was definitely a villain.
“We’ll be in touch if we catch him,” Albanus promised, ever polite.
“How do I know you won’t just catch him and not tell me?”
“This is an inquiry on behalf of the procurator’s office,” put in Ruso. “Are you suggesting the procurator wouldn’t honor his promises?”
The man was not. At least, not while anyone official was listening. Ruso put a hand on the clerk’s shoulder. “Albanus, I need a word.”
Albanus got to his feet and announced, “Back in a moment,” to the line, clearly relishing his newfound authority.
Firmus reappeared. The legionary following behind him had a bunch of heavy keys dangling from one hand.
Firmus announced, “It’s in the west wing of the courtyard, on the ground floor,” then lowered his voice to add, “There’s something funny going on. The watch captain had another man asking about it this morning. He said his name was Ruso, and he told them he had authority from me.”
This was a new development. “Did they let him in?”
Firmus shook his head. “When they said they had to check with me, he ran off. Apparently he was a medium-sized man in his twenties, but they didn’t get much of a look at him because he was wearing a hood.”
Ruso said, “That’s interesting.”
“Not really,” said Firmus. “It was raining.”
As they crossed the courtyard, Ruso dismissed the idea that this mysterious impostor might be the missing Bericus. An honest man would not be sneaking about. A thief would be on the run. It could not be Caratius, who was too old, nor his guard, who was too big. So who else might be calling himself “Ruso”?
Firmus was enjoying himself. “I must say,” he said, “this procurating business is much more fun than I thought. Secret messages and stolen money and mystery men and murders. It must be even better being an investigator.”
“It’s very dangerous, sir,” put in Albanus, speaking from experience.
“And there’s a lot of tedious routine,” added Ruso, aware that he should have insisted on reporting to the procurator as ordered, instead of feeding young Firmus’s craving for excitement.
“I’d be hopeless at it, of course,” Firmus confessed. “I’d never see anything unless it were right under my nose. I mean, look at that.” He paused, gesturing toward the slab of paving beneath his expensive sandals. “I can see there’s something down there, but I can’t tell you if it’s a coin or a cockroach.”
Ruso glanced down at the lump of charcoal that somebody had dropped on the way to a brazier. It gave a satisfying crunch as he stomped on it.
“I was right!” exclaimed Firmus, clearly delighted at the possibility that he was not as shortsighted as he feared. They paused outside a rough wooden door under the west portico. “Is this it? Open up!”
The guard jiggled the iron key in the lock, trying to coax the prongs up into the holes of the mechanism. “Needs greasing,” he muttered, in a tone that suggested somebody else should have seen to it.
Albanus’s cheeks were pink. It could not have escaped him that this was the chance for a harassed schoolmaster to impress the procurator’s office. Ruso wondered if he had noticed the delicate mesh of cobweb joining the edges of the door to the frame.
Finally winning the battle with the lock, the guard was obliged to shoulder the door open. As it gave way he dipped his head, hastily brushing something out of his hair. Stepping inside, Ruso glimpsed a couple of earwigs squirming on the threshold.
Room Twenty-seven smelled musty. Ruso’s eyes began to adjust to the gloom. Those vertical shapes were the legs of one table stacked upside down on top of another. A couple of old doors were propped lengthways against the wall. A half-bald broom lay along the top of them. He stepped over a bucket that appeared to be lined with concrete, and maneuvered an arm in between the table legs to release the catch on the window. As the hinge on the nearest shutter squealed in complaint, the movement ripped open a beautifully constructed white tunnel in the corner of the frame. A large spider emerged, scuttled back and forth along the sill in panic, then ran down the wall and vanished somewhere into the gloom.
The new light revealed a worm-eaten wheel with several spokes missing and a two-foot-high statue of Diana with one arm lying at her feet. Farther back was an old window frame complete with glass. Rusty nails were sticking out of the wood. A length of bent lead pipe snaked out from behind it. Everything in here was waiting for the day when it would be needed again.
Ruso pulled the old doors away from the wall to check but found only a mummified mouse. There was nothing else in the room.
Albanus looked like a boy who had just found out he had been up half the night doing the wrong homework. It was plain from Firmus’s expression that even he could see they had reached a dead end.
For reasons he did not understand, Ruso felt it was his job to soften the blow. As if there were some point in asking, he tried, “Who’s in charge of this room?”
Predictably, the guard did not know. He suggested another name, but Ruso knew it was hopeless. The next man would be unlikely to know either. Room Twenty-seven had obviously lain undisturbed for years while the workmen who had stored their junk in here had moved on and forgotten all about it.
Asper’s unknown correspondent remained as elusive as ever.
23
By the time Ruso, Firmus, and Albanus returned from their unsuccessful visit to Room Twenty-seven, the procurator had gone into another meeting and would not be free for at least half an hour. Albanus settled down outside the gates to deal with more sightings of missing men. Firmus was accosted by a waiting Pyramus with messages about wheat tallies and milestone surveys, and by a clerk bearing a pile of ingot ledgers for checking.
Ruso, seeing Firmus about to turn Pyramus and the ledgers away, declared that he needed some time to think, and he was going to take a lone stroll along the wharf. Firmus looked disappointed. Ruso decided not to tell him it was for his own good.
Unable to serve as an army officer like most young men of his class, Firmus would have to work his way up through the less glamorous back door of the tax office. He would need to make a good impression. Good impressions were made by obeying orders, not by hanging around with investigators. Especially investigators whose every discovery seemed to leave them more baffled than before.
Ruso emerged onto the wharf and turned left, passing a glassblower’s workshop and the secure warehouses that were another part of the procurator’s jurisdiction. If he was going to meet one of the most powerful men in the province, he needed a plan of action. It might be the wrong plan, but Ruso suspected that this was one of those rare occasions when a subordinate was expected to come up with ideas of his own.
Perhaps it was the business of the hooded man that was making him more cautious than usual, but as he was mulling over how Caratius could be connected with the mystery of Room Twenty-seven and the man who had stolen his name, Ruso realized he was being followed along the wharf.
From a distance the suspect seemed an ordinary-looking man. Medium height. Nondescript hair. Sheep brown tunic. Even features that broke into a smile just as Ruso recognized him and realized it was too late to get away.
“Good morning, Doctor.”
He paused by a stack of crates. “Metellus.”
“I haven’t seen you in-how long is it?”
Not long enough. “Two years.”
“I heard you went home to Gaul. I must say I was amazed when you came back here.”
There was no point in asking how Metellus knew he was back. Metellus knew all sorts of things, largely because people who understood what he was capable of were too frightened to lie to him.
“And now you’re heading up an investigation for the procurator.”
