Chapter Thirty Nine. Contains Lord Glenelg’s Story.

There was a long and painful pause.

“Eight years ago I was living with my wife and Judith at the Villa Carracci, in the Val d’Ema, close to Florence, and first met the hunchback Graniani, or Fra Francesco, as he was then called, for he was then a monk at the Certosa Monastery at Galuzzo,” said Lord Glenelg in a hard, strained voice. “He came to beg alms of me; our conversation ran upon books and ancient manuscripts, and I found, to my surprise, that he was very well versed in the study of palaeography. Discovering that I was a collector, he invited me to the monastery one day, and there exhibited the treasures of the library, including a very remarkable manuscript of Arnoldus. Away at Sienna there lived an English friend of this hunchback, named Selby, of whom he often spoke. One afternoon, when visiting the Certosa, I was introduced to this man, and found him to be a person whose past history was somewhat shady, and who was living in Sienna in strict privacy. It struck me from the first that the fellow, like lots of others one meets in Italy and elsewhere, had got into some trouble in England, and lived abroad to avoid arrest. On several occasions we met, and I could not help suspecting that there was some extraordinary bond of friendship existing between that hunchback monk and my dark-faced, oily-looking compatriot, who lived the life of a hermit, sometimes in Pisa, at others in Sienna, and frequently in Rome.

“My wife frequently gave alms to Fra Francesco, hence the lay brother was a constant caller, and was in the habit of bringing us in return presents of grapes, figs, and salads from the monastery garden. I, too, became interested in him, for his knowledge was several times of great assistance to me in my palaeographical studies in the Laurenziana Library and the archives of the Palazzo Vecchio. So, gradually, his connection with the adventurous Englishman passed out of my mind.

“After about a year a crushing blow fell upon me. I had been into Florence one morning making some researches in the archives, and on my return discovered my poor wife seated in her little salon stark and dead. She had, it seemed, received Fra Francesco in the hall, he having called with a present of grapes, and she had given him a few lire. The grapes had been taken to the dining-room, and she had gone straight to her own boudoir and must have there expired without being able to call assistance. The medical examination was a searching one; but it was found that death was due to sudden heart failure. Fra Francesco explained at the inquiry that my wife seemed quite in her usual health when she had given him alms, and that she had told him to call again on the following Monday. Selby was in Florence, and called to condole with me on the day my poor wife was interred in the English cemetery. After that I took Judith, and we became wanderers, travelling about hither and thither across the Continent. People believed me eccentric because I had closed Twycross and my town house here and preferred life in hotels with constant change.” He sighed, adding: “But they knew not that I travelled with one fixed object; that often when my friends supposed me to be thousands of miles away I was living here in secrecy, going forth only at night for fear of recognition. The object of this you will see later.”

“Ah, yes!” interrupted Lady Judith, her face a trifle paler, “an object that is now happily accomplished.”

“My daughter, here, was but a girl when my poor wife died,” went on his lordship, speaking in that mechanical, reflective tone that he had used all along, relating a painful history only from a sense of duty. “For the first three years she was, on and off, at a convent at Angers, and then as my constant companion lived a life of continual travel—an existence which has happily ended this very day. Well, I need not describe our weary wanderings, our swift movements from one city to another, nor our constant subterfuges for disguise. It is sufficient for me to come to these present days.

“By careful inquiries and personal observation I was aware that Fra Francesco had, about a year after my wife’s death, been forced to leave the Order owing to irreligious conduct, and that both he and the man Selby—who I had discovered was a chemist of considerable ability and had been lecturer at one of the London hospitals—were in possession of some profound secret. The pair travelled together very frequently, staying at the best hotels, such as the Langham in London, the Chatham in Paris, the Metropole in Vienna, Shepheard’s in Cairo, the Métropole at Monte Carlo, the Grand at Rome, the houses of the first order in Bombay, Sydney, San Francisco, and New York. Indeed, the pair made a world tour, and, strangely enough, in several places where they went some person of affluence, man or woman, expired suddenly, the doctors attributing death to the same vague cause as that of my poor wife’s disease—heart failure.

“Thus my suspicion became confirmed that this unfrocked monk and his shady companion had actually discovered some secret poison which, like the venom of the Borgias, while defying detection, could be used in the same subtle way and with the same deadly effect. The suspicion had been aroused by my discovering among my dead wife’s papers a note written to her by Fra Francesco just prior to her death, which showed that she had, by some means, become acquainted with their secret discovery, and knew the reason of the death of a small landed proprietor named Bardi, whose estate joined that of the Villa Caracci. It was undoubtedly because of this discovery of their dastardly crime and fear of denunciation that my poor wife was secretly assassinated.”

“Then you have watched these men for seven years?” I exclaimed, in utter amazement at these revelations.

