“I shall return, Mr. Danforth,” the old man replied. “Please do not consider selling it to anyone else before you give me an opportunity to bid.” His eyes on Monty’s were steady and so dark as to be almost black. His expression was unreadable.
The child tugged on his hand and her small fingers seemed to tighten on his even further.
“The scroll is of great value,” the old man continued. “I hope you appreciate that?”
“No one else is aware of it yet,” Monty assured him. “It isn’t actually listed in the papers, and I only discovered it … maybe half an hour ago. May I ask how you heard it was there?”
The very faintest of smiles flickered on the old man’s face, and vanished again before Monty was sure whether it was amusement or something more like regret. “Many people know it is here,” he said very quietly. “They will come and offer you many things for it … money, but other things as well. Be very careful what you do with it, Mr. Danforth … very careful indeed. There is power in it you would be wise to leave.”
Again Monty felt the coldness brush by him again, touching him to the bone.
“What is it?” he said huskily.
The old man drew in his breath as if to answer him. The child tugged at his hand again, and he sighed and changed his mind. He looked steadily at Monty, and there was long experience and a knowledge of evil and of pain in his eyes.
“Be careful, Mr. Danforth. It is a dangerous responsibility you are about to take upon yourself. Perhaps you have no other honourable choice. That I understand. But it is a heavy weight. There is destruction and delusion in what you are about to pick up. Do nothing without great thought.”
Monty found himself gulping, swallowing as if there were something in his throat. “How do I contact you, Mr. Garrett?”
“You do not need to. I shall come back.” He shook the child’s hand off him impatiently and turned towards the door, pushing it open.
Monty followed him to the street entrance. He opened it and the old man walked through, the child on his heels. The street beyond was shadowed, the nearest lamp was apparently broken. When Monty looked again there was no one there.
Monty locked the door this time, not just the latch but the deadbolt as well, and went back to his room. He opened the tin again and took out the scroll. The vellum was soft to his fingers, almost warm. Was it as ancient as the old man had said? Aramaic? Perhaps from the time of Christ?
If that were so, then it could be any of a number of things, real or imagined. How did it come to be in the Greville estate? In their travels could they have found something like the Dead Sea Scrolls?
It was far more likely that they had been sold a fake. How difficult was it to make something of that nature? Or even to find an old scroll which might have been nothing more interesting than instructions to build a house, or lists of a cargo shipped from one port to another? Business writings abounded, just as domestic pottery far outweighed vases for ornament or the worship of gods.
He unrolled it on the table and weighed down both ends, putting it directly under the light. It was not very long, perhaps a thousand words or a little more. That was a lot for a cargo list, and there were no drawings or diagrams on it, so any kind of a plan seemed unlikely.
He peered at it, looking for patterns, repetitions, anything that would give him a clue as to what it was. It was the Hebrew alphabet, which he was vaguely familiar with, but Garrett had said it was Aramaic.
He really had very little idea of what he was doing, and no chance at all of actually reading it, yet he found it almost impossible to look away. Was this some passionate cry of the soul from the tumultuous times of Christ? An account of power and sacrifice, of agony and resurrection?
Or was it simply somebody’s laundry list which had chanced to survive, principally because nobody cared enough to steal it?
Monty’s imagination created pictures in his mind, men in long robes, sandals, dusty roads, whispers in the dark, blood and pain.
The light flickered and the shadows in the corners of the room moved, wavering and then righting themselves again. He half-expected someone to materialize out of the air, the darkness to come together, intensify and take form. Who could it be? Mephistopheles—to tempt an all too fragile Faust? With what? Forbidden knowledge?
“Don’t be so damn silly!” he said aloud. “It’s a power brown out! All you need to do is make sure your computer’s backed up!” He had always had a weird imagination, a sensitivity to the presence of evil. He told the most excellent ghost stories to the great entertainment of his friends. He was known for it, even loved. People liked to be given a frisson of fear, just enough to get the adrenalin going.
His best friend, Hank Savage, a pragmatic scientist, teased him about it, although even he conceded that evil was real, just not supernatural. No angels, no devils, just human beings, some with rather too much excitability and a tendency to blame others for their own faults. Who easier to blame than the devil?
Monty picked up the scroll and rolled it tight, the vellum soft under his fingertips. Perhaps it was not all that old after all. It certainly wasn’t dried up or likely to crack. He put it back in the tin, and then placed the whole thing in the safe, just as a precaution.
It was time he went home and had some supper, and a nice, prosaic cup of tea, or two, strong and with sugar.
The following morning was Saturday and his presence was not necessary at the bookshop. The rest of the Greville estate could wait until Monday. Monty really needed to see Hank Savage and ask his opinion. It would be perfectly sane and logical. There would be no emotional silliness in it, no heightened imagination.
He found Hank pottering in his studio at the back of his lodgings. It was a large attic room with excellent light where Hank enjoyed his hobby of cleaning up and framing old drawings and prints which he bought, often as job lots at auctions. He made a certain amount of money at it, which he gave away. His purpose was the relaxation he gained, and the triumph now and then of finding something really lovely.
He put down the blade with which he was cutting matt for a drawing and regarding Monty with wry affection.
“You look like hell, Monty. What’s happened?” he asked cheerfully. Clearly Monty looked worse than his restless night justified.
“Came across an old scroll,” Monty answered, sitting sideways on the edge of a pair of steps piled with papers. Hank was a scientist and his mind was exquisitely ordered. His rooms were correspondingly chaotic.
“How old?” Hank was irritatingly literal. He was tall, rather too thin, with dark hair and mild blue eyes. Monty had brown eyes, and to put it in his own words, not tall enough for his weight.
“I don’t know. It’s in Aramaic, I think, and I can’t read it.” Monty was highly satisfied with the sharp interest in Hank’s face. “It’s on vellum,” he added for good measure. “I found it in a biscuit tube at the bottom of the last crate of books from the Greville estate.”
“What is it listed as?” Hank asked, abandoning the framing altogether and giving Monty his entire attention.
“It isn’t listed at all. I tried to photocopy it. Nothing came out.”
“Maybe your printer’s broken? I don’t suppose it would be a very good idea to take it anywhere else, if it really is as old as you think. Photograph it, until you get someone in to fix the copier,” Hank replied.
“I tried to photograph it. It didn’t come out.” Monty remembered the strange chill he had felt at the time. “And before you suggest it, there’s nothing wrong with my camera. Or with the copier either, actually. They both work fine on anything else.”
Hank frowned. “So what’s your explanation? Other than gremlins.”