"Concerning the Secret of the Borgias" (continued 3)

“I’ll leave the whole affair in your hands, Noyes, of course,” I responded. “When shall I go into the country?”

“Today. Go where you like, to some place within easy reach of town, and stay there till you hear from me. Don’t go back to Harpur Street, because it’s too dangerous. You must be recognised sooner or later. I’ll find Captain Wyman and explain matters to him. Why not run down to somewhere on the Great Northern, to Peterborough, for instance. It’s on the main line, and the first stop of the expresses to the north—an hour and a half from King’s Cross. You see I could get down quickly if I wanted to see you, or you could run up if necessary. There’s a good old-fashioned hotel—the ‘Angel.’ I stopped there once when I was after a German bank-note forger, and was very comfortable.”

“Very well. I’ll go there. That will be my address till I hear from you. Tell it to Captain Wyman, as he may want to write to me.”

After some discussion, in which he steadily refused to enlighten me further upon his scheme for getting hold of The Closed Book, we returned together by the underground railway to Charing Cross, where we parted, he to seek my friend Wyman, and I to hide myself in the small provincial town of Peterborough, where I arrived that afternoon about half-past four.

As Noyes had declared, the “Angel” was replete with old-fashioned comfort, a relic of the bygone posting-days and a centre of agricultural commerce on market-days. Except the cathedral, there is very little of interest in the town of Peterborough; for of late years it has been modernised out of all recognition. In itself it is ugly, although situated in the centre of the rich green pasturage of the Nene Valley, a busy place, where the hand of the vandal has been at work everywhere save perhaps in Narrow Street, the small, old-fashioned thoroughfare wherein the “Angel” is situated.

I spent the evening examining the interior of the cathedral, afterwards taking a stroll as far as the village of Longthorpe, and after dinner retired early, for I had not yet recovered from my swift journey across Europe.

The following day passed, and still the next, yet I could only idle there, chafing and anxious regarding the success of Noyes’s undertaking. Letters from Wyman showed that, aided by Enrico, he was still keeping observation upon the house, although he had seen nothing further of my friend the detective after his announcement of my departure.

I began to wonder if Noyes had broken faith with me. Yet we had been the best of friends in the old days when I had lived and worked in London; and I thought I knew him well enough to be confident that he would assist me in every way within his power.

Therefore I wandered the streets of Peterborough or lounged in the bar of my hotel, in hourly expectation of some message from him.

His silence was ominous, and my uneasiness increased until, on the third day, I determined to remain inactive no longer.

Chapter Fifteen.

The Old Monk’s Secret.

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.”

Chapter Sixteen.

Continues the Record.

Pausing in my work, I rose and looked out across the sunlit sea. Then, eager to gain further knowledge, returned and continued the deciphering, as follows:

“Of the years I remained at Croylande, growing old in years, and often visiting with my friend Malcolm Maxwell the beadsman Petre of Castor, beyond the town of Peterborough, I speak not, save to say that much happened in London of the king’s marriages and or our lord-Cardynall Wolsey’s disfavour with his majesty.

“But now, reader, another thing did happen in the year 1537 that unquieted our abbot and all of us—namely, that the king intended to suppress and seize our abbey, as his majesty had seized the houses of Romburgh, Fyneshed, Walsinghame, and Bury St. Edmonds. Whereupon our abbot, John Welles, a holy and well-beloved man, wrote unto Thomas Cromwell, chief secretary to the king’s highness, this letter:

”‘With due reverence I command me unto your honourable lordship, humbly asserteing the same that I send your lordship by this bearer part of our fen fish, right meekly beseeching your lordship favourably to accept the same fish, and to be good and favourable, lord, unto me and my poor house, in such cause as I hereafter shall have cause to serve unto your good lordship, and I with my bretheren shall daily pray to our Lord God for the long continuance of your lordship in health.—At Croylande the xxv. day of March, by your daily orator, John, abbot there.’

“But it pleased not the King’s Secretary that our splendid abbey should be spared, and the gift of our fish was unavailing. The king’s highness recognised not the good and true service done to his grace, and gave not his favour unto us. Because of its isolation our abbey became a place of refuge in those black days of the king’s wrath against us. Through those years I had lived a quiet life in the cloister, mostly employed in prayer and meditation, for of a vertie I was penitent, and prayed for the repose of the soul of my Lady Lucrezia. Alas, the secular spirit prevailed in our land, and we received worde at the first daybreak in December 1538 that the commissioners, William Parre, Robert Southwell, and Thomas Myldemay, who had seized the monastery of St. Androse in Northampton for the king’s use, intended to seize likewise our house and lands. Therefore did our good abbot John take me aside with Malcolm Maxwell and held counsel with us how best to conceal owr altar plate and jewels, of the which we held a goodly quantitie. Secretly, knowing how safe a place was the fish ponde, wherein I had already hidden the Borgia treasure, I suggested it, and that night, leaving sufficient silver to satisfy his majesty’s commissioners, the three of us took the great silver altar and a goodlie number of the Abbey treasures, and, placing the latter in three chests bound with iron, sank them deep in the mud in the centre of the pond. Only Maxwell and myself were privy to the secret that we had taken from the abbey treasury the things that follow.”

In Old English the list read:

“i. greate altar of sylver, mayde by the Abbat Richard in 1281. i. great chalyce of golde gyven by Thomas de Bernack in the yeere 1356. iiij. large chalyces of sylver. iiiij. patens. i. alms bason. viij. cuppes of sylver. iii. cuppes of golde. ii. golde candelsticks. iiij. golde crucifixes. viij. cuppes of sylver. ii. sylver boxes full of the precious stones tayken from the altars and robes. Some of great syze. iii. small boxes of other jewells.”

Continuing, the record stated:

“Of the rest, we left two chalices and other things for the king’s highness, the Abbot knowing well that our house must be destroyed and desecrated, and that we must be scattered. The night was dark, with thicke fen-mist, when we carried forth the heavy chests and let them down noiselesslie into the water at a spotte at the opposite end to where through many years my own treasure lay well concealed. The ponde was deepe, and dried not in summer, beinge fed by many springs, and well fylled wyth good carp for Fridays. Malcolm kept watch by the south door while I, wyth the Abbot, sank owr treasure in the deepest parte of the lake. Then, when we returned in silence, we all three went into the Abbot’s chamber and there swore to Almighty God to ever preserve the secret, tayking oath that neither should seeke to recover the hidden treasure withoute the consent of the other two. We knew that our glorious abbey was doomed, and wished to save what we could for the Church’s benefit. And we were not mistaken, for three dayes later the Commissioners came with Thomas Cromwell himself, and our good Abbot was forced to surrender unto them everything. Thus we monks, to the number of one hundred and sixty and four, were dispersed; and the king’s men stripped our great church, seized all that was of value, sold the bells and the lead, and then broke and battered down the walls. Seeing their ill-intentions, some of us still remayned in refuge in houses of the people in the neighbourhood, I finding hospitality at an inn called The Oak Branch at Eye, while Malcolm was at Thorney, owr abbot having departed to London.

“Through a full month we watched the destruction of owr magnificent Abbey, how that Southwell’s men did break owr statues and tore down the very tower, I lingering there because of my own treasure concealed and unable to recover it lest my actions should be noted. Once I heard rumour that Southwell intended to pump out the lakes, and surely the pump was sette up. Then did I tremble, well knowinge that all that we had hidden must be discovered. Cromwell, however, considered that they had seized all of which we were possessed, and luckily gave orders for the work of pumping to be stopped, an order which pleased me mightily, for every other hole and corner was well searched for anything hidden, especially for books and proclamations against the king’s actions.

