He swung the top of the chest shut and shot a glance up at the ceiling, poised to leap left or right at the first sign of motion.
But the motion, when it came, came from the wall beside the chest. With a loud grinding noise, two of the giant stone blocks slowly rotated as one until they sat perpendicular to their original position. The opening revealed a chamber on the other side.
“I don’t believe it,” Sammi said. “How could it possibly have known what you put in . . . ?”
“Maybe it didn’t. Maybe anything the same weight would have worked.”
She looked around at the speared skeletons on the ground. “Somehow I doubt it.”
“Well, then you might want to get over here, before this thing changes its mind.”
He stepped forward, cautiously watching the holes in the ceiling as he passed through the opening—but no spears came.
Sammi followed carefully in his footsteps, not deviating from his path by so much as an inch. As she reached the rotated wall, the top of the chest slowly and silently rose. She looked inside. “The gun’s still there,” she said. She reached in to get it.
“Don’t!” Gabriel shouted—but she lifted the Colt out of the chest without any ill effect.
She held the gun out to him. “What—do you think you are the only one permitted to take risks?” she said. “Besides, it wasn’t all that much of a risk. Napoleon was a tyrant, but he was not a thief. He might take another man’s country—but not his property.”
Gabriel took the Colt and returned it to his holster. “Thank you. I can tell you, I feel a lot safer with this old friend on my hip.”
“Don’t get too comfortable,” Sammi said. “Look.”
She directed her flashlight’s beam toward the ground. In the previous room there had been half a dozen human skeletons. Here, the entire floor was littered with them, many of them horribly contorted, their bony hands clutching at their skeletal throats. Here, circular holes did not just cover the ceiling, they lined the walls and floor as well. And at the far end of the chamber was a metal cage containing a stone tablet. The tablet was covered from top to bottom with minute carvings and inscriptions.
The Second Stone.
Chapter 22
The relic sat on the rotted remnants of a brown cloth. It was only a fraction the size of the Rosetta Stone but its surface was covered with a similar profusion of minuscule writing, rows of angular Greek characters alternating with stretches of hieroglyphics. It was just as Amun had described, and as Louis’s secretary had sketched in the document Gabriel had seen.
But just at the moment it wasn’t the main thing commanding their attention.
“What do you think killed them?” Sammi said, playing her light over the skeletons scattered across the ground.
“Not spears this time,” Gabriel said. “I’m guessing poison. Probably gas.” He leaned forward gingerly and bent to examine one of the holes in the wall nearest to them. There was a dark, solid residue around the edges. With a bit of effort he was able to scrape some of the residue off with his fingernail. He sniffed it and grimaced.
“Sulfur dioxide,” he said. “Not the strongest poison, but enough of it in a closed space will kill you.”
Sammi nodded. “There were stories that Napoleon used sulfur dioxide to put down slave rebellions in Haiti and Guadeloupe. Supposedly he had gas chambers built into the holds of slave ships.”
“Charming,” Gabriel said. “I’m liking him more and more.”
He put down his rucksack and gestured for Sammi to take hers off as well. Then he placed the bags just inside the entrance, where they’d be in the way if the wall started to rotate closed.
Carefully, they picked their way across the room, avoiding stepping on any of the skeletons.
The cage at the far end would have been large enough to hold a large dog, with bars spaced close enough to one another to prevent the Stone from being taken out, even sideways. There was a door on the front of the cage with a metal pedestal beside it, and at the top of the pedestal was a basin. There was what looked like a drain in the center of the basin—but no sign of any source of liquid. Beside the drain were some old coins.
Looking back at the cage, Gabriel saw that there was no handle on the door and no lock—at least no conventional lock.
“The basin must contain the mechanism to open the door,” he said.
“Maybe you have to put something in it,” Sammi said, “like with the chest outside.”
“Not coins, apparently.” He picked out the three tarnished specimens from the bottom of the basin. They were Italian lire dating back seventy-five years. “At least not Italian ones.”
“I don’t suppose the gun would work again,” she said.
“Not likely,” Gabriel said. “And I don’t think we’d get a second chance. I assume putting the wrong thing in triggers the gas.”
He shined his light on the wall behind the cage. Once again there was an inscription:
Lui seul qui contracte un contrat français peut continuer.
“ ‘Only he who enters into a French legal contract may proceed,’ ” Sammi translated.
“Maybe you’d better tell me a bit more about Book Three,” Gabriel said.
She repeated the words of the inscription to herself. “Basically it goes into detail about how property can be acquired: succession, wills, loans, mortgages, even marriage—and all of these involve contracts.”
“And here we are, trying to acquire some property,” he said, gesturing toward the cage. “What does it say about entering into a contract?”
She closed her eyes. “I’m trying to remember. I took a course on the Code, but that was years ago.”
He bounced the coins in his palm. “Probably does involve money.”
“Not necessarily,” Sammi said. “There does not need to be consideration for a contract to exist under Napoleon’s code—a ‘meeting of the minds’ or ‘agreement of the wills’ is sufficient. If I agree to sell something and you agree to buy it, that’s a binding legal contract even if no money has changed hands.”
“But if you’re not here to agree,” Gabriel said. “Say, because you died two hundred years ago. If I wanted to enter into a contract with you then . . . ?”
“Yes, there might need to be consideration exchanged in that case. As a demonstration of good faith.”
“A demonstration of good faith,” Gabriel said. “Or else there’s no contract. So basically if we want to get the Stone out, we need to put up some money. And not lire, because a French legal contract calls for good French money.” He cast a glance back toward the other room. “There’s probably some back there. The problem is, we can’t take it without getting skewered.”
Sammi started unbuttoning her shirt.
“What are you doing?” Gabriel said.
She lifted the chain that hung between her breasts, the one she’d shown him over dinner in Nice. At first he’d thought the object on the end was a medallion—but she’d explained it was a single French franc.
A French franc from 1800.
“Of course,” Gabriel said, his eyes sparking. But then he hesitated. “But are you sure? You said your mother gave it to you—”
“You have a better idea?” Sammi said. “I didn’t think so.” She unclipped the circular setting the coin was mounted in from the chain and with some effort popped the coin out. She laid it in his palm and closed his fingers over it.
“One franc,” he said. “I wonder if it’s enough.”
“To buy a priceless artifact, no,” she said. “But to create a binding legal contract, yes.”
He nodded. It made sense—as much as any of this made sense.
He held the franc over the hole in the pedestal. Even with his flashlight aimed directly down, he could see nothing inside except blackness. “Maybe you should wait in the other room—”