A silent witness
could give him Mr. Reinhardt’s address. Of course I could not, but I
wrote to M. Desiré asking him if he could give it to me. Desiré
replied that he did not, at the moment, know where Mr. Reinhardt was,
but would, if desired, take charge of any communications and forward
them at the first opportunity. This statement may or may not have been
true, but I don’t think we shall get any more information out of
Desiré. He is Reinhardt’s agent and will act on his instructions. If
Reinhardt has told him not to give anyone his address, naturally he
won’t give it. So there the matter ends, so far as I am concerned.”
“Did Vitalis make no suggestion as to altering his will?” Father
Humperdinck enquired.
“None whatever. Nothing was said about the will. But,” Mr. Marchmont
added, after a cogitative pause, “we must remember that he has another
man of business now. There is no saying what he may have done through
M. Desiré.”
Father Humperdinck nodded gloomily, and Thorndyke, addressing the
solicitor, asked:
“And that is all you have to tell us?”
“Yes. And I’m not sure that it is not a good deal more than I ought to
have told you. It is Father Humperdinck’s turn now.”
The Jesuit acknowledged the invitation to resume his narrative by a
stiff bow and then proceeded:
“You can now see, sir, that what I said is perfectly correct. The
conduct of my friend Vitalis shows a sudden and unaccountable change.
It is quite inconsistent with his habits and his way of thinking. And
the change is, as I say, so sudden. One day he is coming with the
greatest haste to the bedside of his sick friend, Brother Bartholomew,
the next he is making arrangements for a life of selfish pleasure,
utterly indifferent as to whether that friend is alive or dead. As a
matter of fact, the good brother passed away to his reward the day
after Vitalis should have arrived, without even a message from his old
friend. But now I return to my story.
“When Vitalis failed to appear, and I could get no news of him, I
became very anxious; and, as it happened that the business of our
Society called me to England, I determined to inquire into the matter.
Circumstances compelled me to travel by way of Boulogne and cross to
Folkestone. I say ‘circumstances,’ but I should rather say that I was
guided that way by the hand of Providence, for, in the train that
brought me from Folkestone to London, I had a most astonishing
experience. In the carriage, alone with me, there travelled a young
man, a very strange young man indeed. He was a very large man--or, I
should say, very high--and in appearance rather fierce and wild. His
clothes were good, but they were disordered and stained with mud, as
if he had been drunk at night and had rolled in the gutter. And this,
I think, was the case, for, soon after we had started, he began to
turn out his pockets on the seat of the carriage, as if to see whether
he had lost anything during his debauch. And then it was that I saw a
most astonishing thing. Among the objects that this man took from his
pockets and laid on the seat, was the reliquary that I had given so
many years ago to Vitalis.
“I could not mistake it. Once it had been mine, and I had been
accustomed to see it almost daily since. Moreover the young man had
the effrontery to pass it to me that I might examine it, and I found
on it the very letters which I, myself, had caused to be engraved on
it. When I asked him where he had obtained it, he told me that he had
picked it up at Hampstead, and he professed not to know what it was.
But his answers were very evasive and I did not believe him.”
“Nevertheless,” said Mr. Marchmont, “there was nothing improbable in
his statement. Mr. Reinhardt had been at Hampstead and might have
dropped it.”
“Possibly. But he would have taken measures to recover it. He would
not have left England until he had found it. He was a rich man, and he
would have offered a large reward for this his most prized
possession.”
“You say,” said Thorndyke, “that he habitually carried this reliquary
on his person. Can you tell us how he carried or wore it?”
“That,” replied Father Humperdinck, “was what I was coming to. The
reliquary was a small gold object with a ring at each end. It was
meant, I suppose, to be worn round the wrist, or perhaps the neck, by
means of a cord or chain attached to the two rings, or to be inserted
into a chaplet of devotional beads. But this was not the way in which
Vitalis carried it. He possessed a small and very beautiful crucifix
which he set great store by, because it was given to him by one of the
fathers when he left school, and which he used to wear suspended from
his neck by a green silk cord. Now, when I gave him the reliquary, he
caused a goldsmith to link one of its rings to the ring of the
crucifix and he fastened the silk cord to the other ring, and so
suspended both the reliquary and the crucifix from his neck.”
“Did he wear them outside his clothing so that they were visible?”
Thorndyke asked.
“Yes, outside his waistcoat, so that they were not only visible but
very conspicuous when his coat was unbuttoned. It was, of course, very
unsuitable to the dress of a lay brother, and I spoke to him about it
several times. But he was sometimes rather self-willed, as you may
judge by his refusal to settle an endowment on the Society, and,
naturally, as he was not professed, I had no authority over him. But I
shall return presently to the reliquary. Now I continue about this
young man.
“When I had heard his explanation, and decided that he was telling me
lies, I made a simple pretext to discover his name and place of abode.
With the same effrontery, he gave me his card, which I have here, and
which, you will see, is stained with mud, owing, no doubt, to those
wallowings in the mire of which I have spoken.” He drew the card from
his pocket-book and handed it to Thorndyke, who read it gravely, and,
pushing it across the table to me, said, without moving a muscle of
his face:
“You had better copy it into your notes, Mr. Howard, so that we may
have the record complete.”
I accordingly copied out my own name and address with due solemnity
and a growing enjoyment of the situation, and then returned the card
to Father Humperdinck, who pocketed it carefully and resumed:
“Having the name and address of this young man, I telegraphed
immediately to a private detective bureau in Paris, asking to have
sent to me, if possible, a certain M. Foucault, who makes a specialty
of following and watching suspected persons. This Foucault is a man of
extraordinary talent. His power of disguising himself is beyond belief
and his patience is inexhaustible. Fortunately he was disengaged and
came to me without delay, and, when I had given him the name and
address of this young man, Jardine, and described him from my
recollection of him, he set a watch on the house and found that the
man was really living there, as he had said, and that he made a daily
journey to the hospital of St. Margaret’s, where he seemed to have
some business, as he usually stayed there until evening.”
“St. Margaret’s!” exclaimed Marchmont. “Why that is your hospital,
Thorndyke. Do you happen to know this man Jardine?”
“There is, or was, a student of that name, who qualified some little
time ago, and who is probably the man Father Humperdinck is referring
to. A tall man; quite as tall, I should say, as my friend here, Mr.
Howard.”
“I should say,” said Father Humperdinck, “that the man, Jardine, is
taller, decidedly taller. I watched him as I walked behind him up the
platform at Charing Cross, and M. Foucault has shown him to me since.
But that matters not. Have you seen the man, Jardine, lately at the
hospital?”
“Not very lately,” Thorndyke replied. “I saw him there nearly a
fortnight ago, but that, I think, was the last time.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Humperdinck. “Exactly. But I shall continue my story.
For some time M. Foucault kept a close watch on this man, but
discovered nothing fresh. He went to the hospital daily, he came home,
and he stayed indoors the whole evening. But, at last, there came a
new discovery.
“One morning M. Foucault saw the man, Jardine, come out of his house,
dressed more carefully than usual. From his house, Foucault followed
him to a picture gallery in Leicester Square and went in after him;
and there he saw him meet a female, evidently by a previous
assignation. AND,” Father Humperdinck continued, slapping the table to
emphasize the climax of his story,
“From--the--neck--of--that--female--was--hanging--_Vitalis_--_Reinhardt’s_--Crucifix!”
Having made this thrilling communication, our reverend client leaned
back to watch its effect on his audience. I am afraid he must have
been a little disappointed, for Thorndyke was habitually impassive in
his exterior, and, as for Jervis and me, we were fully occupied in
maintaining a decent and befitting gravity. But Marchmont--the only
person present who was not already acquainted with the incident--saved
the situation by exclaiming:
“Very remarkable! Very remarkable indeed!”
“It is more than remarkable,” said Father Humperdinck. “It is highly
suspicious. You observe that the reliquary and the crucifix had been
linked together. Now they are separated, and since both the rings of
the reliquary were unbroken, it follows that the ring of the crucifix
must have been cut through and a new one made, by which to suspend
it.”
“I don’t see anything particularly suspicious in that,” said
Marchmont. “If Jardine found the two articles fixed together,
and--having failed to discover the owner--wished to give the crucifix
to his friend, it is not unnatural that he should have separated
them.”
“I do not believe that he found them,” Father Humperdinck replied
doggedly; “but I shall continue my story and you will see. There is
not much more to tell.
“It seems that the man, Jardine, suspected Foucault of watching him,
for presently he left the gallery in company with the female, and,
after being followed for some distance, he managed to escape. As soon
as Foucault found that he had lost him, he went to Jardine’s house and
waited about the neighbourhood, and an hour or two later he had the
good fortune to see him coming from Hampstead towards Highgate, in
company with another female. He followed them until they entered a
narrow passage or lane that leads up the hill, and when they had gone
up this some distance, he followed, but could not get near enough to
hear what they were saying.
“And now he had a most strange and terrible experience. For some time
past he had felt a suspicion that some person--some accomplice of
Jardine’s perhaps--was following and watching him; and now he had
proof of it. At the top of the lane, Jardine stopped to talk to the
female, and Foucault crept on tiptoe towards him; and while he was
doing so, he heard someone approaching stealthily up the lane, behind
him. Suddenly, Jardine began to return down the lane. As it was not
convenient for Foucault to meet him there, he also turned and walked
back; and then he heard a sound as if someone were climbing the high
wooden fence that enclosed the lane. Then Jardine began to run, and
Foucault was compelled also to run but he would have been overtaken if
it had not happened that Jardine fell down.
“Now, just as he heard Jardine fall, he came to a broken place in the
fence, and it occurred to him to creep through the hole and hide while
Jardine passed. He accordingly began to do so, but no sooner had he
thrust his head through the hole than some unseen ruffian dealt him a
violent blow which rendered him instantly insensible. When he
recovered his senses, he found himself lying in a churchyard which
adjoins the lane, but Jardine and the other ruffian were, of course,
nowhere to be seen.