“On the fifth of February 1539, my friend Malcolm Maxwell, who like miself had been compelled by the king’s commissioners to discard his habit, came to me, saying that he had decided to return to Scotland, his own country, and offered me asylum in his brother’s house, the castel of Treyf, in Galloway. His invitation accepted, I managed one night by the light of the moon to drag the fish pond, and after many attempts succeeded in recovering the casket of wood and iron that I had brought from Italie, no one knowinge of my actions. To Malcolm, who was older than myself, I declared that my casket contained my Booke of Hours and a relic of Saint Peter—the which I had brought from Rome—for he knew not that it really contained my dead lady’s jewels and her secrete phials. As touching our journey north by the great roade through Stamford and York to Carlisle I will not speak, save to say that we hadde manie adventures, and more than once I was in imminent peril of losing mi precious casket. On the borderlandes all was in disorder, and the moss-troopers were ever ready to steal and kill. While passing by the high road through Dumfries and Dalbeatie we went into the great Abbey of Dundrennan, and prayed before the silver image of Our Lady there; and also we made a pilgramage to St. Ninian’s shrine, afterwards passing across the hills and glens by Auchencaim and over Bengairn, and thence to the river Dee, where, upon an island, stood the greate grim castle of Treyf, once the impregnable fortalice of the Black Douglas, but now in the possession of my Lorde Maxwell of Terregles, an ancient baron of great landes, and brother of Friar Malcolm.

“In this, the wildest part of Galloway, we were received warmly by my lord of Treyf, who on the nighte of our arrival was entertaining in the great banquetting-hall John Gordon of Lochinvar, who had juste been to France with the Scottish King incognito in search of a wife; Gylbert Earl of Cassilis; David Vaus, abbot of Soulseat; his brother John Vaus of Bambarrock; with the lairds of Garlies and Sorby. The talk as we ate our venison with wheat bread was of how the two Galloway lairds the Macdowalls of Freuch and of Mindork were invadinge Arran with fire and sword, and how they had burned the castle of Brodick to the ground. By their conversation I knewe well that although my lord Maxwell was steward of Kilcudbricht (Kirkcudbright) and keeper of Treyf, which the kinge had wrested from the Douglas; he was, however, not truly loyal, and that there was conspiracy against the king just as there had been in that same stronghold in the days of the Black Douglas.

“Still far from it that I, a houseless fryar, should utter complaints, for mi lord, not havynge seen his brother for fifteen years, treated us both with greatest courtesy, and gave us asylum for as long as we wished, assigninge to us rooms in the tower that commanded the sweep of the river lookynge up towards Greenlaw. Through a full year I remained with my lorde Maxwell, riding often against the Gordons of Kenmuir, the Douglases of Drumlanrig, and the Agnews of Locknaw, having well concealed my treasure-casket in a safe spot upon the island. Old in yeares, yet much fierce warfare did I see across the hills and treacherous mosses of Galloway, often ridinge over the border against the English with Malcolm, who, like myself, had readilie doffed the habit for the breastplate. We besieged the castle of Kenmuir, and took its lord prisoner to Stirling, as also we did the lord of Orchardton, Willyam Cairns.

“At this time our King Henry of England had shaken off the Holy Father’s authority, and the doctrines of the reformed religion were widelie spreading among the people. In Scotland, too, a greate national change was unavoidably approachinge; for religious reformation had been long advancing, and doctrines in opposition to the Romish Faith had been propagated in Galloway by the Gordons of Airds. The Bible, which had been locked up from the laity by the clergy, was now procured in numbers, and secret meetings were beinge held in the woods to read it, for even possession of a copie of the sacred book was a penal offence. Of a verity the persecution was terrible, for many were imprisoned or committed to the flames.

“Treyf was a goodly stronghold, square, surrounded by a barbican and flanked at each angle by a circular tower, secured in front by a deep fosse and vallum, while the island itself was surrounded by the rapid waters of the Dee; and my lord Maxwell, with the kinge’s authority behind him, was the most powerful of the lords of Galloway. One night, however, we returned from ridyng against the English from Lochmaben. Our Galloway troopers, with Lochinvar at their head, had utterly routed a large body of Somerset’s men, and as in the sundown my charger’s heels clattered on the drawbridge of Treyf, Malcolm, who had remained, came forward to greet me with pale face, and took me up into my chamber where we could speak privately. He told me that the conspiracy against the kinge, formed by his brother, had been discovered, and that a mounted messenger had arrived from Helen Lady of Torhouse, who was with the Court in Edinburgh, to warn him that his majesty had sent an armed force on his way to us. My lord Maxwell’s intentions regarding an alliance with Somerset to the detriment of the Scottish king had been betrayed by one of the conspirators, Johnston of Lockwood, and the messenger alleged that five thousande men were already at Dumfries wyth orders to storm and take Treyf, with my lord Maxwell, his brother Malcolm, and myself, who, cominge from England as we dyd, were beleeved to have been in the plot, and to also arrest young Gordon of Lochinvar, Abbot Vaus of Soulseat, and Gylbert Earl of Cassilis, at their various houses. My lord Maxwell was absent wythe James Earle of Bothwell at Earlston, but a messenger was sent in hot haste to him, while Malcolm and myself tooke counsel as to how we should act. My lord’s fair daughter Margaret was in the castle, and we saw that to save her and ourselves we must all three flie. They were hastily preparinge while I had gone in secret to secure my precious casket, when the guard suddenly announced that the advance guard of the kinge’s army was already at Treyf Mains. Not an instant was to be lost, therefore, compelled to leave my ladie Lucrezia’s jewels in their safe hiding-place, I sprang into the saddle of a fresh charger, which one of the troopers led to me, and, following Malcolm and the fair Margaret, dashed across the drawbridge and along the frail wooden brydge that connected the island wyth the opposite banke. Scarce had my horse’s hoofs touched the road than the weak supports of the bridge were knocked away, fell in pieces in the river, and were swept down the stream, while at the same instant the portcullis fell, and the rattling of chains told that the drawbridge was drawn up and the stronghold isolated and rendered impregnable.

“The fair daughter of Maxwell proved a good horsewoman, and through the long dark night we all three rode our hardest, well knowinge that capture meant either death or imprisonment in the dungeons of Edinburgh. Indeed, our departure was noted, and for some hours we were hotly pursued; but Margaret Maxwell knew the countrie as well as any moss-trooper, and she led us safely through the Glenkens into the giant solitudes of Carsphairn; then, after a rest, taking a circular route, we rode along the wild shore of Loch Doon, over the Rhinns of Kells, and across to Auchenmalg Bay, where we arrived in sadde plight and exhausted on the second night. Through the whole of Galloway the kinge’s men were searchinge for us, and we heard that my lord Maxwell had already fallen into their hands near Loch Ken, while Treyf was holding out against the besiegers. To remain in Scotland longer was impossible, although I grieved in secrete that I had no means by which to recover my precious casket. Ours was truly a position of gravest peril.”

Chapter Seventeen.

Contains Forbidden Knowledge.

I had read almost to the end of old Godfrey’s record, and paused for a cigarette. I had written so much that my hand was tired; but it was certainly a highly interesting story, and threw a new light upon Lucrezia Borgia and her crimes, as well as presenting us with a secret chapter of the history of the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. From an antiquarian point of view the record was, therefore, a most valuable find.

Eager to learn the whole I flung away my cigarette when only half consumed, and again turned to, penning each word as I puzzled it out, and as I now copy it out for you:

“Wyth a sum of gold did I bribe a fisherman to take us in his boat to Maryport, in England, where the wrath of Kyng James could not reache us. In company we travelled to York, where I left Malcolm and his neice with their kinsmen who lived close by the city, and continued my way to London, filled with regret that I had been competed to leave my treasure in hiding on account of a false suspicion against me, and yet not daring to return to Treyf, now that it was in possession of the hateful king’s men. What towardness or intowardness I saw while at that castle on the Dee I need not inform you, or what adventures occurred to me in London, except to say that I soon became seized by a desire to return to Italy, the which I did, journeying to Florence, and there reassumynge the religious habyt and enteringe the monastery of Certosa, and am now ending my dayes within the cloister there.

