Pendergast nodded.
"Over the years, I've made hundreds of violins from wood treated this way, experimenting with the ratios and the length of time in solution. The resulting instruments had a big, brilliant sound. But it was a harsh sound. Something was needed to dampen the vibrations, the overtones."
He paused. "Here is where the true genius of Stradivari comes in. He found that in his secret varnish."
He moused up the computer screen, clicked through a few menus. A new image appeared in black and white, a landscape of incredible ruggedness, looking to D'Agosta like some vast mountain range.
"Here is the varnish of a Stradivarius under a scanning electron microscope, 30,000x. As you can see, it is not the smooth, hard layer it seems to the naked eye. Instead, there are billions of microscopic cracks. When the violin is played, these cracks absorb and dampen the harsh vibrations and resonances, allowing only the purest, clearest tone to escape. That's the true secret to Stradivari's violins. The problem is, the varnish he used was an incredibly complex chemical solution, involving boiled insects and other organic and inorganic sources. It has defied all analysis-and we have so little of it to test. You can't strip the varnish off a Strad-removing even a little will ruin a violin. You'd need to destroy an entire instrument to get enough varnish to analyze it properly. Even then, you couldn't use one of his inferior violins. Those were experimental, and the varnish recipe changed many times. No-you'd have to destroy one from the golden period. Not only that, but you'd need to cut into the wood and analyze the chemistry of the solution he soaked them in as well as the interface between the varnish and the wood. For all these reasons, we have not been able to figure out exactly how he did it."
He leaned back. "Another problem. Even if you had all his secret recipes, you still might fail. Stradivari, knowing all that we don't, managed to make some mediocre violins. There were other factors to making a great violin, some apparently even beyond his control-such as the particular qualities of the piece of wood he used."
Pendergast nodded.
"And that, Mr. Pendergast, is all I can tell you." The man's face glittered with feverish intensity. "And now let us speak of this ." He opened his hand and smoothed the crumpled business card. And for the first time, D'Agosta glimpsed what Pendergast had written on it.
It was the word Stormcloud .
{ 62 }
The man held out the card in a trembling hand.
Pendergast nodded in return. "Perhaps the best way to start would be for you to tell Sergeant D'Agosta what you know of its history."
Spezi turned to D'Agosta, his face filling with regret. "The Stormcloud was Stradivari's greatest violin. It was played by a string of virtuosi in an almost unbroken line from Monteverdi to Paganini and beyond. It was present at some of the greatest moments in the history of music. It was played by Franz Clement at the premiere of Beethoven's violin concerto. It was played by Brahms himself at the premiere of his Second Violin Concerto, and by Paganini for the first Italian performance of all twenty-four of his caprices. And then, just before World War I-on the death of the virtuoso Luciano Toscanelli, may God curse him-it disappeared. Toscanelli went insane at the end of his days and, some say, destroyed it. Others say it was lost in the Great War."
"It wasn't."
Spezi straightened abruptly. "You mean it still exists ?"
"A few more questions if I may, Dottore. What do you know of the ownership of the Stormcloud?"
"That was one of its mysteries. It was always owned by the same family, apparently, who it was said purchased the instrument directly from Stradivari himself. It was passed down from father to son only in name, being on continuous loan to a string of virtuosi. That's normal, of course: most of the Strads today are owned by wealthy collectors who turn them over to virtuosi to play on long-term loan. Just so with the Stormcloud. When the virtuoso who was playing it died-or if he had the misfortune to give a bad concert-it was taken away by the family that owned it and given to another. There would have been intense competition for it. No doubt that is the reason the family remained anonymous-they didn't want to be harried and importuned by aspiring violinists. They made secrecy of their identity a strict condition of playing the violin."
"No virtuoso ever broke the silence?"
"Not as far as I know."
"And Toscanelli was the last virtuoso to play it."
"Yes, Toscanelli. The great and terrible Toscanelli. He died a syphilitic wreck in 1910, under strange and mysterious circumstances. The violin was not beside his body and was never found."
"Who should the violin have gone to after Toscanelli?"
"A good question. Perhaps the Russian child prodigy, young Count Ravetsky. Murdered in the revolution, though-a great loss. What a terrible century that was. And now, Mr. Pendergast-I am almost expiring from curiosity."
Pendergast reached into his pocket and slipped out a glassine envelope, held it up to the light. "A fragment of horsehair from the bow of the Stormcloud."
The man reached out with trembling fingers. "May I?"
"I promised an exchange. It's yours."
The man opened it, removed the horsehair with a pair of tweezers, placed it on a microscope stage. A moment later the image appeared on a computer screen.
"It's definitely horsehair from a violin bow-you can see the grains of rosin, here, and the damage that playing has done to the microscopic scales on the shaft, there." He straightened. "Of course, any bow with the Stormcloud almost certainly isn't the original, and even if it was, the horsehair must have been replaced a thousand times. This is hardly proof."
"I'm well aware of that. It was only the first clue that led me on a string of deductions, the conclusion of which was that the Stormcloud still exists. It is here, Dottore, in Italy."
"If only it were so! Where did you get this hair?"
"From a crime scene in Tuscany."
"For God's sake, man: who has it? "
"I don't yet know for certain."
"How will you find out?"
"First, I need to learn the name of the family that originally owned it."
Spezi thought for a moment. "I'd start with Toscanelli's heirs-he was said to have had a dozen children from almost as many mistresses. God knows, one might still be alive somewhere-and now that I think of it, it seems to me there's a granddaughter or some such here in Italy. He was a notorious womanizer, drinker of absinthe, indiscreet in his later years. Perhaps he told one of his mistresses, who then might have passed it on to her issue."
"An excellent suggestion." Pendergast rose. "You have been most generous, Dottore. When I do learn more about the Stormcloud's whereabouts, I promise I shall share the facts with you. For now, I thank you for your time."