The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits Volume 1 (The Mammoth Book Series)

by Mike Ashley

  “He was not,” replied the other, and swore in Greek under his breath. “It has put us out, by Heracles, abominably! The accursed young man invited himself.”

  They separated, and Sollius went to his own quarters. It had been an interlude which had broken his concentration, and now, with an exasperated sigh, he endeavoured to immerse himself once again in his previous thoughts. Two new facts, moreover, had come teasingly into his mind, and he began trying to fit them into the pattern of his reasoning.

  Lucius did not return until dusk. “I fear, Sollius,” he reported disconsolately, “that I have only little things to tell you, and none of them, I think, likely to be useful.”

  “It is the adding up of the little things that makes the large things,” said the older slave with a comfortable smile. “Set out your ‘little things’ in a row like stones on the top of a wall, and let us flick them away, or keep them, one by one.”

  “First,” replied Lucius, “the priest of Saturn hardly ever leaves the temple; he lives like a hermit.”

  “Hardly ever leaves the temple, and lives like a hermit,” repeated Sollius in a meditative echo.

  “Then his three assistant priests,” went on Lucius, “are, two of them, but so in name, and are present only at the annual sacrifice ordained by the State; each is a kind of relative of the Empress, and their connection with the rites of Saturn are perfunctory and official. Neither has entered the temple these six months.”

  “Neither has entered the temple these six months,” echoed Sollius as before.” And the third priest?” he asked.

  “The third priest,” Lucius replied, “is only a kind of servant who performs the daily offices about the place. It is really a temple no longer, but is given over to the business of the treasury; only the one end is still reserved to the god.”

  “As I saw,” mused Sollius. “And now: what visitors has this priest of Saturn?”

  “As few as a real hermit might have,” said Lucius. “In fact, if the doorkeeper speaks true – and why should he not? – the only visitor he has had for many a long month is his nephew.”

  “His – nephew?” repeated Sollius.

  “A young man – so said the doorkeeper – who has won some notoriety,” Lucius went on, “as a gladiator. One or two of the young sprigs of fashion have ventured into the arena in competition with the professionals.”

  “Much to the Emperor’s disgust,” put in Sollius, “for his son is one of them. Did you learn this young man’s name?”

  “Rutilius Marcianus,” said Lucius.

  Sollius shook his head disappointedly.

  “I do not know the name,” he muttered. Then, after a pause, he added abruptly: “Has the lord Commodus ever visited this priest of Saturn?”

  “I was not told so,” Lucius answered, “and I think it would have been a sufficiently noteworthy occasion to have remained in the mind of that gossiping old doorkeeper!”

  “Very like, very like,” said Sollius. “Does this nephew of the priest of Saturn visit his uncle constantly, or only at long intervals?”

  Lucius suddenly grinned.

  “I have this for you,” he said. “He has begun visiting his uncle only in the last few months. Until then nobody knew that the old priest had a nephew.”

  “All this may yet mean nothing,” answered Sollius casually. “But I should like to see this young man – without his knowing either that I do see him or that I even wish to see him.”

  “Perhaps we could go to the arena,” suggested Lucius, his eyes sparkling in anticipation. “He might be performing – ”

  “And might not,” smiled Sollius, “and it would then be a waste of time. I must think of a better way.”

  But it was not through any thought or scheming of his own that the slave met with Rutilius Marcianus, and that in the very near future; in fact, on the next day, or, rather, the next night. He was summoned in the late evening by a messenger from the Temple of Saturn.

  This messenger was a gigantic Cappadocian, the kind of man who usually was a litter-bearer. Sollius took him for one of the treasury porters.

  “Do you come from Gennadius?” he asked.

  The Cappadocian grinned, and nodded. He seemed a very pleasant kind of fellow, thought Sollius.

  They set out for the temple at once, with the aroused centurion marching at Sollius’s heels, lean, sinewy, upright and watchful, and as stiffly correct as if on parade in the Campus Martius. They reached their destination without delay, and Sollius was surprised and interested – and perhaps a little more interested than surprised – that the Cappadocian led him, not to the great bronze treasury doors themselves, but to a small, secret door in another part of the temple. This was opened at the first knocking upon it, and Sollius was beckoned inside by the man who had answered to the Cappadocian’s knuckles. Sollius entered first, followed immediately by his Prætorian bodyguard, for whom the Cappadocian, with an alien politeness, made way. The door was then shut after them with silent precision.

