A Relic of the Borgias

I had just raised my hand to knock on Vernon's door when it was flung open from within, and a man came dashing out into the street. It was only when he nearly knocked me backward into the gutter that I realized the man rushing from Vernon's house was Crampton.

"My dear Arthur!" I exclaimed. "Where are you off to in such haste?"

He stood and stared at me, his breath coming in great gasps. Never had I seen him so seriously disturbed.

"Benham," he panted, "our friend Vernon is a scoundrel."

I did not doubt it. I had no reason to suppose otherwise. But I said nothing. I held my tongue. Crampton went on, gesticulating with both clenched fists, dwelling on the cause of his agitation as freely as if we were in private, seemingly forgetting that we stood at the very doorstep of the man's house.

"You know he stole Lilian from me—promised she should be his wife! They were to be married in a month. And now he's jilted her—thrown her over—as if she were nothing! Made her the laughingstock of the town! And for whom, of all the women in the world? Mary Hartopp—a widow who should know better! It's not an hour since I was told. I came here straight. And now Mr. Vernon knows something of my mind."

I could not help but think, as he went striding away, as if beside himself with rage—without giving me a chance to say a word—that all the world would quickly learn something of it too.

The moment seemed scarcely propitious for interviewing Decimus Vernon. He would hardly be in a mood to receive a visitor.

But as the matter I wished to speak to him about was of pressing importance, and another opportunity might not immediately occur, I decided to approach him as if unconscious of anything untoward having happened.

As I began to mount the stairs, Vernon's man, John Parkes, came stealing down them rather than walking. At the sight of me, the fellow started.

"Oh, Mr. Benham, sir, it's you! I thought it was Mr. Crampton back again."

I looked at Parkes, who seemed sufficiently upset. I had known him for years.

"There's been a little argument, eh, Parkes?"

Parkes raised both his hands.

"A little argument, sir! There's been the most dreadful quarrel I ever heard."

"Where is Mr. Vernon?"

"He's in the library, sir, where Mr. Crampton left him. Shall I go and tell him you wish to see him?"

Parkes eyed me in a manner that plainly suggested that, if he were in my place, he would wish to do nothing of the kind. I declined his unspoken suggestion, preferring to announce myself.

I rapped with my knuckles at the library door. No answer. I rapped again. Still no response, so I opened the door and entered.

"Vernon?" I cried.

I saw at a glance that the room was empty. I knew that adjoining this apartment was a room he used as a bedroom, where he often slept. The door to this inner room stood open. Concluding he had gone in there, I went to the threshold and called, "Vernon!"

My call went unanswered. Wondering where the man could be, I peeped inside. My first impression was that this room, like the other, was vacant. But a second glance revealed a booted foot, toe upward, thrust out from the other side of the bed. Thinking he might be in one of his wild moods, playing some trick, I called again.

"Vernon, what little game are you up to now?"

Silence. And in the silence there was a quality that set my heart fluttering. I became conscious of something strange in the air.

I went right into the room and looked down at Decimus Vernon.

I thought I had never seen him look more handsome than he did then, as he lay on his back on the floor, his right arm raised above his head, his left lying lightly across his breast, an expression on his face almost like a smile, looking, for all the world, as if he were asleep. But I was enough of a physician to feel sure that he was dead.

For a moment or two I hesitated. I glanced quickly around the room. What his occupation had been when death overtook him seemed plain. On the dressing table was an open case of rings. Three or four lay in a little heap on the table. He had apparently been trying them on. I called out, unintentionally loudly—indeed, so loudly that I startled myself in that presence.

"Parkes!"

Parkes came hurrying in.

"Did you call, sir?" He knew I had. The muscles of his face were trembling.

"Mr. Vernon's dead."

"Dead!"

Parkes' jaw dropped. He staggered backward.

"Come and look at him."

He did as I told him, unwillingly enough. He stood beside me, looking down at his master lying on the floor. Words dropped from his lips.

"Mr. Crampton didn't do it."

I caught the words up quickly.

"Of course he didn't. But—how do you know?"

"I heard Mr. Vernon shout 'Go to the devil' as he went downstairs. Besides, I heard Mr. Vernon moving about the room after Mr. Crampton had gone."

