For the Sake of the Game

by Laurie R. King

  “An odd statement, don’t you think?”

  “I believed the strange characters of the inscription threw him off.”

  “Obviously you didn’t take his advice.”

  “Of course not, though now I wish I had. But I did my duty and turned it over to the Egypt Exploration Society, of which I am a member.”

  “Why your duty?” I asked.

  “My trip to Egypt was funded by the Society, and so anything of an historical nature I found belonged to them. The Society showed it to the British Museum which professed an interest in displaying it once its provenance could be established.”

  “You found it in Egypt, did you not? Isn’t it therefore Egyptian?”

  “But it’s quite obviously not Egyptian. It’s a bundle of contradictions, in fact. As I mentioned, the sapphire was inscribed—etched—with strange characters that reminded one of the Phoenician abjad but were not. Experts at the museum thought they were pre-Phoenician and post-Sumerian, but no one had ever seen anything like them. It reeked of antiquity—the pre-Phoenician theory would put it at 2,000 BC or earlier—yet gemstones were not cut like this in antiquity. The lapidary tools and skill necessary to shape this sapphire’s facets did not exist in those times. The stone had many possible origins and the Egypt Exploration Society was determined to sort them out. I’d made quite the discovery, you see, and presented the Society with a delicious mystery. I became their fair-haired boy, as it were.”

  “So some good did come of it.”

  “Yes, well, for a while it seemed nothing but good came of it. And then Madame de Medici entered my life.”

  Finally he had reached the part of his story I wanted most to hear.

  “Just how did that happen?”

  “Quite by accident—or so it seemed at the time. I was attending a display of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri put on by the Society. She entered the hall draped in a floor-length hooded cloak, almost like a Benedictine monk’s robe, although fashioned from the finest midnight-blue cashmere. Her features were hidden deep within the cowl. I forgot all about the papyri. She immediately became the center of my attention. I watched her lithe figure as it glided from display to display. I angled myself so that I could glimpse her face as she perused the display cases, studying the ancient pieces as if reading them. I even saw her smile once or twice as if she found something amusing.”

  “You believe she was reading them?”

  He shrugged. “Or pretending to read them.”

  “If the daughter is anything like her mother, she has a passion for antiquities.”

  “She most certainly does. I simply had to meet her. So, girding my loins, as it were, I approached as casually as I was able and asked if she were a member of the Society. She looked up at me and I had my first full view of her face. Her flawless skin, those amber eyes and . . . and . . .” He shrugged.

  “You fell under her spell.”

  A statement rather than a question, for I remembered her mother’s mesmeric gaze.

  “How could I not? A beautiful, exotic young woman with, as I soon discovered, an encyclopedic knowledge of Egypt. I was completely smitten. We retired to a quiet corner and conversed for hours that flashed by like minutes. An enthralling creature. I didn’t want to let her out of my sight, which was why I was devastated to learn that she lived in Cairo and would be sailing back the very next day.”

  I recognized certain aspects of the classic confidence scheme. Davies had taken the lure, the hook had been set, and now the clock was running. Very smoothly done.

  “Nothing could persuade her to stay on?” I offered.

  He shook his head. “No. She said she didn’t want to leave but had business back in Egypt that she’d left unattended too long. It had all been a wasted trip anyway, according to her.”

  “Ah. Wasted how?”

  “She told me she’d seen a drawing of the Abu Qir Sapphire in a copy of Al-Ahram in Cairo. I knew of the drawing. The Society had released it to the Times but also to the Egyptian press in the hope that someone would recognize the stone or its inscription. The image had shocked her because ‘a very similar stone’—her words—had been in her family for centuries.”

  “‘Centuries’? Most people would say ‘generations,’ don’t you think?”

  “I suppose. I remember her exact words were ‘a de Medici possession for many, many centuries.’”

  I hid my surprise. Decades ago I had heard that exact phrase from her mother regarding another ancient item.

