the trick.  It
was a very delicate matter, and the affair presented features and
difficulties I had never anticipated."

"Then you've actually got it?"  I cried eagerly, opening the parcel and
displaying the precious volume.

"There it is, as you see," he laughed.  "Only please don't ask how I got
possession of it, because I'd rather not say--you understand."

Detectives are apt to be mysterious sometimes, therefore I did not
question him further.  For me it was sufficient that he had been able to
secure it without the thieves knowing into whose possession it had
passed.  I was well aware of the great circle of criminal acquaintances
Noyes had in London, and I suspected that it was through one of them
that the book had been obtained.

"I wired twice to you," I said, when at my invitation he seated himself
at the table to join me at dinner.

"I know," was his response.  "It was not necessary to reply.  In such a
case as this patience is everything.  You were just a trifle too
impatient, Mr Kennedy--if you'll pardon me saying it.  I had promised
to do what I could, and did so, with the result you see."

I know I deserved this quiet reproof, and admitted it, for patience is
one of the many good qualities I do not possess.

He would explain nothing of the means by which he had obtained my
property, although he told me one or two strange facts concerning Selby
and the little old lady who had travelled from Paris.

"I've seen Selby," he said.  "At first I seemed to have a faint idea
that I'd seen his face before, and that he was wanted for something.
But I've searched at the Yard, and found no photograph resembling him,
so I suppose I must be mistaken.  The old woman's name is Mrs Pickard.
She knows several foreigners living at different places, mostly people
in good circumstances."

"You haven't seen anything of a tall, dark, and very handsome young
woman--Italian probably?"  I hazarded, wondering if the actual thief had
arrived in London.

"No.  Captain Wyman is still on the watch.  He's as good as any man I've
ever had under me--quite professional in his methods.  And that young
Italian, too, seems a smart sort of chap.  You picked him up quite
accidentally, I think you said?"

I explained how I had sought Enrico's aid, and what opinion I had formed
of him.

"Well," Noyes remarked, as he gulped down a glass of Bass with evident
gusto, "I shall return tonight, but you'd best remain here, Mr Kennedy;
or, if not here, somewhere in the country.  You must not be seen in
town.  Bury yourself away from there, and leave all the watching to us.
You've got the book, therefore be careful it don't go out of your
possession again."

"Trust me," I laughed.  "When I've gone through it all I shall put it in
a bank for safe keeping."

"It ain't the sort of thing to leave about if the leaves are really
poisoned, as you say.  I've been afraid to open the thing," he remarked,
half apologetically.

"I'm tired of this place," I said, longing to return to London.

"Then go somewhere else--to the seaside, for instance.  You're quite
near the east coast places here."

"A good idea," I exclaimed.  "I'll go to Sheringham tonight.  I stayed
at the `Grand' once, and will go there again."

"Very well," he said, and we concluded our meal and lit cigars
afterwards, chatting over the various remarkable features of the
mystery.  My decision to go to the little watering-place, now becoming
so popular, pleased him.  My absence from London was imperative, he
declared, and at Sheringham, if dull, I could at any rate get some golf.
How long I would be compelled to remain there he had no idea.

"Let me complete my inquiries," he said.  "They are very difficult; but
I don't despair as long as Captain Wyman will continue to assist me.
Perhaps, when you've deciphered the whole of the book, a further clue
will be furnished to the motive of all this secrecy and conspiracy."

"I shall resume at Sheringham tomorrow," I replied.  "I expect to
discover some secret which will throw further light on recent events."

At nine o'clock, after an exchange of expressions of confidence, we
drove together to the Great Northern station, and after seeing him into
the up-express.  I took the slow night train, _via_ Wisbech and South
Lynn, to the clean little fishing-village of Sheringham, which Harley
Street has recently discovered to be so healthy, and which society is
now commencing to patronise.

I took a private sitting-room at the "Grand," overlooking the promenade,
an expensive luxury to be sure, but I wanted quiet and privacy in my
investigations; and next morning, after my breakfast had been cleared, I
first assumed a pair of thick driving-gloves, and then reopened The
Closed Book at the page where my reading had been so abruptly broken
off.

I think, in order to reproduce the record plainly, it will be best to
give the transcript just as I copy it from the time-stained poisoned
pages now before me, with all its quaintness of expression and
orthography, only eliminating the contractions and some obscurities.

