'Some time in the eleventh century. It was accidental at first, but later they began to exploit it deliberately. Then they came up with the composite mirror -- the back would still have a saying of Buddha, but the mirror would reflect something completely different. There's one in the Ashmolean in Oxford -- the back says 'Adoration for Amida Buddha' and the reflection shows Buddha himself. It was just a matter of putting a false back on the mirror, as Vivero has done here.' Halstead turned over the mirror and tapped the gold back experimentally. 'So under here there's a map cast in the bronze?'
'That's it. I rather think Vivero re-invented the composite mirror. There are only three examples known; the one in the Ashmolean, another in the British Museum, and one somewhere in Germany.'
'How do we get the back off?'
'Hold on,' I said. 'I'm not having that mirror ruined. If you rub a mercury amalgam into the mirror surface it improves the reflection a hundred per cent. But a better way would be to X-ray them.'
'I'll arrange it,' said Fallon decisively. 'In the meantime we'll have another look. Switch on that projector.' I snapped on the light and we studied the vague luminous lines on the screen. After a while Fallon said, 'It sure looks like the coast of Quintana Roo. We can check it against a map.'
'Aren't those words around the edge?' asked Katherine Halstead.
I strained my eyes but it was a bit of a blurred mish-mash nothing was clear. 'Might be,' I said doubtfully.
'And there's that circle in me middle,' said Paul Halstead 'What's that?'
'I think I've solved that one,' I said. 'Old Vivero wanted to reconcile his sons, so he gave them each a mirror. The puzzle can only be solved by using both mirrors. This one gives a general view, locating me area, and I'll lay ten to one that the other mirror gives a blown-up view of what's in that little circle Each mirror would be pretty useless on its own.'
'We'll check on that,' said Fallon. 'Where's my mirror?'
The two mirrors were exchanged and we looked at the new pattern. It didn't mean much to me, nor to anyone else. 'It's not clear enough,' complained Fallon. 'I'll go blind if we have much more of this.'
'It's been knocked about after four hundred years,' I said 'But the pattern on the back has been protected. I think that X-rays should give us an excellent picture.'
'I'll have it done as soon as possible.'
I turned off the light and found Fallon dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief. He smiled at me. 'You're paying your way, Wheale,' he said. 'We might not have found this.'
'You would have found it,' I said positively. 'As soon as your cryptographer had given up in disgust you'd have started to wonder about this and that -- such as what was concealed in the bronze-gold interface. What puzzles me is why Vivero's sons didn't do anything about it.'
Halstead said thoughtfully, 'Both branches of the family regarded these things as trays and not mirrors. Perhaps Vivero's rather obscure tip-off just went over their heads. They may have been told the story of the Chinese mirrors as children, when they were too young to really understand.'
'Could be,' agreed Fallon. 'It could also be that the quarrel between them -- whatever it was -- couldn't be reconciled so easily. Anyway, they didn't do anything about it. The Spanish branch lost their mirror and to the Mexican branch it was reduced to some kind of a legend.' He put his hands on the mirror possessively. 'But we've got them now -- that's different.'
II
Looking back, I think it was about this time that Fallon began to lose his grip. One day he went into the city and when he came back he was gloomy and very thoughtful, and from that day on he was given to sudden silences and fits of absent-mindedness. I put it down to the worries of a millionaire -- maybe the stock market had dropped or something like that -- and I didn't think much about it at the time. Whatever it was it certainly didn't hamper his planning of the Uaxuanoc expedition into which he threw himself with a demoniac energy. I thought it strange that he should be devoting all his time to this; surely a millionaire must look after his financial interests -- but Fallon wasn't worried about anything else but Uaxuanoc and whatever else it was that had made him go broody.
It was in the same week that I met Pat Harris. Fallon called me into his study, and said, 'I want you to meet Pat Harris -- I borrowed him from an oil company I have an interest in. I'm fulfilling my part of the bargain; Harris has been investigating Niscemi.'
I regarded Harris with interest although, on the surface, there was little about him to excite it. He was average in every way; not too tall, not too short, not too beefy and not too scrawny. He wore an average suit and looked the perfect average man. He might have been designed by a statistician. He had a more than average brain -- but that didn't show.
He held out his hand. 'Glad to meet you, Mr. Wheale,' he said in a colourless voice.
Tell Wheale what you found,' ordered Fallon.
Harris clasped his hands in front of his average American paunch. 'Victor Niscemi -- small time punk,' he said concisely. 'Not much to say about him. He never was much and he never did much -- except get himself rubbed out in England. Reform school education leading to bigger things -- but not much bigger. Did time for rolling drunks but that was quite a while ago. Nothing on him in the last four years; he never appeared on a police blotter, I mean. Clean as a whistle as far as his police record goes.'
That's his official police record, I take it. What about unofficially?'
Harris looked up at me approvingly. 'That's a different matter, of course,' he agreed. 'For a while he did protection for a bookie, then he got into the numbers racket -- first as protection for a collector, then as collector himself. He was on his way up in a small way. Then he went to England and got himself shot up. End of Niscemi.'
'And that's all?'
'Not by a hell of a long way.' said Fallon abruptly.
'Go on, Harris,'
