“Must’ve been like sitting on a pile of snakes.”
“It was,” he said, opening the door to the servant’s entrance. “Like sitting on Egyptian asps, actually.” He giggled like a schoolgirl.
“And why didn’t ye tell me sooner?” I asked. “I could’ve spent the time getting connections together.”
Dex blinked at me. “Uh…”
“This isn’t like moving rifles or something, lad. I could’ve used the lead time.”
Dex hesitated. “I was…just being careful.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. Maybe he wasn’t such a foolish Yank, after all. I clapped him on the shoulder. “Careful’s good,” I told him. “Now let’s go.”
I followed him inside. He led me unerringly through the kitchen and into the main entrance room. The manor was silent except for the tick of a large pendulum that swung inside a twelve-foot clock in the corner of the room. The place was a marriage of opulent heritage cut into stone and contemporary wood, carved and oiled. The fireplace on the far wall gaped open with enough space for me to stand in. Hell, three of my mates could’ve joined me in there. Carvings of stone lions adorned the hearth. A wide, sweeping staircase led upstairs.
“Feckin’ English,” I muttered.
Dex didn’t respond to my comment. He led me through the room and down a hall. I passed an open door. Through the doorway, I saw walls of shelves filled with books.
I stopped. “That the library?”
Dex looked over his shoulder, pausing. “No, it’s the bathroom, Sean.”
“Ye don’t have to be a smart ass about it.”
“Well, geez. Look at all the books. What did you think it was?”
I shrugged. “Who knows with these occupiers? Maybe this is just the small library, not the main one.”
“It’s the only library in the house,” Dex said. He stepped to the threshold and pointed to a desk in the corner. Stacks of tomes and scattered papers dwarfed it. “That’s where I do my work.”
“Fascinating,” I grunted, but my eyes swept over the tall bookshelves in wonder. “That’s a lot of books.”
He nodded, delighted. “That’s why he was able to hide the information so well. Scotland Yard didn’t have time to go through every single book in there, looking for clues. They didn’t even have enough cause to do it, anyway.”
He turned and headed down the hall. I followed.
Near the end of the hallway, he unlocked another door. A set of stairs yawned in front of him. He disappeared through the threshold and into the darkness.
After a moment, I followed. When the door swung shut behind me, I jumped a little in the pitch black.
“Dex?” I whispered.
A weak, yellow light blossomed. Dex’s shadowy face appeared just beneath me on the stairs.
“I put the lantern here last night,” he explained in a whisper.
“Can we jes’ get on with it?” I snapped.
He looked hurt, but turned and headed down the stairs.
I swallowed and took a deep breath. All his stupid rambling about curses must’ve put me just a wee bit on edge. And why the hell were we whispering, anyway? No one was going to hear us in a million years. I shook my head and followed the yellow glow downward.
After a short distance, the stairwell opened into the wine cellar. Rows of dusty bottles adorned the shelves.
“Now this is a collection a man can admire,” I told Dex.
We passed through the wine cellar and through another door into a storage room. A few boxes were stacked against the wall, along with a couple of pieces of furniture shrouded in a dusty white sheet.
“Is this it?”
He nodded, pointing to a far wall. I followed his finger, but nothing looked out of the ordinary.
“Give me the lamp.”
He handed it to me and I walked to the wall. It was made of stone and mortar. The wall looked the same as the other three to me.
“Are you sure about this?” I asked Dex.
He nodded excitedly. “I’m sure. I got a copy of the layout for this manor. This room is supposed to be thirty feet long. But it’s only twenty-two.”
“Someone may have made a mistake. It’s not like they were keeping good records when this place was built.”
“No, they didn’t. But they did later on. And in 1847, Thomas Hunt commissioned a surveyor to do a layout of this manor. He wanted to add on, but never did. Still, the layout was completed and kept in the family papers. It says thirty feet long.”
“Maybe it was non-standard feet. Things weren’t as exact in the old days.”
Dex shook his head. “No, the measurement for a foot was standardized by then. And the plans I saw were hidden. I came across them in one of the books I found when I worked out the cryptogram. The official plans were forged. Those plans have this room at twenty-two feet long.”
“What are you saying?”
Dex pointed at the wall. “I’m saying that Randal Hunt hid Ahwere behind that wall, which he built when he came back from Egypt.”
“No way, lad. The Peelers aren’t that bright, but they’d see a brand new wall.”
“Not if they spent the first month searching the estate outside London,” Dex said. “And not if servants stacked items up next to it and cluttered up the room.”
I frowned. “I don’t know.”
“There’s only one way to find out.” He glanced at the wall.
I shrugged. “Oh, what the hell,” I said.
I swung the pick.
The metal of the pick end bit into the stone with a resounding pink! and bounced off. I set my jaw and swung again. After a few solid swings, I broke off a chunk and that started things rolling. Mortar and stone flew with each swing of the pick. Dex stood behind me, watching. From time to time, he stepped forward and swept the rubble aside with his foot.
After twenty minutes, I’d worked up a healthy sweat. I could taste the stone and mortar hanging in the air in the dull yellow light. The hole was the size of a football and about three inches deep.
Dex watched me impatiently while I paused to catch my breath. I lit a fag and took a deep drag. I blew the smoke in his direction. “Are ye sure about this? This looks like nothing more than a thick wall to me.”
“I’m sure,” he insisted.
“Because I don’t want to burrow half way to the Irish Sea here.”
“It can’t be much farther.”
I stared at him while I finished my smoke. I flicked the butt away. “Better not be,” I said and resumed swinging the pick.
Half an hour later, the pick struck a loose rock and it toppled backward and disappeared.
“What was that?” Dex asked as soon as he heard the sound.
I wiped my brow. “I’ve broken through. Feckin’ Jaysus, boyo! Ye were right. There’s something here.”
“Widen the hole,” Dex instructed.
I took a couple more swings at it and knocked out a hole the size of my head.
“Let me look,” Dex said, lifting the lamp and stepping forward.
I moved aside, breathing heavily.
Dex held the lamp next to the hole and peered in. He was quiet for a long while. Finally, I asked, “What is it? What do ye see?”
He didn’t answer.
“Dex! Did ye hear me, lad? What do ye see in there?”
His voice was reverent. “Wonderful things,” he whispered.
I waited as long as I could stand. Then I took the lamp and pushed him aside. I looked inside.
A small golden sarcophagus lay on the floor, surrounded by golden cups and trinkets. Pottery vessels lined the floor next to the golden sarcophagus like sentries.
“Is that all gold, do ye think?”
“Pure gold,” Dex said.
“What are those things lined up next to it?”
“Her internal organs.”
“Her guts are in those?”
“Her kidneys and lungs. Things like that,” Dex said, his voice brimming with excitement. “But not her heart. That stayed in the body.”
My eyes danced over the golden sarcophagus.
“Millions,” I whispered.
“Let’s widen this hole,” Dex directed me.
There was no let’s about it. I widened the hole with swings from the pick. Now that I’d broken through, each swing knocked away large chunks. The hole grew quickly.