The Mammoth Book of Roman Whodunnits (53 page)

“By Jupiter himself, it shall be yours,” he promised emphatically.

She seemed satisfied, laid down his platter with its rough contents, and prepared to go. Reeling, she weaved her way to the door, and there, stumbling, she dropped her lamp. The clay splintered into fragments, and the blazing oil ran over the stone slabs and caught the dry wood of the half-rotted door, which, in a moment was ablaze itself. It caught the woman’s clothes, too. She shrieked and fell.

Sollius seized the instant, and daring the blazing oil, stumbled out through the door. Then he turned to draw the old woman clear, but her shrieks abruptly ceased and he saw that she was dead, killed by the shock. He left her where she had fallen, still with her clothes on fire and the stench of her scorching flesh.

Swathed in the smoke, he limped chokingly up the stone steps ahead of him and along a narrow stone passage which led both into an unsavoury outside alley and, by a low arched entrance, into the still more unsavoury tavern in the cellar under which he had been held. Edging carefully past this entrance, he could see a dozen or so of the worst types in Rome, drinking and quarrelling. He made no pause, but limped on towards the open alley. As he did so he heard a voice speaking above the hubbub in the tavern, into which the smoke had hardly yet begun to drift – a voice that spoke in high-bred, patrician Latin – and it uttered Sollius’s name. It was too risky to go back and peer into the tavern; his business was to escape: but he knew that he would remember that voice.

At last he was out into the night. He knew the byways of the Subura well, and made his way to the less evil streets of Rome. Suddenly he paused, stood still for a moment in thought, and then changed his direction, turning away from his master’s house.

Cordus, crying for revenge, pestered the Prefect and Lucius alike. The latter, sick with fears for Sollius, haunted the evil life of the Subura where his instinct told him that his friend would eventually be found – alive or dead. He spent more time seeking for Sollius than for Cordus’s unknown enemy or seducer of his daughter. The house on the Esquiline was filled with apprehension. Sollius had been loved by all, not least by his master, and Sergius
Falba, the old Senator’s adopted son, willingly joined Lucius in his expeditions.

He appeared, in fact, to find amusement in searching Rome’s dark places, many of them already known to him during a wild youth. But he was in earnest enough, and more than once brought with him on the excursions a noble friend of his, one Terentius Cremutus. Both young men endeavoured to uphold the young slave in his almost despairing hopes.

“Sollius will be found,” said Falba. “He’ll come home one day with a perfect explanation.”

“So clever a man,” echoed Cremutus, “can find his way out of any labyrinth,” and he laid a comforting hand on Lucius’s shoulder. “I’ll bet you a golden aureus, slave, that you see him again, safe and sound.”

They were in a thoroughfare, and suddenly a slave approached Cremutus in an agitated manner.

“What is it, Sosius? What news do you bear?”

The slave took his master apart and spoke hurriedly to him. Cremutus beckoned Falba over to him, and they spoke together for some minutes. Then the slave departed at a run, and the two young patricians rejoined Lucius.

“My friend,” said Falba with a laugh, “is buying a new and very handsome slave-girl – and she has disappeared! From now onwards,” he added with another laugh, “he’ll join our searches with even greater eagerness, eh, Terentius?”

Sollius, having begged and received secret quarters in the barracks of the Urban Cohorts, was in conference with Licinius, the City Prefect.

“So the tavern was not burned down?”

“Burrus, the tavern-keeper, and his cronies had a fright because of the smoke, but only the cellar door flamed,”
affirmed Licinius. “There was little wailing for the old woman, and you yourself wished no one – as yet – to be arrested. But I bet that Burrus’s back has felt a few stripes from him who employed him to hold you! But why, my friend, did you not go home? The noble Sabinus is grievously anxious over you.”

“I’ve asked myself,” Sollius answered, “why I was abducted – but not killed – and have come to the notion that someone, about to commit a crime, feared that its solution might be referred to my known deftness in such matters, so wished to have me for certain days, or weeks, just out of the way. Can you suggest such a crime, Prefect?”

“There is one, and one for which your aid was sought. As it is, your younger associate Lucius has been trying his hand – to little effect, I know, and my own informers have equally failed,” and Licinius outlined the case of Cordus.

“I’ll take it up,” said Sollius, “and remain missing while I do so. That will at least keep the criminal worried. He’ll know by now that I’ve escaped.”

