William Rabkin - A Fatal Frame of Mind

“Uh-huh,” Gus said.

“Look at the sphinxes,” Polidori said. “They should be guarding the obelisk, but instead they seem to be looking at it. That’s because they were installed backward-they turn away!”

“Which would mean nothing, unless you know that the golden cherubim on the biblical Mercy Seat are actually believed to be sphinxes,” Kitteredge said. “This has to be the place.”

“It all seems to fit,” Shawn said. “Except for one thing. What about the eye?”

Polidori stepped up to the obelisk and rapped on the marble pedestal it sat on. “In here,” he said. “The eye of the needle. It has to be.”

“When the obelisk was erected, they put a time capsule in the base,” Kitteredge said. “It contained all the usual things you might find in such a container-the day’s newspapers, a Bible, a portrait of Queen Victoria.”

“And the sword of King Arthur?” Gus said.

“You’d think someone would have noticed,” Shawn said.

“When Rossetti’s wife, Lizzie, died, he placed the manuscripts of his most recent poems in the casket with her,” Kitteredge said. “Several years later he was desperate for money, and his only prospect was the publication of those poems. So he sneaked into the graveyard in the middle of the night, dug up his wife’s grave, and took the papers back.”

“Is it such a stretch to believe he and Morris would repeat that stunt with the sword?” Polidori said.

“If you’ve stretched things this far, why not?” Shawn said. “So what do we do next? Steal the pillar?”

“This is the point at which our destinies diverge,” Polidori said. “Professor Kitteredge, Chip, and I are going to wait here until long after dark, at which time we will attempt to find the mechanism to open the time capsule. I’m afraid that you will be going with Leonard to a slightly less scenic spot.”

For the first time since they had left the warehouse, Kitteredge seemed to be aware of the reality of the situation. “There’s no reason for that,” he pleaded. “Let them stay-at least until they see the sword.”

“You can describe it to them when you see them in heaven,” Polidori said. “Leonard.”

Leonard took the van keys out of Chip’s outstretched hand and dropped them in his pocket, then grabbed Shawn’s arm with one hand and Gus’ with the other.

“I have a better idea,” Shawn said. “Why don’t you just have Leonard hit us over the head and dump us into the river right here?”

“Thanks for the suggestion, but I’d prefer not to bring the police down to this particular spot,” Polidori said.

“What police?” Shawn said. “Put rocks in our pockets; no one will ever know.”

“Except all the tourists lined up for the boat tour below,” Chip said. “Nice try.”

“Then let Chip take us,” Shawn said. “Leonard can stay here.”

“Yeah,” Leonard said. “I’d like to see the sword.”

“Chip’s been my partner in this for years,” Polidori said. “He deserves to be here when we retrieve it.”

Leonard looked unhappy. He didn’t move.

“It’s okay, Leonard,” Shawn said soothingly. “I’m sure they’ll still be here when you get back. It’s not like they’re going to wait here until you’ve gone, and then make a dash for the real hiding place.”

Gus felt Leonard’s grip loosen on his arm a little. “Sure-they already told you there’s no way the sword’s at the London Eye,” Gus said. “They wouldn’t lie about something like that.”

“Not to you, Leonard,” Shawn said. “You know how much they think of you.”

For a second, no one moved. Then Leonard let go of Shawn and Gus. His hand dug in a pocket and came out with a pistol. He leveled it at Chip.

“Chip takes them,” Leonard growled. “I wait for the sword.”

“Put that away, you fool,” Polidori hissed. “Don’t you realize where you are?”

“I’m not up front with the smart guys. I know that,” Leonard said.

“That’s because you’re not smart,” Chip snapped. “Now put that gun back in your pocket.”

“It’s a little too heavy,” Leonard said. “Stretches out the fabric. Maybe if I lightened it a little. Just by the weight of a couple of bullets.”

He kept the gun and his gaze aimed straight at Chip. Which meant he didn’t see Polidori reaching into his own pocket and pulling out his own pistol.

“I told you to put that away,” Polidori said. “I should kill you right here. But there’s no more time. We have to move-now!”

Chip pushed past Leonard’s gun and grabbed Gus’ arm.

“What’s going on?” Gus whispered to Shawn as Chip started to pull him away. “What happened?”

“Nothing yet,” Shawn said. “But there’s a funny thing about England. It’s-”

Something hit Gus in the back and knocked him to the ground. He threw out his hands to protect his face as he fell, landing hard on his palms. He tried to turn around to see what had struck him, but before he could move, someone grabbed his wrists and whipped plastic cuffs around them. He lifted his head, but all he could see was a swarm of black uniforms and yellow Windbreakers.

“-the biggest surveillance state in the world,” Shawn said as he was cuffed. “You can’t go anywhere in public without the police seeing you.”

If it had occurred just a day earlier, Gus would have thought the flight back to the States was the worst thing that had ever happened to him. Handcuffed to his seat, accompanied by a uniformed U.S. marshal, he knew that everyone who walked by his row was staring at him and wondering what he had done. But compared to the ride in Polidori’s van, this was better than the luxury flight in Flaxman Low’s private jet.

And spending ten hours flying back to Santa Barbara was definitely preferable to ten years in an English jail, which was what their arresting officer had originally threatened them with. That threat began to ease when it became obvious that neither they nor Kitteredge was carrying a gun, and that there seemed to be little with which to charge them. When a routine search of their names turned up the California warrants, the English government was only too happy to turn them over to American officials.

That wasn’t the case with the Polidoris. They would be going away for a long time, especially once the police started to inventory what turned out to be multiple warehouses of stolen antiquities. It seemed that a certain division of Scotland Yard had long been suspicious of Polidori and Son Antiques, and now planned to devote substantial resources to uncovering every illegal transaction in the firm’s long history. That task would prove to be substantially easier once Leonard started talking about everything he’d been involved with, starting with directions to the barn containing Malko’s body.

“Do you realize what this means?” Gus had said to Shawn while they sat in a holding cell waiting for the marshal to transport them to the airport. “They’re going to break up the entire Cabal.”

Shawn stared at him. “Maybe you want to join Professor Kitteredge in the other cell,” he said. “This one is reserved for sane people.”

“What?” Gus said. “You can’t still be denying the Cabal exists. They nearly killed us.”

“An antiques dealer nearly killed us,” Shawn said. “Which, by the way, is nothing to brag about if you happen to tell this story to that blond sales rep at next year’s Christmas party.”

“He wasn’t just an antiques dealer,” Gus said. “He’d spent his life searching for the sword, just like Kitteredge said.”

“Yes, just like Kitteredge said,” Shawn agreed. “Because that’s where Polidori heard about it. Or, more precisely, his son heard about it from Kitteredge in class. And Chip told Daddy. And the hunt was on.”