“Please it you to understand, my reader, that on enteringe this monastery aforesaid I became so troubled with the past that I have penned in brief, this ninth day of February, 1542, all that happened to me, in order to leave on recorde the fiendish crimes of the Borgia; to show how my Lady Lucrezia was but the unwilling agent of His Holiness and the Duke Cesare; to affirm that my connection wyth the secret envenoming was in my poor lady’s interests and for her protection; and, lastly, to leave on record the exact place within Treyf’s grim walls where lie concealed my lady’s jewels, together with the secret phials, the small casket that contains emeralds, the worth of which be sufficient to found the fortune of a great house. As touching the family of Borgia, the evil they have done is herein written in this Closed Book, just as it is written in the solemn booke above the which no man can observe.

“A curse resteth upon all the Borgia, save my lady Lucrezia, so also there resteth a curse upon him who shall attempt to take my lady’s jewells for his own uses. Already the knowledge gained by you from my record must prove fatal, as I have by preface forewarned you, inquisitive reader, therefore it were best if you sought no further to understand the spot where the treasure lieth hidden. Still, as I perceive that it is my bounden duty to place on record the spot where the casket lieth concealed now that my life is so short a span, in order that the jewels may not be lost for ever, I write these instructions which, before actinge upon, you must note very carefully, otherwise the secret place of concealment can never be discovered. And further, be it recollected that the jewels have upon them the blood of innocent victims, and that a curse will fall upon the finder providing they are not sold and half the proceeds given to the poor. Heed ye this!

“Item: Directions for recovering the casket:

“Go unto the castle at half-past three of the clocke when the sun shines on September the sixth, and followe the shadow of the east angle of the keep forty and three paces from the edge of the inner moat, then, with the face turned straight towardes Bengairn, walk fifty and six paces. Seek there, for my lady Lucrezia’s treasure is hidden at a playce no man knoweth save Malcolm Maxwell; but the secret of whych thou mayest discover if thou wilt again face death.

“But heed thys my warning, ye who hast gayned this knowledge. Evil be upon ye and eternal purgatory if ye dare take my lady’s treasure for your own uses without devoting one-half to actes of charity.

“Seek both at Treyf and in the lake at Croylande, and thy diligence shall be well rewarded by that which thou shalt find.

“Item: How to discover the place at Treyf:

“First find a piece of ruined wall of greate stones, one bearinge a circle cut upon it as large as a manne’s hande. Then, measuring five paces towards the barbican, find—”

The next page contained the quaint ending which I have already reproduced.

A page of The Closed Book was missing—the most important page of all!

The folios containing the secret record were not numbered like the rest of the volume; but on closely examining the place I found that the important folio of vellum had been torn out.

I wondered if it was possible that Selby had read the book just as I had done, and having gained the secret had abstracted the leaf whereon minute directions for the recovery of the treasure had been written. That he had been seized with symptoms of poisoning was a clear proof that he had been examining the envenomed pages.

Suddenly recollecting, I turned back to the two roughly drawn plans in the centre of the record, wondering if either would give a clew to the whereabouts of the treasure. The reason of the word “treyf” that was scrawled in the margin of one of them, and had so puzzled me, was now rendered plain. The plan no doubt concerned the ancient castle of Treyf, and it seemed more than likely that by its aid I might succeed in discovering the hiding-place of the Borgia emeralds and the vial of Lucrezia’s secret poison.

The other plan, bearing no name and no distinguishing mark, told me nothing.

I rose, and, standing at the open window, looked out upon the sunlit sea. It was different from the blue, tideless Mediterranean, in sight of which I had passed those seven years of my life, but the breeze from it was more invigorating and the surf whiter and heavier than the watery highway of southern Europe. I stood there, lost in thought.

The secret of the hidden treasure was what old Godfrey Lovel, soldier, courtier, and monk, had written and yet endeavoured to hide, first by his terrible warnings, and secondly by poisoning the pages of the record with that deadly secret substance of the Borgias. Malcolm Maxwell had died; and he, being the only person aware of the place of concealment of the casket and its priceless contents, had conceived it to be his duty to leave that record, yet so to guard it that any who sought to open The Closed Book would die mysteriously.

I recollected the very narrow escape I had had. The very gloves now upon my hands were, in all probability, poisoned.

Turning again to the table, I reread the directions given as far as the missing folio, carefully comparing it with the transcript I had made, and finding no error. Then, closing the precious book and packing it away in the stout paper, I took it to the hotel manager to be placed in his safe.

Certainly the story therein written was a remarkable and interesting one. Treasures were apparently concealed both at Crowland Abbey and at Treyf—of the whereabouts of which I was at present in the dark, and it seemed to me more than likely that the two plans would show the places where they were hidden. Yet the missing folio was tantalising. Just as the minute directions for the recovery of the Borgia emeralds were commenced, they broke off, leaving me utterly confounded!

Could it be possible that those who had formed this remarkable plot to obtain the book actually knew of its contents? To me it seemed very much as though they did, and, further, that the man Selby had abstracted the missing folio. If he had, then he was in possession of the actual secret of where the casket was concealed!

What I had read of the great treasures of the once magnificent Abbey of Crowland and of the emeralds of the notorious Lucrezia Borgia whetted my curiosity and aroused my eagerness to commence a real treasure hunt in earnest. Stories of buried treasure have always interested me, and I knew that in the troublous times in England, during the dissolution of the monasteries and the civil wars, everyone hid his wealth for fear of seizure. A glance at the correspondence from the King Henry VIII’s commissioners to Thomas Cromwell, now preserved in the British Museum, and reporting the dissolution of the various monasteries, shows quite plainly that the abbots and monks hid the greater part of their treasures before the arrival of the king’s men, and that the search made for them was usually in vain, so ingeniously did they contrive their places of concealment. It must also be recollected that the monasteries were the richest institutions in England, and that the altars and images of the abbeys were for the most part adorned with gold and gems. Many of the images of Our Lady are known to have been of solid silver and life-size. Little of this enormous wealth of hidden treasure has yet been discovered. Where, therefore, is it, unless buried in the earth? The treasure of the abbot of Crowland was, according to old Godfrey’s chronicle, hidden in the fish pond or in that vicinity, a treasure the very list of which caused one to marvel, including as it did the great altar of silver which dated from the thirteenth century; the great chalice of gold, the gift of Thomas of Barnack; four chalices of silver; five patens, an alms basin, eight cups, and an image of Our Lady—all of silver; with two candlesticks, three cups, and five crucifixes in gold, as well as two silver boxes filled with precious stones. Surely, even with the law of treasure-trove as bogey before us, such a valuable collection was worth searching for!

But somehow, as I strolled along the small promenade towards the old village where the bronzed fishermen were just landing their crab-pots and packing their catch for the London market, I could not help being more attracted by the treasure at Treyf. The crafty old Godfrey had written that record so that the treasure he had concealed in Scotland should not become altogether lost. The Borgia emeralds were historic, and the Borgia poison also.

I felt impelled to write to Walter Wyman, explaining what I had discovered, and urge him to aid me in my search. Now that I had discovered the secret contained in The Closed Book I could remain in uncertainty no longer.

That afternoon I took train to Cromer, and in a Gazetteer which I found in the library there I discovered that the place called Treyf was really Threave Castle, a very historic pile of ruins situated on an island in the river Dee in the vicinity of the town of Castle-Douglas, district of Galloway, in the south-west of Scotland, on the line from Carlisle to Stranraer. This information was most gratifying, for it so happened that my old friend Major Fenwicke and his wife had a fine shoot with a splendid old mansion called Crailloch only fifteen miles or so away, and I knew that I should be warmly welcomed in that merriest of circles if I wished to make it my headquarters, for Fred Fenwicke kept open house, and his place was full of visitors year in and year out. A trifle older than myself, he was one of my very best and most trusted friends, therefore I was eager to pay him the visit I had so long promised, and, by reason of living abroad, had been compelled to postpone.

Then, on my return to Sheringham, I wrote a letter to Wyman, telling him briefly of the interesting discovery I had made, and by the same post wrote to Fred Fenwicke, announcing that I was eager to pay him a visit as soon as he could put up both of us. I explained nothing of my object, for if one starts to search for buried treasure one is apt to be met with considerable sarcasm and ridicule.

Here, however, I had in my possession facts that could not be disputed—facts which had resulted in a curious and apparently well-organised conspiracy.