“I have,” was his hard answer. “I followed them everywhere, secretly noting how ingeniously and unsuspectedly they dealt death and were gradually enriching themselves without any fear of detection, for they were clever enough never to be associated with the actual fatality. Indeed, they could so regulate their poison, whatever it was, that death would occur almost instantly, or, if they so desired, not for several days, robbery, of course, being always the motive. Under a dozen aliases they made their dastardly progress, striking death in seven different instances within my own knowledge, without compassion or remorse.

“Among the persons who fell their victims were the well-known stockbroker Clement Harrison, of Wall Street, New York, whose sudden death in Paris you will probably recollect; a woman named Blacker, maid to the Duchess of Cornwall, from whom they stole a quantity of diamonds which the unfortunate woman had in her keeping in the Hotel Métropole in Vienna; a banker named Lefevre, who died suddenly in his offices in the Boulevard Haussmann; and a Polish prince named Lebitski, who expired mysteriously at the same hotel in which they were staying at Sydney.

“I enumerate these just to show you the progress of their atrocious crimes. From the last-named victim they obtained at least thirty thousand pounds in cash and securities; and yet, although I felt absolutely certain of their guilt, I was utterly powerless to denounce them, because never once had there been the slightest suspicion of poisoning. Indeed, in several cases, in order to satisfy the police, the viscera had been analysed, and all idea of venom utterly set aside.”

“Then you dared not denounce them,” remarked Wyman, listening as eagerly as myself to this extraordinary story.

“True. I felt assured that I was in possession of the startling truth; but in no case was there the slightest evidence that either of the men had anything whatsoever to do with the victim’s death.

“Two years ago, however, the pair acted in a manner which, for a long time puzzled me. They suddenly separated while in New York, Selby returning to Liverpool and Graniani taking a North German boat to Genoa. They were evidently in possession of considerable funds; but both were sufficiently clever not to show it. Indeed, neither of them had ever betrayed signs of affluence, Graniani usually posing as a deformed man of easy circumstances, and Selby his paid companion.

“On parting from his accomplice, Selby spent a month in London, and then went out to India for the cold weather, staying with a military friend in Bombay. Nothing, however, occurred, although with Judith I had followed him. The meaning of this latest move confounded me until about a year ago he returned to London, rented that house in Harpur Street, and took a comfortable flat himself in Walsingham House, Piccadilly. He engaged as his housekeeper at Harpur Street a strange-looking little old lady named Pickard, and spent about half his time there, apparently in strictest seclusion. With Judith’s aid I watched that house carefully and continuously,” went on the grey-haired, rather sad man, “and was not long in coming to the conclusion that a stuffed bear cub was being placed in the window at certain times as a secret signal to some passer-by; but although I exerted all my ingenuity, and spent days and nights in that gloomy street, I utterly failed to discover its meaning. At last, after all those years of watching, I resolved again to approach this malefactor in order to entrap and unmask him. It was this sole motive, that prompted me to take part in the conspiracy—to learn the truth and rid society of the terrible danger. One night, therefore, I followed him from Walsingham House to Daly’s Theatre, and having seated myself in the next stall to him, feigned to suddenly recognise him. At first he was puzzled to recollect who I was, but quickly remembered, and then we at once became friendly. Probably he anticipated that through me he might obtain introductions to certain wealthy men who might become his victims, and with that object gave me his address at Piccadilly, and invited me to call. I went, notwithstanding the great risk I ran. For aught I knew he might defeat me with that secret and terrible weapon which none could withstand, and certainly he would have done so without compunction if he had known how many years and how much time and money I had spent in tracking him down.

“But we became on friendly terms, and you may well imagine the care I was constantly compelled to exercise in order to conceal my knowledge of his years of travel and his dastardly crimes. Each time we met, either here or at his cozy flat in Piccadilly, I knew not whether he might suspect and attempt to kill me by his secret method. In the old days in Italy he knew of my love for codexes and manuscripts, and he also being something of an authority, our tastes ran in similar lines. Indeed, it was upon this study that I feigned to cement our friendship. I entertained him once down at Twycross, showed him the whole of my collection, and more than once went with him to Sotheby’s to give him the benefit of my knowledge regarding his purchases, for he himself was forming a small collection. During all this time, of course, he made no mention of the house of mystery in Harpur Street.”

“Yours was certainly a dangerous position,” I remarked. “He would undoubtedly have envenomed you had he suspected.”

“Most certainly. Like his unscrupulous companion Graniani, he would stand at nothing. A dozen times he could have killed me if he had so wished. He and his accomplice had, I feel convinced, recovered, from some old manuscript—in the Certosa, I believe—the secret of the Borgia cantarella. One afternoon he came to me here and told me in confidence of a most important palaeographical discovery made by his friend, Fra Francesco, who, he added, was no longer a monk at the Certosa, that monastery having been dissolved by the Italian Government—which was, I knew, the truth.

