It was just a fortnight later that I received quite unexpectedly a
telegram from Rome directed to me at my London lodgings. I tore it open
hastily; it was signed by Emily, and contained only these few words: "We
have found the Museum Wulfric. The superintendent is coming over to
identify and reclaim it. Can you manage to run across immediately with
him?"
For a moment I was lost in astonishment, delight, and fear. How and why
had Emily gone over to Rome? Who could she have with her to take care
of her and assist her? How on earth had she tracked the missing coin to
its distant hiding-place? It was all a profound mystery to me; and after
my first outburst of joy and gratitude, I began to be afraid that Emily
might have been misled by her eagerness and anxiety into following up
the traces of the wrong coin.
However, I had no choice but to go to Rome and see the matter ended; and
I went alone, wearing out my soul through that long journey with
suspense and fear; for I had not managed to hit upon the superintendent,
who, through his telegram being delivered a little the sooner, had
caught a train six hours earlier than the one I went by.
As I arrived at the Central Station at Rome, I was met, to my surprise,
by a perfect crowd of familiar faces. First, Emily herself rushed to me,
kissed me, and assured me a hundred times over that it was all right,
and that the missing coin was undoubtedly recovered. Then, the
superintendent, more shamefaced than ever, and very grave, but with a
certain moisture in his eyes, confirmed her statement by saying that he
had got the real Museum Wulfric undoubtedly in his pocket. Then Sir
Theophilus, who had actually come across with Lady Wraxton on purpose to
take care of Emily, added his assurances and congratulations. Last of
all, Woollacott, the warder, stepped up to me and said simply, "I'm
glad, sir, that it was through me as it all came out so right and even."
"Tell me how it all happened," I cried, almost faint with joy, and still
wondering whether my innocence had really been proved beyond all fear of
cavil.
Then Woollacott began, and told me briefly the whole story. He had
consulted with the superintendent and Sir Theophilus, without saying a
word to me about it, and had kept a close watch upon all the letters
that came for Mactavish. A rare Anglo-Saxon coin is not a chattel that
one can easily get rid of every day; and Woollacott shrewdly gathered
from what Sir Theophilus had told him that Mactavish (or whoever else
had stolen the coin) would be likely to try to dispose of it as far away
from England as possible, especially after all the comments that had
been made on this particular Wulfric in the English newspapers. So he
took every opportunity of intercepting the postman at the front door,
and looking out for envelopes with foreign postage stamps. At last one
day a letter arrived for Mactavish with an Italian stamp and a
cardinal's red hat stamped like a crest on the flap of the envelope.
Woollacott was certain that things of that sort didn't come to Mactavish
every day about his ordinary business. Braving the penalties for
appropriating a letter, he took the liberty to open this suspicious
communication, and found it was a note from Cardinal Trevelyan, the
Pope's Chamberlain, and a well-known collector of antiquities referring
to early Church history in England, and that it was in reply to an offer
of Mactavish's to send the Cardinal for inspection a rare gold coin not
otherwise specified. The Cardinal expressed his readiness to see the
coin, and to pay a hundred and fifty pounds for it, if it proved to be
rare and genuine as described. Woollacott felt certain that this
communication must refer to the gold Wulfric. He therefore handed the
letter to Mrs. Mactavish when the postman next came his rounds, and
waited to see whether Mactavish any day afterwards went to the post to
register a small box or packet. Meanwhile he communicated with Emily and
the superintendent, being unwilling to buoy me up with a doubtful hope
until he was quite sure that their plan had succeeded. The
superintendent wrote immediately to the Cardinal, mentioning his
suspicions, and received a reply to the effect that he expected a coin
of Wulfric to be sent him shortly. Sir Theophilus, who had been greatly
interested in the question of the coin, kindly offered to take Emily
over to Rome, in order to get the criminating piece, as soon as it
arrived, from Cardinal Trevelyan. That was, in turn, the story that they
all told me, piece by piece, in the Central Station at Rome that
eventful morning.
"And Mactavish?" I asked of the superintendent eagerly.
"Is in custody in London already," he answered somewhat sternly. "I had
a warrant out against him before I left town on this journey."
At the trial the whole case was very clearly proved against him, and my
innocence was fully established before the face of all my
fellow-countrymen. A fortnight later my wife and I were among the rocks
and woods at Ambleside; and when I returned to London, it was to take a
place in the department of coins at the British Museum, which the
superintendent begged of me to accept as some further proof in the eyes
of everybody that the suspicion he had formed in the matter of the
Wulfric was a most unfounded and wholly erroneous one. The coin itself I
kept as a memento of a terrible experience; but I have given up
collecting on my own account entirely, and am quite content nowadays to
bear my share in guarding the national collection from other depredators
of the class of Mactavish.
_MY UNCLE'S WILL._