Those poisoned pages held me terrified, now that I knew how fatal was their contact.

Chapter Eighteen.

Lady Judith Speaks.

The table-d’hôte that evening differed little from that at any other seaside hotel. The majority of the guests were holiday-makers from London in smart city-built “lounge-suits,” the womenfolk being dressed by the providers of Westbourne Grove or Kensington High Street—some of the men in evening clothes and others not; the majority of women affecting that most handy makeshift, the blouse. A few were sturdy middle-aged men of means, who had come there for golf and not for lounging in beach-tents or promenading on the asphalt: these formed a clique apart.

There was a time, when I was a homeless wanderer, when hotel life appealed to me by reason of its gaiety, its chatter, and its continual change; but after years of it, drifting hither and thither over two continents, I hated it all, from the gold-braided hall porter who turns up his nose at a half-crown tip, to the frock-coated, hand-chafing manager who, for some reason unaccountable, often affects to be thought a foreigner. You may be fond of the airy, changeful existence of food and friends which you obtain in hotels; but I am confident that your opinion would coincide with mine if you had had such a long and varied experience of gilded discomfort combined with elastic bills as had been my lot. Try a modern hotel “of the first order” in Cairo, on the Riviera, or at any other place that is the mode today, in England or out of it, and I think you will agree with my contention.

Many a time for the purposes of my books I had studied the phantasmagoria of life as seen at the table-d’hôte, especially in the gambling centres of Aix, Ostend, and the patchouli-perfumed Monte Carlo, where one often meets strange types and with strange stories; but the crowd of the seaside resorts, whether at aristocratic Arcachon or popular Margate, are never any more interesting than the bustle of the London streets.

Therefore, on this night, I left the table quickly, refusing to be drawn into a long scientific discussion by my neighbour on my right, who was probably a very worthy lawyer’s clerk on holiday, and evidently knew but a smattering of his subject, and went forth to stroll up over the golf links in the direction of Weybourne.

I wondered what Wyman had discovered regarding the disappearance of the Earl of Glenelg and his connection with The Closed Book. Those strange words of the terrified, white-faced girl, his daughter, still rang in my ears—her face still haunted me. Student of human character that I was, I had never seen terror and despair in a woman’s face before. But one is a student always.

Noyes, too, had continued a careful watch upon the house in Harpur Street, where, I had no doubt, the book had been regained by some professional thief. Selby evidently believed that a burglary had been committed, yet feared to inform the police because the only thing taken chanced to be a piece of stolen property. Hence he could only sit down and abuse his ill-luck. Noyes had certainly very neatly checkmated the conspirators, whoever they were or whatever their object—the latter apparently being the recovery of the hidden gold.

For the present, eager as I was to commence investigations, I could only wait.

The sun had set away across the sea facing me, and as I walked over the cliffs a welcome breeze sprang up, refreshing after the heat of the hotel dining-room. The way was lonely and well suited to my train of thought. It led over a place known by the gruesome designation of Dead Man’s Hill, and then straight across to the Weybourne coastguard station, standing as it does high and alone on that wind-swept coast. From the coastguard on duty I inquired my way to Kelling Hard, whence I had been told there was a road inland to Kelling Street, which led on over Muckleburgh Hill through Weybourne village and back to Sheringham. The bearded old sailor standing before the row of low whitewashed cottages pointed out a path down the hill, telling me that I should find the road a mile farther on, at a place called the Quag; then, as it was already growing dark, I wished him good-night and swung along the footpath he had indicated.

I am a good walker, and wanted exercise after that long transcription I had made earlier in the day.

Having gone about three-quarters of a mile on that unfrequented path I ascended again to the top of the cliff, where a hedgerow with a gate separated one pasture from another; yet so occupied was I with my own thoughts that I did not notice this gate until I was close upon it.

When, however, I raised my head suddenly I was close upon it, and saw, standing beyond, a woman’s figure darkly outlined against the clear afterglow.

I looked again as I came quickly along the path in her direction, and my heart for a moment stood still. The woman was looking straight at me, as though hesitating to come through the gate until after I had passed; and beside her, also regarding my approach with suspicion, stood a big black collie dog.

I drew nearer, and had placed my hand upon the latch when our eyes met again.

No. I was not mistaken! She was the white-faced girl I had seen pass along Harpur Street that night, the woman from whose lips had come that exclamation of blank despair, the woman to whom the sign of the bear was the sign of death.

For a few seconds I believed that my constant thoughts of her had caused my vision to play some sorry trick; but, fumbling clumsily with the gate while she stood aside modestly to allow me to pass, I again reassured myself that it was actually Lord Glenelg’s daughter.

Why had she followed me there? That was the first question that arose to my mind, for all these strange occurrences connected with The Closed Book had aroused my suspicion.

She glanced at me once, then dropped her eyes, and held the collie by his collar for want of something else to do. Her face was still pale and slightly drawn, and her eyes betrayed a deep, all-consuming anxiety; but her countenance was, I saw, really more beautiful than it had appeared to me on that wet night in the dismal London streets.

All these details I took in at a single glance. The all-important question was whether it were wisdom to speak to her?

We were strangers. Perhaps she had not noticed me on that night in London—in all probability she had not. Yet, if she were unaware of my existence, why should she follow me to Norfolk?

To speak might not be a very diplomatic move; but I suddenly recollected her despair at seeing the mysterious sign of the bear, and her father’s apparent disregard of her future. Such being the case, ought we not to be acquainted?

This argument decided me, and with some hesitation I raised my hat after I had passed through the gate to where she stood, and in faltering tones begged to be allowed to introduce myself.

She frowned with displeasure, and next moment I saw I had made a false move. The golf-playing girl of today, with red coat and masculine manners, will treat a stranger just as a man may treat one. Modesty is, I fear, a virtue that in the modern girl is growing annually rarer, because nowadays if a girl blushes at her introduction to a stranger she is at once pronounced a “gawk,” even by her own mother.

But there was nothing masculine about Lady Judith Gordon, only sweetness and a charming simplicity.

“I really have not the pleasure of your acquaintance, sir,” she answered in a musical voice, but with a natural chilly hauteur. “I am not in the habit of accepting self-introductions from strangers,” she added.

Her reply, if a trifle superior in tone, was nevertheless the only one that could be expected of a modest, high-minded woman.

“I have the honour of knowing you only by sight, I admit,” I went on quickly, eager to remove her false impression, my hat still in my hand. “My name is Allan Kennedy, by profession a novelist—”

“You!” she gasped, interrupting me. “You are Mr Kennedy?” And her face blanched in an instant.

“That is my name,” I answered, much surprised at its effect upon her. But taking up the cue quickly, I said, “Perhaps I need say nothing further, save that your interests and my own are identical.”

She looked puzzled, and declared that she did not understand.

“Then forgive me if I mention a matter that must be distasteful to you, for I only do so in order to show how desirous I am of becoming your friend, if, after inquiries about me, you will allow me.”

I said. “Do you recollect the other night dressing in clothes that were not your own, and, accompanied by your father the Earl, paying a secret visit to a certain street in Bloomsbury?”

Her face fell. She held her breath, wondering how much I knew.

“Do you recollect, too, how heavily the rain fell, and how you turned from Theobald’s Road into Harpur Street in search of something? You saw the sign—the stuffed bear cub in the window, the fatal sign. Do you deny it?”

She was silent. Her lips twitched, but for a few moments no sound came from them. She was dumbfounded, and unable to speak. At last she stammered:

“I know, I know! But why do you torture me like this,” she cried, “you who evidently know the truth?”

“Unfortunately I do not know the truth,” I declared. “I may as well tell you, however, that I overheard your exclamation when your eyes fell upon the sign in that dingy upper room, and I followed you both home to Grosvenor Street, determined that if you would allow me I would stand your friend. Because of that I have ventured to introduce myself to you this evening.”

“My friend?” she echoed. “Ah! it is all very well to offer me your assistance, Mr Kennedy; but I fear it can be of no avail. My enemies are stronger than you are. They have crushed all my life out of me. My future is hopeless—utterly hopeless,” she sighed.

