Suddenly my conductor stopped before a small door, which he opened with his key, and I found myself within a tiny, carpetless cubicle containing a truckle bed, a chair, a well-filled bookcase and a writing-table. Upon the wall was a large wooden crucifix before which he crossed himself on entering.
“This is my home,” he explained in English. “Not very luxurious, it is true, but I would not exchange it for a palace in the world outside. Here we are all brothers, with the superior as our father to supply us with all our worldly wants, even to our snuff. There are no jealousies, no bickerings, no backbitings or rivalry. All are equal, all perfectly contented, for we have each one of us learnt the very difficult lesson of brotherly love.” And he drew the single chair for me to seat myself, for I was hot and tired after that long, steep ascent from the town.
“It is surely a hard life,” I observed.
“At first, yes. One must be strong in body and in mind to successfully pass the period of probation,” he answered. “But afterwards the Capuchin’s life is surely one of the pleasantest on earth, banded as we are to do good and to exercise charity in the name of Sant’ Antonio. But,” he added, with a smile, “I did not bring you here, signore, to endeavour to convert you from your Protestant faith. I asked you to accompany me, because you have told me what is a profound and remarkable mystery. You have told me of the death of Burton Blair, the man who was my friend, and to whose advantage it was to meet me in San Frediano to-night. There were reasons—the very strongest reasons a man could have—why he should have kept the appointment. But he has not done so. His enemies have willed it otherwise, and they have stolen his secret!” While he spoke he fumbled in a drawer of the little deal writing-table, and drew forth something, adding in deep earnestness—
“You knew poor Blair intimately—more intimately, perhaps, than I did of later years. You knew his enemies as well as his friends. Tell me, have you ever met the original of either of these men?”
And he held before my gaze two cabinet photographs.
One of them was quite unfamiliar to me, but the other I recognised in an instant.
“Why!” I said, “that’s my old friend Reginald Seton—Blair’s friend.”
“No,” the monk declared in a hard, meaning tone, “not his friend, signore—his bitterest enemy.”