“If it is within my power, I will,” I assured him.
“Then you see this!” he exclaimed, drawing from beneath his pillow a small flat packet in white paper about four inches square and secured by three large black oval seals evidently impressed by some old monastic seal of the middle ages.
“I want you,” he said, “to accept the responsibility of this. They are papers of considerable value to certain relatives in Italy. Will you take charge of it, and three years after my death hand it intact to the Italian Ambassador? I appeal to you to do so, for you are my only friend, and I am dying,” he added, in a tone of intense earnestness.
“If you wish,” I said, somewhat reluctant, however, to undertake such responsibility. And I took the packet, and, after examining the seals, transferred it to my pocket.
The mysterious Massari firmly declined my offer to go to the Italian Church in Hatton Garden and fetch a priest.
“I don’t wish to see anybody,” he snapped. “I have a reason. At least let me die in peace.”
And an hour later, just as Tulloch returned, he again fixed those bright staring eyes upon me and silently passed away, carrying with him his secret to the grave.
It concerned a woman. That much he had admitted. Who was the woman, I wondered? What was her secret?
“This man had a strange history, I feel convinced,” I remarked in a low voice to Tulloch as we left the chamber of death together and quietly closed the door.
“Yes,” he said. “He seemed a queer fellow. But in my profession, old chap, we often meet strange people, you know. Men, when they are dying, frequently have curious fancies and extraordinary hallucinations.”