“That fellow Cordus again, sir,” said a soldier, entering.

“Let him enter,” ordered Licinius. “This is your case now, old friend. Ah, Cordus, come in!”

“Any news for me, O Prefect? Am I to lose my property and no one suffer for it?”

“This,” said Licinius, “is one of my sharpest informers. He has your case in hand, he will do everything he can.”

“If only,” sighed Cordus, “he were the Slave Detective! Is there no news either of the great Sollius?”

Both Licinius and Sollius lugubriously shook their heads.

“My poor, lovely farm!” burst out Cordus, obsessed by his own trouble. “It was so well sited between two woods, and a stream ran through its gardens. It was a site for a villa rather than a farm. I’ve had offers for the site – but I would never have sold my patrimony. But now it is gone – and no money for it!”

Sollius then proceeded to ask some of the same questions which his pupil Lucius had put to the farmer before, and received the same answers. Finally he asked another which Lucius had not asked.

“Did you recently turn away a beggar unsatisfied and who turned nasty?”

“By the gods, but I did!” exclaimed Cordus. “A great, hulking fellow with a scar across his face – like a retired gladiator. Find that man, Prefect, and we’ll have him whipped till he screams. I’m sure that’s the man. There is no need for the Slave Detective after all! Find a gladiator who survived the arena, and you’ve the man!”

He took his leave, grimly satisfied with the new chance of revenge. Immediately afterwards the same soldier came in again.

“The noble Sergius Falba and the noble Terentius Cremutus wish to see you, sir,” he announced.

Licinius lifted an eyebrow towards the Slave Detective.

“Do you wish to be ‘found’?” he asked.

“I think not yet. Can you hide me – and where, perhaps, I might hear?”

“Step inside my scribe’s room yonder. You’ll hear there well enough. Show the two noble gentlemen in to me, soldier.”

When the two friends entered they found the Prefect alone.

The preliminaries of the interview were curt and blunt.

“We’re not satisfied, Prefect, and my father Titius Sabinus is not satisfied, at the progress made towards the finding of our slave Sollius.”

“I am sorry,” answered Licinius, “that the illustrious Sabinus feels I’ve been negligent in my duty. I assure you I’ve had all my men on the hunt for him.”

“It is certainly not enough, Prefect,” said Cremutus, who
seemed even more angry than his companion though Sollius was no slave of his.

“He may already be dead,” added Falba.

“Then where is his body?” drily asked Licinius. “If dead his body would have been flung out to the crows – and so found.”

“We’re not satisfied!” repeated Cremutus.

“My friend has a plan,” said Falba.

“It is this,” Cremutus explained. “We suggest enrolling a body of picked slaves from our two households and searching Rome thoroughly ourselves – but it needs your permission: it were a stupid folly, Prefect, for our men to be picked up by the Urban Cohorts as disturbers of the peace.”

“You may use your slaves so,” replied Licinius stiffly. “It will do no harm, at least, to shake up the Surbura. Our own nets, cast in after you, may draw in a few fish from the disturbed mud.”

“You take this very lightly, Prefect,” said Falba. “The Emperor himself has expressed his concern in this disappearance to my father.”

“Also to me,” equably answered Licinius. “His Divinity is continually informed of our progress.”

“Your progress!” snorted Cremutus. “Come, Sergius. We have our permission, and the sooner we pick our slaves the better. Good-day, Prefect.”

As soon as they had gone Sollius emerged from the scribe’s room.

“Did you hear?” smiled Licinius. “I shall be glad when I can produce you!”

“I heard – and something more than I expected,” Sollius answered, and he patted one of his ears as though he thoroughly approved of the accuracy of that organ. “Where does Cordus dwell? I must see him again. But lend me a centurion to go with me – and confirm who I am.”

*   *   *

Sollius and the centurion found Cordus in his cottage on the edge of his farmlands.

“Have you laid hands on that broken gladiator?” he asked them.

“Do you believe in him – on second thoughts?” retorted Sollius with a smile. “It was but a question I had to ask for the sake of the record. Have you told
everything
to the Prefect?”

“Did I not tell you, Satrius my son, that only the Slave Detective could be trusted? And now he is dead,” he said in a great gloom, and suddenly clapped his hands as though in a moment of illumination. “May it not be part of the plot against me: to kill him in order that he of all people should
not
look into our trouble?”

