Grim Shadows (Roaring Twenties #2)(16)

“Thank you, dear, I know. And no more interruptions, please.”

Lowe tried to catch her gaze, but she exited with a dramatic slam of the door.

“You already know she can feel power coming from the amulet?” Bacall said when the brisk click-click of her heels faded. “Did she tell you that when you met her in Salt Lake City?”

“Yes,” Lowe answered cautiously. “Would you like to . . .” See the amulet? That didn’t sound right, considering the man’s condition.

“No, no, no. If she’s vouched for it, I trust her.”

“And you still want to buy it?”

“Absolutely. Do you have the paperwork?”

“It’s coming from Egypt,” Lowe lied easily. “Should be ready in a month. I haven’t cashed your check yet, but—”

“Cash it. I have had an agreement drawn up that you can sign. And if you can store the amulet safely for now, that’s even better for me. But you must keep it somewhere safe and well guarded. There are people who will kill to get their hands on it. So I’d advise you not to keep it in your own home. You’ll only invite a robbery. Safety-deposit box is no good, either. It needs to be well hidden.”

“Don’t worry about that.”

“Yes, I suppose your family knows a thing or two about hiding goods, what with your brother’s line of work.”

“I suppose we do.”

“You were happy with the deposit amount?”

“I’ve had better offers.” Rather, he would have better ones, if he played his cards right.

“I thought as much. Money isn’t a problem. Whatever you think is fair. But if you’re interested, I have a proposition for you, related to the amulet, for which I’m willing to pay a much higher sum. It’s right up your alley, I think.”

“I’m listening.”

“I used to excavate in Egypt every year when I was younger, you know.” He leaned back in his chair. “Half the museum’s Egyptian collection, I found personally.”

“I’m aware,” Lowe said.

“What if I were to tell you that I’d found the four missing crossbars of the djed years ago?”

Lowe stilled. Was the man serious? A piece of the amulet was one thing, but the entire thing, assembled? That would be worth—well . . . so much more.

“If that’s true—” Lowe started.

“Why haven’t I sold them? The first reason would be that the amulet has personal meaning. But the second reason, the pressing one, is why I’m interested in hiring your services. The four crossbars are here in the city. At least, I believe they are. I just don’t know where, exactly.”

“I’m not following.”

The man felt around his desk for a gold cigarette case. He managed to extract a cigarette with some effort. Watching him was painful, so Lowe offered to strike a match. “Thank you,” Bacall mumbled as he puffed the cigarette to life. “When I was younger, my excavation partner and I experienced what you might refer to as an occult phenomenon in Cairo. I won’t bore you with the details—”

“I’m not easily bored.”

“Suffice it to say, after that experience, we became enemies. Not the kind of enemies who squabble over petty things in the office, but the kind of enemies who spend much of their free time plotting to kill one another.”

Well, well. “If you’re going to do something, might as well do it right.”

“This isn’t a joking matter, Mr. Magnusson.”

Grouchy old bastard, wasn’t he? “My apologies,” Lowe said. “Please continue.”

Bacall took a long drag off his cigarette.

“Before we became enemies, we spent a lot of time searching for mythical objects. The infamous Backbone of Osiris was one of them. Obsession does strange things to the mind, and I was obsessed to outdo my partner.”

“So you hunted the amulet.”

“For years. Such a disappointment to discover it had been split up in the Amarna Period. Imagine trying to find something whose pieces were scattered around an entire country almost three thousand years ago.”

“But you did?”

“Spent a fortune scouring excavation sites, only to find them all in one place. Not in a tomb or temple or any sort of excavation site, but in the hands of a wealthy British earl, who’d bought them from grave robbers in 1879.”

“Ah.”

“Yes, not exactly the victory a young archaeologist craves, but I didn’t care. So I gave the earl the better part of my wife’s gold fortune to acquire them. That’s when I ran into a problem.”

“You didn’t have the base of the amulet.”

“That was one problem, yes. But at the time, I believed I could eventually find it. The problem was, my partner heard a rumor I’d found the crossbars. And I couldn’t risk him stealing them from me before I found the last piece. Too dangerous to keep them, so I shipped them home to my wife.”

Lowe crossed his legs. “Your deceased wife.”

“She wasn’t at the time,” Bacall said. “The year was 1906. I had a lead on the last piece—a wrong lead, as you’ve proven—but I didn’t know that at the time. So I chased the lead to Cairo and instructed my wife to hide the pieces in our house. She hid them, all right. Hid them around the city of San Francisco. I got a series of telegrams from her, in which she explained that she was ending my obsession with the amulet in some misguided attempt to mend the rift between me and my partner. She tried to destroy the pieces—said no fire would melt the gold.”