I remained with the great specialist for half an hour longer, then taking possession of the curious evidence of the old fellow’s returning sanity I went back to Chelsea.
Time after time I examined that strange warning regarding “Black Bennett.” Who could he be?
There was one remark about the black flag, which meant piracy. Possibly, then, this man Bennett had been a pirate at some time or other.
Anyhow, I was greatly gratified to think that ere long the Mysterious Man might be able to give us an intelligible account of himself, and although the meaning of the warning regarding “Black Bennett” was an enigma, I quickly forgot all about it.
The one point upon which all my energies were concentrated was the recovery of that cryptic document which the drunken old labourer at Rockingham had disposed of. I called at all the chief dealers in manuscripts in London and made inquiry if anything like the parchment I described had been offered for sale, but was informed that sixteenth-century parchments of that character were too common to be of sufficient value for them to consider. Codexes or charters of any century down to the fifteenth would always be looked at, but a notarial deed of so late a date as the end of the sixteenth century was beneath the notice of any of the dealers.
Early one morning I received a telegram from Mr. Staffurth, and, in response, went to Clapham Park Road in hot haste.
I found, to my surprise, a strange, black-bearded man in his study, and the old gentleman was greatly excited and alarmed. A pane of glass in the window was, I noticed, missing, and it was accounted for by his breathless statement that during the night his house had been broken into by burglars.
The black-bearded man, who was a detective, chimed in, saying: —
“It seems, sir, as though they were after some of the valuable books the gentleman has. They didn’t go further into the house than this room, although the door was unlocked.”
“You see what they’ve done, doctor—cut out a pane of glass, opened the window, forced the shutters, and got in. Look at the place! They’ve turned everything topsy-turvy!”