Beyond Compare (29 page)

“Did they say anything?” Rafe asked.

“Yes!” Con brightened. “The one who dropped me said something. It sounded like an oath—the way his
voice sounded, I mean. But I couldn’t understand what he said. And one of the other men said something to him. Several words. But I couldn’t understand them, either. I think it was a foreign language. It didn’t sound familiar at all.”

“Would you have known if it was French?” Kyria asked.

“It wasn’t French. I’m pretty sure of that. Or German. We’ve studied both those languages.”

“You think it’s Habib?” Kyria looked over at Rafe.

He shrugged. “Could be. I certainly think we should have a talk with the man. But it could have been the man who escaped us, the one at the tavern. He was apparently foreign, too. And of course, the men the other night—”

“Oh!” Con exclaimed. “There was something else. I just remembered it!”

“What?”

“The chap who picked me up had a medallion on a gold chain around his neck. It was under his shirt, but when he was climbing over the wall and trying to hold on to me, it fell outside his shirt, and I saw it. It was gold and round and it had this, I don’t know, a kind of symbol or something engraved on it.”

“What kind of symbol?” Reed asked eagerly.

“I don’t know. I’d never seen it before.” Con paused. “I could try to draw it.”

“Good.” Reed whipped out a piece of paper and a pencil and handed them to the boy.

Con bent over the paper, drawing, his tongue clamped between his teeth in concentration. He scratched out his drawing and started again. Finally he stopped and held it up for the others to see. They bent forward to look at the drawing.

Inside the circle, two lines ran parallel, curving up and together and bending to the right at the top, joining in a swirl. Kyria stared at the drawing, the blood draining out of her face.

“Oh, my God!” she whispered. “I’ve seen that. I drew it!”

There was a moment of stunned silence, then Reed and Rafe began to talk at once.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know what it means. It’s just…something I drew. I was sketching a design for a necklace.” She paused, thinking. “Well, actually, I think I may have started drawing this design first, and then I made it into a necklace. I don’t know what it means, if anything. I’d never seen it before that. Wait. I’ll show you.”

Kyria left the office and darted up the back stairs to her room, returning a few minutes later with her drawing pad. She opened the pad and set the sketch of the necklace down on the desk beside Con’s drawing.

“That’s it!” Con said excitedly, jabbing his finger at Kyria’s drawing. “That is exactly what the medallion looked like.”

“See, I drew it down here first, just the symbol, and I liked the design. Then I got the idea of putting it on metal squares and linking them into a necklace.”

“This is too much coincidence,” Reed said. “You can’t have just happened to think of exactly the same design that is on the kidnapper’s medallion. You must have seen it somewhere.”

Kyria shrugged. “Perhaps. But I don’t know where. I have no memory of ever seeing it before I drew it. It was an idea that popped into my head one day.”

“Maybe you saw it someplace that we have been the
past few days,” Rafe suggested, “and you just didn’t notice it enough to remember. Like at Ashcombe’s place. It has that look of something ancient, don’t you think? Where else have we been? Here, of course, and the Blue Bull tavern. I wouldn’t think there was anything like that there. The opium den…”

“No, no, it couldn’t have been any of those places,” Kyria protested. “I drew it before we came here. I drew it at Broughton Park, not long before we left. I had been looking at the reliquary, and then I went back up to my room. I was just sitting there, daydreaming, and suddenly this design flashed into my mind. So if I saw it, it must have been at Broughton Park.”

“It looks like the kind of things Papa has,” Con commented, tracing the whorled design with his forefinger. “Perhaps you saw it on one of his pots or bracelets or something.”

“Perhaps,” Kyria conceded. “But it doesn’t seem exactly Greek or Roman.”

“Byzantine, then,” Rafe suggested. “Especially if you had just been looking at the reliquary. It triggered some memory in you of Byzantine art.”

“Or the Near East,” Reed put in. “It reminds me a little of that silver belt Theo sent you that time, the one with the tiny bells hanging off it.”