“The Slave Detective,” quietly answered Sollius, “is not dead. I am he!”

Father and son stared at him incredulously.

“This
is
Sollius the Slave Detective,” confirmed the centurion.

“Now I can believe again in the gods!” cried Cordus. “Why was I told you were missing?” he asked suspiciously.

“I
was
missing; I was abducted – but escaped. No matter for that now!”

“At last, father, we can dare speak out,” said Satrius.

“How ‘dare’ speak out?” asked Sollius, but he was smiling as though he knew very well.

“Who but you,” answered Cordus, “could accuse the powerful without a whipping? How I wished I could really have deceived myself over that suggested gladiator! But . . . I fear my enemy is a patrician.”

“Give me his name.”

“Neither my son nor I know it – or he would be dead. I have a daughter,” he added, sighing, “and she has a dangerous beauty.”

“He came to the farm at night,” interposed Satrius. “I
nearly caught him once. But it was too dark to see his face, and he got swiftly away in a rich man’s chariot with two spirited white horses. My sister will not give his name. Though infatuated, she fears him.”

“I would question her,” said Sollius.

“I have sent her to her uncle in Rhodes. He has an only son, and is a rich man. She may even come to good in the end. He will have burnt down my farm in revenge for my sending her out of his reach.”

“You should have told this to the Prefect,” said the Slave Detective severely.

“And had one patrician cover up for another? I know my Rome. The seducer of my daughter may even be in the circle of the new Emperor.”

“You should still have told the Prefect – and even I am afraid of Caracalla!”

“You’re afraid of no man,” said Cordus, “or your fame is false. Get me but the man’s name, and I’ll kill him even at the Emperor’s feet!”

“And I will strike with you,” cried Satrius. “I love my sister.”

“Come,” said Cordus in a milder tone. “Let me show you my burnt-out farm, and you will know my double cause for hate . . .”

He led the way. It was a walk of less than a quarter of a mile. They came to a scene of black destruction, desolate in spite of the Appian sunlight. Cordus suddenly gave an angry exclamation, A man was standing in the midst of the ruins, looking about him.

“Who is this trespasser?” cried Cordus.

“I think I recognize him,” said Sollius. “It is Tranquillus, a lawyer.”

Cordus bristled, and went forwards.

“What do you here?” he demanded.

“You are the freedman Cordus?” was the polite inquiry.

“What of it?”

“I am a lawyer from Rome, Tranquillus. Ah, Slave Detective, so
you
are here, looking into the fire? Well, freedman, my presence is easy to explain. I have a business proposition for you from a client. He would buy the land on which your farm stood.”

“I shall not sell!” answered Cordus.

“He offers a good sum,” said Tranquillus, and he named a certain number of sesterces.

“Even that is too cheap,” replied Cordus contemptuously.

“You haven’t the capital to rebuild,” said Tranquillus with a dry smile. “Why waste so fair a country prospect when you can sell it?”

Cordus obstinately shook his head.

“The land as it is now,” the lawyer pursued, “is worth little or nothing to you. It might as well have been ploughed with salt. Sell when you can, my friend!”

“At that low price? Never! At any price? Never!”

“I can go a little higher . . .” and Tranquillus advanced the number of sesterces. “But my client will not barter. I can only strongly advise you. No one will give you more. Don’t you agree, Sollius, that he will be a fool to refuse my client’s offer?”

“Who is that client?” brusquely snapped Cordus.

“I speak for him. I have the money here. There is no need for a name where there is hard money, freedman. Let me pay you now. See, my slave yonder carries a large bag . . . filled with coin, O Cordus.”

“Take your slave and his bag away together, lawyer! I will not sell. Who is your client?” he repeated.

“Since you refuse his offer, freedman, there is no need to name him,” answered Tranquillus blandly; he saluted them, and turned away towards a waiting chariot.

*   *   *

A puzzled Lucius, summoned peremptorily to the Prefect’s quarters, found Sollius with the Prefect himself – and flinging up his hands in his amazed relief, he burst into tears.

“Save your wonder!” smiled Sollius. “I will tell all of my adventures in time. But for now listen.” He spoke quickly and concisely, and Lucius listened in growing surprise and excitement.