Street of the Five Moons

of the sketches I had seen through a haze of heat and perspiration had a certain something . . .

It wasn’t a theory, it was just a nebulous, incredible suspicion. But I knew I had to check it out, right away. I grabbed my raincoat and was almost at the door when I caught sight of the clock on the dresser. It was four thirty. So I went back to the telephone.

Schmidt’s secretary, Gerda, answered the phone, and I had to gossip with her for a few minutes before she put me through. She is the worst talker I have ever met, but she’s a good kid. Yet I found it hard to chat; a mounting sense of urgency made me as twitchy as a dog with ticks. Finally Schmidt came on the line.

‘I think I may be on to something,’ I said. ‘No, I can’t tell you yet, it’s too amorphous. But I’ll call you later if my hunch works out. If you don’t hear from me tonight, forget it – but expect the usual call tomorrow.

He was full of questions, but I cut him short. I didn’t have much time. If I did not show up in the drawing room for cocktails, someone might go looking for me. But I was wild to check out my crazy hunch, and with the rain keeping everyone indoors, I might never have a better chance.

The door of Luigi’s studio was closed, but not locked. It yielded to the pressure of my hand. Once inside, I wiped the raindrops off my face and looked for a light switch.

In the bluish glare of fluorescent bulbs the studio looked cold and depressing. It certainly was a good imitation of a starving art student’s garret. The velvet draping the model’s throne was worn and dusty, and the chairs looked as if they had been chewed by a large dog. The rain pounded on the skylight like the drums of a regiment marching into battle.

I pulled out some of the canvases that had been placed in racks along the wall. Luigi had gone through several ‘periods.’ Like Picasso, he had enjoyed a blue period. Like his namesake Caravaggio, he had experimented with chiaroscuro. He had tried pointillism, and cubism, and imitations of Van Gogh, with an overloaded palette knife. The dreary collection proved that the boy couldn’t paint in any style known to man, but it also proved that he was dedicated. Why hadn’t he ever tried sculpting?

A long table under the windows held a miscellaneous assortment of paint tubes, turpentine, stained rags . . . and the portfolios of sketches. A bolt of lightning splashed across the skylight, but I hardly noticed it. Those sketches . . .

They were bad; there was no question about that. But they had a certain quality. I looked at a dozen of them – amateur renditions of heads and animals and parts of bodies – before I realized what they did have. His anatomy was terrible, and he had no feeling for design or form. But there was one pen-and-ink drawing of a female head that was so good I thought for a minute it must be a print. I knew I had seen the original somewhere. Then I recognized it. I had seen the original, in the Bargello in Florence. It was a sculptured bust by Mino da Fiesole. Luigi had no creative talent, but as a copyist he was absolutely first rate. I put the drawings carefully back in the portfolio and started to search the room.

The trapdoor was under the model’s throne, which slid on rollers. There must have been some way of anchoring the throne when it was in use, or Luigi’s models would have gone gliding around the room like the Flying Manzinis; if so, he had forgotten to take care of that little detail. Why should he? If I was any judge, the trapdoor was used a hell of a lot more than the model’s throne.

The light of the subterranean room at the bottom of the stairs went on automatically when the trapdoor was raised. There was a very complete little workshop down there. I couldn’t identify all the objects, but many of the tools of the trade have not changed over the centuries. Gravers, punches, hammers, a soldering iron . . .

I got a little excited. I went running around the room grabbing things and dropping them, pulling out drawers, shuffling through papers. The tools of the trade might not be enthralling, but the materials certainly were. Gold wires and sheets of thin gold, silver nuggets; tiny compartments filled with imitation pearls and emeralds, rubies and opals; chunks of lapis lazuli and turquoise and orange-red carnelian – for the Egyptian crown and other objects of that period; stones of every colour of the rainbow, from pale-yellow citrine to garnets like drops of blood; sheets of ivory, malachite, porphyry, jade. All fakes, no doubt, but the general effect was dazzling.