  “She told me,” Davies continued, “that she’d traveled all the way from Cairo and visited the British Museum to view it, but was very disappointed when she learned it wouldn’t be ready for display until more was learned about it. Allowing her to see it was out of the question since it wasn’t even in the museum.”

  “But you could remedy that, could you not,” I said, perceiving how this would play out. “You could make her trip worthwhile. You could be her knight errant.”

  “Exactly,” he replied, nodding with a grim expression. “I wanted so desperately to impress her.”

  “Were you not the least bit suspicious? She latches on to perhaps the one person in all of London who can arrange a viewing of that stone?”

  “I will say in my own defense that such a possibility did occur to me. But only briefly. I immediately realized that it was I who had latched on to her.”

  My only response was a dour look that Watson knew well.

  “I know, I know,” he said sheepishly. “A beautiful young female dangling before a young, unattached male . . . I was a moth to her flame. But I still might have refrained from showing her the stone had she not produced her pièce de résistance.”

  “The exact same jewel.”

  Davies started as if he’d received an electric shock. “How could you know?”

  “As inevitable as the sun rising in the east, I’m afraid.”

  He sighed. “Well, easy for you to say at this point. But be that as it may, she removed a black velvet jewel box from her purse and opened it for me. There, nestled in white satin, lay a sapphire identical to the one I had found in Abu Qir Bay. As I told you, I’m no gemologist, but what she showed me appeared to be an exact duplicate, right down to the indecipherable engraving.”

  “Didn’t that arouse any suspicion?”

  “I’m not saying ‘very close’ or ‘almost like,’ I’m saying exact. The only image of the Abu Qir released was the simple black-and-white line drawing we gave to the press. She could not know the color from the drawing, and hers was a perfect match. One had to have intimate knowledge of the original to make such a copy. I dare say, one might well have had to own it at some time in the past to make that copy.”

  “Well, perhaps her mother did at one time.”

  He barked a harsh laugh. “Oh, I doubt that very much. That gem was underwater a long time. I’m thinking it might even have washed out of Heraecleion itself.”

  That made no sense. “The capital of Crete?”

  “No-no. They sound the same, but I’m speaking of the ancient fabled city supposedly built on an island in Abu Qir Bay. Legend has it that Heracleion sank in the second or third century BC.”

  “‘Supposedly’?”

  “Well, there’s no trace of it, but it’s mentioned as a trading center in ancient texts, so it must have existed.”

  I had never heard of it, but then I do not clutter my mind with trivialities such as tales of ancient sunken cities and such. They take up room that might be more usefully occupied by facts and theories related to solving crimes. I recall how Watson was shocked when he learned that I could not name the planets, and had no idea that they numbered eight. But really, of what use is such information? None.

  “But no matter,” Davies went on. “Since the stone seemed impossible to fake, what this woman showed me had to be a genuine companion piece to the Abu Qir.”

  “And of course, once you revealed yourself as discoverer of the stone in the paper, she wondered if she could see
them side by side.”

  Another sheepish look. “That, I fear, was my suggestion. As finder of the gem, I’d been given access to it for research purposes, and so I took her to the vault, and we laid our respective stones side by side on a velvet cloth. At that point I could see a variance in color between the two, but so slight as to be unnoticeable when they were apart. I asked her what she knew about the stones. She said the inscription was in what she called the Old Tongue from the First Age and was the name of an ancient god of the sea. Sailors of that time believed sapphires guaranteed a safe journey.”

  “Did any of this make sense to you?”

  He shook his head. “Not a bit. She was vague about dating this ‘Old Tongue’ and ‘First Age,’ saying it was wiped out by ‘the Cataclysm.’ And then abruptly she announced that she had packing to tend to and couldn’t stay any longer. She thanked me profusely for the opportunity to see the stones together. No cajoling on my part could delay her departure. With the greatest reluctance I handed back her stone and bid her adieu.”

  “When do you think she made the switch?”

