A detail of one of the prints caught my eye. I suppose that subconsciously I was alerted to pick it up. I stared at it, with eyes that began to see for the first time. I felt something fluttering inside of me like a trapped bird, felt the electric tickle run up my arms.
‘Sal,’ I said and then stopped.
‘What is it. Ben?’ She picked up the quaver of suppressed excitement in my voice.
‘The light!’ I said. ‘Do you remember how we found the city in the moonlight? The angle and the intensity of the light?’
‘Yes,’ she nodded eagerly.
‘Do you see it, Sal?’ I touched the white king’s face. ‘Do you remember the print I gave to Lo? Do you remember the mark on it?’
She stared at the photograph. It was fainter than on Louren’s print, but it was there, the same shadowy cross shape superimposed upon the death-white face.
‘What is it?’ Sally puzzled, turning the photograph in her hands to catch the light.
‘I don’t know.’ I said as I hurried across the room
I came out of the cupboard and handed her one of the four-cell torches. ‘Take this and follow me, Watson.’
‘We always seem to do our best work at night,’ Sally began, and then realized what she had said. ‘I didn’t mean it that way!’ She forestalled any ribald comment.
The cavern was as still as an ancient tomb, and our footsteps echoed loudly off the paving as we skirted the pool and went to the portrait of the white king. The beams of our torches danced upon him and he stared down at us, regal and aloof.
‘There’s no mark on his face,’ Sally said, and I could hear the disappointment in her voice.
‘Wait.’ I took my handkerchief from my pocket. Folding it in half, and in half again, I masked the glass of my torch. The bright beam was reduced to a steady glow through the cloth. I climbed up onto the timber framework that had been left in position.
‘Switch yours off,’ I ordered Sally, and in the semi-darkness I stepped up to the portrait and began examining the face with the dimmer light.
The cheek was white, flawless. Slowly I moved the light, lifting higher, lowering it, moving it in a wide circle around the king’s head.
‘There!’ we cried together, as suddenly the hazy mark of the cross appeared over the pale features. I steadied the light in its correct position and examined the mark.
‘It’s a shadow, Sal,’ I said. ‘I think there must be an irregularity beneath the paint. A sort of groove, or rather two grooves intersecting each other at right angles to form a cross.’
‘Cracks in the rock?’ Sally asked.
‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘But they seem to be too straight, the angles too precise to be natural.’
I unmasked my torch, and turned to her.
‘Sal, have you an article of silk with you?’
‘Silk?’ She looked stunned, but recovered quickly, ‘My scarf.’ Her ringers went to her throat.
‘Lend it to me, please.’
‘What are you going to do with it?’ she demanded, holding her hand protectively over the scrap of pretty cloth that showed in the neck of her blouse. ‘It’s genuine Cardin. Cost me a ruddy king’s ransom.’
‘I won’t spoil it,’ I promised.
‘You’ll buy me a new one if you do,’ she warned me, as she unknotted the scarf and passed it up to me.
‘Give a light,’ I requested and she directed her torch onto the king. I spread the scarf over the king’s head, holding it in position with the fingers of my left hand.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ she demanded.
‘If you are ever buying a second-hand car, and you want to be sure it has never been in a smash, then this is the way you feel for blemishes that the eye can’t see.’
With the fingertips of my right hand I began feeling the surface of the painting through the silk. The cloth allowed my fingertips to slip easily over the rock, and seemed to magnify the feel of the texture. I found a faint groove, followed it to a crossroads, moved down the south axis to another crossroads, moved east, north, and back to my starting point. My finger-tips had traced a regular oblong shape, measuring about nine by six inches.
‘Do you feel anything?’ Sally could not contain her impatience. I did not answer her for my heart was in my mouth, and my fingers were busy, running all over the rock beneath the silk, moving well away from the portrait, down almost to floor level, and up as high as I could reach.
‘Oh, Ben. Do tell me! What is it?’
‘Wait!’ My heart was drumming like the flight of a startled pheasant, and the track of my fingertips trembled with excitement.
‘I will not wait, damn you,’ she shouted. ‘Tell me!’
I jumped down off the framework and grabbed her hand. ‘Come on.’
‘Where are we going?’ she demanded as I dragged her across the cavern.
