Оливер Блик - The Highbinders

“I thought you might,” I said. “And then there’s another persistent rumor that keeps cropping up about something called the Sword of St. Louis.”

I watched him as I spun my tale. His lips had twisted themselves into what I took to be a sneer until I got to the Sword of St. Louis. Then they clamped themselves down into a line so tightly closed that I thought I might have to pry it open.

But after a moment he sipped his tea and popped another cookie into his mouth. “You are off on the wrong track, young man. Indeed you are.”

“How?”

“The Infante Fernando had no crown. I’ll spare you the details, but if you’d done any research at all, you’d know that. There was no crown.”

“All right,” I said.

“As for the Cid having a shield of silver and gold, that’s utter rot. He was a fighting man and an excellent one. He certainly wouldn’t have burdened himself with an overly elaborate shield. Where could you have heard such rubbish?”

“Around,” I said. “What about the Sword of St. Louis? Is that rubbish, too?”

Those thin lips clamped themselves together again. He had wet gray eyes, as nervous as quicksilver, and they darted around the room as though looking for the escape hatch until they finally lit on something — something reassuring, I thought, a Basilard dagger perhaps.

“It was a bastard sword,” he said in a low voice.

“A what?”

“A bastard sword. That meant that it had a hand-and-a-half hilt. One could wield it with one hand or both, if the action called for it. Fine steel, too, it was. Not razor sharp, of course; none of them was, but it took an edge that can’t be matched on any of today’s knives.”

“So it existed,” I said.

“Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. There’s no doubt of that. It’s far too well authenticated.”

“Including the diamond as big as an egg in the pommel?”

His eyes started skittering around the room again. “So you’ve heard that, have you?” he said, not looking at me.

“I’ve heard.”

“Rock crystal most likely, if that. Swords were damned democratic things in medieval times. There was a brotherhood then among knights which made the simplest of them the equal of kings. A knight was as good as his sword and not many indulged themselves in fancy trimmings.”

“So you don’t believe there was a diamond?”

“If Louis had had a diamond as large as you claim, he probably would have used it to help finance his Crusades.”

“Maybe it was his mad money,” I said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“His emergency fund. Maybe he kept it tucked away in the hilt of his sword.”

Christenberry tried on his yellow smile again. He didn’t wear it well. “I suppose we’ll never find out though, will we?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I hear that the thing’s turned up here in London.”

“Impossible,” he said. “I would have heard.”

“That’s what I thought. I heard that it went for twelve-and-six in a shop on Shaftesbury Avenue back in thirty-nine and that the present owner just recently found out what he had.”

“Twelve-and-six,” the old man whispered. “My God, twelve-and-six.”

“How much do you think it would be worth now?” I said. “With the diamond.”

He shook his head. “Priceless,” he said.

“Nothing’s priceless, Doctor Christenberry. The Rosetta Stone’s only insured for a million pounds.”

He shrugged. He wasn’t really listening to me. He was thinking of the bargain that had gone for twelve-and-six on Shaftesbury Avenue in 1939. “Two million pounds,” he said. “Three million perhaps. The French would pay three million. Twelve-and-six! Oh, dear God, think of it. Twelve-and-six. They didn’t tell me that.” He looked up sharply to see if I had heard.

“How much did they pay you?” I said.

“Who?”

“I don’t know who. But how much did they pay you to authenticate it?”

His wet eyes went roaming again. “I’m a poor man. The world pays you nothing while you work and then it pensions you off with a pittance and oh, God, I get so hungry sometimes why can’t I just die.” He was starting to snuffle. He pulled at his nose a couple of times. It was the only unwrinkled spot on his face except his eyes, and if they had seemed wet before, they were flooded now.

“They wanted you to authenticate the sword, didn’t they?” I said.

“Yes,” he said between snuffles.

“Did you?”

He waved an angry arm. “I don’t have the proper equipment anymore. I sold it. I told them that. They said they’d be satisfied with just my opinion. They said I knew more about the sword than anybody else and God knows they were right. I spent years and years and a tidy sum ferreting out every scrap of information there was about the wretched thing. Years I spent and now you tell me that it went for twelve-and-six.” His voice rose. “I could have been there! I could have been there in Shaftesbury Avenue that very day. Oh, God, why wasn’t it me?”

“And was it what they thought it was?” I said.

Some hiccups interrupted his snuffles. But he nodded anyway. Then he stretched out his hands. “I held it right here — right in these very hands.”

“How much did they pay you?”

The hiccups and snuffles died away. “My pension. They paid me a sum equal to my pension for a year. Five hundred pounds. That’s what I have to starve on. Isn’t that a princely sum?”

I took out my wallet again. He watched me. I counted out five ten-pound notes onto the arm of my lumpy chair. He watched that, too.

“Who were they?” I said.

He licked his lips as though he could taste the ten-pound notes. “You’re going to give me that money, if I tell you?”

“That’s right.”

“They swore me to secrecy.”

I sighed, took the wallet out again, and added another ten-pound note to the pile.

“Was the diamond in the pommel?” I said.

He nodded.

“Who were they?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. They were two men. They wouldn’t tell me their names.”

“Young or old?”

“Younger than I — but getting on. In their sixties, I’d say.

“Did they look alike?”

He nodded. “They could have been brothers. One was harder looking than the other.”

“And you got a good look at the sword?”

“I spent two hours on it. Two lovely hours. It was in surprisingly good condition. Much better than I’d have expected.”

“Anything else about it? Anything unusual?”

He shook his head. “No, not really. Except on the hilt just below the pommel. I didn’t see it until I used the glass. It looked as if somebody had scratched his initials into it — into the gold.”

“Were the initials NN?”

He looked surprised. “Yes, they were. Now may I have my money?”

I rose and handed it to him. “Thank you, Doctor Christenberry. You’ve been a lot of help. I’ll find my way out.”

I don’t think he really heard me. He was already counting the money. I went through the door into the foyer and closed it. Then I opened and closed the door that led to the street, but I went back and pressed my ear against the thin panel of the foyer door. I didn’t have to wait. He was already dialing the phone.

“This is Christenberry,” he said. “He only just left. I told him what you told me to tell him. Now may I have my money?”

I slipped out the front door and walked up to Elgin Avenue, caught a taxi, gave the driver an address on Harley Street, and thought about what I had heard and overheard in the house at 99 Ashworth Road. As I thought about it, I decided that it may have been what I was supposed to have overheard.