done a fine job. The plates are wonderful. Ja, wunderbar!'
Von Schiller had endowed the clinic, so any request of his was treated
as a royal command. The director had sent down his most modern portable
-ray equipment and two technicians to photograph the mummy of Lord
Harrab, and a senior radiologist to interpret the plates.
Reeper inserted his plastic pass card into the lock of the steel vault
door, and with a soft pneumatic hiss it slid open. They all stood aside
for von Schiller to enter first.
He paused in the doorway, and looked around the great vault. The
pleasure never palled. On the contrary, it seemed to grow more intense
every time he entered this place.
The walls were enclosed in two metres of steel and concrete, and were
guarded by every electronic device that genius could devise. But this
was not apparent.when he viewed the softly lit and elegantly appointed
main display room. It had been planned and decorated by one of Europe's
foremost interior designers. The theme colour was blue. Each item of the
collection was housed in its own case, and each of these was cunningly
arranged to show it to its best advantage.
Everywhere was the soft glimmer of gold and precious gems nestling on
midnight-blue velvet cushions. Artfully concealed spotlights illuminated
the lustre of lovingly polished alabaster and stone, the glow of ivory
and obsidian. There were marvelous statues. The pantheon of the old gods
were here assembled: Thoth and Anubis, Hapi and Seth, and the glorious
trinity of Osiris and Isis and Horus, the son. They gazed out with those
inscrutable eyes which had looked upon the procession of the ages.
On its temporary plinth in the centre of the room, in pride of place,
stood the latest addition to this extraordinary hoard, the tall,
graceful stone testament of Taita. Von Schiller stopped beside it to
caress the polished stone before he passed on into the second room.
Here the coffin of Tanus, Lord Harrab, lay across a pair of trestles. A
white-coated radiologist hovered over her back-lit display board on
which the ,ray plates were clipped, Von Schiller went directly to the
display and peered at the shadowy pictures upon it. Within the outline
of the wooden coffin, the reclining human shape with hands crossed over
its chest was very clear. It reminded him of a carved effigy atop the
sarcophagus of an old knight in the precincts of a medieval cathedral.
'What can you tell me about this body?' he asked the radiologist without
looking at her.
'Male,' she said crisply. 'Late middle age. Over fifty and under
sixty-five at death. Short stature.' All the listeners winced and
glanced at von Schiller. He seemed not to have noticed this solecism.
'Five teeth missing. One front upper, one eye too and three molars.
Wisdom teeth impacted. Extensive caries in most surviving teeth.
Evidence of chronic bilharzia infection. Possible poliomyelitis in
infancy, withering in left leg.' She recited her findings for five
minutes, and then ended, 'Probable cause of death was a puncture wound
in upper right thorax. Lance or arrow. Extrapolating from the entry
angle, the head of the lance or arrow would have transfixed the right
lung.'
'Anything else?' von Schiller asked when she fell silent. The