I gave a sigh of relief. I had wondered. I knelt at Vernon's side. He was quite warm, but I could detect no pulse.

"Perhaps, Mr. Benham, sir," suggested Parkes, "Mr. Vernon has fainted, or had a fit, or something."

"Hurry and fetch a doctor. We shall see."

Parkes vanished. Although my claims to medical knowledge are scanty, I had no doubt whatever that a doctor would pronounce that Decimus Vernon was no longer among the living. How he had come by his death was another matter. His expression was so tranquil, his attitude as of a man lying asleep upon his back, so natural, that it almost seemed as if death had come to him in one of those commonplace forms in which it comes to us all. And yet—

I looked about to see if there was anything unusual that might catch the eye. A scrap of paper, a bottle, a phial, a syringe—something that might have been used as a weapon. I could detect no sign of injury on Vernon's person; no bruise on his head or face; no flow of blood. Stooping over him, I sniffed at his lips. There are certain poisons whose scent is unmistakable, and the odor of those with the most rapid effect lingers long after death. I have a keen sense of smell, but about Decimus Vernon's mouth there was no odor of any kind. As I rose, I heard someone entering the outer room.

"Decimus?"

The voice was a woman's. I turned. Lilian Trowbridge stood at the bedroom door. We exchanged stares, apparently startled into momentary speechlessness. She seemed in a tremor of excitement. Her lips were parted. Her big, black eyes seemed to scorch my face. She leaned one hand against the doorframe, as if seeking support to regain her breath.

"Mr. Benham—you! Where is Decimus? I wish to speak to him."

Her unexpected entry had caused me to lose my presence of mind. The violence of her manner did not help. I stumbled in my speech.

"If you will come with me into the other room, I will give you an explanation."

I made an awkward movement forward, my impulse being to conceal from her what was lying on the floor. She, detecting my uneasiness, perceiving that I wished to hide something, swept into the room, straight to where Vernon lay.

"Decimus! Decimus!"

She called to him.

Had her tone then been in her voice when she played her parts on the stage, her audiences would have had no cause to complain that she was wooden. She turned to me, as if at a loss to comprehend her lover's silence.

"Is he sleeping?" I was silent. Then, with a little gasp, "Is he dead?" I still made no reply. She read my meaning rightly. From where I stood, I could see her bosom rise and fall. She threw out both her arms in front of her. "I am glad!" she cried. "I am glad that he is dead!"

She took me, to say the least, aback.

"Why should you be glad?"

"Why? Because now she will not have him!"

I had forgotten, for the instant, what Crampton had spluttered on the doorstep. Her words recalled it. "Don't you know that he lied to me, and I believed his lies?"

She turned to Vernon with a gesture of scorn so frenzied, so intense, that it might almost have made the dead man writhe.

"Now, at any rate, if he does not marry me, he will marry no one else."

Her vehemence staggered me. Her imperial presence, her sonorous voice, were always among her finest theatrical attributes. I had not supposed she could display them to such terrible advantage. Feeling as I did that I shared my manhood with the man who had wronged her, the almost personal application of her fury I found overwhelming. It struck me even then that, perhaps, it was just as well for Vernon that he had died before he had to confront this latest illustration of a woman scorned.

Suddenly her mood changed. She knelt beside the body of the man who had so recently been her lover. She lavished on him terms of endearment.

"My loved one! My darling! My sweet! My all in all!"

She showered kisses on his lips and cheeks, eyes and brow. When the paroxysm passed—it was a paroxysm—she stood again.

"What shall I have of his, for my very own? I will have something to keep his memory green. The things he gave me—the tokens of his love—I will grind into powder and consume with flame."

In spite of herself, her language smacked of the theater. She looked round the room, searching for something portable worth capturing. Her glance fell upon the open case of rings. With eager eyes she scanned the dead man's person. Kneeling again, she snatched at his left hand, which lay lightly on his breast. On one finger was a cameo ring. Her glance fastened on it. She tore, rather than took, it from its place.

"I'll have that! Yes! That!"

She broke into laughter. Rising, she held out the ring toward me. I regarded it intently. At the time, I scarcely knew why. It was, as I have said, a cameo ring: a woman's head cut in white relief on a cream ground. It reminded me of Italian work of about the sixteenth century. The cameo was set in a plain, somewhat clumsy gold setting. The whole affair was a curio, not the sort of ring a gentleman of the present day would care to wear.