The collie, escaping from her hand, sniffed me suspiciously, and then settled near his mistress.

“Ah, no! there is always hope. Besides, I am utterly in the dark as to the meaning of your words. My surmise, based simply upon logical conclusions, is that our interests are, as I have already suggested, identical. You have heard of me, have you not?”

“I have read your books,” was her answer, “and my father has spoken of you.”

“He has spoken of me in connection with the sign placed in that window in Bloomsbury?” I suggested.

She nodded. Her splendid eyes met mine mysteriously.

“He is a friend of Mr Selby’s?” I ventured.

“I believe so.”

“Do you not, then, admit the truth of my suggestion that, our interests being in common, we should establish friendly relations whereby we may defeat our enemies?” I asked.

“I admit the truth of the argument entirely,” was her response after a few moments’ consideration; “and, although I recognise your kindness in offering to stand my friend, I cannot see how either of us can benefit. I must suffer—till my death.”

“Your death?” I cried reproachfully. “Don’t speak like that. I know how utterly helpless you are, how completely you have fallen into the hands of these mysterious enemies of yours. Yet I would urge you not to despair. Trust in me to assist you in every way in my power, for I assure you of my honesty of purpose. Be frank with me, and tell me everything; then we will form some plan to combat this plot—for plot it seems to be.”

“Be frank with you?” she cried in a tone of dismay, but quickly recovered herself. “With you—of all men?”

“Why not with me?” I asked in great surprise at her manner. “Surely I am not your enemy?”

“If you are not at this moment, you have been in the past.”

“How so?” I asked, amazed.

“You would have brought death upon me if you could,” she cried huskily. “I was only saved by the protection of Providence.”

“I really don’t know what you mean?” I cried. “I have only seen you once before, on that wet night in London. Yet you actually accuse me of being your enemy?”

“No,” she said in a hard voice. “My words are not an accusation. The fault, I feel certain, was not your own; but you might easily have encompassed my death without ever knowing it.”

“I really don’t understand!” I exclaimed. “Will you not speak more plainly? To think that I have ever been your enemy, consciously or unconsciously, for a single moment, pains me, for such a thing is farthest from my thoughts. I am only desirous of being your good and devoted friend. We both have enemies—you and I. Therefore, if we join forces in perfect confidence, we may succeed in combating them.”

“Then I can only presume you have followed me here in order to put this proposal to me?” she said in a tone of indignation.

“I have certainly not followed you,” was my quick response. “Indeed, I believed that it was you who had followed me! I am staying at Sheringham, and had not the least idea you were in the neighbourhood.”

“The same with me,” she replied. “My father and I are staying at my uncle’s, Lord Aldoborough’s, at Saxlingham, and I strolled over here this evening as far as the sea. Then our meeting must have been quite accidental.”

“When did you arrive?”

“Yesterday.”

“And your father may have come down here in order to be able to watch me?” I suggested.

She did not reply, although her troubled breast heaved and fell quickly in agitation.

“I know that you hesitate to accept me as your friend,” I went on earnestly. “But before your final decision I would urge you to seek some information about me, for I can only repeat what I have already said, that our interests are in common, and that we should defend ourselves.”

“From what?”

“From the evil which you fear may fall upon you,” I answered, recollecting her words in Harpur Street.

“Ah, no!” she cried bitterly, as her fine eyes filled with tears. “It is useless for you to tell me this—perfectly useless! I, alas! know the truth. Before tomorrow,” she added in a hoarse voice, “I shall have ceased to trouble you.”

Chapter Nineteen.

The Hand and the Glove.

Do you believe in love at first sight? I did not until the moment when, in my brief conversation with the Earl’s daughter, I detected the beauty of her character. I had often heard it said that only fools love a woman at first meeting her. Yet within that woman’s heart was a fathomless well of purest affection, although its waters slept in silence and obscurity—never failing in their depth, and never overflowing in their fullness. Everything in her seemed somehow to lie beyond my view, affecting me in a manner which I felt rather than perceived. At first I did not know that it was love for her. Amid the strange atmosphere of mystery and conspiracy into which I had so suddenly been plunged, amid convulsions of doubt and fear which had during those past few days harrowed my soul, the tender influence of this woman came like that of a celestial visitant, making itself felt and acknowledged, although I could not understand it. Like a soft star that shines for a moment from behind a stormy cloud, and the next is swallowed up in tempest and darkness, the impression it left was beautiful and deep, but vague.

Perhaps you may blame me. Most probably you will. But man is ever the jetsam of the wind of destiny.

I glanced at her, and took in every detail of her countenance and dress. She was no longer in shabby black, but in a pretty costume of dove-grey cashmere, with silken trimmings of a somewhat darker shade; she looked daintily bewitching, supple and slim, grey lending relief to the delicate roundness, the gentle curves of a figure in which early womanhood was blooming with all its sweet and adorable charm. Her fair hair, streaked here and there with gold, was covered with a hat that suited her exquisitely, whether the eye sought harmony of colour or unity of lines. She wore no veil, and thus I could freely feast my eyes upon her beauty.

“I really don’t understand you,” I exclaimed, after a pause. “You do not trouble me, for until I saw you by chance passing into the street we were entire strangers.”

“No benefit can be obtained by discussing the matter,” she answered blankly. “Why were you watching in Harpur Street if not to witness my despair?”

“I had a motive in watching,” I answered.

“Of course you had. You cannot deny that. My father has already spoken of you, and told me everything.”

“And he is still triumphant?” I queried, recollecting his expression of satisfaction on seeing the fatal sign.

She was silent, her lips set closely, her fair face turned towards the open expanse of grey sea.

“Am I not right in suggesting that your enemy is a person named Selby, and that he—”

“Who told you that?” she cried. “How did you know?”

“By my own observations,” I replied, as calmly as I could, yet secretly gratified that she should have thus betrayed the truth.

“Ah?” she sighed. “I see! I was not mistaken. You are not my friend, Mr Kennedy.”

“But I am,” I declared. “Give me an opportunity of proving my friendship. You apparently believe that I am implicated in some plot against you, but I swear I am innocent of it all. I myself am a victim of some extraordinary conspiracy—just as you are.”

She looked me straight in the face as though hesitating whether she dared speak the truth. Next instant, however, her natural caution asserted itself, and, with tactful ingenuity, she turned the conversation into a different channel. She seemed uneasy, and eager to escape from my cross-examination; while I, on my part, became determined to obtain from her the truth and to convince her of my good intentions.

I was in a difficulty, because to reveal my connection with The Closed Book might upset all my plans. For aught I knew, she might inform the man Selby, who, gaining knowledge of my presence in England, would suspect that the precious volume had come again into my possession. Therefore I was compelled to retain my secret, and by so doing was, of course, unable to convince her of my intention to be her friend.

Mine was a painful position—just as painful as hers. For some reason quite unaccountable she held me in terror, and now that dusk was darkening to night, was in haste to return to Saxlingham, about three miles distant. It was apparent that my admission of having watched her and her father in Harpur Street had aroused her suspicion of me, a suspicion which no amount of argument or assertion would remove.

She was disinclined to discuss the matter further; and, after some desultory conversation regarding the beauties of Norfolk, she called her dog Rover, preparatory to taking leave of me.

“You must excuse me, Mr Kennedy,” she said, with a smile, the first I had seen on that sad, sweet face. “But it is growing late, and it will be dark before I get back.”

“May I not walk with you half the distance?” I urged.

“No,” she responded. “It would be taking you right out of your way for Sheringham. I have known the roads about here ever since I was a child, and therefore have no fear.”

“Well,” I said, putting forth my hand and lifting my hat to her, “I can only hope, Lady Judith, that when next we meet you will have learned that, instead of being your enemy, I am your friend.”

She placed her hand in mine rather timidly, and I held it there while she replied, with a sigh, “Ah, if I could only believe that you speak the truth!”

