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."