Borrower of the Night

George sipped his drink.

‘You two kill me,’ he said conversationally. ‘Why don’t we put our cards on the table?’

‘What cards?’ I asked. ‘You know why we are here and vice versa. If I judge your sneaky character accurately, you probably know by now as much as Tony does. But you don’t know any more than that; and if you did, you wouldn’t tell us. You must be crazy if you think I’m going to give you any information.’

George reached for the bottle. I moved it away from his hand. Good Scotch is expensive. Unperturbed, he grinned at me.

‘You’re quite a girl. If you find the shrine, I might revise my long-seated hostility towards marriage.’

‘That’s big of you. But my hostility is just as deep-seated, if not as long established.’

George stood up. Still smiling, he stretched lazily. Muscles rippled all over him.

‘I’m noted for getting what I want,’ he murmured.

Tony, who had been swelling like a turkey, couldn’t stand it any longer.

‘Play your hot love scenes in private, why don’t you?’

‘If you’d take the hint and leave, we would,’ said George.

‘Oh, no, we wouldn’t,’ I said. ‘Out, both of you. I need my beauty sleep. Who knows, I may not find the shrine. Then I would have to rely on sheer sex appeal to catch myself a husband.’

‘I’m betting on you,’ said George. He glanced at Tony, who said shortly, ‘It’s all for none and one for each in this game. We’ll see. Come on, Nolan. Good night, Vicky.’

The undercurrents in that conversation set my teeth on edge, and I was still thinking about them the next morning. When I reached the dining room, Tony was the only one at our table. He grunted at me, but didn’t look up.

‘Where’s George?’ I asked.

‘Been and gone.’

‘Did you two exchange any meaningful remarks after you left me?’

‘Define “meaningful.” Tony looked at me. ‘You know what that crook is planning, don’t you? He’ll follow us until we find – uh – something, then jump in and grab it.’

‘Time to worry about that if and when we find it. At the moment we aren’t even warm.’

‘Wrong. The time to worry is now, before Nolan pops out of a dark corner and hits somebody over the head.’

‘He won’t hit me over the head,’ I said smugly.

‘Are you sure?’

Come to think of it, I wasn’t at all sure. I wouldn’t give Tony the satisfaction of agreeing with him in his assessment of George’s scruples, or lack thereof; but I didn’t object when Tony proposed that we make a joint expedition out to the old Wachtturm. As he said, it wasn’t a good place for solitary exploring. A lot of nasty accidents could occur in a crumbling, deserted place like that.

Before we had finished breakfast, Irma came to the table. She was wan and pale, with dark circles under her eyes. On her, even baggy eyes looked good. Tony got to his feet so fast he almost turned his chair over.

‘My aunt wishes you – both of you – to have tea with her this afternoon,’ she said.

‘How nice,’ I said, since Tony was too preoccupied with his tottering chair to be coherent. ‘What time?’

‘Four o’clock.’ She didn’t look at me; she was watching Tony from under those long lashes. His confusion seemed to amuse her; she gave him a small but effective smile before she turned away.

‘I suppose,’ Tony said, capturing the chair and sitting on it, ‘she’s going to bawl us out.’

‘Who, the Grafin?’ There was only one Grafin in that house; it was impossible to think of Irma by her title. The word, with its guttural r and flat, hard vowel, suited the old lady.

‘Let her complain,’ I went on. ‘If she gives me a hard time, I’ll report her to the SPCC, or whatever the German equivalent may be.’

‘Irma’s no child,’ Tony murmured.

‘If you want to explore ruins, let’s go,’ I said, rising.

The going was rough. The undergrowth between the castle and the keep was ninety per cent brambles. They had the longest thorns I’ve ever seen on any plant. Tony kept falling into them; I gathered he was still preoccupied with Irma, because after a while he said, ‘What makes you think the old lady is hassling Irma? We haven’t seen her do anything particularly vicious.’

‘You don’t call that performance last night vicious? The girl is scared to death about something. She works like a drudge, of course, while the old bat sits in her tower drinking tea; but it’s more than that.’

‘Yeah, I know. It’s hard to put into words, but there is something between the two of them . . . I hate to think of handing the shrine over to an old witch like that.’

An unwary step took me off the path, such as it was. I stopped, and unwound barbed wire brambles from my ankle.

‘So you’re going to hand the shrine over, are you?’ I said. ‘Aside from comments on overconfidence, which I have already made, may I compliment you on your ethics? I assumed you were going to tuck the treasure under your arm and steal away.’

‘You’re getting me confused with Nolan. I think he plans just that. I admit, when I started on this deal I hadn’t thought the problem through. I was excited about the hunt itself. Back in Ohio the whole thing was sort of unreal, you know what I mean? I never really thought we’d succeed. It’s different now . . . But I’m sure of one thing. The shrine doesn’t belong to us. All we can do is turn it over to the rightful owner. I never had any intention of doing anything else. And don’t try to kid me; you never did, either.’

‘No, but I’ve been thinking.’ I unwound the last bramble and stepped back onto the path. ‘The shrine wouldn’t be considered treasure trove, would it? That is strictly defined legally; depending on local laws, it belongs either to the state or to the state and the finder, half and half. But the shrine belongs to the Drachensteins; that can be proved by means of the documents we’ve been using. And – listen. The old lady is only a Drachenstein by marriage. If Irma is the count’s brother’s child, wouldn’t she be the heiress?’

‘Good point,’ said Tony, brightening visibly. ‘We might try to find out about the late count’s will. Not that it has any bearing on our search . . .’

‘But it would add to your zeal to think that Irma would enjoy the fruits of your brilliance?’

We had reached the keep and stood beside the high walls. Tony ignored my last remark and its tone of heavy sarcasm.

‘Behold the Wachtturm,’ he said, gesturing. ‘It was built in AD eight hundred and seven by Count Meninguad von und zu Drachenstein, fondly known to his contemporaries as the Black Devil of the Tauber Valley. The keep was abandoned in thirteen eighty-three when the present castle was built. In fifteen hundred and five – ’

‘All right, all right. I’ve read the guidebook too. Let’s go in.’

There was no door. Rusted iron hinges, each a couple of feet long, hung futilely from the doorframe. The interior of the first floor was a single circular room, dimly lit by the four narrow slits that pierced the walls. Since said walls were over eight feet thick, the sunlight didn’t have much of a chance. The floor was of stone, but so overlaid with dirt that the original surface was virtually invisible.

Tony made a circuit of the walls, peering at the huge stones.

‘When they built in those days, they built to last.’ He spoke in hushed tones, as if something might be listening. ‘I can’t see anything unusual here. Let’s go up.’

Narrow stairs were cut into the stones of the wall. They were treacherous to climb; each step had a deep trench in the centre, worn by generations of feet.

The second floor had been the hall. The windows were a little wider than those below. Across one quadrant of the room lay the remains of a half-wall, or screen, of stone, behind a low dais. The big stone fireplace, with the family arms on its hood, was the only feature in the room, which was littered with chips of fallen stone.

‘The count and his lady dined there,’ Tony muttered, looking at the dais. ‘Their sleeping quarters were behind the screen. Rushes underfoot, and the dogs fighting over table scraps . . .’

‘Gracious living,’ I agreed. ‘According to the guidebook, this place was abandoned long before fifteen twenty- five. It wouldn’t be a bad spot to hide something.’