where I’d left the Hawk.
The GPS had probably been lost by one of the camo-boys. Simple.
Just as simple was the fact that I felt no obligation now to return it. The last thing I wanted was to have to explain to any of those guys, let alone the leader, how I came to possess it. On my way back to the Hawk, I removed the two good batteries and tossed the GPS into a garbage bin. Then I mounted up and rode home.
The cellphone in my saddlebag had completely slipped my mind.
RAPHAELLA LAUGHED.
I called her that night and related my unintentional visit to paintball heaven.
“I guess it does have its funny side,” I said, aware that my voice was a little chilly. She wasn’t taking the paintballers as seriously as I was. Maybe she was right.
“Sorry,” she apologized. Then she giggled. “I can just picture you charging through the trees, chased by the Testosterone Kids with their blotchy green-and-brown clothes.”
“Hardly kids.”
“All this because you were too conscientious about trying to return someone’s lost property.”
“Yeah, well, I misplaced that sense of duty in the bush somewhere,” I replied. “The GPS is in the trash down at the park, and the cell is still in the Hawk’s saddlebag.”
“You’re not going to try and return it, I hope.”
“No. It can stay where it is for the time being. I’ll probably end up tossing it, too.”
“Good idea,” she said, suddenly serious. “They sound like people worth staying away from.”
We talked a bit more and then signed off for the night. I watched a bit of TV and went to bed. Before I fell asleep, my imagination replayed images of the camo-boys flitting through the trees, converging on me.
PART TWO
The Lord has brought me here, and has said to me,
“I have put you here as a watchman in the centre of Italy
that you may hear my words and announce them to the people.”
– Girolamo Savonarola
One
I
THE MORNING AFTER my unplanned visit to the paintball camp I returned to the mansion and went immediately to the library. I sat down at the escritoire, thinking. I hadn’t abandoned the possibility that Professor Corbizzi already had a catalogue of his collection, and I was determined to search the library thoroughly before I started an inventory from scratch. There was no use asking Mrs. Stoppini-she avoided the room. Besides, she had asked me to do the inventory in the first place.
The absence of a computer or one of those old-style multi-drawer file-card systems like they used to have in public libraries was not encouraging. The filing cabinet yielded nothing but old household bills, tax statements, and other papers, and in the escritoire I found only an old pipe tobacco tin containing a broken pocket knife and a rosary with glass beads and a black wooden cross.
One of the bottom drawers of the escritoire jammed when I tried to close it. Wiggling as I pulled, I removed it and set it on the desk. On my hands and knees, I took a close look at the track. It was worn but seemed true. I checked the drawer’s corner joints. Sure enough, they were loose, a common problem with old furniture. It would take only a few minutes to fix.
I emptied the contents-a few loose papers and a package of envelopes-onto the desk beside the typewriter and turned the drawer upside down to examine it more closely. Something rattled, then two small brass keys plopped onto the escritoire. I set the drawer down, intending to repair it later, then looked around, my mind back to the quest for a catalogue. I could see nowhere such a thing might be kept-unless among the books themselves. Finding it would mean taking the books off the shelves and examining them-which Raphaella and I would be doing anyway as we worked on the inventory.
Then I remembered the alcove on the other side of the room, and the cupboard built into the bookshelves.
Quickly, I crossed the floor, the little brass keys in my hand. The volumes flung onto the floor by the professor during his last seconds on earth were now stacked on the table in the alcove. I stepped between the table and the shelves on the north wall. The closely fitted cupboard door had a round wooden pull-and below the pull, a brass cabinet lock.
One of the keys opened the lock. I found a stack of small leather-bound books that would have made my father exclaim “Aha!” as he waggled his eyebrows. He loved old books, and sometimes added them to his collection rather than put them up for sale. I transferred the pile onto the table behind me and opened one book at random. It was a Greek-Latin dictionary, published in London in 1763. Assuming the rest were as valuable-or the professor wouldn’t have kept them under lock and key-I made a mental note to tell Mrs. Stoppini she would need the services of a rare books expert at some point.
I lifted out a stack of bundled papers, each bunch secured with ribbons, like a parcel. On closer examination, the paper turned out to be vellum-finely polished animal skin. The manuscripts had been penned by different people, and none was in English. Conscious of their value, I replaced them carefully. As I slid them back into the cupboard, my fingernail caught on something. I moved the manuscripts to the table again.
There was a large round knot in the board that formed the right-hand wall of the cupboard. In an otherwise top-quality bookshelf, why use a flawed piece of wood? Any cabinetmaker knows that knots-especially a big one like this-can come loose and even fall out over time as the wood dries. More important, the old vellum could be snagged just as my finger had been, and damaged. A lapse in cabinetmaking quality like this didn’t make sense.
I ran my finger across the surface of the knot. It
And heard a barely audible click.
Then nothing.
Taking a step back, I scanned the shelves and uprights. Everything appeared as it should be-except for a barely noticeable gap that outlined three shelves and their uprights to the right of the cupboard. The gap hadn’t been there moments before.
I gripped the edge of a shelf between my finger and thumb and pulled. Silently, a section of the shelf unit, books and all, moved toward me like a hinged door, and I found myself looking at another cupboard set into the wall behind the bookshelves, this one secured by a locked metal roll-up door like you’d find on an old writing desk.
And then I heard a shrill ring.
Like a schoolboy caught with his hand in the teacher’s purse, I jumped back and snatched a glance toward the library doors, even though I couldn’t see them from the alcove. The ring trilled again.
My cell.
