“Compelled you!” Reggie exclaimed. “How?”
Chapter Twenty One.
“Worse than Death.”
The tall old fellow looked at me with his grey eyes and shook his head.
“Burton Blair knew rather too much,” he answered evasively. “He had, it seemed, been raised to chief mate of the Annie Curtis, when I left her, and Poldo, the man who had held dukes and cardinals and other great men to ransom, worked patiently under him. Then after a bad go of fever Poldo died, and strangely enough gave—so Blair declared—the pack of cards with the secret into his hands. Dicky Dawson, however, who was also on board as bo’sun, and who had lived half his life on Italian brigs in the Adriatic, declares that this story is untrue, and that Blair stole the little bag containing the cards from beneath Poldo’s pillow half an hour before he died. That, however, may be the truth, or a lie, yet the facts remain, that Poldo must have let out some portion of his secret in the delirium of the fever and that the little cards passed into Blair’s possession. Three weeks after the Italian’s death, Blair, on landing at Liverpool, carrying with him the cards and the snap-shot photograph, set out on that very long and fatiguing journey up and down all the roads in England, in order to find me, and learn from me the key to the secret of the outlaws which I held.”
“And when at last he found you, what then?”
“He alleged solemnly that Bruno had given it to him as a dying gift, and that his reason for seeking me was because the old outlaw had, before he died, requested to see the photograph from his sea-chest, and looking upon it for a long time, had said to himself reflectively in Italian, ‘There lives in that house the only man who knows my secret.’ For that reason Blair evidently secured the picture after the Italian’s death. On arrival here he showed me the cards, and promised me a thousand pounds if I would reveal the Italian’s confidences. As the man was dead, I saw no reason to withhold them, and in exchange for a promise to pay the amount I told him what he wanted to know, and among other matters explained the rearrangement of the cards, so that he could decipher them. The key to the cipher I had learnt on that festival when I had discovered Poldo writing upon a pack of cards a message, evidently intended for the Cardinal himself at Rome, for I have since established the fact that the outlaw and the ecclesiastic were in frequent but secret communication prior to the latter’s death.”
“But this man Dawson must have profited enormously by the revelation made by Blair,” I remarked. “They seem to have been most intimate friends.”