On being answered affirmatively he handed the investigator a letter, explaining that an unknown man had handed it to him with a tip to pay for its delivery. The note said simply:
“Dear Sir: In the convent of St. Mary of the Carmelites at Cracow, a nun by the name of Jovita, her real name being Barbara Ubrik, has been held a captive for twenty years, which imprisonment has made her a lunatic. I do not care to mention my name but vouch for the truth of my assertion. Seek and you will find.
“Your correspondent.”
Masilewski drove on in silence, puzzled and not a little incredulous. True, he had heard of this nun and her disappearance, but she had vanished long ago and surely death had sealed the lid of this mystery, as of others. No doubt this was another of those romantic reappearances of the famous missing. Still—what if there were truth in it. But no, it must be a figment, else why had the informant hidden himself? It was an attempt to make a fool of an honest detective.
So Masilewski hesitated and waited, but the remote possibility of something grotesque and extraordinary plagued him and drove him at last to action. Even when he had determined to move, however, he knew that he must act with caution. If he were to go to the bishop of the diocese, for instance, and ask for permission to search the nunnery of St. Mary’s, the very possible result might be the transfer of the unfortunate nun to some new hiding place and the infliction of worse penalties and tortures.
If he appealed to the Austrian civil authorities (Austria having annexed the province of Cracow in 1846), he might enter the convent and find himself the victim of a hoax, which is, after all, the ultimate humiliation for a detective. There was no possible course except cautious investigation.
So Masilewski went to work. Carefully and slowly he traced back the stories of Barbara Ubrik’s mother, the exchanged babies, the theft by the old Jew and the captivity with the Gypsies. He discovered the record of Barbara’s parents’ marriage, got the young nun’s birth certificate, learned about her admittance to the convent, the part played in her life by Father Gratian and the early chastisement. How he did these things one needs hardly to recount, but unrelenting care and watchful judgment were necessary. He must never let the enemies of the nun know that a detective was at work. All he did had to be handled through intermediaries. Probably it would even be a thankless job, but it was an enigma, a temptation. He went ahead.
Finally Masilewski stumbled upon the fact that the convent of St. Mary’s contained a celebrated ecclesiastical library. The inspiration came to him at once. He or someone else must play the part of a learned student of religious and local ecclesiastical matters and get permission to use the library in St. Mary’s. After some seeking, Masilewski came upon a renegade theological student and sent this man first to the bishop and then to the Abbess Zitta. Since the head of the diocese apparently approved the student, he was permitted to enter and use the rare old books and records.
Under instructions from Masilewski, the man worked with caution. The detective invented a subject with which the man busied himself for days before a chance question, skillfully introduced into his research problem, called for an inspection of the old church law records of the convent. There was a moment of suspense and the investigator feared that he had been suspected or that the abbess would rule against any such liberty. But no suspicion had been aroused and the abbess decided that so holy and studious a young man might well be permitted to see the secret papers.
Once the records were in his hands, the mock student turned immediately to the date of the nun’s escape and found under date of June 3, 1848, this remarkable record: