to harvest the gold from the artifacts. No one took the casket from the warehouse, because someone on the inside—someone with no idea what the casket could do—melted it down to nothing.”
“Not quite,” said Evelina.
Both men turned to look at her.
“The gold was just for show.” She gave a sly smile. “They threw the insides out as scrap.”
Chapter Forty
PROMETHEUS GALLERY
Even Jasper Keating must have known the old axiom that the show must go on. With or without Athena’s Casket, the gallery with his show of Greek treasures was due to open that night. Fashionable London was invited to experience the glory of the Gold King’s archaeological bounty. Or, as Imogen quipped, booty.
The Roths—minus Lady Bancroft—went on ahead while Evelina got into a hansom with her uncle and Dr. Watson. No one except Sherlock Holmes thought he should be going anywhere, least of all his long-suffering doctor, but the game was afoot.
“I arranged for a wheeled chair to meet us there,” the doctor said in a grumpy tone. “Lest the game no longer be afoot but prostrate.”
“Did you bring it?” Uncle Sherlock asked Evelina, ignoring his friend.
“I did,” she said, patting the basket in her lap. “Gold, gems, device, and decoded letter.”
“Excellent,” he said. “This should be most entertaining.”
Evelina wasn’t so sure. “What will happen to the casket?”
Holmes closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the cushions of the cab. “I imagine it will find its way into a ship. That is why it was originally created, after all.”
“But do we really want to give such a marvelous thing to someone like Jasper Keating? What about armies of invading airships?”
“Holmes?” Dr. Watson piped up.
Her uncle didn’t reply, but put on his inscrutible face and opened one eye.
“I would think that if the casket were designed to fly,” said Watson, in his kindest voice, “it would yearn for the skies. It would be unkind to keep it locked in a museum.”
Evelina gave him a grateful smile. The doctor had known almost nothing of devas until that afternoon, but was keeping up with the conversation like a trooper. “What about the gold and the letter?”
“I mean to expose a theft. You are holding the evidence. Athena’s Casket is only one of many missing items.”
“I follow the part about melting down the ancient objects for the gold,” Watson said. “That explains why the maid had raw gold and jewels on her person. But wouldn’t the melted objects be missed?”
“No,” said Uncle Sherlock. “I surmise that Keating will see every item in his collection except the casket. That was too unusual a piece, with all its working parts, to replicate, but of all the pieces, it was the largest and most valuable. That made it far too tempting a prize for our thief to ignore, and so it was pronounced lost.”
“Are you saying Harriman took it for himself?” Evelina asked.
“Assuredly.”
“You say the other pieces were replicated. Replicated how?” asked Watson.
“I have my theories. I have but to test them.”
“You’re being cryptic again, and it’s tiresome.”
Sherlock closed his eye again. “I can promise you a good show, Watson. Mr. Keating will be one very angry man.”
“But won’t innocent people be hurt by that anger?” she asked, thinking again of Imogen and Tobias.
“Truth is impartial,” her uncle replied evenly. “Even so, I will do my best to keep as many of your friends as I can from harm’s way. I am not without my methods. You have my word on that.”
That was somewhat reassuring, although she had no idea how her uncle would manage the Gold King. Evelina was starting to form an idea of what might happen, but it was like squinting through mist. There were outlines, but no detail.
Lestrade had come by after Nick had left and reported that he had followed up on the matter of the Chinese workers. It turned out that Mr. Markham’s observant tailors were a wealth of information. One had chanced to speak with a worker who had been allowed outside the warehouse to repair a window. He had said that the workers had been hired by Harriman. Their foreman—one of their own countrymen—kept them in virtual slavery. The most interesting fact was that some of them were goldsmiths.
The cab arrived at the gallery just as the sky was turning to indigo dusk. Evelina alighted, the basket over one arm. Keating’s gallery wasn’t in a large building on its own, just one door along a curving row of Georgian storefronts. The facade was pale stone, flanked by Corinthian pilasters. Through the door she could see a large open space, dotted with marble plinths holding statues and other objets d’art.
The streetlights were on, washing the front of the building in the gold light of Jasper Keating’s empire. Her uncle waved away the wheeled chair and walked her toward the door. He moved slowly, but steadily.
Lestrade waited inside, his sharp face full of anticipation. “You’re just in time,” said the inspector. “The gang’s all here.”
“I’ll be with you in a moment,” her uncle said. “I have one small detail to attend to.”
“Right you are.”
Sherlock led her down a side corridor that opened onto a row of offices. One door was marked Curator. The room was empty, although the desk looked like someone had been there recently. Letters and invoices littered the surface.
“Wait here,” he said, and left.
Evelina set her basket on the desk and looked around. The cube had been curiously silent since the code had been solved, as if its work was done. Now she pulled aside the cloth she had wrapped it in, and slid her hand onto the cold metal surface.
“Do you want me to leave you here?” she asked it.
At first, she felt nothing. Then there was a faint stirring of consciousness, like a breeze rippling across a pond.
Then suddenly Evelina was in the clouds, mist and free air all around her. It was the first time she’d truly connected with its essence.
“Evie?”
The spell broke, and she was suddenly grounded and heavy, glued to the earth. For a split second, she had truly merged with the air deva. The loss of that connection, the loss of that freedom, left her bruised and leaning on the desk for support.
“Nick,” she said breathlessly. “Why are you here?”
“Your uncle told me to come. He said I should be here for the finish, since I was involved. That was decent of him.” Nick looked at his feet, a frown pulling at the corners of his mouth.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s near the middle of April, and that means tenting season. Ploughman’s is moving on. That means it’s time for me to leave London.”
Loss wrenched a cry from her lips. The hollowness that followed seemed achingly final. She closed her eyes, willing back a sudden rush of tears. “I’ll miss you. More than you know.”
He gave her a hard look. “Are you sure about that?”
There it was: he was jealous. It was in every line of his body, every angle of his face. He was moving on
