“There are distinct suspicions,” was my reply. “Although, according to the doctors, he died from a purely natural cause.”
“Ah! I don’t believe it!” cried the monk, fiercely clenching his fist. “One of them has succeeded at last in stealing that sachet of which he was always so very careful, and I’m positive that murder has been committed in order to conceal the theft.”
“One of whom?” I inquired anxiously.
“One of his enemies.”
“But are you aware what that little bag contained?”
“He never would tell me,” was the Capuchin’s reply, looking me straight in the face. “He only said that his secret was concealed within—and I have reason to believe that such was a fact.”
“But you knew his secret?” I said, my eyes full upon him.
I noted, by the change in his dark countenance, how my allegation caused him quick apprehension. He could not totally deny it, yet he was certainly seeking some means of misleading me.
“I only know what he explained to me,” he responded. “And that was not much, for, as you are aware, he was a most reticent man. He has long ago related to me, however, the somewhat romantic circumstances in which you met, what a good friend you were to him before his stroke of fortune, and how you and your friend—I forget his name—put Mabel to school at Bournemouth, and thus rescued her from that weary tramp which Burton himself had undertaken.”
“But why was he on tramp in that manner?” I asked. “To me it has always been an enigma.”