The Simeon Chamber (28 page)

The grant project for which Lefever was employed used the cyclotron as a variation on the theme of carbon dating. Rather than measuring the rate of radioactive decay or the half-life of carbon-14, the particle accelerator was used to count the ions in the sample to be dated. It had the benefits of using a sample as small as a few milligrams of carbon, and it provided information beyond mere dating. The method permitted the inquirer to actually read the molecular structure of the item being examined, to compare it with a known object of the same period and in that way to conclusively determine its authenticity.

Lefever had delayed the test for nearly a week, waiting for a small vial from Oxford University in England—scrapings from another document known to have been written by Francis Drake immediately following his return to England after his round-the-world voyage.

He performed some final calculations, adjusted his glasses and pressed the large red button on the control panel, initiating the process that would pulverize the microscopic scrapings into subatomic particles. There was a low whine from the accelerator followed rapidly by a muffled bang as if a cap pistol had been fired somewhere deep within the bowels of the circular-tracked accelerator.

He moved to the small video monitor and in quick succession punched a number of keys on the computer keyboard below the monitor. Instantly, several columns of characters appeared on the screen.

Lefever consulted a small notebook 347

on the desk next to the keyboard, flipped one page in the notebook and studied it for several minutes.

Then slowly he reached for the telephone receiver and punched an eight-digit number. On the third ring a voice answered. It was steeped in a thick English accent.

Lefever spoke quietly into the mouthpiece. “It’s me. There’s no question. It’s authentic.”

“You’re certain?”

“Yes. The solution of carbon suspended in the ink is a match with the other writings. It has to have been part of a special order for Drake. The scrapings from Murray also show traces of a compound identical with that of sea salt. But the clincher are the traces of oil from the hands and fingers of the author. They appear on the samples from both documents, those from Murray and those from Oxford—the molecular structures of the two are identical. It’s as conclusive as fingerprints.”

“Good. How long can you sit on the results before you tell Murray?”

“I’m not sure. He’s been talking directly with the professor. I can tell the prof that I just won’t have time to get around to analyzing the results for a day or two.”

“That should give us enough time. Bury it for two days, and by that time I’ll have the journal and it won’t matter.”

“Okay.” Lefever heard the click as the telephone receiver on the other end dropped into its cradle.

Nick pushed the compact rental car to its limit, passing vehicles in the slower lanes as he raced along 101 south toward Cambria.

A small dark sedan kept pace a half mile back.

Jorgensen gazed vacantly at the road ahead and the passing countryside, then glanced at his watch. In twenty minutes he would be in San Luis Obispo. He was fighting to stay awake. Fletcher’d had him locked in a cell with two drunks all night. Nick had stolen perhaps an hour’s sleep between the retching sessions of his two cellmates at the commode. The jailer had roused him at 4:00 A.M. and by the time he’d gotten out and back to Angie’s, dodged her dozen questions and grabbed a shower and a change of clothes it was after 7:00. Angie had demanded to know where 349

Sam was and whether his absence had anything to do with the parchments. Nick was surprised that the old lady knew about the documents. She must have been talking to Carol.

He could only hope that Sam and Jennifer hadn’t already checked out of the inn. For the moment his principal concern was Jake, who was still in jail. There had been no arraignment, and so no bail had been set that Nick could post for his release. He knew that as soon as Sam found out, he would call friends in the city and Jake would be out in an hour.

But Jorgensen had been unable to reach Bogardus by telephone. He’d tried a dozen pay phones at gas stations since leaving the city.

Sam would be mad as hell when he discovered that Nick had left the city, but he didn’t care anymore. He was tired of sitting around waiting for telephone calls from Bogardus, calls that never came.

Nick felt the welt on his throat where the chauffeur had nearly crushed his windpipe the night before. There were scratches and abrasions on the skin but the swelling was beginning to go down. Until he shifted his body in the seat and felt the stiffness in his joints, his bout with the sadistic chauffeur seemed like a bad dream. The holding cell at city hall had robbed him of all sense of time.

