The Judas Pair

He watched me splash the ale as I drove the truth savagely home. 'Michelangelo's Goliath to match his David. Turner's mysterious set of portraits and industrial paintings. Napoleon's woodcuts done by his very own lily-white hands. Sir Francis Drake's poetry in two breathtaking volumes. Bill Shakespeare's latest play, King Penda. Robin Hood's diary. Czar Alexander's secret will. The Grail. Excalibur. Prince John's necklace from the Wash. Friar Bacon's perpetual clock. Leonardo's jeweled casket of secrets. Cleopatra's ruby ring. The Kohinoor's partner diamond, even bigger and better. Nazi treasure chests in those tiresome bloody lakes. Rembrandt's French landscapes. Chippendale's missing design books. All myths. Like,' I added harshly, 'the Judas pair.'

'Did Dill tell you how much I was willing to pay?' he asked.

'Ten thousand,' I said bitterly. 'Just my luck.'

'Now I believe you, Lovejoy,' he said, calm as you please.

'Look,' I said slowly. 'Maybe I'm not getting through to you. Can't you understand what I'm saying? Ten thousand's too little. So is ten million. You can't get something if it doesn't exist.'

'Before,' he continued evenly, 'I thought you were leading me on, perhaps pretending to be more honest than you really were. That is a common deception in all forms of business.' I took a mouthful of ale to stop myself gaping too obviously. 'Now I believe you are an honest man. A dishonest dealer, seeing I know little about the subject, would have exploited my ignorance.'

'It happens,' I admitted weakly.

'I accepted that risk when I came to you.' Field stared thoughtfully at me.

'So you knew about the Judas pair being legendary?'

'From various sources.'

'And it was a try-on, then.'

'Yes.'

'Well, Mr. Field.' I rose. 'You've had your fun. Now, before you leave, is it worth your while to tell me what you do want?' I stood over him. To my surprise he remained unabashed. In fact, he seemed more cool as the chat wore on.

'Certainly.'

'Right. Give.' I sat, exuding aggression.

'I want you to do a job.'

'Legal?'

'Legal. Right up your street, as Dill would say.' So he'd listened in on Tinker's phone call as I'd guessed. 'You'll accept? It will be very lucrative.'

'What is it?'

'Find me,' he said carefully, 'the Judas pair.'

I sighed wearily. The guy was a nutter. 'Haven't I just explained—?'

'Wrongly.' Field leaned forward. 'Lovejoy, the Judas pair exist. They killed my brother.'

It was becoming one of those days. I should have stayed on the nest with Sheila, somewhere safe and warm.

Chapter 3

Elizabethan ladies—the First, I hasten to add—had fleas. And lice. And gentleman suitors who came courting also suffered. If these heroes were especially favored, they were allowed to chat up the object of their desire. If they were really fancied, though, matters progressed to poetry, music, even handclasps and sighs. And eventually the great flea-picking ceremony. You've seen baboons do it on those unspeakable nature programs. Yes, our ancestors did the same, uttering rapturous sighs at all that contact.

What I am getting at is this: If you see a little (one and a half inches maximum) antique box, dirty as hell, that should be neat and enameled to be a proper patch-and-comfit box and somehow isn't quite right, it can be only one of two things. The first is a battered nineteenth-century trinket or snuffbox, in which case you can generally forget it. The second—oh, dear, the second—is an Elizabethan flea and louse box. Don't shudder. Don't boil it to kill any remaining creepy-crawlies. Lock it carefully in the biggest safest safe you can find, swallow the key, and then scream with ecstasy. These little jeweled boxes were used by lovers for holding fleas and lice that they captured on their paramours' lovely chalk-powdered skin. It was an exquisitely charming pastime of those days. We don't advertise them as such, these boxes. We call them anything: 'Early antique sixteenth- century lady's minute toiletry box, heavily inlaid, made by…' and so on.

Remember Adrian? I spent part of the night cleaning the lumpy box—it was a genuine flea box. I kissed it reverently, drew all the curtains, doused my lamp, and rolled up the carpet. Underneath was the hinged paving stone. Down I went, eight wooden steps underground into my secret cave. Eight feet by eight, cold as charity, dry as a tinderbox, safer than any bank vault on earth. I laid the box on a shelf and climbed out, replacing the stone flag and making sure the iron ring lay in its groove. It wouldn't do to have a visitor tripping up over an unexpected bump in the carpet, would it? I smoked a Dutch cigar to celebrate, though they make me sleep badly, and went to bed. It was four o'clock.

Field's brother was a collector, apparently. One of the indiscriminate kind. To his wife's dismay he filled the house with assorted antiques and semi-antiques and modern junk, a mixture of rubbish and desirable stuff. In short, a collector after my own heart.

Somewhere, somehow, Field's brother found the Judas pair, so Field told me, not realizing they were anything more special than a pair of supreme antique flintlock duelers made by any old passing genius. He seems to have mentioned to all and sundry about his luck and I daresay let interested callers click the triggers—knocking guineas off their value at every click. Tender-hearted as I am, by this point in Field's narrative I was getting the feeling his brother might have got the same fate from me, but I suppressed it.

Anyway, one night several months ago Field had a phone call from his brother, who told him very excitedly that