“The manuscript was nothing less than the noted Arnoldus of the Certosa, which had fallen into the hands of the Prior of San Sisto at Florence, and had been purchased by an English collector—yourself. Graniani had missed securing it, believing that it was not the treasured volume of the monastery, but a smaller and less valuable copy that he knew had been in the library. After it had been purchased by you, however, he discovered, to his chagrin, that it was the great Arnoldus itself, the book that contained some strange things in English written by an English monk named Lovel, who had ended his days at that famous monastery. Many strange and remarkable secrets were, he said, in that record—secrets regarding Lucrezia Borgia, her life, and the whereabouts of her jewels, all of which Fra Francesco had read years ago when, as a lay brother, he had had access to the manuscript. He was now about to obtain possession of it, and send it to England, so that the statements it contained might be investigated and verified.”

“They stole it from my house at Antignano,” I said quickly. “An Italian woman named Anita Bardi was the thief!”

“I know. Old Mrs Pickard went to Paris, met her there, and carried it to Harpur Street. That night he examined it alone, reading through the record; and afterwards becoming seized by extraordinary pains, he was compelled to send for a doctor. He showed me the manuscript at Walsingham House next day; but we examined it with gloves, for he declared that the vellum leaves had been envenomed. Afterwards, it mysteriously disappeared from Harpur Street.”

“It passed again into my possession,” I admitted, explaining how I had invoked the aid of my police friend Noyes.

“Selby had not finished copying the whole of it, hence our miscalculation of the spot at Threave,” his lordship explained. “Of course, when Graniani returned to London and their scheme to obtain the treasure was placed before me, both myself and Judith announced our readiness to assist; first, in order to obtain the secret of that mysterious house in Bloomsbury; and, secondly, to obtain sufficient evidence to convict the men of their dastardly crimes. As participators in the conspiracy we were at length admitted there, and found it a gloomy, dismal place. The sign of the bear cub still puzzled us, and the reason of Selby’s secret visits there were equally inexplicable. Judith did all she could to unravel the mystery, acting with utter fearlessness, although well knowing that at any time, if the faintest suspicion were aroused, she would fall the victim of secret assassination just as her dear mother had done.”

“It was to avenge her that I have acted as I have done through it all,” declared her ladyship. “I was determined to learn the truth about that pair of fiends and to unravel the mystery of that house with its secret sign. You sought of me an explanation of my conduct. Yet how could I give it without telling you the strange, tragic, and remarkable story which my father has just related? I promised you that you should know some day—and you have now heard the truth.”

“I understand,” I replied. “But not everything.”

“Ah, no! you do not know everything,” she sighed, stretching forth her hand towards me. “When you do, you cannot forgive.”

“Forgive! What?” I cried. But her father hastened to calm her emotion.

“Yes,” she went on hoarsely. “You may as well know at first as at last that I became implicated in the terrible secret of that house. At Selby’s suggestion I invited there to luncheon a friend of his, young Leslie Hargreaves, a wealthy man who had met and, I believed, admired me. He went to Harpur Street to meet me and have luncheon on the very day you detected me at the window; but half an hour after his return to his chambers in Shaftesbury Avenue his valet found him dead, and notes to the value of nearly five hundred pounds known to have been in his pockets were missing! I suspected the intention of those men, and yet I actually allowed the sacrifice of his life! I shall never forgive myself for that—never?”

“But you were in ignorance of their real intention?” I said, excusing her. “Hargreaves was Selby’s friend, you say. If so, you surely had no idea of treachery, inasmuch as you were friendly with these men, and they never sought to harm you.”

“But I ought to have been wary,” she wailed. “I ought to have saved his life. My offence is unpardonable before God—as before man!” And she covered her blanched face with her hand, sobbing in bitter remorse.

I bent towards her, and there, before her father and Wyman, strove to comfort her. What passionate, consoling words I uttered I know not. All I was conscious of was that she had at last utterly broken down. And then, when I assured her that I forgave everything, and that in the circumstances she was not culpable in the unfortunate death of young Hargreaves, she raised her head, smiled at me happily through her tears as I told her of my love, and there, before Wyman and her father, declared that she reciprocated the passion that was consuming me.

Then I knew she was mine—my own sweet love. Her eyes had filled with tears, and for a moment she rested her head upon my shoulder, weeping silently. She was thinking of that long and terrible past, and of how she and her father had at last avenged her mother’s death and defeated the villainies of that dangerous pair of assassins. I knew it well. I held her hands in mine without uttering a word, for my heart was too full.