The Closed Book: Concerning the Secret of the Borgias. Le Queux William
thought you wouldn’t pull through. I telephoned to Cassuto at the hospital, and he rushed round and helped me. I didn’t believe you had really been poisoned. It certainly was not strychnia after all, although the symptoms were very like it. Tell me how it happened.”
I turned on my bed towards him and briefly related how I had purchased the curious volume, and how, on two separate occasions, I had been suddenly seized while examining the secret history written at the end.
“H’m!” he grunted dubiously; “very remarkable, especially as the record mentions the unknown poison used by Lucrezia Borgia and her brother. A matter for investigation, certainly. You must allow me to submit one of the vellum pages to analysis; and perhaps we might clear up forever the ingredients of the compound which has so long remained a mystery.”
“Most willingly,” I answered. “We may make a discovery of the utmost interest to toxicologists. Hitherto they have declared that to produce a substance sufficiently venomous to penetrate the skin and cause death to those who touch it is impossible. Here, however, I think we have an illustration of it.”
“It really seems so,” he answered thoughtfully. “I should strongly advise you, when handling the book again, to wear gloves as a precaution. Having once narrowly escaped death, as you have, you cannot be too careful.”
“I’ll take your advice, signore dottore,” I responded. “And I’ve to thank you for saving me, as you’ve done today.”
“You had a narrow escape – a very narrow one,” he remarked. “I do not think that in all my experience I have seen a man come so near death, and then recover. When you first told me that your hands had become impregnated with the Borgia poison I was, of course, sceptical. You English sometimes become so very imaginative when you live here in our climate. But I am compelled to admit that the symptoms are not those of any known poison; and if what you tell me is correct, then it really appears as though we are at last actually in possession of an object envenomed with the ancient compound about which so much has been written during the past three centuries. For my own part, I am deeply interested in the curious affair, and shall be only too happy to investigate it analytically, if you will allow me. My friend Marini, the professor of chemistry at Pavia, is at present here for the sea-bathing, and he will, I am sure, help me. As you know, he is one of the most expert analysts in Italy.”
And so it was agreed that a chemical investigation should be made, in order to discover, if possible, the secret of the Borgia poison which was so subtle and could be so regulated that no effect might be felt for half an hour or for a month, as the poisoner wished, but the end was always the same – death.
By secret use of that fatal compound the Duke Caesar detto Borgia undoubtedly swept away his enemies, and more than one old chronicler alleges that his father, the Pope Alexander VI. himself, did not hesitate to use it to rid himself of obnoxious cardinals who were wealthy, or other persons who aroused his enmity. He fully lived up to his official title of Ruler of the World, and it is more than likely that by the aid of this secret compound he broke the back of the turbulent, selfish baronage which had ravaged the papal states for centuries. Certainly his reign was full of diabolical atrocities and wanton, ingenious cruelty, documentary evidence of which is still preserved in the secret archives of the Vatican and of Venice. As to the alleged crimes of the beautiful Lucrezia, a long tress of whose yellow hair is still preserved in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, those who have read Italian history know well how she has been represented as placed outside of the pale of humanity by her wantonness, her vices, and her crimes. Yet what was written in that curious record of Godfrey Lovel, soldier, courtier, and monk by turns, seemed to demonstrate that in her youth, with no initiative, no choice permitted to her, she was rather the too pliant instrument in the hands of Alexander and his son Caesar.
Anyhow, the fact remained that the writer of that secret record was absolutely in the confidence of Lucrezia Borgia, and also in possession of some of the venom, with which, in all probability, he envenomed the book in order that those who gained the secrets it contained should never live to profit by them.
Knowledge of the secret written there, he alleged, would place its possessor among the greatest upon earth. Was not that sufficient to arouse one’s curiosity to proceed – to continue handling those envenomed pages, unconsciously seeking his own doom?
Surely the secret must be an important one, placed on record upon vellum, and yet so protected that the seeker after it must inevitably die ere the entire truth could be revealed.
The whole affair was most puzzling. As I sat in the swift, open cab that took me back along the sea-road to Antignano, the crimson sun was setting, and the gaily dressed Italian crowd was promenading under the ilexes and acacias beside the Mediterranean. Leghorn is a fashionable bathing-place during July and August, and from the hour when the sun sinks behind Gorgona until far into the night no fairer prospect than the Viale Regina Margherita, as the beautiful promenade is called, with its open-air cafés and big bathing establishments, can be found in the south of Europe.
Through the little wood that lies between the fashionable village of Ardenza and the sea, where the oleanders were in the full blaze of their glory, my cab sped homeward; and having left the gaiety of the outskirts of Leghorn behind, I fell to reflecting upon the future, and wondering what, after all, was the hidden truth contained in The Closed Book – the knowledge that would place its possessor among the greatest on earth?
I thought of the strange circumstances in which I had purchased the old tome, of the inexplicable manner of Father Bernardo, of the old hunchback’s evil face at the church window, and, most of all, of that singularly handsome young woman in black whom I had encountered in the prior’s study – the woman with whom the fat priest had spoken in private.
Why should Father Bernardo have urged me to relinquish my bargain? Why should Graniani have come to me on the same errand, and have warned me? Surely they could not be aware that the pages were envenomed, and just as surely they could have no motive in preventing my falling a victim!
If they were acting from purely humane motives, they would surely have explained the truth to me.
Besides, when I reflected, it became apparent that the vellum leaves at the end whereon was inscribed old Godfrey’s chronicle had not been opened for many years, as a number of them had become stuck together by damp at the edge, and I had been compelled to separate them with a knife.
At last I sprang out, paid the driver, passed through the echoing marble hall of the villino, and up the stairs towards my study.
Old Nello, who followed me, greeted me with the usual “Ben tornato, signore,” and then added, “The lady called to see you, waited about a quarter of an hour in your study, and then left, promising to call tomorrow.”
“She said nothing about the little panel of St. Francis?”
“Nothing, signore. But she seemed an inquisitive young lady – from Bologna, I should say, from her accent.”
“Young lady!” I exclaimed. “Why, the wine-grower’s wife is sixty, if a day. Was this lady young?”
“About twenty-six, signore,” was his reply. “Hers was a pretty face – like a picture – only she seemed to wear a very sad look. She was dressed all in black, as though in mourning.”
“What?” I cried, halting on the stairs, for the description of my visitor tallied with that of the woman I had seen in the priest’s study in Florence and afterwards in Leghorn. “Had she black eyes and a rather protruding, pointed chin?”
“She had, signore.”
“And she was alone in my study a quarter of an hour?” I exclaimed.
“Yes. I looked through the keyhole, and, seeing her prying over your papers, I entered. Then she excused herself from remaining longer, and said she would call again.”
“But that’s not the woman I expected, Nello?” And with a bound I rushed up the remaining stairs into the room.
A single glance around told me the truth.
The Closed Book had disappeared! It had been stolen by that woman, who had been following me, and whose