by Mike Ashley
He paused, and gave the Emperor a direct look.
“The jewels, after all,” the Emperor quietly reminded him, “were missing from the Empress’s casket.”
“Precisely, sir: missing – from the casket. But ‘stolen’ is another word. I looked over the ground outside the Augusta’s chamber, but saw no sign of any intruder. An intruder into that secret part of the imperial gardens would need wings to drop from Heaven: he could not go thither on his feet. It was the print of feet, and any other kind of visible disturbance, that I could not find. I decided against a thief entering from the gardens, O Augustus. And then the Prætorian was missing. At first, I did not understand that, and suspected, indeed, that he had been killed; but when I visited the tavern in the Subura where he had last been seen, I found no sign of anything like murder. I concluded that whatever had happened to him had taken place after he had left the tavern and not in the tavern itself. I saw a scented gladiator there – but suspected other matters, none relative to the missing man. But, sir, a scented gladiator is himself a cause for enquiry.”
He gave the Emperor another deep glance, wondering the while how much, or how little, that august personage knew of the fearful rumours concerning his wife. He guessed that any clever woman could outwit that noble character, so philosophical in temper, so simple of heart. But Marcus Aurelius gave no sign of inward disturbance.
“Go on,” was all he said.
The three listeners hung on the slave’s every word, spellbound by what he was telling: Sabinus, smilingly proud of being his master; Alexias deeply puzzled and beginning to prick with unknown fears; the Emperor enigmatically calm.
“Then,” continued Sollius, still fixing the Emperor with his gaze, “I was set upon. I expected to be slain out of hand. But I was not slain; I was abducted; I expected to be tortured to tell all that I knew, but I was not tortured, only threatened. Then I was knocked out skilfully – and returned where I was taken. There seemed no purpose in it unless it was to frighten me. I was frightened, of course. I am only an elderly slave, not a man of war or adventure. But when I came to no serious harm, I began to think again over all my scraps of evidence. One of the men who had abducted me was the missing Prætorian. Who could have employed him, except one whom he would obey without question? His companion, too, I recognized, though not at first: he is one of a troupe of actors. You, O Augustus, have shown him favour for his playing in Plautus.”
“It does sound like a prank of Sicinius Malvus,” said the Emperor with a smile.
“Then,” pursued Sollius, “I recognized the kind of bark peculiar to a breed of hound among the many barkings at the farm to which they had taken me. It was the bark of a Gallic hound. There are few of them in Rome. My master has one, a gracious present from yourself, Augustus. Previously, as he will bear witness, I asked my master a question. He answered that a certain small, private villa and farm lay off the Appian Way about three miles out. I guessed that it was thither that I had been taken – and where else could the Prætorian have been so well hidden? When I came to myself, safely back at my master’s gates, I knew the truth. It is that truth, sir, which I am waiting for you to command me to tell.”
“Do you need my ‘command’ to tell it to me?” asked Marcus Aurelius, stroking his beard.
“I dare not tell it without, O Augustus,” answered Sollius.
The Emperor rose, crossed the chamber to a recess containing some marble shelves upon which stood a number of circular, silver containers of scrolls and rolled books. Bringing one back with him, he returned to his former place, and tipped its contents on to a small, round, marble table in front of him. The missing jewels poured out in a glittering cascade of rainbow-coloured beauty.
“I took them with the Empress’s permission,” he said, smiling, “to make a test of your powers, Sollius, before I employed you in a more serious matter. I seem to have deceived you very ill! I hope that Malvus and Constans were not too rough with you. But I had to test your courage as well as your wits. I am satisfied. Sabinus, will you lend me this clever slave for as long as I need his quick brain?”
“Ah, Augustus,” cried Sabinus, bowing and self-important – it might have been he who had unravelled the little mystery and not Sollius! – “all that I have is at your command.”
“But I ask only for your Sollius,” laughed the Emperor. “I have great need of him. If you will leave him behind you, Sabinus, I will tell him, now, at once, everything that is known about these thefts from the Treasury, and then he can set to work on a real mystery!”
EPISODE II
THE TREASURY THEFTS
The vaults under the ancient Temple of Saturn, which housed the imperial treasury at Rome, were vast, dark, and very like those of a prison. Sollius shuddered involuntarily as he was led down into them, though he was there at the Emperor’s command to investigate the thefts which had so mysteriously been taking place, and though he was in the company, and under the protection, of Alexias, the Emperor’s favourite freedman, and of Decius, a centurion of the Prætorians, who had been assigned as his official bodyguard during his enquiries. He had himself asked for Decius, whom he had met when looking for the supposedly stolen jewels of the Empress Faustina, and to whom he had taken a liking, though he was aware that the man regarded him with a superior and only half-tolerant contempt. Sollius sighed; to the centurion, he knew, he was only an elderly slave. At the moment, however, the Emperor’s commission had given him a certain authority to which even the Prætorian would have to bow – and the treasury officials no less.
Gennadius, the chief clerk to the treasury, was accompanying them, a middle-aged, burly man, though somewhat round-shouldered from his avocation. He was of full citizenship, being the son of a freedman, and an official and civil servant of long standing, proud of his position, haughty and pompous to his inferiors, but servile enough where servility might possibly advantage him.