“The harem-dancer belt?” Kyria tilted her head. “Yes. It’s not the same design, but there is a sort of Levantine flavor to it.”

“You probably saw it in some book or other of the duke’s,” Rafe said. “But which one? And primarily, what does that mean about the men who are wearing it?”

“No, wait,” Kyria said. “Were
all
of them wearing it or just the man who had Con? Because if it was only
him, then it could just be some personal decoration, and he wears it because he thinks it’s attractive. But if all of them are wearing it, then it would seem to denote some sort of club or order…”

“Like the Keepers of the Holy Standard?” Rafe asked.

“Yes,” Kyria said, “I suppose so. But this doesn’t seem like something they would do. After all, they rescued us last night. Why would they turn around and try to harm us? They presented their case to me, and I told them that I would think very carefully about it. I am rather inclined to return the box to them.”

“Yes, but they don’t know that,” Rafe pointed out.

“All right, then,” Reed said. “Shall we start with them? These Keepers?”

“If we knew where they were,” Rafe said. “Unfortunately, they just seem to pop up now and again. We don’t know where they are located.”

“I’m not at all sure that finding the Keepers would help,” Kyria argued. “I don’t think they are the ones who kidnapped Alex. That symbol doesn’t look like a religious one. Wouldn’t it be more likely that they would have a medallion with the Chi-Rho emblem on it rather than this? That was what was on the front of Brother Jozef’s garb last night.”

Rafe shrugged. “You’re probably right. As for Alex’s kidnappers being foreign, that does not give us much direction, either. This whole affair is crowded with foreigners—the Lebanese dealer, the Frenchman, the Russian, even the man who originally brought the reliquary to you. Then there’s the man who hired Sid and Dixon, and we have no idea whether he is the Frenchman, the Russian or someone else altogether.”

“Well, we can’t just sit here. We have to start somewhere,” Reed said pragmatically.

At that moment, there was a knock on the door, and one of the parlor maids came in. “There’s a letter here, my lord. My lady.” She looked from Reed to Kyria. “A boy just delivered it. It has no address on it, and when I asked who it was for, he said he didn’t know. They just told him to deliver it to this house.”

“‘They?’” Reed repeated, rising. “Who exactly is ‘they’?”

“I don’t know, sir. I made the boy wait here, in case you wanted to talk to him—I mean, what with all that’s going on.”

“Quite right. You were smart to do so.” Reed took the letter and ripped it open, his eyes running quickly down the page. “You were right, McIntyre. They want the reliquary.”

“What does it say, Reed?” Kyria asked anxiously. “Don’t keep us in suspense.”

“Sorry.” Reed began to read the letter aloud. “‘We have the boy.’ Obviously they wrote this before they actually accomplished the deed—they have written ‘boys’ and then crossed out the ‘s.’ ‘We will give him to you in exchange for the box. Tomorrow. We will send you time and place.’” His jaw tightened. “Damn! They intend to keep him all night!”

“Poor Alex! He will be so frightened!” Kyria said, sucking in her breath in a sob.

Rafe wrapped an arm around her, pulling her against him comfortingly. “Don’t worry, darlin’. We’ll get him back.”

“We certainly will,” Reed agreed grimly. “Bring the messenger in here, Milly.”

She bobbed a curtsy and appeared a few minutes later with a street urchin in tow. The boy’s face was pale beneath his dirt, and he looked as if he would have run if it had not been for the firm grip Milly and another maid had on his arms.

“I din’t do nothin’,” were the first words out of the boy’s mouth as soon as the maids let him go and stepped back out of the door.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to accuse you of anything,” Reed told him calmly. “I just want to hear about the person who gave you this message to deliver here.”

“I din’t know ’im or nothin.’ ’E just give me a couple o’ coppers and told me to bring it ’ere. ’E din’t say nothin’ about yer grabbing me and all.”

