The Closed Book: Concerning the Secret of the Borgias

“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.

Chapter Forty

By which the Book Remains open

But passons.

I have perhaps related this strange episode of my eventful life at too great a length already. Yet you, my reader, may pardon me when you recollect that from out that musty envenomed volume, The Closed Book – which may be seen by you any day in the manuscript department of the British Museum, placed by itself in a sealed glass case – there came to me both love and fortune in a manner entirely unexpected.

Of the love I have already spoken. As to the fortune, we found the law of treasure-trove as elastic as all the others. You, no doubt, read the other day of the sale of the Borgia emeralds to the wife of an American millionaire through the medium of Garnier, the well-known jeweller in the rue de la Paix, and of the high price paid for those historic gems.

If you evince any curiosity regarding the treasure of the Abbey of Crowland, you may, if you search, discover the altar and certain other objects exposed to view in the British Museum. Two chalices, an alms dish, and a quantity of loose gems remain by amicable arrangement at Crowland as Mr Mason’s share; while Fred Fenwicke, Sammy Waldron, and Walter Wyman have, of course, all equally participated in their great find. The bulk of the treasure is, however, still in my possession, and I placed aside one casket of ancient jewels intact as a gift to Judith on our marriage, the promise of which she gave me with her father’s free and willing consent.

As regards the mystery of the house at Harpur Street, I telegraphed that same evening to Noyes, to whom we related the whole story, first obtaining his pledge that none of us should be dragged into the double tragedy that had taken place.

For the first time in his life the genial, well-trained police inspector betrayed absolute amazement; then, thoroughly practical, he left us hurriedly, hailed a cab, and drove away.

Next day the papers were full of the mysterious discovery, but neither press nor public ever knew the real secret of that house of death. Indeed, not until a month ago, after most exhaustive inquiries, in which the chief intelligence at Scotland Yard was engaged, did Noyes declare to us that the place had been used constantly by Selby during the nine months of his tenancy as a place to which to invite people, and, if it suited his purpose, to administer poison with an ingenuity unsurpassed.

One day he took me to the house in secret, and there showed me how murder had been brought to the perfection of a fine art. Not only did he explain the steel point in the polished handrail that had so nearly caused my own death, but showed me a similar hollow point cunningly concealed in the door knob of the drawing-room, which, on being turned, ejected the deadly venom like a serpent’s tooth; an umbrella with a similar contrivance in its briar handle, as well as a silver matchbox which, being well worn, showed that it had been long carried in the vest pocket, and probably well used!

London regarded the death of Selby and the old Italian hunchback as one of its many mysteries, especially as the medical evidence failed altogether to prove foul play. Our theory, however, coincided with that formed by Noyes and certain other high officials of the Criminal Investigation Department. It was that Anita Bardi, daughter of one of the early victims of the dastardly pair, having been in the employ of Judith as maid for several years, and having travelled with her, had had an opportunity of watching the movements of the poisoners and had also overheard the suspicions entertained by Lord Glenelg and his daughter. She then determined to seek her own revenge for her father’s cruel assassination, and with that in view had come to London. The warnings she had given me regarding Judith were, as the latter afterwards admitted, purposely uttered in order that I should dissociate myself from the dangerous affair. Being an accessory in the recovery of the case containing the Borgia ring and phial, she had undoubtedly possessed herself of them, had met both men on their return from their fruitless journey to Crowland, and had killed them by the very means they had themselves employed against others, afterwards locking the door, escaping from the house, and flying back to Italy.

This theory, indeed, has been proved to be the correct one by a letter, bearing no address and posted in Venice, since received by Judith.

The reason Graniani returned from New York to Italy two years before was evidently in order to search for the missing Arnoldus, known to have been sold with other volumes from the Certosa library and passed from hand to hand. Father Bernardo, who is now one of my best friends, was entirely innocent of the conspiracy, and has since told me that the reason he endeavoured to obtain repossession of The Closed Book was because of Graniani’s allegation that evil would befall its possessor and – very Italian – his offer of a greatly increased price on behalf of an American collector. The hunchback had evidently followed me from Leghorn to Florence; and suddenly discovering the manuscript to be the actual Arnoldus, urged the prior to cry off the bargain and sell to him. Anita Bardi’s visit to Father Bernardo was on a false pretext, because she was, of course, assisting Graniani at Lord Glenelg’s suggestion.

Lord Glenelg has, as you know, recently returned to public life; but the secret inquiries instituted by the commissioner of police revealed the extraordinary fact that in no fewer than eight well-proved cases where there had been inquests regarding sudden death during the period of Selby’s residence in Harpur Street, the deceased was known to have visited that house of mystery immediately prior to his or her death. And if these eight cases have been satisfactorily proved, how many others may there not have been?

After a long search, Mrs Pickard, the wizened old woman whom Selby had engaged as housekeeper, was found, and from a statement made by her to the police it seemed that the poisoner had an accomplice named Brewer – evidently the fair-bearded man who had assisted him in the assault on the valet Thompson, but who never came to the house. It was his duty to watch outside for the sign of the bear cub in the window, and then follow home persons who had been decoyed there, to ascertain that death really overtook them, and that they could not return and make an accusation.

The sign of the bear cub was the signal that some person had been secretly envenomed, and that a watch was necessary – a startling fact of which certain officials at Scotland Yard are now aware.

Happily for the personal safety of society, the formula for the manufacture of the venom has died with its discoverer, Graniani, and his accomplice; while the fact that the little crystal bottle of Lucrezia Borgia was found by the police empty in the grate of the front attic at Harpur Street, together with the poison-ring – now also in the British Museum, by the way – is sufficient evidence that the few drops of the fatal compound of the Borgias which we recovered are now also lost forever. The missing folio, which, however, contains nothing of great interest, I have since discovered in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin.

And of Judith – my heart’s love – now my wife? She is not a woman of fulsome words. She has proved her love for me by deeds. Today she is seated beside me as, in the quiet of our country home, I conclude this strange chronicle. Here, as I write, the sun shines across the old-world lawn, where the high box hedges cast their long shadows, the mist has vanished, and the day, like all our days, is one of cloudless happiness and blissful hope.