A file on one of the workbenches held detailed sketches of a number of pieces. They weren’t all jewellery. Some were plates, reliquaries, goblets. The piece Luigi was working on had been covered with a cloth. I lifted it gently.

Only a few surviving pieces have been definitely attributed to Benvenuto Cellini. I had seen one of them, the Rospigliosi cup in the Metropolitan Museum. The bowl itself is shell-shaped, exquisitely curved; it stands on a base consisting of an enamelled serpent mounted on a golden tortoise. Luigi had not ventured to copy any of the known pieces. Even that gang of arrogant swindlers wouldn’t dare claim they had burgled the Met. But this could have passed for one of Cellini’s works; the various elements of which it were composed were all based on parts of other pieces. It was a golden chalice, with the same elegant curves as the Metropolitan’s bowl. The handles were jewelled serpents, and the whole thing was supported by a voluptuous nymph modelled on the lady on the saltcellar in Vienna. Luigi was branching out, no longer imitating known works of art. I wondered what a hitherto undiscovered Cellini would fetch in the market. I couldn’t even guess. Worth the effort, certainly.

The thunder outside was making quite a racket. The noise itself didn’t make me nervous. What made me nervous was the fact that I couldn’t hear anything else over the thunder – like, for instance, the sound of someone upstairs. I had to get out of there fast, and I had to come back – with a camera.

I started up the stairs. My nerve ends were twitching, but when I cautiously put my head up out of the hole the studio was still deserted. I closed the trapdoor and shoved the throne back into position. I felt a little more secure then, but not much; no one would believe I had been overcome by an irresistible urge to see more of Luigi’s work during a rainstorm. I wished I had not turned on the studio lights. They would be visible for quite a distance, thanks to that skylight.

The studio was perilous ground, but I would have to risk coming back, at least once more. I needed photographs of the shop, the tools, the sketches, the unfinished chalice. The photographs wouldn’t be proof of a swindle. There is no copyright on antique art. But if I could find out what jewels had been sold, the photographs would be damning evidence of forgery.

I was awfully pleased with myself, and I guess conceit made me careless. I opened the door and stepped out into the rain, and a fist that hit me on the jaw.

Chapter Eight

I WOKE UP in the cellars. There was no question about it. I had seen those rough-hewn limestone walls before, though I did not recall this particular room. There were actually three rooms, as I discovered when I got my aching body off the floor. Open archways, doorless, led from one chamber to the next. The only exit from the suite, if I may call it that, was in the room where I had awakened. The door was of wood so old it was practically petrified. When I pounded on it experimentally, I hurt my knuckles.

The rooms were windowless, but there was light in the first one from a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. I appreciated that light, though there was little to be seen: only a pile of blankets and comforters, upon which I had been lying, and a low wooden table. The air was cool and dank. The farthest room of the three, dirt- floored, had sprouted a fine crop of mushrooms. This room also boasted a primitive sanitary arrangement. I must admit I was relieved to see this. I had always wondered how prisoners managed that little detail; my favourite mysteries and thrillers ignored the point with prissy delicacy, but let’s face it, the problem is important to the prisoner.

Exploring my prison did not take long. I lay down on the pile of blankets and nursed my aching jaw. I had been hit on the same place twice in a week, and it hurt. Maybe I would have to go on a liquid diet. Of course that might not be a problem. My captors might decide not to feed me at all.

I don’t usually wear a wristwatch, so I had no idea of the time, not even the time of day. But I fancied it must be later the same evening. My next telephone call to Professor Schmidt wasn’t due until five o’clock the following day. They had all night and most of the next day to decide what to do with me.

Schmidt would go to the police if I failed to report on time. I knew him well enough to be sure of that. I also knew him well enough to suspect that the police would not be impressed by what he told them. They would call the villa, and Pietro would have a plausible story to account for my failure to telephone. A young, healthy female has to be missing for much longer than twenty-four hours these days before any police department in the world is going to