“It is the truth!” I cried, still holding her tiny hand in my grip. “You are in distress, and although you decline to allow me to assist you, I will show you that I have not lied to you tonight. Recollect, Lady Judith,” I went on fervently, for I saw that some nameless terror had driven her to despair, “recollect that I am your friend, ready to render you any assistance or perform any service at any moment; only, on your part, I want you to give me a promise.”

“And what is that?” she faltered.

“That you will tell no one that you met me. Remember that, although you are not aware of it, your enemies are mine.”

For a moment she was silent, with eyes downcast; then she answered in a low voice, “Very well, Mr Kennedy. If you wish it, I will say nothing. Good-night.”

“Good-night,” I answered, and having released her hand she turned from me with a sad smile of farewell, and with her collie bounding by her side made her way over the brow of the hill along the straight white road, while I, after watching until she had disappeared from view, turned and walked in the opposite direction.

Anything like mystery, anything withheld or withdrawn from our notice, seizes on our fancy by awakening our curiosity. Then we are won more by what we half-perceive and half-create than by what is openly expressed and freely bestowed. But this feeling is part of our life; when time and years have chilled us, when we can no longer afford to send our souls abroad, nor from our own superfluity of life and sensibility spare the materials out of which we build a shrine for our idol, then do we seek, we ask, we thirst, for that warmth of frank, confiding tenderness which revives in us the withered affections and feelings buried, but not dead. Then the excess of love is welcome, not repelled; it is gracious to us as the sun and dew to the seared and riven trunk with its few green leaves.

Like every other man I had had my own affairs of the heart. I had loved unwisely more than once, but the sweetness, sensibility, magnanimity, and fortitude of the unhappy Judith’s character appealed to me in all the freshness and perfection of what a true woman should be.

I cared nothing for the repugnance she felt towards myself, because I knew that it must be the outcome of some vile calumny or some vague suspicion.

As I passed back along the narrow path over the cliffs, my face set towards the gathering night, I calmly examined my life, and saw now that seven years had gone since the great domestic blow had fallen upon me and caused me to ramble aimlessly across the Continent; that I still stood yet in the morning of life, and that it was not too late to win the glorious prize I had asked of life—love incarnate in sovereign beauty, endowed with all nobility and fervour and tenderness and truth.

In any case, whether she became mine or not, I loved her with my whole heart; and to know that I could love again, in spite of all the torture of the past, was in itself both comfort and delight.

Chapter Twenty.

Walter Wyman Rejoins me.

That night I slept little, my mind being full of thoughts of the evening’s adventure. Before my eyes I had constantly that pale, tragic face, just as, previously, visions of the countenance of the woman I had seen in the prior’s dim study in Florence seemed ever before me. Was it by intuition that I knew that these two women were destined to influence my life to a far greater degree than any woman had done before? I think it must have been; for while I loved the one, I held the other in a constant, indefinable terror. Why, I know not until this day—not even now that I am sitting here calmly chronicling all that occurred to me in those wild days of ardent love, reckless adventure, and impenetrable mystery.

At noon Walter Wyman unexpectedly walked into my room with a cheery greeting, and, throwing himself down upon the couch in the window that looked over the sea, exclaimed, “Well, old chap, what does this extraordinary book contain, after all?”

I took the transcript from the place where I had hidden it, and, seating myself on the edge of the table, read it through to him.

“Oh, hang it!” he exclaimed excitedly, when I had finished, “then we may, if we are persevering and careful, actually discover this great treasure!”

“Exactly,” I answered. “My suggestion is that we lose no time in making preliminary observations at the two spots mentioned by the man who hid it from his enemies.”

“And supposing we found it, would it benefit us, having in view the law of treasure-trove?” was Walters very practical inquiry.

“Not very much perhaps,” I admitted. “But we should at least clear up a mystery that has puzzled the world for ages—the actual existence of the Borgia poison and its antidote, besides rescuing Lucrezia Borgia’s emeralds, and at the same time discovering the real motive of the strange conspiracy surrounding the book.”

“I quite agree with that,” exclaimed my friend; “but does it not strike you that we are considerably handicapped by that folio being missing—the very page of all others most important for the success of our search? Besides, this man Selby has, in all probability, read the chronicle, and therefore knows just as much, and probably more, than we do.”

“That I grant you,” I said. “But, nevertheless, I somehow feel that we ought to search both at Crowland, which is within easy reach of this place, and at Threave, in Scotland.” And I explained how I had written to my old friend Fred Fenwicke, asking that we might both be allowed to come up and visit him.

“You certainly haven’t let the grass grow under your feet, old fellow—you never do,” he said, taking a cigarette from the box I handed to him and lighting it. “I think with you that we ought to try Threave, seeing that the plan is evidently of the spot. But we are unable to do anything till the sixth of September, when we ought to be there at three o’clock in the afternoon, according to the directions given.”

“We have still three weeks, then,” I remarked. “In that case we might go over to Crowland first and look around there. In all probability the other plan is meant to indicate where the treasure of the abbey is concealed.”

“By Jove!” he exclaimed, taking the transcript from my hand. “This list of things, the silver altar, gold chalices, and boxes of gems are sufficient to make one’s mouth water—aren’t they?”

“Yes,” I laughed. “We ought, if we act in a circumspect manner and arouse no attention on the part of the villagers, to be able to make a secret search. The one thing to avoid is public interest. The instant anybody suspects what we are after, the whole affair will get into the papers, and not only will our chance of success be gone, but our enemies, whoever they are, will know that The Closed Book is again in our possession.”

“I quite follow you, Allan,” he said with sudden seriousness. “We’ll go to Crowland tonight, if you are agreeable, and set carefully to work in order to see if the plan tallies with any landmark now existing. It’s a pity the old chap who wrote the record didn’t label it, as he did the other.”

“He may have wanted to give the plan but hold back the secret from anyone who casually opened the book,” I suggested. “You see, the volume has evidently been preserved for centuries in the library of the Certosa Monastery at Florence—the house in which the monk Godfrey Lovel died—and, being written in early English, could not, of course, be translated by the Italian monks.”

“I wonder how many people have died through handling those poisoned pages?” my friend observed. The deadliness of that secret Borgia venom appealed to him as it has appealed to the world through ages.

“Ah!” I said, “it is impossible to tell.”

But my mind was on other things, and as soon as the opportunity offered I related to Walter my strange rencontre with Lady Judith Gordon.

“What?” he cried, jumping up from the couch; “you’ve actually seen her and spoken to her?”

“Certainly. She is charming, and I admit, my dear Walter, that I’ve fallen most desperately in love with her.”

“Love! You actually love her?” he demanded.

“Indeed I do. She is the perfect incarnation of what a good, sweet woman should be. Is there any reason why I should not admire her?”

“None that I know of,” he returned; “but I’m afraid of these people and their connection with this mysterious affair. Remember, all we know about them is that they have led very peculiar lives for years. But time will show whether you are wise. Certainly these people appear to have found the secret just as we have—the secret of the existence of a valuable treasure.”

Chapter Twenty One.

We Make Preliminary Investigation.

“I thought buried treasure existed only in books!” I remarked, recollecting “Treasure Island” and other such romances. “Certainly I never anticipated that I should be actually engaged in a real treasure hunt.”

“Nor did I, until I saw the gravity of the whole thing, and how deeply in earnest are these people.”

“They have no idea that The Closed Book is again in my possession?” I asked.

“None whatever. The volume was stolen from Harpur Street, of course, and they are puzzled to know into whose hands it has fallen. All the chief dealers in manuscripts in London—Quaritch, Maggs, Tregaskis, Dobell, and the others—have been warned that if the Arnoldus is offered them it is stolen property.”

“Well, it is not very likely that any of them will have the offer,” I laughed. “It will be kept in a safe place now I have it in my possession again, you may depend upon that.”

Walter Wyman had turned over the many folios of my transcript, and was reading the portion concerning the hidden treasure of the Abbey of Crowland. I think the list of gold and silver objects so plainly set out appealed to him.

“We’ll go back to Peterborough tonight,” he said, “sleep at the ‘Angel,’ and visit Crowland, as it is now spelt, tomorrow. I’ve heard that the ruins of the abbey are very fine. It will be an interesting outing, if nothing else.”