"Look at it. Observe it closely! Keep it in your mind, so you may be sure to know it should you ever chance on it again. Isn't it a pretty ring—the prettiest ring you ever saw? In memory of him," she pointed to what lay on the floor behind her, "I will keep it till I die!"

Again she burst into that hideous, seemingly meaningless laughter. Her bearing was that of a mad woman rather than a sane one. She affected me most unpleasantly. With feelings of pure relief, I heard footsteps in the library, and turned to see Parkes arriving with the doctor.

When Vernon's death became generally known, a great hubbub arose. Mrs. Hartopp went almost, if not quite, out of her senses. If I remember rightly, nearly twelve months elapsed before she was sufficiently recovered to marry Phillimore Baines. The cause of Vernon's death was never made clear. The doctors agreed to differ; the post-mortem revealed nothing. There were suggestions of heart disease; the jury brought in a verdict of valvular disease of the heart. There were whispers of poison, but as no traces were found in the body, the coroner dismissed them. And though there were murmurs of suicide, no one, so far as I am aware, hinted at murder.

To the surprise of many, and the amusement of more, Arthur Crampton married Lilian Trowbridge. He had been infatuated with her all along. His infatuation even survived her yielding to Decimus Vernon—bitter blow though that had been—and I have reason to believe that on the very day Vernon was buried, he asked her to be his wife. Whether she cared for him a snap of her fingers is more than I would say; I doubt it, but she consented. At very short notice she left the stage and, as Mrs. Arthur Crampton, retired to private life. Her married life was short, if not merry. Within twelve months of her marriage, giving birth to a daughter, Mrs. Crampton died.

I had seen nothing of her or her husband since their marriage. I was therefore the more surprised when, about a fortnight after her death, a small package came to me, accompanied by a note from Arthur Crampton. The note was brief almost to curtness:

"Dear Benham, my wife expressed a wish that you should have, as a memorial of her, a sealed packet which would be found in her desk. I hand you the packet precisely as I found it. Yours sincerely, Arthur Crampton."

Within an outer wrapper of coarse brown paper was an inner covering of cartridge paper, sealed with half a dozen seals. Inside was a small duodecimo volume in a tattered binding. Half a dozen leaves at the beginning were missing. There was nothing on the cover. What the book was about, or why Mrs.

Crampton had wished me to have it, I had no notion. The book was printed in Italian—my acquaintance with Italian is colloquial and superficial. It was probably a hundred years old or more. Nine pages near the middle were marked in a peculiar fashion with red ink, several passages being trebly underscored. My curiosity was piqued. I marched off with the volume to a translation bureau.

There they told me it was an old, possibly valuable treatise on Italian poisons and poisoners. They translated the underscored passages. They dealt with the pleasant practice with which the Borgias were credited of destroying victims by means of rings—poison rings. One passage in particular purported to be a minute description of a famous cameo ring supposed to have belonged to the great Lucrezia herself.

As I read, a flood of memory swept over me—what I was reading was an exact description, so far as externals went, of the cameo ring I had seen Lilian Trowbridge remove from Decimus Vernon's finger after his death. I recalled her frenzied exultation as she thrust it at me, her almost demoniac desire that I impress it on my memory. What did it mean? What was I to understand? For three or four days I was in miserable indecision. Then I resolved to keep still. The man and woman were both dead. No good purpose would be served by exposing old sores. I put the book away, and never looked at it again for nearly eighteen years.

The consciousness that his wife had spoken to me from the grave did not make me more eager to cultivate Arthur Crampton's acquaintance. But circumstances proved stronger than I. Crampton was a lonely man; his marriage had estranged him from many friends; now his wife was gone, he turned more and more to me as the one person on whose friendly offices he could rely. I found I could not refuse what he so obviously took for granted. The child who had cost her mother her life grew and flourished. In due course she became a young woman, with all her mother's beauty and more than her mother's charms: she had what her mother had always lacked—tenderness, sweetness, femininity. Before she was eighteen she was engaged to be married. The engagement was ideal. On her eighteenth birthday it was to be announced to the world. A ball was to be given, with half the county expected, and the day before, I went down to take my share in the festivities.

