Chapter VI
'The man's name is Eunos,' Amphytrion said. 'He is from Rhodes and was personal valet to Iphicrates for two years.'
'Can he read?' I asked.
'Of course. All the Museum slaves assigned to personal service must meet certain standards of education. After all, if one must send a slave from a lecture hall to fetch a certain book, he must be able to recognize it.'
'Sensible,' I said. 'Tell me, do you know whether the General Achillas or any other of the military nobles paid frequent visits to Iphicrates?'
He looked at me as if I had taken leave of my senses. 'Meaning no disrespect to his Majesty's noble servants, the military men are an ignorant lot of Macedonian mountain bumpkins. Why would they consort with a scholar like Iphicrates?'
'Was Iphicrates ever absent for extended periods?' I asked.
'Why, yes. He took monthly trips by boat upon the river, taking measurements of the water's rise and fall and observing the effects of flowing water upon the banks. He was deeply interested in the dynamics of water. You saw the canal lock he was designing.'
'Yes, I did. What was the duration of these trips?'
'I fail to see the pertinence of these questions, but he always took six days at the beginning of each month for these journeys.'
'Is that a common sort of arrangement here?' I asked.
'Within reasonable limits, our scholars have perfect freedom to pursue their studies as they see fit. They need not even give lectures if they do not wish to. Here in the Museum, our goal is pure knowledge.'
'Most commendable,' I murmured. I was beginning to have severe doubts concerning the purity of Iphicrates's knowledge. There was a knock at the door and a middle-aged Greek entered, dressed in the livery tunic of the Museum. He bowed to Amphytrion and to me, then waited with that dignified self-possession common to slaves conscious of their own superiority in slave society.
'Eunos, the Senator wishes to question you concerning the late Iphicrates of Chios.'
'Eunos,' I began, 'did you attend Iphicrates on the night of his murder?'
'Yes, Senator. I helped him prepare to go to the banquet that night, then he dismissed me. As I was walking down the gallery toward my quarters, he called me back and told me to bring some extra lamps. I did as he directed and set the lamps in his study. I was about to light them, but he dismissed me and I left.'
'Had you any indication why extra lamps were required when he was about to attend a banquet?'
'He had a visitor. I had not heard the man arrive.'
'Did you get a look at him?' I asked.
'When I came in with the lamps, the man was sitting in the bedroom to the rear. The light was dim. He seemed to be medium-sized, with dark hair and beard trimmed in the Greek fashion. He did not look my way. That was all I saw.'
'Do you remember anything else that might help to identify, this stranger? Anything else Iphicrates might have done that was unusual?'
'I am sorry, sir. No, there was nothing else.' I dismissed him and sat pondering for a while. It didn't surprise me that the man had not come forth earlier. Any intelligent slave knows better than to volunteer information unless asked. Amphytrion had less excuse for not asking, but that was understandable, too. It would have been beneath his philosophical dignity to listen to a slave.
'I would like another look at Iphicrates's quarters,' I told Amphytrion as I rose from my chair.
'Be my guest, Senator, but we must remove Iphicrates's belongings soon. The distinguished scholar of music, Zenodotos of Pergamum, is to arrive soon and we shall need those rooms.'
I found Asklepiodes finishing up an anatomy lesson and persuaded him to accompany me. We found the study in good order, the completed inventory arranged neatly on the large table. I picked up one of the silver bowls.
'You said that Iphicrates was doing research into the properties of parabolic mirrors,' I said. 'Just what are the properties of these things, besides concentrating light?'
'They also concentrate heat,' Asklepiodes said. 'Come, I'll demonstrate.' We went out into the courtyard and he squinted at the angle of the sun. With the reflector, he cast a disc of light against the side of the now- abandoned canal lock. Then he drew it back. As he did so, the disc shrank until it was an intensely bright spot the size of a copper as. 'Put your hand there and you will see what I mean.'
Gingerly, I slid my hand along the wooden surface until the tiny disc of light rested in my palm. It felt distinctly warm, but not hot enough to be distressing.
'To what use did Archimedes put these devices?' I asked.
'It is said that he set fire to Roman ships with them.'
'Do you think that is possible? It doesn't seem to make all that much heat.'
'These are miniatures. The ones Archimedes used would have been larger than shields. And he used a great many, perhaps a hundred of them lined up atop the harbor walls of Syracuse. With that many concentrating their light, I believe they might well have succeeded in firing attacking ships. Ships are extremely combustible at the best of times.'
So for a while we experimented with the four silver bowls. With the light of all four concentrated on a single spot, we managed to coax some faint wisps of smoke from the wood. Back inside, I went over the inventory lists, trying to find anything that might offer a clue to just what the infuriating pedant had been up to.
'Item: a box of miscellaneous rope samples, each sample labeled,' I read. 'What do you think that means?' So we rooted around until we found the box beneath the table. It contained scores of pieces of rope, variously twisted and braided and of various materials, both animal and vegetable fibers being used. Each sample was about a foot long, and from each dangled a papyrus label adorned with shorthand lettering and strings of numerals.
Asklepiodes selected a handful. 'These are made of human hair,' he said. 'What might be the use of such ropes?'
I studied the labels, trying to piece together their meaning. 'Human hair is said to make the best rope for torsion-style catapults. The women of Carthage sacrificed their tresses to build war engines during the siege. Scipio conquered a city of bald-headed women. Look here: These abbreviations give the race and nation of each donor. The man was obsessive about detail.'
'And the numbers?' For once, even Asklepiodes was at a loss.
I pondered them a while. 'I think they measure the weight or tension at which the ropes finally broke. How he could determine such things I've no idea.' If my guesses about his shorthand were correct, the hair of black Africans rated the lowest in this regard, while the hair of blond German women was the strongest and most resilient. None of the vegetable fibers or cords of animal hide were as good as hair. Even silk, while strong, had deficiencies in the torsion department because it was, if I translated correctly, 'too stretchy.' Besides, it was far too expensive.
I told Asklepiodes what the slave had said. 'At least now we have a description of the killer, however sketchy.'
'Medium-sized, dark hair and beard of Greek cut: that certainly narrows the field. Surely there can be no more than twenty or thirty thousand men of that description in Alexandria.'
'And among them is General Achillas,' I pointed out.
'A tenuous connection at best.'
'It's enough for me,' I maintained. 'A man of that description is in Iphicrates's quarters on the evening of his murder. The next day, Achillas shows up without warning or reason and objects to my prying into the killing.'
'Persuasive, but far from conclusive,' Asklepiodes said.
'There's more. A few days ago, in a spirit of idle curiosity, I wandered into the parade ground of the Macedonian barracks. I noticed some sort of war engine under construction and went for a closer look. That lout Memnon ran me off, very rudely. I'll wager that, were we to go by the parade ground now, we would find that the engine has disappeared.'
'If, as you seem to suspect, Iphicrates was designing engines of war for Achillas, why would he murder the man?'