“Before we go we had better take a tracing of the unnamed plan,” I suggested. “It may assist us, and yet it may, on the other hand, be a plan of an entirely different place. One thing, however, is certain—namely, that it had been drawn there with some distinct object, just as the plan marked ‘Treyf.’”

To this he agreed, and going downstairs I obtained the packet containing the book from the hotel manager’s safe, and together we carefully traced the rough plan in question. It was merely an arrangement of lines and numerals, which told us absolutely nothing. Still, we both felt half-convinced that it must somehow concern the Crowland treasure which was hidden from the king’s men at the time the abbey was dissolved and destroyed.

At seven-thirty, after an early dinner, we left by the London express for Peterborough, arriving back at the old-fashioned “Angel” just before eleven. In travelling I carried the precious Arnoldus myself, fearing to lose it; but at our hotel I again transferred it to the landlord’s safe, with injunctions to the hotel keeper to be careful of it, as its value was considerable.

Next morning was bright and sunny, and taking a carriage from the hotel we drove out to Crowland, a fen village distant some seven miles.

Perhaps you may have visited it, an old-world straggling place clustering about the time-worn, blackened ruins of the ancient abbey, a venerable pile which even in its present gaunt decay displays mute evidence of a long-past glory.

As we stood before its restored tower and great ruined, roofless aisles, where arches still remain that are the wonder of the modern builder, we could not help reflecting on the vicissitudes through which the grand old place had passed from its foundation, A.D. 713, as a memorial to the Saxon Saint Guthlac, down to its complete dissolution and overthrow by Henry VIII. Because of its isolation in that great marsh, it was for centuries a place of refuge, where the monks were engaged in a noble and great work, employed in prayer, writing manuscripts, building bridges, making roads, or constructing by degrees that noble monument to the glory of God, the great abbey, the nursing mother of Cambridge University, and the very centre of Christian life in the fens of Lincolnshire. Though those venerable aisles are roofless, and the wonderful Early English life-sized statues in the western front of the nave are blackened by age and crumbling to decay; though all traces of the original dimensions of the place are lost in the ill-kept and weedy churchyard surrounding it, the old pile is still one of the noblest buildings in England, wonderful in its station, unique in its beauty, and a valuable relic of Christian devotion, interesting alike to the architect, the historian, and the antiquary.

The guide to the place, which we purchased of the sacristan, told us that the vast structure, consisting of the porch, western tower, and the north aisle, with the ruins of the nave, did not represent one-fourth of the original abbey church. Indeed, the grey, time-stained building which we stood before was little more than the north aisle of the church attached to the abbey, and therefore conveyed no more adequate idea of the extent of the monastic building than the ruins of a domestic chapel will of the castle or mansion to which it was attached. At the time of the dissolution it was standing in all its glory, with the wooden roof of the now ruined nave richly gilt, the great windows full of fine stained glass, two grand organs, and altar blazing with gold, silver, and gems.

The north aisle still remains roofed over,—but uninteresting—to do duty as the parish church; but the magnificent nave is stripped, mutilated, and open to the four winds of heaven, for what sacrilege the commissioners of Henry VIII did not commit in old Godfrey Lovel’s day, Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers completed when they stormed the place and shattered the remaining walls and windows in 1643.

Together we strolled into the space enclosed by the nave, wandering among the grey old ruins, where the quiet was broken only by the twittering of a bird. The morning was bright, with a warm sun and cloudless sky; but its very light seemed to render the venerable pile, rich with deeds long since forgot, the more bare, solemn, and imposing.

We were alone, for the sacristan, having received the sixpence for the guide, had returned to her cottage, allowing us to roam there at our own sweet will. Therefore, when in a spot where we thought we should be unobserved, I drew forth the transcript I had made of the old monk’s record, and reread it aloud to my companion in order that my memory might be refreshed, and that he should know the exact wording of what was written.

We smiled at the simplicity of the old Abbot John sending Thomas Cromwell a present of his fen fish in the hope he would be appeased and pass by the abbey without seizing it; yet, as I afterwards discovered, the original of that very letter is still preserved in the British Museum, and I have had it in my own hand, thus showing that old Godfrey must have possessed the entire confidence of his abbot.

In front of where I stood, let into the ruined wall and beaten by the weather, was a grey slate which I knew to be of fifteenth-century workmanship. The incised marginal inscription, in Lombardic characters, read as follows:

“PETRE: PRECES: P: .ME: PETRO: PASTOR: PIE: P: ME.”

This, being translated, reads:

Peter (offer) prayers for me. Peter, Pious Shepherd (pray) for me.

In the centre of the slab was a floriated cross, and the words, “Orate p. aia Johanis Tomson.” In 1423 John Tomson gave ten marks for the building of the abbey tower, and it appeared that the marginal inscription was a prayer addressed either to the Apostle St. Peter or to John Tomson’s father confessor, named Peter.

Those great bare walls and high pointed arches, grey and frowning, rudely broken, yet perfect in grace and symmetry, surely furnished a striking instance of the uncertainty of all human labours. In the day when the soldier-monk Godfrey lived there it was the seat of devotion and learning, the abode of luxury and ease, possessing riches in abundance, and vessels for its use of the most costly description; now, except in that portion fitted as a church, it scarcely afforded shelter to a rook or daw, and the last remains of its once almost unparalleled magnificence were smouldering silently and mingling with the soil on which they stood:

“Whilst in the progress of long decay, Thrones sink to dust, and nations pass away.”

We turned again to the old chronicle of the monk who had lived there and actually seen those massive walls torn down by Southwell’s men; the monk who, with the abbot himself and his friend the Scotch monk Maxwell, had at midnight on the first of December, 1538, concealed the greater part of the abbey treasures.

According to Godfrey’s statement, Malcolm had kept watch at the south door while the abbot and himself had carried the three chests out and sunk them in the centre and at the deepest part of the fish pond. It was hidden in the same pond in which he had previously concealed the Borgia jewels—namely, in the lake at a spot indicated, being one hundred and thirty-one paces south of the grand altar. The pond was never dry, it appeared, even in the hottest summer, and like all other monastery waters contained carp for Fridays. The Borgia treasure he managed to secure before leaving Crowland with his friend Malcolm Maxwell, but the abbey plate and jewels and the silver altar he had been compelled to leave, the two others who alone knew the secret, in addition to himself, having died. He had recorded the existence of the treasure from a sense of religious duty, feeling that the Catholic Church should not suffer by entire loss of such a magnificent property.

His directions were by no means explicit, but in our eagerness we resolved to investigate as far as possible.

Passing up what was once the nave, where great trees now flourished and bushes grew in tangled profusion, we came to the high round-toothed arch and two massive piers which were all that remained of the central tower. Beyond, although the abbey church extended just as far eastward as the ruins ran westward, all had disappeared.

There was no sign of the whereabouts of the grand altar from which to take our bearings. The whole of the eastern side of the church had been swept away and converted into a modern churchyard.

“Perhaps the guide will tell us something,” Wyman suggested, and at once began to scan its pages, while we stood in the rank grass beneath the shadow of that magnificent arch which is the admiration of all modern builders.

Presently he pointed out to me the original measurements, showing that the nave had been one hundred and forty-four feet long by twenty-eight feet wide and seventy-five feet high, which after careful comparison with other calculations, made it clear that the grand altar must have stood eighty-six feet from the broken pier of the central tower where we stood.

We had fortunately purchased a measuring-tape in Peterborough; therefore, without delay, we marked out eighty-six feet in a direct easterly direction towards the open fen pastures straight before us, and, looking round, discovered to our satisfaction some broken stone foundations hidden in the grass and weeds—evidently the lower stones of the grand altar mentioned by the monk Godfrey.

Some twelve feet farther on there were some similar moss-grown stones, which struck me as being the remains of the rear of the demolished altar; therefore from this latter point we determined to take our bearings, and begin our operations.

