chalk stripe and had been worn enough to have acquired just the right
degree of casual bagginess. The only shiny items of his dress were the
hand-made shoes from Lobb of St. James's Street.
The intercom buzzed softly and Nicholas lifted the handset.
'There is a Mr Walsh to see you, Sir Nicholas,' said the receptionist at
the desk in the bank lobby downstairs.
'Please ask him to come up.'
Nicholas opened the door at the first ring and Walsh glowered at him
from the threshold.
'I hope you are not wasting my time, Harper. I have flown all the way
from Fort Worth.' It was only thirty hours since Nicholas had telephoned
him at his ranch in Texas.
Walsh must have jumped into his executive jet almost immediately to have
got here so soon.
'Not Harper. Quenton-Harper,'said Nicholas.
'Okay then, Quenton-Harper. But cut the crap,'Walsh said angrily. 'What
have you got for me?'
'I am also delighted to see you again, Mr Walsh.' Nicholas stood aside.
'Do come in.'
Walsh strode into the room. He was tall and roundshouldered, his jowls
drooping and wrinkled and his nose beaky. With his hands clasped behind
his back.he looked like a buzzard on a fence pole. Forbes magazine
listed his net worth at 1.7 billion dollars.
Two men followed him into the room, and Nicholas recognized both of
them. The antiquarian world was very small and incestuous. One of them
was the professor of
ancient history at Dallas University. Walsh had endowed the chair. The
other was one of the most respected and knowledgeable antiques dealers
in the United States.
Walsh stopped so suddenly that they both ran into him from behind, but
he did not seem to notice.
'Son of a gun!' he said softly, and his eyes lit with the flames of
fanaticism. 'Are those fakes?'
'As fake as the Hannibal bronzes and the Hammurabi has-relief you bought
from me,' said Nicholas.
Walsh approached the exhibits as though they were the cathedral
communion plate and he the archbishop.
'These must be fresh,' he whispered. 'Otherwise I would have known about
them.'
'Fresh out of the ground,' Nicholas confirmed. 'You are the first one to
have seen them.'
'Mamose!' Walsh read the cartouche on the uraeus of the Nemes crown.
'Then the rumours are true. You have opened a new tomb.'
'If you can call nearly four thousand years old new.' Walsh and his
advisers gathered around the table, pale and speechless with shock.
'Leave us, Harper,'said Walsh. 'I will call you when I am ready to talk
to you again.'
'Sir Nicholas,' he prompted the American. Nicholas knew that he had the
upper hand now.