Nick rounded a horseshoe curve in the road and looked askance at the sprawling Madonna Inn. The pink facade and large sandstone boulders stood like a monument to money, the creation of a local tycoon whose fortune was anchored in highway construction. In a state where fast-food stands built in the image of hotdogs and geodesic oranges are considered to be historic structures, the complex had become a landmark, commonly accepted by motorists as the coastal halfway point between San Francisco in the north and Los Angeles in the south. He pushed on south along 101 toward the cutoff to the coast and Cambria on Highway 1.

Nick wondered why he hadn’t received results of the final lab tests from Tony Murray. Murray had told him it would only take two days to establish the provenance of the pages of parchment. Nearly a week had now passed. He’d half expected a message from Murray when he’d gotten back to Angie’s after his night in jail, but there was nothing.

He passed through the outskirts of a 1

small town and slowed as he took the off-ramp toward Morro Bay and Highway 1.

The Westminster chimes repeated their melodic tone as the doorbell was rung a second time.

“I’m coming. I’m coming.” Angie trudged down the long hallway. She slid the small wooden stool to the center of the front door and stepped up so she could reach the prism of the peephole with her eye. She was a woman careful to the point of paranoia. For forty years she had performed a daily ritual, checking each knob on the gas range, unplugging the television and tugging on the security chain at the front door before departing the house by the rear to walk to the grocery store a block away.

The man on the front porch was tall and to the far side of middle age, with a mass of well-groomed gray hair. He wore a tweed sport coat and bow tie. His eyes peered through tortoise-shell-framed glasses from under thick brows. His nose, a bit bulbous, was accentuated by the fish-eye lens of the peephole.

“What do you want?” Angie commanded in the tone of a drill sergeant.

“I’m looking for Professor Jorgensen. I’m a colleague from the campus.” There was a strong English accent to the voice.

Angie paused for a moment to consider, then stepped off the stool, kicked it to the side of the hall and unlatched the chain. She opened the door and stood looking up at the well-dressed man, who cracked a broad smile.

“How do you do, madam? My name is Jason Stone. I’m a close friend of Professor Jorgensen. He asked me to drop by to pick up some items for one of his classes.”

Angie toyed with a few loose strands of hair in a self-conscious effort to tuck them back into the bun on the top of her head. She smiled, taken by the elegant looks and manners of the tall stranger.

“That’s funny, he didn’t say anything about it to me.” Her voice took on an airy, genteel quality.

“Well, you know Nick. I suspect he would never trouble a lady with such trivial matters.” Jasper Holmes bent slightly at the waist and issued his most disarming smile. “Why don’t you call him to the door, and perhaps he can 3

introduce us?” A blush settled into Angie’s cheeks. It was a challenge Holmes knew she could not perform, since he’d spent the better part of the morning parked at the curb a half block from the house, waiting and watching until he saw Nick leave in a yellow taxi.

“I’m afraid he’s not here right now.”

“Oh, that is a shame, and I came all the way from Berkeley just for this purpose.”

“I should have thought it was England.” She laughed, trying to make small talk.

“Actually, Australia, madam.

Sydney.” Jasper drew out his a’s, affecting a crude accent from down under.

“What is it you were supposed to pick up?” she asked.

“Some lecture notes for a class. Without them I’m afraid I’ll be completely lost.” He gave an impish laugh and shifted his leather briefcase to the other arm.

Angie stood in the doorway, her face a picture of indecision.

“I’m certain I would recognize the papers immediately if I saw them.” Jasper tried to influence the verdict. “Professor Jorgensen will be quite upset if I’m compelled to cancel the class.” The uncertainty in her eyes evaporated.

“I suppose it would be all right.” Angie backed away from the door and allowed him in.

Three minutes later Jasper stood in the basement apartment and listened as Angie climbed the wooden stairs to the back porch. “Like putty in my hands,” he snickered. Satisfied that he was alone he began to ransack the room, careful to return each item to its proper place. He was convinced there was no more than a fair chance the old woman would ever remember to mention his visit to Jorgensen when he returned, much less recall the bogus name he’d given her at the door. One more interested and charming smile, he thought, and she’d probably forget her own name.

