Inside it looked like a junk shop. There were chests and tables and piles of paintings and vases and books and statues, and God knows what else, all jumbled together on the floor. Near the door I saw a silver candelabra with two candles. I lit the candles and went into the room.
It looked more like a junk shop than ever. There were hundreds of things in the room. The candlelight shone off a silver tea-set and some silver platters in a corner. Next to these was a small gold-framed picture of a woman's head. She had her hair parted in the middle and hung in two braids over her shoulders. On a red Chinese chest were some gold salt shakers. I almost stepped on some kind of a tapestry showing men hunting a boar in a forest. There was a sword with a jewelled hilt leaning against a bronze statue of a naked boy. I saw the name Scott engraved on the sword. Under a table was a whole set of hand-painted china, including a couple of huge platters, and on the table was a clock with the four seasons, the sun and the moon and the hours all on separate dials. I saw a hand- carved model of a frigate, a big pipe with a silver bowl, a spinning-wheel, an Oriental rug, an engraved silver bit for a horse, an inkwell made from jade.
This wasn't a fiftieth part of the junk. I was still staring at the things when the Princess came into the room. She was breathing so hard I turned around to look at her. Her face was calm; only her chest moved with her quick breaths. Her eyes went around the room.
“Has he come to yet?” I asked.
“No.” Her voice sounded flat and lifeless.
“He'll be all right,” I said.
She nodded, but I don't think she paid any attention to what I said. She was looking at the room.
“Where'd all this come from?” I asked.
“The Brothers and Daughters,” she said. “They have to take vows of personal poverty when they enter the Vineyard. They turn everything over to the Elders.”
I stared at the mess of stuff. “God, what junk!”
“You don't think it's any good?”
“Do you?”
She opened one of the chests. “Look.” I held the candelabra over the chest. It was full of watches: gold watches, silver watches, men's watches, women's watches, watches with jewels on the covers, engraved watches. “My God!” There were probably five or six hundred watches there.
She opened another chest. Tins was full of necklaces and bracelets. The stones gleamed in the light. A lot of them were cheap-looking, but some looked wonderful. I saw one, a kind of collar, that must have had a hundred diamonds in it. The next chest was filled with rings and cameos. Another was full of loose jewels. They were mostly semiprecious stones, but I saw diamonds sparkling in the heap. I put my hand in this chest and felt the stones. They were slick and cold.
“Pick out some of the diamonds.”
I put the candelabra down and got a couple of dozen fairly good-sized diamonds out of the chest. One was about five carats, and none was under two. They glittered in the soft light.
The Princess closed the chest. She took the diamonds away from me. “Now for the dough,” she said.
She went to a small table at the back of the room, the one with the fancy clock on it, and opened the drawer. Brother, my eyes fairly popped out of my head! The drawer was full of paper money. There were hundreds of bills, many of the old size. These looked strange, bigger than I'd remembered them. She put her hands in the bills, feeling with her fingers for something. She brought her hands out filled with gold pieces. Their colour was a dull yellow in the light of the candles. They made a soft clinking noise. I took one from her and felt it. It was heavy. It was like finding a mine. I picked up a handful of paper money. I had hold of twenties, and fifties, and hundred-dollar bills, and three one-thousand-dollar bills. I had four or five thousand dollars, and it hadn't made a hole in the drawer.
“They turn their cash into big bills,” the Princess said, “and give it up along with everything else when they come in.”
She began to sort out bills worth a hundred dollars or more. I helped her, digging my hands deep down in the money. There was a lot of gold there, but we didn't touch it. The bills crackled as we sorted them. We worked for a long time. Once I thought I heard a noise. Our shadows seemed to shiver as we listened.
“You're just spooked,” the Princess said scornfully.
We counted what we'd taken. There were twenty-five thousand-dollar bills, thirty six-hundred-dollar bills, twenty-four two-hundred-dollar bills, and sixty-three one-hundred dollar bills.
“How much?”
I said it came to fifty-four thousand, one hundred dollars. The Princess started to pick up the money.
“Wait a minute.”
“I'll just carry it.”
“No, you won't,” I said.
I gave her twenty-seven thousand and tossed the extra hundred back in the drawer. I put the rest in my pocket. It made quite a wad of money. “Let's get the hell out of here,” I said.
“All right.”
We went out the door. The guard was still lying on the floor. I could just see him by the broken chair. I blew out the two candles on the candelabra, and put it in the vault. Then I fastened the padlock. I turned around, and suddenly I noticed something queer about the guard. He was lying in a strange sprawled-out way. I went over to him. There was blood all around his head, and a deep wound on his temple. Something had almost crushed his head in, a stone or an iron bar. Something heavy.
The Princess stared at me.