We stood and glanced around to find the monastery fish pond. Southward in the direction indicated, in the centre of a grass field, which, filled with mounds where old foundations had been overgrown, was a deep dip in the ground, a small pond quite unlike the deep lake full of old carp that we had imagined.

“That’s it?” I exclaimed, much disappointed. “There certainly isn’t much water there. I suppose we had better measure the hundred and thirty-one paces, so as to be quite certain that it really is the spot.”

“Come along,” cried my friend. “Let’s do it separately;” and, turning our faces to the south, we paced on, each counting silently, and being compelled to scale the churchyard wall in our progress.

At one hundred and nine paces, however, I arrived at the edge of what had, no doubt, once been a big pond, for the grassy hollow was some thirty feet wide and sixty long, divided into two, and in each remained a few feet of muddy water from which the cattle drank.

The discrepancy in the distance puzzled us. Was it possible that the celebrated silver altar of Crowland and the three chestfuls of treasure lay buried in the centre of the slime of that half-dried pond?

Surely the lake must have been of much larger dimensions in Godfrey’s day; and, if it were, then the distance between its edge and the grand altar would not be so great.

I produced the tracing of the mysterious plan contained in The Closed Book, but failed to comprehend it in any detail. The shaky lines, intended to be straight, were mostly numbered, as though denoting paces distant. But there was no number 131, or 109, as I had found it, hence we were utterly mystified, and both inclined to believe that in imagining the plan to concern Crowland we had been mistaken.

We both stood at the edge of the muddy pond and glanced into its green, stagnant water.

Was it possible that the great treasures of that half-demolished abbey, whose high ruined walls and buttresses cast their shadows behind, had been hidden deep in the mud below by the same hand that had written The Closed Book, the hand that had envenomed its pages and thus preserved the great secret from age to age?

It seemed almost incredible in these matter-of-fact times, and yet we both felt confident that the treasure enumerated in that list lay cunningly concealed somewhere in that vicinity.

Chapter Twenty Two.

What Happened at Crowland.

The long hollow in the field, with a small quantity of muddy water in the bottom, was by no means the kind of place where one would expect to find a treasure concealed. The fields around that neglected churchyard were uneven, where the foundations of the monastic buildings were now overgrown with rank grass and nettles, and in the centre was this hollow where undoubtedly the pond had once been.

Facing us there ran across the eastern boundary of the field a line of beeches, and then, beyond, the broad, bare, misty fenland, without a tree almost as far as the eye could reach, flat, inhospitable, and uninteresting. Like the Maremma, with which I was so familiar in Tuscany, there lay over everything a light mist—that miasma which in Italy is so deadly to the peasantry; and yet even more barren and more cheerless was it than the wide marshes on the road to Rome. The old windmill, with broken sails and roofless outbuildings, stood forth, the most prominent object in that flat, unbroken landscape, without hedgerow, a pitiful relic of the days when it paid to grind corn, before the advent of steam machinery; while clustered on the north side of the abbey were rows of old-fashioned cottages, mostly built of the stones of the monks’ houses thrown down by Cromwell. The quiet old village of Crowland is still far from the railway, and modern progress has therefore been slow in reaching it.

As I stood beside that weedy hollow with my companion, I was bound to admit that although old Godfrey Lovel might have inhabited the monastery for eighteen years or so, and his chronicle might be proved to be correct on comparison with contemporary history, yet his statement regarding the distance of the fish pond from the grand altar was incorrect.

Walter pointed out that we had measured from a spot where we merely surmised the altar to have been, and therefore we might have mistaken the distance. Nevertheless, we gazed about us in uncertainty. We alone knew the existence of treasure there, being in possession of a secret lost to the world ever since the year of grace 1538.

Was not that in itself sufficient incentive to cause us to make a search?

“This is evidently where Godfrey Lovel hid the Borgia jewels,” remarked Walter Wyman, referring to my transcript of the secret record which he held in his hand. “But he apparently dragged the casket out of the pond on the night before his departure for Scotland.”

“Leaving the abbey treasure still hidden,” I added.

“Certainly,” he said. Then rapidly referring to my transcript, he added: “As far as I can make out, the silver altar and the three chests full of treasure hidden from Cromwell’s men were not placed in the same lake as the Borgia jewels. Old Godfrey was clever enough not to suggest that, fearing that the casket he himself had secreted might be discovered by some prying person. You see he says that the abbey plate and jewels were buried ‘at the opposite end to where, through many years, my own treasure lay well concealed.’ Again he says: ‘Once I heard rumour that Southwell intended to pump out the lakes.’ He speaks in the plural, thus showing that there was more than one fish pond at this place. Of course, they’ve since been filled in, and this ground made comparatively level over the old foundations.”

I glanced at the passages he referred to, and saw that his surmise was correct. There was certainly more than one pond there in Godfrey’s day, and although the Borgia jewels were hidden in the water one hundred and thirty-one paces south-east of the grand altar, yet it did not actually allege that the abbey plate was submerged in the same lake, but at the opposite end. That would be south-west of the grand altar.

I pointed this out to my friend, and, both turning at the same moment, we saw the glint of sunshine upon water at the opposite corner of the rough and broken ground, level with the clock tower, and abutting upon the road which skirted the village itself.

Together we eagerly approached it, first, however, returning to the spot where we had fixed the whereabouts of the main altar, and counting the paces towards it. I counted them as one hundred and twenty-nine, while Walter made them one hundred and thirty-two.

The pond was big, full of dark water, and weedless, showing it to be of considerable depth. It had escaped our notice on entering the abbey grounds, and we both saw that although it was now bounded on one side by the high, black-tarred fence of a cottage garden, and at the end by some red-brick farm outbuildings and hayricks, it had nevertheless once been of considerable dimensions—unquestionably the fish pond of the monks from which they caught their Friday fare.

Once it had undoubtedly been well kept and cared for, but today the cattle grazing on that weedy ground drank from it, for round the mud showed prints of hoofs.

“This is it, no doubt,” exclaimed Wyman, again referring to the record. “You see it says ‘the pond was deep and dried not in summer, being fed by several springs.’ This one is of fresh water, while the other is stagnant. If the treasure has not already been found, it is most likely sunk deep in the mud here.”

We both gazed upon the unruffled surface of the water glittering beneath the sun, wondering in which part had been the centre of the original pond. At present it was not more than twenty feet across and perhaps fifty feet long. Its previous dimensions had, of course, been much greater, for it must have extended nearly the whole length of the abbey if, as seemed so probable, the depression on the east side of the field had been in connection with it.

Of course, we had at once seen that the abbey and monastic buildings had originally spread over all the fields southward, eastward, and northward; but we had here sufficient evidence of the existence of the ponds, the hiding-place of the treasure.

A flock of rooks were lazily circling around the tower, and as we stood there in silence at the edge of the pond the deep-toned abbey bell rang out the hour.

“I cannot see how we can search here without its being known,” Wyman remarked at last. “How are we to pump out this pond and dig out the mud secretly? Why, the whole village would be here in half an hour if we attempted it.”

“I am quite of your opinion,” I answered. “And I would point out further that until we are aware of where the centre of the pond was it is no use searching at all. My idea is that the spot where the treasure lies is not beneath the water at all, but in another place, midway between here and the other pond—a place that has since been filled up with the débris when the abbey was destroyed. As you see, the ground has practically been levelled, yet at one time nearly the whole of this field was a deep pond. Recollect that there were sometimes as many as seven hundred monks here; therefore they required good-sized fish ponds. No; I feel confident that if we ever do discover the treasure we shall find it somewhere about the centre of this field.”

“Which means that we’ve a lot of excavation to do, and that we must disclose our secret to the whole countryside—even if we were successful in obtaining permission from the lord of the manor, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, or whoever owns the land.”

“It means all that,” I said, “and more. It means that if we do go to work without knowing the exact spot where old Godfrey and the abbot concealed the silver altar and the three chestsful of plate we might continue our investigations until doomsday and achieve nothing except the inevitable reputation of having made arrant fools of ourselves.”

“But how can we know the exact spot?” inquired Wyman, who was nothing if not entirely practical.