He grinned inwardly as his ego floated to the ceiling. Unfortunately for Holmes, his eyes did not follow it, or he might have seen the small hole in the plaster directly overhead.

Australian my ass, thought Angie as she pressed her eye to the small hole drilled in the closet floor years before when Sam was 355

a small boy and the basement room his play area. Proper supervision of children required sufficient interest and a little guile. Angie Bogardus possessed a healthy portion of both. She had taken on a renewed responsibility for her son’s welfare now that the Paterson woman was out of his life.

She watched as Holmes grabbed a long cylindrical cardboard tube that rested against the wall in the corner and popped the plastic cap from the end to peer inside. He threw the empty tube against the bed in exasperation, and began poring through a stack of blue books on a corner table. Not finding what he was looking for, he rifled through the men’s clothing hung on a rod against the far wall.

Suddenly he spied a briefcase on the floor propped against the leg of a chair. He opened it and dumped the contents on the bed. Brushing aside several small scraps of paper, the Englishman stopped motionless for a brief second and stared down at a single shiny object on the bed cover. Quickly he grasped the key and read the attached tag. It contained both the name of the bank and the account number for the safe deposit box.

Finally he would have his chance to read the Drake parchments.

Holmes bolted from the basement and stopped only momentarily to check the back stairs before letting himself out of the yard by the side gate.

He cast an arrogant grin and touched the two fingers of his right hand to his forehead in a mock salute as he drove in front of Angie’s house. “Next stop First United Bank,” he whispered.

Behind the lace curtains in the large bay window of the living room, Angie Bogardus squinted and rapidly penned onto a small pad the license number of the little foreign car as it disappeared down the hill.

“Mr. Symington, this is Dr. George Johnson from the Art Center in Los Angeles. He’s here to examine some of the Italian Renaissance pieces in Casa del Mar.”

As the man in the pinstripe suit swung around for the introduction, Arthur Symington stood paralyzed in the doorway to the kitchen, 357

unable to speak. The awkwardness of the moment was evident in the air as seconds passed in silence. The secretary sensed the uneasiness of her boss. Finally Symington pried his eyes off of the visitor.

“Thank you, Peggy. You can go back to your office now. I’ll call if I need further assistance.”

The two men stood silent near the opening to the huge institutional pantry as the secretary left the house by the kitchen entrance.

Johnson spoke. “Are you surprised to see me after all these years?”

“Surprised is an understatement. What business can we possibly have after all this time?”

“Just one very quick matter and I’ll be on my way, never to trouble you again.”

Symington’s expression was a blend of anxiety and contempt. He stood silent, unwilling to offer an opening that might extend the conversation.

“I want the journal.”

“You what?” Symington couldn’t believe the audacity.

“I want the journal. Where is it?”

Symington began to laugh. His voice filled the room and echoed out through the pantry to the morning room, where a tour was assembling. “You of all people—have no claim whatever to that book.”

He would surely have been less cavalier had he been privy to the telephone call placed earlier that morning by the man who called himself George Johnson.

“Hello.” The two syllables at the other end of the line had carried a distinctive English accent.

“Well, did you get them?”

“Like clockwork. The old lady never suspected a thing. They’d stashed them in a safe deposit box at a local bank. All I needed was the key and the box number. The teller at the bank asked me to sign the register, so i used Jorgensen’s name. Remind me not to use that bank. As I suspected, she never compared my scrawl with the signature card on file.” The arrogance of his airy tone made Jasper Holmes sound like a man who had just seduced a vestal virgin.

“Have you had time to look at them?” 9

“I’ve done little else all night.”

Holmes paused for effect.

“And, my dear man, you won’t believe what I found. It’s little wonder Dr. Jorgensen was not anxious to have me reading over his shoulder at the apartment that evening. I’d venture to say that we’re on the verge of the quintessential find of this century. Archaeologists will refer to it in the same breath with Tutankhamen’s burial chamber.”