The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [1945]
"Well, what happened after the report of firearms?"
"You shall hear. We are still at breakfast, all silent--for what have we to talk about here? What have we but our devotions, our kitchen-garden, and our wretched, wretched bits of breakfasts and dinners? I say we are all silent, when there comes suddenly such a ring at the bell as never was heard before--a very devil of a ring--a ring that caught us all with our bits--our wretched, wretched bits!--in our mouths, and stopped us before we could swallow them. 'Go, brother of mine,' says the father superior to me, 'go; it is your duty--go to the gate.' I am brave--a very lion of a Capuchin. I slip out on tiptoe--I wait--I listen--I pull back our little shutter in the gate--I wait, I listen again--I peep through the hole--nothing, absolutely nothing that I can see. I am brave--I am not to be daunted. What do I do next? I open the gate. Ah! sacred Mother of Heaven, what do I behold lying all along our threshold? A man--dead!--a big man; bigger than you, bigger than me, bigger than anybody in this convent--buttoned up tight in a fine coat, with black eyes, staring, staring up at the sky, and blood soaking through and through the front of his shirt. What do I do? I scream once--I scream twice--and run back to the father superior!"
All the particulars of the fatal duel which I had gleaned from the French newspaper in Monkton's room at Naples recurred vividly to my memory. The suspicion that I had felt when
I looked into the outhouse became a certainty as I listened to the old monk's last words.
"So far I understand," said I. "The corpse I have just seen in the outhouse is the corpse of the man whom you found dead outside your gate. Now tell me why you have not given the remains decent burial."
"Wait--wait--wait," answered the Capuchin. "The father superior hears me scream and comes out; we all run together to the gate; we lift up the big man and look at him close. Dead! dead as this (smacking the dresser with his hand). We look again, and see a bit of paper pinned to the collar of his coat. Aha! son of mine, you start at that. I thought I should make you start at last."
I had started, indeed. That paper was doubtless the leaf mentioned in the second's unfinished narrative as having been torn out of his pocketbook, and inscribed with the statement of how the dead man had lost his life. If proof positive were wanted to identify the dead body, here was such proof found.
"What do you think was written on the bit of paper?" continued the Capuchin "We read and shudder. This dead man has been killed in a duel--he, the desperate, the miserable, has died in the commission of mortal sin; and the men who saw the killing of him ask us Capuchins, holy men, servants of Heaven, children of our lord the Pope--they ask _us_ to give him burial! Oh! but we are outraged when we read that; we groan, we wring our hands, we turn away, we tear our beards, we--"
"Wait one moment," said I, seeing that the old man was heating himself with his narrative, and was likely, unless I stopped him, to talk more and more fluently to less and less purpose--"wait a moment. Have you preserved the paper that was pinned to the dead man's coat; and can I look at it?"
The Capuchin seemed on the point of giving me an answer, when he suddenly checked himself. I saw his eyes wander away from my face, and at the same moment heard a door softly opened and closed again behind me.
Looking round immediately, I observed another monk in the sacristy--a tall, lean, black-bearded man, in whose presence my old friend with the snuff-box suddenly became quite decorous and devotional to look at. I suspected I was in the presence of the father superior, and I found that I was right the moment he addressed me.
"I am the father superior of this convent," he said, in quiet, clear tones, and looking me straight in the face while he spoke, with coldly attentive eyes. "I have heard