Sollius and he had exchanged searching glances on their introduction by Alexias, and if the chief clerk had made less of the slave than the slave of the chief clerk, that was only because the men possessed different attributes. Each in his sphere was probably equally clever, and that at least was spontaneously recognized by both. Sollius had eyed the other a second time, while Gennadius and Alexias had whispered for a moment or so apart, and he had wondered whether behind the mask of departmental acquiescence in the slave’s investigations there had been any touch of personal apprehension. But he had seen nothing in the man’s face or manner to suggest it.
Gennadius broke off his brief whispering with Alexias, and turned more graciously to the slave detective than when he had first greeted him.
“I hear much praise of you,” he said “But the Emperor, I suppose,” he went on smilingly, “would not employ you in this most important task if you were not the right man for it. Come!”
So saying, he had led the way down worn and winding steps into the vast, underground passages. Decius the centurion was carrying a torch, by the flaring light of which their descent was sufficiently illuminated.
“Ask whatever you will,” said Gennadius, “and I will answer with truth.”
He was still gracious towards the slave, and evidently filled with more curiosity than his habitual pompous pride could easily keep subdued.
They came to an iron grille which sealed off a huge section of the temple’s vaults. Its inset gate was both locked and chained. This Gennadius importantly opened, and a stridence of harsh, unoiled metal echoed hollowly about; then, as soon as all had passed through, he relocked and rechained it with the same ceremony.
“We oil the lock and the hinges but rarely,” he said, turning to Sollius. “It cannot, as you heard, be opened silently – and therefore not secretly. You approve of my simple precaution?”
Sollius bowed without speaking. His eyes were beginning to be busy. One fact he had already noted: the key to the gate was itself chained to the person of the chief clerk.
“Does the key ever leave your posses
sion?” he asked abruptly. “Who has it when you sleep?”
Gennadius smiled complacently, and answered as though to a child. Many spoke to Sollius as though to a child – and repented of it afterwards.
“No one unlocks this gate but myself,” he answered. “I have no deputy. At night the key hangs in my chamber on a nail at the head of my couch. It could not be reached without waking me.”
(“Unless,” thought Sollius, “you were drugged in your drink at supper!”)
“And when you go on leave?” he enquired aloud.
“Then I hand it to the Emperor himself, and he appoints a guardian for it. But I have not been on leave during the period of the thefts,” replied Gennadius, as if pleased at being able to make the task of Sollius more and more difficult. “This way,” he went on, and led them down a passage which dripped with moisture in both roof and walls. But the chamber into which finally they passed was itself dry enough and of considerable extent. It was, thought Sollius, like a great wine-cellar, with deep bins of bronze along three of its sides.
At one corner, within a small niche of dusty marble, stood a tutelary statuette in silver, but stained and tarnished from lack of proper care. It was a delicate work of art, and Sollius, in the lifted light of the torch, stared upon it with appreciation. He recognized it for a figure of the young, dead Verus, once the Emperor’s much-loved colleague, though unworthy of his affection.
“It was set yonder a year ago,” commented Gennadius, “by the Augustus in person. As a tutelary image,” he added, with a slight cough, “it has brought us but little luck!”
“Why set it here?” asked Sollius curiously.
“Verus loved jewels, and came here often to inspect the hoard of centuries. We never left him alone with them,” added Gennadius with a dry smile. “It seemed right to the Augustus to make his dead spirit their guardian.”
Sollius smiled, and lost interest.
“You can set the torch in the iron ring yonder,” Gennadius directed the centurion.
So disposed, the torch illuminated the whole chamber with vivid crimson, and there being no draught, the flame burned with a calm glow.
“It is from here,” announced Gennadius, “that the money and jewels are missing. But I must explain. This is not the section of the treasury in which the current money for the business of the State is stored; it is hardly ever entered by way of business, and is really a kind of museum of money, though the value of what is stored here transcends that of the current coin of the Empire. This section holds the tribute of subject peoples for generations; some of it even from the days of the Republic. It is all, of course, negotiable; especially the naked gold and the raw silver. I mean, the thief could sell at a great profit what he has stolen.”
“How great,” asked Sollius, “do you reckon the loss to the treasury from these thefts?”
Gennadius mentioned a sum so large that Sollius could scarcely believe his ears, but he had no doubt of the truth of the statement. A smaller sum would not so seriously have perturbed the philosophic Emperor, and that Marcus Aurelius was seriously perturbed had been very plain both in the accents of his voice and in the troubled weariness of his heavily lidded eyes when giving Sollius his instructions.
“How many thefts have there been?”
“As far as we know: two.”
“How were they discovered?”