  “I assume while she was telling me about the First Age,” he said, looking chagrinned. “I kept gazing into those amber eyes, never thinking to watch her hands. When she was ready to depart, I unknowingly handed her the original and packed away the copy. Two days later Doctor Carruthers immediately noticed something amiss when he saw the stone. He has a better eye than I, and a quick examination with his loupe confirmed that the Abu Qir Sapphire had been replaced with a glass copy. Since I was the last one to sign into that particular vault, I am, naturally, a suspect.”

  “Of course you are. And since you know nothing more than the name the woman gave you, and are the only one who saw her face, you have nothing to fall back on. Anyone who saw you with her that night will assume her to be your accomplice.”

  “But I did confirm with the police that she boarded a steamer bound for Port Said the very next day. The ship made its first stop in Brest where French authorities were on hand to arrest her when it arrived.”

  “But she was not aboard.”

  He looked upset. “True. But how can you know that?”

  “Because if she’s anything like her mother, she’s too smart to allow herself to be apprehended so easily. The boat trip was misdirection, just like her stories of the ‘Old Tongue’ and the ‘First Age.’ She’s consistently made you look in the wrong direction—misdirection and legerdemain.”

  “Where should I look, then? Where can she be?”

  “Mark my words, Mister Davies: Madame de Medici is still in London. And I think I might know where.”

  MADAME DE MEDICI THEN

  We set out for London immediately in Davies’s Benz roadster. The evening was warm and I must say I found the rushing air refreshing. Engine and road noise made conversation all but impossible, so I lapsed into a reverie of my encounter with our quest’s mother more than three decades before.

  The late 1870s were a time of great foment in the Middle East. The fall of the Ottoman Empire at the close of the Russo-Turkish War encouraged nationalist elements in the Egyptian army to revolt. Their overthrow of the government came at a time when years of abnormally low flooding of the Nile resulted in food shortages and starvation in Upper Egypt.

  In 1879, leaving the riots and looting behind, Madame de Medici arrived in London. I knew nothing of this. I was engaged in the late summer of that year—August 24, to be precise—by Sir Reginald Serling to locate an Akkadian tablet dating back to 1800 BC that had been stolen from his home. He told me he did not wish the police involved because the tablet was delicate and he would not risk it being damaged by some blundering constable.

  Of course, I didn’t believe that for a second. Many private collections contained ancient artifacts obtained through highly questionable channels that would not bear even the most cursory scrutiny. Nevertheless, he was offering a generous finder’s fee and the circumstances intrigued me.

  To wit: Sir Reginald’s collection was eclectic, spanning many cultures, from Japan to East Africa. Upon my inspection of the premises I noted a collection of daggers with jeweled handles. The thief had left these untouched. Also untouched was a display of ancient gold coins which easily could have been melted down and sold off as ingots, leaving no link to the crime. Only a clay tablet had been taken.

  Upon questioning, Sir Reginald seemed genuinely puzzled at the thief’s choice of the tablet. He said it had arrived in a lot he had purchased from a stall in a Cairo street bazaar before leaving Egypt. He’d had the tablet appraised and was told he might get one hundred guineas for it if he found the right buyer. Unless they were engraved with an image, Akkadian tablets were not terribly sought after. This one supposedly listed ingredients for an ointment. Because of the circumstances of its theft, he now suspected that it might be more valuable than he’d been led to believe. He wanted it back.

  I began my investigation and, as it progressed, a mysterious lascar of ill repute surfaced and resurfaced. He ran the infamous Bar of Gold opium den in Upper Swandam Lane, a place I would frequent in disguise often in the future. But he lived elsewhere in Limehouse; his home was an anachronism, a relic from the Georgian era, the time before the docklands were built, before the Oriental influx that eventually resulted in Chinatown. I went there expecting to find this mysterious lascar. Instead, I found Madame de Medici.

  I was met at the door by a dark-skinned, white-robed servant in slippers that matched the color of his red fez. His angular face traced a maze of fine wrinkles.

