I took the chair he indicated. Max turned to the window and stood staring out, hands clasped behind his back. I glanced at the desk. He had almost finished the silhouette. It was a gentler caricature than I would have expected; he had turned John’s admittedly pointed nose into a modified Pinocchio pecker and made his chin recede more than it actually did, but that was all. Hand and scissors had slipped, perhaps when Georg said the magic word ‘rich.’ A ragged tear ran across the shadow head, from the bridge of the nose to where the ear would have been.
Max turned from the window, once more calm and smiling. ‘Let us not waste time sparring with one another, Dr Bliss. You are an intelligent woman, and I am a very busy man. It would serve the interests of both of us if I could conclude this matter swiftly and leave you in peace.’
I didn’t say anything, but he interpreted my expression accurately. ‘You doubt that I would leave you alive and well? Consider the pros and cons. I have nothing to gain by harming you and your friends, and a great deal to lose. I will even make concessions, if it will ease your mind. For instance, I might restore Mr Jonsson to you.’
‘So far as I can see, that concession would just make it simpler for you,’ I said. ‘Get all the pigeons in the same place, so to speak.’
‘But if you had a gun,’ Max said softly. ‘A thirty-eight, fully loaded? Picture it. You and Mr Jonsson, locked in one of the upstairs rooms. We could not reach you from the window, but you could see us leave – and you could shoot to kill if anyone tried to enter by the door.’
Talk about your seductive pictures. What’s more, some odd sixth sense told me he was sincere – not planning any nasty little tricks like setting fire to the house. Watching the play of emotions on my face, Max sidled up to the desk and lowered himself into a chair. ‘I will consider any reasonable suggestion,’ he murmured. ‘Only help me to find the treasure.’
‘I don’t know where it is,’ I wailed.
‘But you are the possessor of expert knowledge, training, that might give me a clue.’ His voice changed. It held a note of purely human curiosity. ‘How the devil did Smythe trick you into joining him in this? Your reputation is excellent, and now that I have met you I find it impossible to believe you wanted to swindle Mr Jonsson.’
‘It’s too complicated to explain,’ I said mournfully. ‘But you’re right – he did trick me, the bastard.’
‘He will be punished. For that and other injudicious acts.’
‘I don’t suppose you’d include him in your amnesty offer.’
‘No. Why should you care? You owe him nothing; he is responsible for your present plight.’
‘How true.’
‘Are you in love with him?’
‘No. None of your business.’
‘I take a fatherly interest.’
I gaped at him. He went on seriously. ‘He is not a proper associate for a lady of your worth. You will be better off without him. Mr Hasseltine, now – there is a fine man, young and healthy. What are your feelings for him?’
My head was spinning. I couldn’t believe I was getting advice on affairs of the heart from a leader of organized crime. Uncle Maxie’s Love Column . . .
‘Now, look here, Max,’ I said. ‘Not that I don’t appreciate your interest – but let’s get back to basics, okay? Your deal has its attractive points, and I’d be strongly tempted to take you up on it, except for one detail.’
‘Your professional conscience?’
‘Well . . . I hate what you’re planning to do. My training and my moral senses are howling with outrage. But there isn’t one artefact in existence that I’d place above a human life. Especially mine.’
‘Then what is the difficulty?’
He still sounded like kindly old Uncle Maxie, weary but patient I waved my arms wildly. ‘Max, I don’t have the information! Georg is the archaeologist; I’ve just enough background to think he may be right in his assessment of the site. There may have been a fifth-century house here, with all the attendant features – outbuildings, a defensive wall, maybe a cemetery. If the graves weren’t robbed in antiquity, they might contain all kinds of goodies – like the chalice. It’s equally possible that the chalice was one object in a cache of treasures buried by the owner in time of war for safekeeping. If you had a couple of trained scholars on the spot, with the necessary equipment, they could plot the site and locate the cemetery. But there’s no way on earth anybody could pinpoint the location of a cache. Where would you bury your savings, if you were in the ancient owner’s position? In the farmyard? Under the living- room floor? In the pigsty? Damn it, Max, even if we had a complete plan of the house and outbuildings, we still wouldn’t have a clue. It’s hopeless. Why don’t you give up and go home?’
Elbow on the table, chin propped on his hand, Max listened attentively to my peroration.
‘I am tempted to tell you why,’ he said when I finished talking, breathless and flushed. ‘Better still, I am tempted to show you. Wait here.’
Naturally I waited. I couldn’t take my eyes off the mutilated silhouette. The tear was like a ragged wound.
Max was back in a few minutes, carrying a manila envelope. He opened it and handed me the contents.
They were colour photographs, eight-by-ten in size. Six of them – sides, top, and bottom. The object was shaped like a little house, with the roof sloping up to a richly ornamented ridgepole – a doll’s house, about a foot long. But doll’s houses, even royal doll’s houses, aren’t made of gold. Insets of scarlet and blue enamel, in a convoluted interlace pattern, studded the side and roof. It had been beautifully restored – at least I assumed it had, for a thing like that couldn’t have been buried for fifteen centuries without getting battered.
‘So this is it,’ I murmured. ‘Funny. I postulated its existence, but never once visualized what it might be like. It’s . . . nice, isn’t it?’
‘Does it alter your image of the honest Scandinavian farmer?’ Max asked with a cynical smile.
‘It’s a reliquary,’ I said. ‘Probably Celtic. I admit you wouldn’t expect to find a Christian church or monastery in this area so early – but that doesn’t prove this was raiders’ loot. Maybe he got it in trade, or bought it, or – or something.’
‘You cling stubbornly to your preconceptions,’ Max said, amused.
I wasn’t sure myself why I resented the suggestion that the fifth-century lord of the island was a barbaric burner of churches. He wasn’t my ancestor; probably he wasn’t Gus’s ancestor either, despite the latter’s claim. And so what if he was? Nobody’s ancestors are perfect.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, shrugging my fantasies aside.
‘No. What does matter is the quality of the hoard. If the two objects found thus far are representative – and we can assume they are, since they were discovered by accident – then it is worth a great deal of trouble to me.’
‘Granted. But the treasure is looking more and more like a cache; you wouldn’t expect to find something like this reliquary in a pagan grave. Which makes your chances of finding it remote. Would I be rudely intruding into classified matters if I asked where you got this?’
‘What you really mean is why didn’t we ask the thief to draw us a map.’ Max spoke lightly, but I had hit a sore point. His hands began to move restlessly around the desk, as if they ached to be holding scissors and paper. ‘I see no reason why I shouldn’t tell you. We have not been able to locate the original finder. It could have been anyone – a farmhand, a trespasser, a hunter, a pair of lovers seeking privacy. The man we dealt with was several steps removed from the finder, and unfortunately the member of our organization who purchased the reliquary from him was too dense to see the implications. Not until it was viewed by one of our consultants did these emerge.’
‘You can’t blame the poor man,’ I said soothingly. ‘It’s pretty damned far-fetched, Max. Only a specialist in Scandinavian antiquities would make the connection.’
‘Yes, we were told that much when we questioned the seller a second time.’ Max saw my lips tighten, and went on quickly, ‘The only useful thing that emerged was his admission that he had not come to us first. When I heard Smythe’s name, I knew he was the man to follow. He has a number of annoying qualities, but he is without peer in his own field.’
With some self-disgust I realized I had been enjoying the conversation. The insights I had gained were interesting and possibly useful, but that wasn’t the reason why I found myself chatting away in such a relaxed fashion. The strange little man had a certain charm; you certainly couldn’t call it integrity. But there was unquestionably rapport between us, a sense that under far different circumstances we might have been friends. Even now, I think Max really did like me.
