Christensen’s face began to clear. His eyes brightened a bit. “How much do you think—?”
Nordberg thought a moment and then shrugged, as if to say that after all it was only money, and money which he could easily afford, certainly more easily than his obviously poor cousin.
“Well,” he said, his voice deprecating his generosity, “after all, you went to a lot of trouble diving for this stuff, bringing it up from the bottom of the sea. That alone ought to be worth something. What about — say — a thousand kroner?”
Christensen took a deep breath of relief. A thousand kroner! It wasn’t, of course, what he had hoped for when he found the stuff, but it was far more, he knew, than what any bazaar would offer him for the stuff. And certainly far more than its value as scrap. It would buy a new anchor, and while what was left wouldn’t pay for any memorial for his brothers, it would at least make a down-payment on some sort of metal cross to replace the crude wooden one over Gustave’s grave.
“That’s very generous,” he said, and held out his big hand. Nordberg gripped it, his diffidence at the compliment apparent. Knud swallowed, as if ashamed, after such generosity, to be asking. “I don’t suppose—?”
“You mean, can I pay you now? Of course,” Nordberg said, disparagingly, as if he carried thousands of kroner with him every day. He brought out his wallet and separated a thousand kroner from the pile of bills there, allowing Christensen to note his affluence. It did strike him for a moment that it was a shame to be wasting a thousand kroner on a dead man, but he could see no other way to handle the affair. He certainly had no intention of waiting for Christensen to die and then recover the money from the body. He handed the money over. “There you are.”
“Thank you!” Christensen could not believe his good fortune. “Thank you!”
“There’s one thing, though,” Nordberg said, almost as an afterthought. It had struck him that he really didn’t know how fast the poison would work, and he didn’t want the oaf to go running to the neighbors and telling them of his good fortune before it took him to bed for the last time. “I should not like my colleagues at the university to think me a fool for spending that much money on an obviously worthless collection of cheap costume jewelry. So while they may be conversation pieces, there is no need for anyone to know I went overboard in paying for them. So I would appreciate it if we could keep this business — well, just between the two of us.”
“Of course! I haven’t told anyone that I ever found the box, and there’s no need for me to ever tell anyone.” Christensen tucked the money deep into a pocket and bent to wrap the pieces roughly in their original packages. Nordberg did not stoop to help him, but when the packages were ready, he did deign to carry two of them out to his car and store them, together with the two that Christensen carried, into the trunk. He closed the trunk lid and turned to look at his distant cousin. He steeled himself. This was the moment to prove if he had the nerve to murder or not. And he knew that he did.
“I say,” he said as if the thought had just occurred to him — and again it seemed to be a different Arne Nordberg speaking. His voice sounded different even to his ears. “Do you like whiskey?”
“Very much!” Christensen said, and then seemed to realize the lack of hospitality on his part the question seemed to imply. “I never offered you a drink! I’m sorry. Here, let me get you—”
“No, no!” Nordberg waved the offer away. “I brought a bottle for you. Actually” — he tapped his stomach and smiled regretfully — “doctor’s orders. No alcohol for a long, long time. But someone gave me this bottle, rather fine stuff, imported, and since I’m not allowed it, I thought you might care for it.” He reached into his handbag and brought out the bottle, handing it over. “Here you are. Have some now. To — well, to sort of seal our deal.”
Knud Christensen grinned as he looked at the label. “My Lord! I haven’t seen anything this fine for a long, long time. Somebody’s wedding, I forget whose.”
“Yes, it’s good stuff. Have some now.”
Christensen shook his head, still grinning. “Not anything this fine, this good. This will have to wait for a proper occasion.”
“No, no!” Nordberg said hurriedly, and cursed his stupidity in bringing an expensive brand. “It — I mean, it really isn’t all that fancy. Have some and tell me how it is, in case — I mean, so I’ll know when the day comes the doctor lets me drink again...”
“It’s good. I don’t need to prove that.” Christensen studied the label again and then looked up, smiling gratefully. “It won’t go to waste, I promise.” He held out his hand. “And I want to thank you for everything.”
Nordberg stood and stared, incapable of thinking of any way to get the clod to drink the whiskey. Then, unable to do anything else, he shook the outstretched hand briefly and climbed into the car as Christensen stepped back and raised his hand in a slight salute, the bottle dangling from his other fist. For a moment Nordberg thought of making one final effort, but he knew it would only look suspicious. With a frozen face he put the car into gear and drove from the yard.
But if the oaf didn’t drink the whiskey today, he would drink it one of these days, certainly before any possible news of the treasure or its disposition ever got out. Maybe it was just as well that Christensen hadn’t drunk the whiskey while he had been there. He had no idea of just how fast the combination of drugs and alcohol acted. And occasions as an excuse for opening a bottle of fine whiskey, Nordberg was sure, came up with a great regularity — birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, whatnot. And one nice thing about having spent that much money for an expensive brand was that it was doubtful the big man would share it with others. Not that it would have bothered Nordberg if others suffered the consequences as well. It was just the fact that sharing might dilute the strength of the combination, and that would not do at all.
And, of course, he had the idiot’s promise not to mention the deal to anyone. It wasn’t everything, but it was about as much as he could have hoped for — and the fact remained that in the trunk of his ancient car at that very moment as he headed back to Copenhagen, he had the famous Schliemann treasure.
That was a fact!
Chapter Ten
Other than the fact that Knud Christensen had not drunk the doctored liquor in his presence, and the fact that he would never know exactly when the clod did drink it since the deaths of unimportant people were not reported in the Copenhagen newspapers — and he certainly had no intention of returning to Gedser to verify the death — one might have thought Associate Professor Arne Nordberg would have been a happy man. Not only was he in possession of the Schliemann treasure, but in the week since he had brought the treasure back from Gedser and deposited the pieces trip-after-trip into two large safe-deposit boxes in his bank, he had lost ten pounds of weight. He had also saved at least a hundred kroner, since the girls in the Istedgade, for the first time since he could afford them, did not interest him in the least. His hairline, however, seemed to have receded even farther, and he wondered if worry alone could account for the fact.