“Yes, well, I don’t intend to harm you.” Reed fished a half crown out of his pocket and held it up in front of the boy. “In fact, I plan to give you this if you will think very hard and tell me everything you can about the man who gave you the message.”

The boy’s eyes widened. “All right. I’ll tell you everythin’. Uh, ’e was shorter than you, like. Regular lookin’, I guess.”

“Was he foreign?” Reed asked.

The boy looked surprised. “No. ’E sounded like you. You know, upper crust, like.”

“Really?” Reed cast a glance at Rafe and Kyria. “What color hair and eyes did he have, do you remember? What sort of complexion?”

The boy shrugged. “Regular. Not dark or nothin’. Brown ’air, I thinks. ’Is eyes…” The boy seemed to cast back in his mind, then said, “I don’t know. Sorry. I didn’t notice ’em much.”

“How was he dressed?”

“Like a gentleman. Like you or ’im.” He looked
toward Rafe. “Dark-gray sort o’ jacket, it was, and trousers the same. White shirt. Bowler ’at.”

“So, a well-spoken, well-dressed English sort of chap,” Reed summed up.

The boy nodded. Reed cast a look at Rafe and Kyria, both of whom shook their heads. They could think of nothing else to ask. Reed gave the lad the coin and sent him on his way.

“All right,” Reed said. “So now, what do we know?”

“That at least one of the kidnappers is English,” Kyria began, “and apparently dresses and talks like a gentleman. And the others, or some of the others, are foreign. We know of at least four people or groups who want the reliquary—the Keepers, Prince Dmitri, Monsieur Brulatour and Mr. Habib.”

“What about Ashcombe?” Rafe asked. “I don’t know that you can discount him.”

“But he is an archaeologist!” Kyria looked shocked.

“That doesn’t exempt him from greed,” Rafe pointed out. “He has been looking for the reliquary for years. I would think that it would mean a great deal to him to be able to show it to his colleagues. To prove that it existed.”

Kyria thought for a moment. “All right. Say we ignore the fact that he is world-renowned and has a spotless reputation as a scholar and archaeologist, and we suppose that he is overcome by greed and the desire to prove that he was correct. The fact of the matter is that if he gets the reliquary by criminal means such as extorting it from us by kidnapping a child, then he can never show the reliquary to any of his colleagues or anyone else. If he does, we—and everyone else—will know that he is a criminal.”

“That’s true.” Reed nodded. “Besides, with an archaeologist, it is extremely important to prove where it came from. All he can trace it back to is us. We have no proof of what it is or where it came from.”

“So, except for admiring it, he really could not do anything with it,” Rafe said. He gave a nod of his head. “I would agree that he is the least likely of any of the possible suspects. Although I cannot entirely dismiss him, either. However, I think that we should go talk to him about the meaning of that symbol on the medallion. The medallion seems to me the best clue we have, and Ashcombe is the only scholar we have at hand. We are more likely to find out what it means from him than from trying to sift through the books in the library here hoping to spot it.”

Kyria nodded. “I agree, we need to talk to him about that. What about the others? Do you think we should confront Habib or any of the collectors?”

“What are we going to say—did you have Alex kidnapped?” Reed asked. “No one is going to admit to it. It would be better to have them followed, don’t you think?”

“We already have Tom Quick on Habib.”

“Do we know where the other two collectors reside?” Reed asked.

“Yes. They both gave me their cards,” Kyria replied.

“What about this other chap?” Reed asked. “The English gentleman who gave the boy the message to deliver.”

“I have no idea who he is. One of the men who attacked us last night was English, but he was quite large and did not dress like a gentleman.”

“He could even have been a decoy,” Rafe sug
gested. “Habib or whoever might have hired him to give the message to the boy, knowing that we would be likely to question the lad.”

“Or the man from the tavern. He could have been English. For all we know, he could have assumed an accent to fool Sid,” Kyria suggested in turn.

“Well, we can’t do anything about him since we have no idea who he is. I think we’ll have to start with these Brulatour and Dmitri fellows.”

“What about Walford?” Rafe asked.