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_."