When even Lucas remained blank, he added, “It also went by the name of Saint Anthony’s fire. Perhaps you have heard it called by that name.”
By that name, Lucas had.
“John Stuart Mill died of it,” the doctor added.
“Here?” Polly said with terror in her voice.
“In London, in the previous century. We’ll continue to do all that we can for Mr. Gregg, but if you’ll excuse me”—Crowley flipped the chart on his clipboard—“I have to complete my rounds now.”
“Actually, Doctor,” Lucas couldn’t resist saying, as the doctor paused impatiently at the door, “Mill was born in London, but he didn’t die there. He died in France.”
Then he draped a consoling arm around Polly, and they both turned their attention to her father. As Lucas’s thoughts raced ahead, trying to put together the shards of the puzzle he found himself confronted by, Polly reached out to take her father’s hand. Bandages concealed what Lucas could only surmise were partially amputated fingertips. She was just about to make contact when the head nurse, her hat as white and crisp as cardboard, bustled in.
“No, no, no,” she admonished her, brushing Polly’s hand aside and lowering the netting around the bed again. “No touching. You’ll both have to go now. Visiting hours were over at five-thirty.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
All that day, and now into the evening, Simone had been champing at the bit, waiting for the museum to close to the public so that she could join Professors Delaney and Athan in the conservation wing for the great unveiling.
There was just going to be one problem. Telling her father, who was sure to bridle at not being included.
She found him settled, as usual, in the darkest corner of the Yankee Doodle taproom in the basement of the Nassau Inn. The room took its name from the broad Norman Rockwell mural behind the bar, depicting a colonial soldier, feather in his cap, riding a scrawny pony through the streets. She didn’t know if her father actually preferred this quiet, candle-lit corner, not far from the hearth, or if the hotel was trying to keep him as much out of the sight of their lily-white, Anglo-Saxon guests as possible. Under his elbow rested a blue folder, weighted down by a copy of the Koran and a much depleted box of mentholated cough drops.
Simone slipped into the empty seat across the table and it was several seconds before he looked up from the book and registered her presence. “I was wondering where you’ve been.”
“I was wondering the same thing about you.”
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about me,” he said with a sly grin. “I was in the chapel, having a delightful conversation with Professor Einstein.”
Simone did not know if he was joking.
“It’s true. He gave me these cough drops,” he said, as if offering incontrovertible proof of the encounter.
“What did you talk about?”
“The weather. Our work. The universe.”
Simone would love to know more about it, and in much greater detail, but time was short, and her father was pushing the bread basket toward her.
“Let’s get you some dinner,” he said.
“Thanks, but I’m not hungry.”
“Nonsense. You have to eat.”
“I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“There’s that cough, for one thing.”
He brushed it aside.
“Or that maybe you were feeling abandoned here?”
“Abandoned? Me? Never. As long as I have my work, and a place to do it in — the library here is particularly fine, by the way — I have everything I need.”
Since they had arrived, Simone had been occupied with nailing down her temporary sinecure at the university, and she’d felt guilty about leaving him to his own devices from morning ’til night. But how could she have forgotten who he was — a man who could lose himself in a single book, not to mention a world-class, open-stack library, for hours on end?
“And my work on the papyri is going exceedingly well,” he confided, leaning forward. “I’ve translated enough of them to believe they contain the revelations we’ve been hoping for.”
She felt herself holding her breath. “What revelations?”
“That my reasons for hunting the tomb all these years were right.” He lowered his voice further. “I have long suspected, as you know, that it contains a benevolent power, one that might be used in this present world as a force for good.”
“Now would certainly be a good time for it.”
“But there’s a danger — what if that force is coupled, inexplicably, with a malevolent one?”
Simone looked deep into his dark eyes, alight with the fervor of his theory. “What if it’s impossible to release one,” he murmured, “without freeing the other?”
A waitress in colonial garb set a plate of sautéed broccoli and cauliflower down in front of her vegetarian father, and asked Simone if she would like a menu.
“No, thanks, I’m not staying.” His words were still echoing in her skull.
Flicking open his napkin, her father said, “After what I’ve just told you, you’re going to leave? Impossible.”
“Possible.”
“We have so much to discuss.”
“We’ll have to do it later. I have an appointment.” Now it would be even harder than she’d foreseen to tell him the rest.
“At this hour?” her father said, spearing a stalk of broccoli. “Where, and with whom?”
“A certain saint.”
He stopped, fork poised above his plate, and gave her a long look. “Do not be cryptic with me.”
“Professor Athan has decided to open the ossuary tonight.”
He dropped the fork onto the plate, dabbed his napkin at his lips, and said, “And when were you planning to tell me about this? Obviously, there are things I need to prepare.”
This confrontation was precisely what she had hoped to avoid, and why she had been reluctant to notify him in the first place. “You don’t need to prepare anything. I’ll take care of it all.”
“We are going to the museum?” he said, not hearing a word of what she’d just said. “Whether or not my worst suspicions are correct, there are precautions that must be taken.”
“The project is being kept under the tightest security, and only personnel okayed by the OSS are allowed to be present,” Simone said, placing a hand on top of his. “It’s a miracle I was able to worm my way in. I’m afraid I will have to go there alone.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head, “absolutely not. I won’t allow it.”
It reminded her of the time he had refused to let her go off on a motorcycle trip with a boy she’d met at school (though she had gone, anyway). “I’ll make sure no harm comes to anyone, or to the ossuary, for that matter.”
“What do you mean by anyone? Who besides Athan?”
“Professor Delaney, from geophysics, is the only other person allowed.”
“And I am not,” he said with disgust. “Do any of these people have any idea of what might be inside it?”
Simone dropped her eyes to the flickering candle flame. “Nothing other than the usual skeletal remains.”
“I thought not.” He withdrew his hand from beneath hers. “Is that because you are afraid to tell them? Afraid of what they might think of you if you did?”
The answer was yes, but she did not say it aloud. She didn’t have to.
“Don’t you think they should know?”
“Why?” she blurted out. “First of all, they’d never believe a word of it. And chances are, none of it is true, anyway.”
“Yes, there is always that possibility.” What hung in the air, however, was the rest of that thought — that it just might be. “If only we’d had the opportunity to open it in Cairo,” her father added, slapping the edge of the table in frustration. “We could have gone about this properly.”