Christopher Golden - The Nimble Man

Within the silent halls of the Boston Antiquities Museum the shadows were in motion. Red alarm sensors shone brightly but recorded nothing out of the ordinary. Only the nearly somnambulant passing of security guards disturbed the dust that eddied up on currents of air. Hidden cameras revealed only exhibits and artifacts in otherwise empty rooms.

Yet there was one room that was not empty.

The exhibit was Egyptian, devoted almost wholly to the Twelfth Dynasty. Though its collection of stone fragments, papyrus, masks, and sarcophagi might impress schoolchildren, to those educated in the area of antiquities the exhibit would have been wholly unremarkable. Or nearly so. Those who noticed anything at all out of place would likely have attributed it to simple human error, a curator who had made an honest mistake.

In one corner of the room Mr. Doyle thoughtfully stroked his thick mustache and admired a small sphinx. The piece had been unearthed at Katna millennia before and bore the name of a daughter of Ammenemes II, but the curators of the museum had badly mislabeled it. He shook his head and his heavy gray brows knitted with disapproval. If he had them there he would have given them a tongue-lashing for being so careless. Of course, on this night their carelessness had worked in his favor.

The moment he tore his attention away from the priceless sphinx, Doyle caught sight of the object that had drawn him here. With a grunt of satisfaction he crossed the room to a marble pedestal and peered through the thick glass enclosure atop it at the artifact inside. It was a crystal spider set inside a gold frame, perhaps five inches in length and four at the widest legspan. A small placard rested atop the enclosure.

Crystal Spider, circa 1995 B.C., discovered at Lisht, believed to have been a gift to the illegitimate pharaoh Nebtawyre Menthotope III during the "seven kingless years" preceding the Twelfth Dynasty.

"Well, well. Hello my little friend," Mr. Doyle rasped, standing a bit straighter and smoothing his greatcoat as though he was in the presence of respectable company. Which was not at all the case.

"So?" came a voice from a shadowy corner of the exhibit. "How did I do?"

He glanced in the direction of that voice. There was a large, ornate sarcophagus on display, and beside it several lighted glass enclosures that contained burial jars apparently associated with whomever had been put to rest within the sarcophagus. Eve stepped from amidst this tableau of death with grace and nonchalance, the same way she would walk into a bar or step onto a subway train. She wore crisply new blue jeans and a tight green turtleneck beneath a stylishly long brown suede coat. With her silken black hair and exotic features she was beautiful in a way only cruel things are. A tragedy, to be sure, for though Eve could be cruel she had so many other facets, so many better qualities.

They were old friends, these two, but it had been quite some time since they had seen one another. Doyle understood. He was just as guilty as Eve of letting their acquaintance grow fallow. With lives as busy — and as long — as they both led, the years could go by with the deceptive speed of clouds in the sky. When each one was so much like the last, it was easy to lose count.

As always, they were becoming reacquainted in a time of crisis. It was the nature of their friendship. He had contacted Eve for assistance and her efforts had produced results in less than a day. He had located her on the island of Mykonos. Fourteen hours later she had knocked on the door of his sprawling townhouse on Beacon Hill with the news that led them here.

Doyle smiled indulgently at her, as he would have at a daughter of whom he was particularly proud. "How did you do? Remarkably well, Eve. I've inquired all over the world in search of a Lemurian Spider." He turned his focus back upon his prize. "Bangladesh, Cyprus, Istanbul, Minsk. I confess to feeling more than a little foolish that you located one right here beneath my nose. And so quickly. How did you manage it?"

Eve strode across the room to join him, leather heels scuffing the floor. "We all have our specialties, Doyle. For instance, how did you get us in here without setting off any alarms? Without the guards noticing?"

A rare tremor of amusement passed through him. There had been so little humor or camaraderie in his life of late. Too many times in the past he had been betrayed by colleagues and friends, so that he had come to count on his enemies as far more reliable. Eve was one exception. There were others, but he had not seen most of them for a very, very long time.

With a mischievous smile he touched the enclosure around the spider and whispered a minor incantation. The glass turned to damp mist that fogged the air around their heads and warped the thin beam of red light that should have triggered an alarm the moment the enclosure had been removed. It did not. When the mist had dissipated, Mr. Doyle picked up the crystal spider and examined it more closely.

"As you say," he mused, "we all have our specialties."

Eve allowed herself an appreciative nod and then began to stride impatiently around the exhibit hall. It was typical of her.

"Relax, Eve. We're not leaving just yet." He shot her an admonishing glance. "If the whispers Dr. Graves has been hearing are correct, we don't have time for certain niceties. I'm not going to be able to take my new toy home to play with it."

He began to pry the crystal spider out of its golden frame.

"Hold on," Eve protested, hurrying to his side with a rasp of suede and denim. "Do you have to do that? You know how much I love the sparkly things. The spider would look nice on my mantel next to that Buddha with the clock in his belly."

He ignored her. It had grown warm in the museum in spite of the cool air blowing out of the vents, but Mr. Doyle had been a magician long enough to know the heat had nothing to do with the actual temperature. His face felt flush and the gold softened in his fingers, peeling away like hot wax.

"Fine," Eve sighed. "This thing wasn't easy to find. Just doesn't seem right to ruin it. How many bits and pieces of flea market junk do you think survived from Lemuria?"

Doyle sniffed in contempt. "More than you realize. I doubt there's a major museum in the world that doesn't have at least one Lemurian piece misclassified as Egyptian or Greek or Etruscan, even Japanese. It's one of the great failings of the human mind. One of our primary irrationalities. We see the improbable and call it impossible, and would rather accept convenient untruths than seek out unpopular solutions."

"Do you have to be such an elitist asshole about everything?"

The man flinched and, crystal spider in his hands, turned to glare at her. They were allies and sometimes friends and he was fond of Eve, but there were times when her behavior puzzled him. Other times it reminded him that though he had put a great deal of distance between himself and the odd primness of the era of his birth, he had not entirely escaped it.

"No," he replied at last, "just about some things. And most certainly about history and archaeology. I would think you of all people would understand."

Her eyes narrowed and a hint of fury glimmered in them a moment, and then passed. She sighed. "You are the most aggravating man."

Mr. Doyle cleared his throat, back rigid, and nodded once. "Yes. I believe I am." Then he bent to his task once more. The job was nearly done and it took him only another minute or so before he had removed the gold entirely from the elegantly designed crystal spider. It was a marvel from an age far more distant than anyone would have guessed.

"So are you going to tell me how this is going to help us find your dead sorcerer friend?"