The Book With No Name (23 page)

When he saw Dante and Kacy standing just inside the museum entrance he gestured for them to take a seat while he finished with the student party. They sat themselves down on a comfortable cream-cushioned sofa by the reception desk. The entrance hall was certainly impressive. It was bigger than the last three apartments Dante and Kacy had rented put together. The ceiling was extraordinarily high, a good thirty feet above the smart wood-block floor, and the air was beautifully fresh thanks to the best air conditioning in Santa Mondega.

From their place on the sofa it was possible to see through a large arched entrance and into the first of the museum’s huge galleries. There were paintings hung on the walls and a number of exhibits of varying sizes spaced out through the middle of the gallery, as well as glass-topped display cases containing smaller items. None of the exhibits looked in the least bit valuable or interesting to either Dante or Kacy, but the former, out of respect for Cromwell, decided to try his best to appreciate what he was looking at. He picked out a painting and stared at it as if he was taking in whatever message it was supposed to impart to its viewers. Sadly, it was a painting of a kind he particularly despised. In Dante’s opinion a good painting was one that looked like a photograph, but this was one of those that looked like a load of different-coloured paint thrown haphazardly on to a canvas. If there was any hidden beauty in it, it was wasted on him.

Eventually the students bustled past and out of the building, leaving Dante free to get up from the sofa to approach Cromwell. Kacy slipped her hand into his and followed on a half-step behind.

‘Hi, Cromwell. How ya doin’?’ Dante inquired cheerily.

‘I’m very well, thank you, Master Vittori. It’s nice to see you, and you too, Miss Fellangi. What can I do for you?’

‘Cromwell, I need you to look at something for us. We’ve kind of stumbled on to something that might be quite valuable, and well, y’know, we were kind of looking to cash in on our good fortune.’

Bertram Cromwell smiled. ‘Have you got it with you?’

‘Yeah, but can we go somewhere private to show it to you?’

‘I’m actually a bit busy, Dante.’

‘Trust me, Prof, you’re really gonna want to see this.’

The Professor raised an eyebrow. He didn’t look convinced that they weren’t wasting his time, but he was too kind and too polite just to send them away without humouring them a little.

‘Well, this
must
be something special. Please, follow me.
We’ll go to my office.’

Dante and Kacy followed Cromwell down a maze of corridors for several minutes, exchanging idle pleasantries with him as they glanced at the many paintings and artefacts on the way. Dante had worked as a janitor at the museum only recently, yet he recognized none of the articles on display. He wasn’t an art lover and he wasn’t in any way interested in historical artefacts, so it was a safe bet he wouldn’t recognize anything on the way back out, either.

Kacy, on the other hand, was looking at everything they passed and taking it all in, not because she was interested in the exhibits, but because she wanted to make sure she could remember the way out. She had only met Bertram Cromwell once before, and she hadn’t yet formed an opinion of him. It therefore made sense to her to be particularly cautious and memorize the route they were taking, on the off chance that she and Dante needed to make a hasty escape. The visit to the Mystic Lady had made her a little paranoid, and increasingly suspicious of everyone she met.

Rightly so.

Cromwell’s office was situated below ground level. It was a very large and spacious room, and certainly one of which any occupant would be proud. Facing the door was a nineteenth-century polished oak desk with a frighteningly large chair covered in black leather set behind it. There were two smaller but no less fashionable leather-covered chairs on the other side of the desk. He beckoned Dante and Kacy to seat themselves in these as he made himself comfortable in the massive chair behind the desk.

Although Dante showed very little interest in the room, Kacy was awestruck by the magnificence of it. Two entire walls were covered from ceiling to floor with thick hardback books set on dozens of oak shelves. This was how she imagined the world’s most exclusive library would look. The other two walls were panelled in a dark shiny wood and adorned with a collection of large paintings. All of the paintings were very dark. There did not appear to be a light colour in any of them. If it hadn’t been for the snug warmth provided by the inner-wall heating, and the light blazing from a magnificent chandelier, it might have been a very scary and intimidating room to be sitting in, she thought.

Cromwell finally made himself comfortable after shifting around for a few seconds, making squeaking noises as his suit rubbed against the chair’s leather covering. He placed his hands together and drummed the fingertips of each hand against each other for a few moments, then smiled at each of them in turn. First at Dante, then at Kacy. Since neither of them seemed to appreciate that his time was fairly valuable, he
chose to speak first rather than wait for one of them to initiate any conversation.

‘Right then, Dante, may I see this item you have that is so precious?’

Kacy waited for Dante to give his approval, which he duly did with a nod. She then took the necklace off from around her neck, lifting the blue stone out from under her top to reveal it for the first time. Cromwell held out his hand across the desk and she dropped the necklace into his grasp. For a few seconds he remained motionless, merely staring at what she had placed in his outstretched hand. From the expression on his face it seemed as though he knew something about what he was holding. His eyes lit up, and for a moment his face had the look of an excited child at Christmas. Eventually, having stared at it for long enough to make it obvious that he was impressed by it, he drew it close to his face and took a long hard look at it.

‘What do you think?’ Kacy asked him.

Cromwell ignored her and pulled open a drawer in the desk with his left hand. He fumbled around in the drawer, obviously trying to locate something, but at no point did his gaze shift from the stone. After a few seconds of bustling around in the drawer he pulled out a very small magnifying glass and held it up to his eye. For the next thirty seconds he studied the stone from every possible angle, holding it under the glass in his right hand.

