And perhaps while visiting Dr. Bacall, Lowe might see Hadley again. After the way she’d left him at the train station, it might be in his best interest to avoid the woman. Why he was still thinking about her, he didn’t understand.
The train company delivered his luggage early that morning. He looted it for gifts he’d brought back from Egypt before dressing in a freshly pressed suit and tie—possibly the cleanest clothes he’d worn in months. But old habits die hard, so he tucked his pants into knee-high brown leather boots and skipped the suspenders, opting for a belt. More comfortable, and it gave him something on which to anchor his curved dagger. He’d never admit it to Winter, but after the thugs with the guns in Salt Lake City, he wasn’t exactly champing at the bit to march around the city unprotected. So he checked that his short coat covered the weapon and headed out.
“Oh, Lulu baby,” he cooed to the poppy red Indian motorcycle gleaming in the late morning sunlight. God, he’d missed her. Conspicuous, yes, but also small and nimble; she could fit into places a big car couldn’t.
He adjusted the fuel petcock and chock, and with one good kick-start, the engine rumbled to life. Beautiful. After tugging down the brim of his favorite brown herringbone flatcap, he maneuvered around Winter’s limo and sped out of the gate. Sweet freedom! Everything disappeared but Lulu’s weight beneath him and the road ahead.
The ride reacquainted him with the city’s steep hills and the sweeping views of the sparkling Bay, an oasis after the prison sentence he’d served digging under Egypt’s blistering sun. He was home, and he wasn’t going to leave. Ever. He repeated this promise to familiar buildings as he passed until he’d crisscrossed his way through downtown.
No one seemed to be dogging his path, so he stopped at his favorite barbershop to rid himself of the itchy whiskers and have his mop of sun-bleached blond curls trimmed and pomaded back into manageable waves. Astrid would stop complaining now.
Feeling lighter, he zigzagged up through southwestern Pacific Heights past the old Laurel Hill Cemetery grounds to Golden Gate Park. The de Young Museum sat on green lawns and a palm-lined concourse. Throngs of people soaked up sunshine in front of the building’s Spanish Plateresque facade. He zipped around the side road to the administrative offices.
Austere wood paneling and a pretty strawberry-haired receptionist greeted him.
“Why, hello,” she said, flashing a dazzling smile as she chewed a piece of gum. “How may I help you, sir?”
“Mr. Magnusson to see Dr. Bacall.” He handed her a business card and waited while she excused herself to announce his arrival. A few minutes later, she returned to lead him down a narrow hall past several closed doors to one of the bigger offices in the back.
Book-heavy shelves and numbered boxes lined the walls of the musty room, and paperwork collected on a corner conference table. Dust motes hung suspended in a slice of sunlight framing a thin, elderly man slumped behind a desk. More than elderly—on death’s door. The man looked as if he were minutes away from drying up and blowing out the window.
“Dr. Bacall . . .” the redhead prompted.
“Lowe Magnusson?” the man answered. His head turned in Lowe’s direction, but his eyes didn’t see him. They were eerily blank. Albino white—no iris and barely a trace of pupil.
He was blind.
Good lord. What the hell had happened to Archibald Bacall?
Lowe cleared his throat. “Ah, yes, sir. It’s good to meet you.”
“Come in, come in. I have trouble moving around these days, so you’ll have to forgive me.” He lifted his head and spoke to the receptionist. “Miss Tilly, can you show him a chair, then close the door, please? This is a private meeting. No interruptions.”
As the door snicked shut behind him, Lowe removed his cap and studied the old man. Sagging, mottled skin. Frail bones. Balding. Liver spots. He’d seen fairly recent photographs of the man in archaeology publications—he’d had a head full of hair and didn’t look a day over fifty.
“It’s good to finally meet you after all our correspondence,” Bacall said in a half-British, half-American transatlantic accent. The one Hadley shared. If Lowe remembered correctly, Bacall was from some titled English family or another—he’d married the gold rush heiress after moving here from across the pond.
“You, as well.”
Could the man see him at all? Anything? Lowe waved his hand in the air. Bacall stared vacantly toward the back of the room.
“Quite a nest you stumbled upon outside the Philae temple,” the old man said. “Hard to believe it’s attracted so many scholars and tourists over the last couple of decades and no one noticed the sunken entrance.”
Lowe peeled off his driving gloves and stuffed them in his coat pockets. “Just happened to decipher a code on the temple walls that led me to the secret room. Stroke of luck, really.”
“I don’t believe in luck. I think you’re damn good at solving puzzles and finding things. Good scholars are a dime a dozen. In fact, we’ve got a dozen of them in these offices this afternoon. They can argue a theory and uncover new things sitting behind their desks, but they won’t get their hands dirty. An educated treasure hunter like you with sharp field skills and the brains to decode riddles? You’re a different breed altogether. An undervalued one.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Society snobs like Bacall didn’t have respect for men like Lowe. Maybe the old man was trying to butter him up to get a better price, hard to tell. His daughter had been much easier to read.
The telephone rang.
“I thought I told her no interruptions,” Bacall murmured. “Excuse me one moment.”
Lowe sat back and waited for the man to finish his call. A few seconds into it, a brief knock sounded from an inner door in the corner of the room, and the door swung open. A familiar willowy figure marched in lugging a stack of file folders up to her nose.
Dressed in a black pencil skirt and gray sweater, with a string of faceted black beads swinging down to her waist, Hadley looked more Casket Saleswoman than Wealthy Funeral Attendee today.
With a grunt, she lowered the files onto her father’s conference table and attempted to straighten the teetering stack. She stilled and lifted her chin as if she were scenting the air. Then both her head and the string of black beads swung in his direction.
He grinned. Hard to tell if she was surprised or disgusted by his presence, but whatever it was, her hand slipped on the stack of folders. Half the files slid sideways and toppled onto the floor, paper scattering like autumn leaves.
He jumped to his feet to help her. “Funny seeing you here,” he said in a low voice as he steadied the remaining folders threatening to fall. “Jumped any trains today?”
“Please don’t mention that in front of Father,” she whispered, looking over her shoulder to check that the man was still talking on the telephone.
“The jumping part, or the torn dress part, or the spending the night together part?”
“The part where we did anything other than meet briefly in the first-class dining car.”
“Oh, ho-ho! Someone lied to dear old Daddy, did she?”
She glared at him like she was seconds away from scratching out his eyeballs.
“You have my word,” he said, etching an invisible “X” over his heart.
“Which is worth less than a trapdoor on a lifeboat.”
“Ooaf!” He bent with her to scoop up paperwork. “I get the distinct impression you aren’t glad to see me again, Hadley.”
“You aren’t wrong, Lowe.”
Despite her dour attitude, if he didn’t know better, he’d think she was flirting with him. A strange little spark warmed his chest. “And to think, just yesterday morning I was waking up to the sight of your bed-mussed hair.”