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 cafés 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 wine-grower’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, Mâcon, 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.