  “The Madame is waiting for you,” he said with a slight lisp.

  Hiding my shock, I followed him down a hallway. I had been expecting to meet a man, and had intended my visit to be a surprise.

  The servant’s slippers made no sound as he led me down a series of well-lit and luxuriously decorated hallways, ending in a thick-carpeted chamber where an exotic woman reclined on a pillowed divan, smoking a mauve cigarette under the cloth-of-gold canopy obscuring the ceiling. She wore a long robe of Kashmiri silk. A low, inlaid table of Chinese design squatted between us. She exhaled a cloud of aromatic smoke as she fixed me with her amber stare.

  “Mister Sherlock Holmes,” she said in languid tones. “I have heard your name mentioned in certain quarters. You are developing an interesting reputation.”

  Carmine lips, ivory skin, ebony hair . . . I suppose she might have been considered beautiful by most men. I am not most men. Even then, in my early days of detection, I did not allow the physical attributes of either client or quarry to impinge upon my consciousness. Once you engage the emotions, you hamper clear reasoning. I tried to assess her ethnic origin but could not. Her age was equally obscure. I put her at thirty, thirty-five at most—about five to ten years older than I at the time—but she radiated a calm authority that was ageless. A woman used to having her way.

  “You have me at a disadvantage, Madame.”

  “De Medici,” she said.

  The name suggested Italian descent, but she possessed no Italian features.

  “Honored,” I replied. “I am looking for a certain lascar–”

  “No, you are looking for that,” she said, pointing her cigarette at a velvet-wrapped bundle that sat between a beige envelope and a delicate silver bell on the table. “I do not wish to waste your time. Do not waste mine. Don’t be shy. You may look.”

  I parted the velvet folds and beheld a dun-colored clay tablet engraved with rows of unfamiliar symbols. Most unimpressive.

  “Is this Sir Reginald’s?” I asked, for I had never seen it.

  “No, it is mine—mine for quite a long time. That is until rioters looted it from my Luxor house earlier this year.”

  She knocked the ashes off her cigarette into a silver bowl at her side. I noticed a gold ring engraved with an image of Bast. A feline human and a feline goddess. It glinted when she spoke.

  “Sir Reginald says he bought it from a street vendor.”

  “That may well be, b
ut that does not grant him ownership of stolen property. It has been a de Medici possession for many, many centuries.”

  “Still, it comes down to your word against his.”

  “Precisely. That is one of the reasons I wished to meet you. The first is because you have been quite dogged and rather clever in tracking me down. I thought I had used the lascar to cover my tracks rather well, yet here you are.” She smiled and it changed her face in such a way that it might have melted any other man’s heart. “The other reason is so that you can deliver a message to Sir Reginald. The envelope is next to the tablet.”

  Lifting the square beige envelope, I immediately appreciated the silk paper with fine threads running through it. Handmade and of the highest quality, with “Sir Reginald Serling” inscribed on the front in an odd, squared-off hand, obviously written with a quill. On the back, a disk of red wax with a scarab seal.

  I held it up. “May I enquire . . . ?”

  “Of course. I wish to live an unobtrusive life, to come and go anywhere in the world as I please with no one caring and no one the wiser. Therefore I despise conflict. It attracts attention, so I always settle conflicts. To that end I have invited Sir Reginald to meet with me, just the two of us, so that we might discuss this calmly and rationally. I intend to offer him another antiquity of even greater value in place of the tablet.”

  “That seems fair,” I said. “Quite generous, in fact.”

  “I have a rather extensive collection spread all over the world. I store quite a few items right here in London, so I am sure we can arrive at an accommodation that will leave us both satisfied.”

  “Then it appears our business here is done,” I said.

  That smile again. “You may linger if you wish.”

  “Duty calls,” I said, pocketing the envelope. “I am obliged to deliver this without delay.”

  “As you wish.” She rang the little silver bell and the red-slippered servant re-appeared. “Good day, Mister Holmes. Until we meet again.”