Death Mask by Ellis Peters

Author:Ellis Peters
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781480445352
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road

TEN

I sat in my open window smoking until all the house was quiet and dark. I’d used up all the possibilities of my first course of action already without result, I was reduced to the second. And this one had to get results, because it was the only one I had left.

If Crispin’s “he” was really here—let him be Dermot, or David, or whoever he would—then the crisis was inevitably upon us, and nothing could be done to avert it. But what I might be able to do was to precipitate it, and precipitate it somewhere away from the house, away from Crispin, away from Dorothy. Crispin sat at the heart of the cyclone, waiting with certainty for the enemy to come to him; but he could be certain only because he had the gold, and was the only person in the world who could tell where it was; and his premise held good only so long as he and the gold stayed together, or, more accurately, as long as the enemy believed that they were together. Should they be separated, it was the gold “he” would follow.

Nobody knew better than I did that Crispin was never likely to surrender his treasure into my keeping. But how, after all, could the enemy know that? From the outside it might appear very probable indeed that a fifteen-year-old boy should find himself badly scared when it came to the point, and be only too glad to hand over his dangerous charge to some older person for safe-keeping. Supposing, for instance, that I were observed stealing away from Crispin’s room by night, and then from the house, with something bulky and suggestive nursed tenderly under my arm? The hunter must be watching the boy’s every move, and every trail that started from him would demand investigation, especially a stealthy nocturnal trail, laid when all the house was asleep, and honest people, with no secrets to keep, were scarcely likely to be on the move. And supposing that he should swallow the bait, and follow me to some safe and secret place where he could observe at leisure my dispositions for the concealment of that queer something I’d brought away from the house with me?

Yes, there might be something there. If he precipitated the showdown—well, I should at least be prepared for him. If he did not, if he hung back and waited for me to go away, satisfied that I’d been unobserved, and leave him to disinter the treasure in his own time—well, so much the better, the initiative would then be with me, and I could pull out the pin from the impending eruption at the best moment for my own plans.

And what would it prove? That he was a thief? Possibly. That he was a murderer? Not Bruce’s, I concluded regretfully, that was past proving in this country, short of a confession, and it was very improbable that it could ever be proved even with a great deal of detective work in Greece.

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