“We take a periodic inventory,” answered Gennadius. “Each of these bronze containers is filled with either gold, silver or jewels. You can see for yourself at a glance. Some of the jewels are of fabulous value. The third container on the wall to your left, and the seventh on the wall to your right, are empty. The others are full and untouched. When I came down to make the inventory two months ago, I saw at once that a container – that on your left – which had held a most valuable collection of eastern jewellery, some of it said to be part of the spoils brought back to Rome by Pompeius the Great, was empty. That was the first that we knew of any theft, and when it had taken place we had no means of knowing. The lock seemed not to have been forced, nor the chain broken; everything at the grille was as it should have been. We could none of us understand it. But the jewels certainly had vanished.”
“And the second theft?” asked Sollius. “You said, I think, that there have been two thefts?”
“That is so,” responded the chief clerk. “The very next day, on descending to superintend the fixing of a new chain and a new lock, so that if a key had been made to fit the old lock it should be found useless by the thief, I went again to examine the empty container. On looking round, I discovered, to my utter consternation, that a second container – that on your right – was empty, too. It had held bars of Parthian gold. Not one was left!”
“And the lock and the chain were again apparently undisturbed?” asked Sollius.
“There was not a sign of the iron grille having been forced in any way,” answered Gennadius, throwing up his hands. “It is an incredible thing!”
“It is one matter to break through the grille,” murmured Sollius thoughtfully, “and it is another to carry the stuff away. The gold, at least, would be heavy.”
“Very heavy,” agreed Gennadius. “But the jewels would be fairly easily borne off in a sack – at most in two sacks.”
“More than one man would seem to be necessary for either operation,” said Sollius, stroking his chin, and Gennadius nodded.
“Yet we have nobody whom we can even suspect,” the chief clerk muttered in accents of despair. “My assistants are picked men; I would charge none of them. I trust them all.”
“Have any been recently appointed?” enquired the slave.
“Not one. All are old and well-tried officials,” was the answer. “Responsibility calls for honest men, and honesty here is the very condition of service. It must be.”
“Are there any outside servants who should be considered more carefully? Some new doorkeeper, or porter?” Sollius asked.
“All are trusty men – most of them former gladiators,” replied Gennadius, “and each is of long service. It is really a complete mystery,” he sighed. “I have done my best to unravel it. But when nothing points in any way to a possible culprit, where can we begin? I do not wish to discourage you – the gods forbid! – but I have little hope of your succeeding where I, and Alexias here, have so completely failed. Still, Alexias says that you astonished the Augustus by your astuteness in another matter, so I shall watch you with – ahem! – interest, intense and immense interest, Sollius. That is your name?”
Sollius wasted no time in answering an unnecessary question, but went across to each of the two empty bronze coffers – for such they were – and examined them briefly in turn.
“There is nothing for me here,” he said with a sigh. “The cleverest hunter cannot follow a spoor that does not exist.”
“You give up – so soon?” asked Gennadius, his mouth agape.
“Not so,” replied Sollius, smiling, “but I must begin elsewhere. You all began here – and got nowhere. Had there been a clue in these vaults you would, I am sure, have found it. The clues, therefore, are not to be found where the jewels and gold were stolen, but in some other place. It is that other place which I must find, and then work backwards to establish the means, and forwards to discover the user of the means, the thief. Perhaps I shall travel in a circle, and forwards and backwards will meet.”
He turned away, and strode back towards the grille. The centurion took the torch from the ring, and moved behind him like a shadow which itself cast another shadow, and Alexias and Gennadius, after exchanging puzzled and slightly contemptuous glances, followed. Arrived at the grille, Sollius paused while Gennadius began the business of unlocking and unchaining. Suddenly the slave snatched the torch from the Prætorian, and held it high above his head. The roof of the vault sent back wisps of reek and smoke, while the bars of the grille seemed to run drippingly with fiery blood as Sollius slowly waved the torch searchingly about along the grille’s iron face. Then, w
ith a grunt, he returned the torch to Decius, and the gate being now open, stepped through into the passage beyond.
“Tell me,” he said to Gennadius, who had stepped through before him, “what are the formalities by which a man may reach as far as this grille? To pass beyond has its special difficulty, as I have seen; but how easy is it for one to reach to this side of it, even if not through to the other side?”
The chief clerk gave him a shrewd, approving glance.
“The treasury office is above, in the temple. The only way down to these vaults is by the steps by which we descended and are now returning. They are perpetually guarded by soldiers at the top, as you saw when we passed through their watch. The door to these passages is never left for an instant. It would need a full cohort to force a way down. But – ”
He paused, looked about him, took Sollius by the arm, and led him aside.
“It is said – it is but rumour – that there is a secret way down to other vaults from behind the altar of the temple itself,” he whispered. “I speak not of my own knowledge. If such a way exists, it will be known only to the priest of Saturn. Peace! – do not interrupt. As I was about to explain: this secret way down would still not lead behind the grille. There is no other way in to the vaults of the treasury except through the grille. Every inch of the walls has been most carefully examined.”
“Has the priest of Saturn been interrogated?” asked Sollius.
“By the Emperor himself – to no purpose. He knows nothing.”
“You mean: he says that he knows nothing.”
“I would take whatever he says to be true,” answered Gennadius. “He is an elderly and most reputable person, learned, and of high family. I freely admit as much, though I dislike him – for his pride. We are not on speaking terms.”
