She Walks in Darkness by Evangeline Walton Page B

men everywhere. But how the devil will I ever make the old fellow understand...feel damned ungrateful....”
    And then the blow had fallen. When it was struck, the diary must have been open. What was now an ugly brownish dullness had gushed out across the paper, red and wet. Across that paper on which Roger Carstairs had been writing his last words.
    I said softly, shivering a little, “So that was it.”
    Floriano did not seem to hear me. “It is still there!” His eyes were blazing. “Still somewhere down there.”
    I was disgusted. “Whatever is down there, it wasn’t worth a man’s life.”
    “You say that, a woman! Have you ever seen Etruscan jewelry? The wonder of it, the shining golden wonder!”
    “He may have meant statues, vases. To archaeologists, treasure doesn’t have to mean gold.”
    He laughed. “The Romans carried off Veltha’s own image—the thing the Etruscans held holiest! Only the things fleeing men could carry under their cloaks could have been saved. Small things, slim things. Gold!”
    “I see. Perhaps you’re right.”
    He rushed on as if he had not heard me. “I have heard Prince Mino say that in a coffer at the foot of Veltha’s image, golden tablets lay. Tablets on which were engraved Tages’s words that Tarchon wrote down. The dirty kingly plotter pretending to take dictation from his little stooge! Poor little parrot, trained to recite his lesson and then doomed to have his neck wrung for his obedience.”
    He could pity poor little long-dead Tages, whose murder he could fit into his political philosophy; he seemed already to have forgotten that of Roger Carstairs. Probably Prince Mino had seen that only as the execution of a traitor, a would-be thief, necessary and just. I felt a sick revulsion against both men, prince and communist. I said shortly, “We don’t even know that Tages ever lived. And what if those tablets were gold? The inscriptions on them would be worth far more than anything they could possibly be made of.”
    He snorted, “Dirty propaganda worth more because it is old! I would be glad to melt them with my own hands—those lies that were graven there to enslave men! But the jewelry—the wonderful, shining jewelry—”
    His own flushed face shone, virile red lips parted, dark eyes glowing. His beauty was dazzling. I thought, touched, It isn’t the money value he’s thinking of. It’s the beauty he loves, as innocently as a child would. The sheer beauty of all those golden, sparkling things.
    No, he was not callous. The vision of all that buried splendor had simply shut everything else out of his head. In that too he was like a child; and I was glad. The pressure of that warm male magnificence, whose pull any two-legged female must have felt, was lifted from me. His consciousness of me had faded.
    I said, thinking aloud, “Prince Mino killed Roger, but why didn’t he take the diary? I can’t imagine him leaving it around for Mattia Rossi or anyone else to find.”
    “Mattia must have found it after the Allies took his master away.” Floriano spoke quickly, too quickly. I had again that queer feeling that he was afraid.
    “But if he couldn’t read it, why should he think it would help him to find the treasure? Which it wouldn’t, really.”
    “He must have heard Prince Mino speak words that made him think so.” But Floriano spoke without conviction; he muttered, after a moment’s silence, “He cannot be here. He cannot.”
    But just then I had what I thought was an inspiration; I felt like a fool for not having had it hours before.
    “Professor Harris’s desk! There must be papers there—maybe keys. It’s the only place where I haven’t looked for keys! The papers might record Prince Mino’s death. And if we could lock those cellar doors, couldn’t you risk going for help? Though I don’t believe anybody’s down there. That book certainly didn’t give him any map to the treasure.”
    The murderer had dropped it because he found it