What I further deciphered, then, was as follows:

"Reader who darest to seeke within this BOOK, I commend me unto you as
heartily as I may think, trusting in God that you be (the which Jesu
continue) in good prosperity.  It is not out of your remembrance that my
lord of Valentinois had sworn to kill me because I had given help unto
my lady Lucrezia, and had more than once used the knife contayning the
antidote, striking as I had stricken my lord of Pesaro those whom he
attempted to poison.  Hence my lady, seeing that her lord was dead, and
right knowing her helplessness, induced me to recover her jewels and
flie to England with them, there to await her ladyship's arrival, her
intention being to seeke the gracious intercession of our lord Cardynal
Wolsey, who had befriended her when in Rome.  Loth as I was to leave my
lady alone in the Vatican, that place of so many black deeds, I saw that
to serve her I must obey, hence did I at once repair unto the spot near
unto the village of Monte-Compatri, where I had concealed my lady
Lucrezia's wondrous jewels within a strong casket of wood and iron.  The
Borgia emeralds, be it knowne unto you, were the finest the world had
ever seen, and were once the property of the Great Turk, the Sultan
Muhammed, who is said to have obtained them from the ruins of ancient
Babylon.  They were set in the forme of a neck-collar, each stone as
large as a mann's thumb.  And preserved with them were diamonds, pearls,
and rubies of value enormous, and with the which was the sealed phiall
of the secret venom and the antidote.  All these did I recover securely,
and having bade farewell unto my lady, journeyed to England after many
adventures that need not be herein recounted.  Arrived in London, I
again took up my lyving in the house of my friend Sir George Goodrick,
in East Chepe, on the iij. daye of January in the yeare of our Lord
1501.

"For the space of one year and two monthes I remained in London, until a
messenger came from my lady with the amazing news that she had become
wedded unto the lord Don Alfonso D'Este, heir of the lord Duke Ercole of
Ferrara, and, having removed to Ferrara, did not intend travellynge to
England at that presente.  In her letter she told me how that at last
she had wedded a man she loved, and that with her confessor she was
seeking the forgiveness of her God for the black deedes her brother
Cesare had compelled her to commit.  Furthermore, she tolde me that
knowing her jewels were in safe keeping in my hands she wished me to
still retaine them in their secret hyding-place until such time as she
should arrive to see mi lord Cardynal Wolsey at Hamton.  She pointed out
that I, well knowing of the terrible deedes commited by her, and
therefore havying been more than once her assistant in her murderous
treachery, was as guiltie as she.  The blood of many of those who had
been envenomed was upon my hands, therefore it was for me to make
penance and seek forgiveness.

"Her words were those of a penitent woman, and they caused me to think.
She was happy with her husband, but uneasy on account of her guiltiness
of mind.  She was repentant, and wished me to be so.  For a long time I
thought over her words, until at last becoming convinced that being
privy to those foul poison-plots wherein death was dealt secretly to
every enemy, I was also an assassin and accursed.  Wherefore, after much
reason, I resolved to hide mi lady's treasure and enter as a novice the
order of Saint Benedict at their great abbey of Croylande in
Lincolnshire, hoping that the rigours of a monastic life would open up
to me the glories and comforts of religion, of the which I stood sorely
in need.

"Please it you, reader, to understand that I repaired to Croylande, and
having sunk the casket of my lady's jewels in the fish-pond one hundred
and thirty and one paces south-east of the grand altar of the abbey,
midway between the shores, I entered as novice of the sacred order,
Roberte de Deepynge then being abbot.  Through eighteen full years did I
make penance, leading a religious life and making peace with my God.
Our abbey was one of the finest and well-favoured in all England, and my
lyfe was spent mostlie in religious work among the people.  At times I
visited the abbeys of Peterborough, Thomey, Fynshed, Fountance
[Fountains], St Albans, and our great Glassynburie [Glastonbury],
travelling much, and making many and long pilgrimages.  Much that I did
see at Glassynburie was indeed of a scandal; but my bounden duty most
humbly remembered, I speak not of the evil deeds of those supposed to
live in sanctitie.  One day in April, when I passed across the
tryangular bridge at Croylande towardes the Abbeye, having been to the
priory of Castor to visit the beadsman Willyam Petre, a monk, my friend
named Malcolm Maxwell, brought unto me a travel-stained messenger from
Ferrara, who tolde to me the death of my lady Lucrezia, and gave unto me
a letter written to me an hour before she died.  She urged me to
continue my lyfe of religion and peace with God, and sente me as her
dying wish that her pryceless jewels should remain concealed because a
curse rested upon them.  She wished that no man should see or touch
them, but her will was that they might only be used in the cause of the
holy Catholic church.  And for that purpose she left the treasure in mi
hands, together with the poison-phiall and the secrete antidote to be
used if occasion warranted in the same cause, these also beynge
concealed with the marvellous gems in the mud of the fish-pond.  This
news overburdened my heart with greefe, and I vowed unto God (praised be
Him) that I would faithfully fulfil my lady's commandments, and still
continue in my unfained fidelity of my allegiance.  Wherein reducing to
remembrance the prised memories and perpetual renowned facts of the
famous Duchess, yet having the reader's most benign and gracious favour,
I resolved to still remain in the sanctuarie of the abbey, although I
hadde in mi possession some of the finest jewells known unto the world,
and the whych, if solde, might keepe me in prosperity all my days."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

CONTINUES 

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