In the evening, Crampton, his daughter, Charlie Sandys—the fortunate young gentleman—and I were together in the drawing-room. Crampton, who had vanished for some seconds, reappeared, bearing in both hands a large leather case. It looked like an old-fashioned jewel case, and indeed it was. He turned to his daughter.

"I am going to give you part of your birthday present today, Lilian—these are some of your mother's jewels."

The girl was in ecstasy, as any girl her age would be. The case contained jewels enough to stock a shop. I wondered where some had come from—and whether Crampton knew more of their origin than I. Wholly unconscious that stories might attach to some of the trinkets, the girl proceeded to try them on. Soon they were all spread out on the table, and the box was empty. She announced the fact.

"There! That's all!"

Her lover took up the empty case.

"No secret repositories, or anything of that sort? Hullo!—speak of angels!—what's this?"

"What's what?" The young girl's head and her lover's bent over the empty box. Sandys' fingers were feeling about inside.

"Is this a dent in the leather, or is there something concealed beneath it?"

The bottom of the box was flat except in one corner, where a slight protuberance suggested the possibility of something hidden. Miss Crampton, already excited, at once took for granted that there was.

"How lovely!" she exclaimed, clapping her hands. "I do believe there's a secret hiding-place."

If there was, it threatened to baffle our efforts. We all tried, but in vain. Crampton gave up.

"I'll have the case examined by an expert. He'll soon find your secret hiding-place, though mind you, I don't say there is one."

There was an exclamation from Sandys.

"Don't you? Then you'd be safe if you did, because there is!"

Miss Crampton looked eagerly over his shoulder.

"Have you found it? Yes! Oh, Charlie! Is there anything inside?"

"Rather, there's a ring. What a queer old thing! Whatever made your mother keep it hidden away there?"

I knew in an instant. I recognized it, though I had seen it only once in my life, and that once was separated from me by nineteen years. Sandys was holding in his hand the cameo ring I had seen Lilian Trowbridge remove from Decimus Vernon's finger—the very ring described in that tattered volume she had sent me, as a memorial, as having been one of Lucrezia Borgia's pretty playthings. I was so confounded by the rush of emotion that I was tongue-tied.

Sandys turned to Miss Crampton. "It's too large for you. It's large enough for me. May I try it on?"

I hastened toward him, my fear giving me sudden speech.

"Don't! For God's sake, don't! Give that ring to me, sir!"

They stared at me, as well they might. My sudden, meaningless agitation was a bolt from the blue. Sandys drew back the hand holding the ring.

"Give it to you? Why? Is it yours?"

As I confronted the young fellow's smiling face, I felt incapable of arranging my thoughts into adequate expression. I appealed to Crampton.

"Crampton, request Mr. Sandys to give me that ring.

I implore you to do as I ask. Any explanation you require, I will give you afterwards."

Crampton looked at me open-mouthed, in silence. He was never quick-witted. My excitement seemed to amuse his daughter.

"What is the matter, Mr. Benham?" She turned to her lover. "Charlie, do let me see this marvellous ring."

I renewed my appeal to her father.

"Crampton, by all that you hold dear, I entreat you not to allow your daughter to put that ring on her finger."

Crampton assumed a judicial air—or what he intended as such.

"Since Benham appears so very earnest—though I don't know why—perhaps, Lilian, by way of compromise, you will give the ring to me."

"One moment, papa: I think, as Charley says, it is too large for me."

I dashed forward. Sandys, mistaking my purpose or thinking me mad, interposed, and in doing so killed the girl he was about to marry.

Before I could stop her, she had slipped the ring on her finger. She held out her hand for us to see.

"It is too large for me—look."

She touched the ring with her other fingers. In doing so, no doubt unconsciously, she pressed the cameo. A startled look came over her face. She gazed about her with a bewildered air, and cried, in a tone that rang in my ears long after:

"Mamma!"

Before we could reach her, she had fallen to the ground. We bent over her, all three of us, now sufficiently alarmed. She lay on her back, her right hand above her head, her left hand—with the ring on one finger—resting lightly on her breast. An expression like a smile was on her face, and she looked as if she slept. But she was dead.