‘Well?’ asked Kacy, now a little embarrassed that he hadn’t answered her first question.

Cromwell put the necklace and the magnifying glass down on the desk and took a deep breath through his nose.

‘It’s precious, all right,’ he muttered, almost to himself.

‘How much do you think it’s worth?’ asked Dante. The Professor’s slightly strange behaviour had raised his hopes.

Cromwell swivelled his chair to the left and stood up. He then stepped out from behind the desk and walked over to the book-covered wall on his left. He ran his fingers along the spines of the books on one of the shelves just below eye level.
After touching eight or nine books, his hand stopped on a thick hardback volume with a black binding. He pulled it out and returned to his chair, gently placing the book down on the desk.

‘That blue stone could just be the most valuable stone in the world,’ he said, looking at Dante then Kacy to see if they understood the significance of what he was saying.

‘Great,’ said Dante. ‘Where can we sell it?’

Cromwell let out a deep sigh. ‘I’m not sure you can,’ he said gently.

Dante couldn’t prevent himself from voicing his severe disappointment loud. ‘Huh! Typical. Why not?’

‘Let me just check this book. There’s something about that stone in here that you really should read before you decide what you wish to do with it.’

‘Okay.’

Dante and Kacy exchanged excited looks while Cromwell flicked through the pages of the book. Kacy grabbed Dante’s hand and clenched it tightly to help keep her excitement in check.

‘What’s that book called?’ she asked Cromwell.

‘It’s
The Book of Lunar Mythology.
’

‘Oh. Right.’ This answer meant nothing to Kacy, and made her wish she hadn’t asked. She wasn’t alone. Dante had no idea what lunar mythology was, either.

After about a minute of flicking pages and scanning text, and a good deal of ‘umming’ and ‘aahing’, Cromwell finally located the page he had been looking for and started to read to himself. From where he was sitting, Dante could see a colour illustration on the page of a blue stone not dissimilar to the one they had handed to Cromwell. The stone in the picture was not held on a silver chain like the one Kacy had been wearing, but it still looked very like the one now sitting on the desk in front of him.

After reading for a minute or two Cromwell looked up at his visitors and turned the book around to face them. They both looked at the two pages in front of them, expecting to
see something thrilling jump out at them, such as a sum of money indicating how much the stone was worth. They saw nothing of the sort, so were soon reduced to looking back up at Cromwell, silently waiting for him to explain what they should be seeing.

‘Young lady, that blue stone you have been wearing around your neck is known to historians as the Eye of the Moon.’

‘Wow!’

Kacy was impressed. The Eye of the Moon seemed quite a glamorous title, and she had never been so fortunate as to own a piece of jewellery that had its own unique name.

‘So how much is it worth?’ asked Dante again.

‘That, young Dante, is not a question you should be asking
me.
It is a question you should be asking
yourself
’, Cromwell warned. He continued sombrely, ‘Is that stone worth risking your life for?’

‘Oh God, not
you
as well?’ said Dante, thinking back to the gloom-monger that was the Mystic Lady. For some reason Cromwell didn’t pick up on this and carried on speaking regardless.

‘The Eye of the Moon has no book value, Dante. Its value is in the eye of the beholder. There are people who will stop at nothing to get their hands on that stone. And it is not for financial gain that they want it, either.’

‘So why do they want it?’

‘Is it because it’s so pretty?’ Kacy chipped in. This time Cromwell chose to answer her.

‘No. It
is
pretty, I’ll give you that, but the reason it is so valuable is because, according to legend, and indeed this book, the Eye of the Moon is a stone with incredible power. A kind of magical stone, if you will.’

‘Say again?’ said Dante, now very confused.

He knew Bertram Cromwell well enough to know that he wasn’t a fool. He was a man of intelligence, and not one to talk nonsense. If he said the stone had some sort of magical power there was every reason to believe he might be telling the truth, no matter how absurd that truth might seem.

‘There are,’ the older man went on, ‘a number of differing stories about what the Eye of the Moon is capable of. Some say that any man who wears it – on a chain around his neck, say – or even carries it, becomes immortal.’

‘Immortal? As in …
can’t be killed? Lives for ever?
’ gasped Kacy.

‘Yes, but there are also others who say that it steals the soul of whoever wears it.’

Dante smiled.

‘People
believe
that shit?’

‘Oh, certainly.’

‘
You
believe that shit, Bertie?’

‘I reserve judgement.’

‘So what should we do with it?’

‘Well,’ said the professor, standing up again. ‘You could always test the theory that it has healing powers.’

Dante was intrigued. ‘What do you mean?’

Bertram Cromwell picked the necklace up from the desk and tossed it to Dante, who caught it in both hands.

‘Put the necklace on and I’ll cut your arm a little, just enough to draw blood. If the stone has these powers, then the wound should heal up and you’ll feel no pain.’

Dante glanced sideways to check Kacy’s opinion of this idea. She looked keen for him to try it out, so reluctantly (because he didn’t believe in witchcraft and all that nonsense; he didn’t believe in pain, either) he slipped the necklace over his head and let it fall around his neck. Then he rolled up the shirt sleeve on his right arm and held it out. Cromwell took hold of his arm with his left hand, and with his right pulled a flick-knife from the inside pocket of his jacket. He flicked the blade out and held it up in front of Dante, who was, frankly, extremely surprised to find a professor who walked around with a flick-knife about his person.