  A single lamp was burning in a niche. By its gleam Sollius saw that they were in a descending stone passage of considerable antiquity. But he was given no time for examining his surroundings at all closely.

  “Go forward,” whispered the Cappadocian.

  After a few yards the passage turned abruptly at right angles and went on for some distance, still descending. This passage, too, was lit by a lamp in a niche. At the end was a small, bronze door, embossed with symbolic figures and green with damp and age. As the Cappadocian pushed it open with his huge hand, a metallic sigh seemed to echo along the passage. The door had been recently oiled, decided Sollius, but not quite well enough. Probably, however, the noise of its opening would not be heard in the temple, for clearly they were by now well underground.

  The opened door led directly to an upward flight of ancient, worn, and uneven steps. The man who had opened the first door to them caught up the lamp from the niche in the passage, and led the way up. At the top a narrow aperture, hung with a heavy curtain, gave into a small chamber – the same chamber in which Sollius had had his interview with the priest of Saturn. A long, roundabout way, he reflected wryly, to bring him back to it! He was not surprised at finding himself there; he had suspected whither he was being taken; but he was somewhat more than surprised by the scene which immediately presented itself to his gaze, for the chamber was occupied by two men, both of whom he recognized on the instant, and one of them, the priest of Saturn himself, was leaning back in his chair as though asleep. But from more than one visible sign it was plain that it was no true sleep, but a drugged unconsciousness. The other occupant was the same scented young man who had been with the Emperor’s son at the house of Sabinus on the previous day, and whom Sollius now certainly believed to be the man he had once encountered in one of the worst alleys of the Subura.

  They were three to two, with the unconscious priest of Saturn between them.

  “I expected you to bring him alone,” said the scented young man to the Cappadocian.

  “This fellow has the Emperor’s orders to follow him everywhere he goes,” was the sullen answer. “Could I order him away?”

  “Stand by the door, Balbus!” commanded the scented young man, and he who had let them in moved a pace or so back and posted himself between the centurion and retreat. Decius fixed his eyes upon the slave, and wondered what his charge would do. As for himself, he had no fear. He was a trained soldier and was armed, and would confidently have taken on more than any such three at a time, unskilled men as they probably were. The Cappadocian, however, was of a terrible size . . . The centurion fingered the heavy stabbing-sword at his belt: it was just as well for a man to be ready.

  The scented young man turned to Sollius.

  “You know me?” he asked.

  “I recognize you,” answered the slave. “You were at my master’s yesterday.”

  “I am Gaius Rutilius Marcianus,” the scented young man went on. “I am a practised gladiator,” he added, his gaze falli
ng for a moment on the centurion. “The priest of Saturn is my uncle,” he continued, turning back to Sollius. “No, he is not poisoned: have no fears. He does but sleep – after a drink of wine containing – no matter what. It will do him no harm. He will wonder a little at his strange, sudden ‘illness’ – and will find his nephew most assiduous! Well, slave, understand this: you are not the only person able to make enquiries; I, too, have made some, and to-day I know for certain what yesterday was only a guess: that you are thrusting your nose into the thefts from the treasury. You need not, out of duty to the Augustus, deny it,” he concluded in a tone of menace.

  “I do not deny it.”

  “You are not so clever as you think, or you would not have let yourself be brought hither,” sneered Marcianus.

  “Perhaps I wished to be brought – wherever I might be taken,” answered the slave, and their glances clashed.

  “Shall I kill this scented fellow?” cried out the centurion.

  “No, no; oh no!” answered Sollius in a tone of horror. “We wish for no killing here.”

  “Who wishes for no killing?” asked Marcianus with a laugh. “You, slave? Or is it I? There is little chance of our having the same wishes about that! Silence is what we have brought you hither to have from you, and there is no surer silence than death’s.”

  The centurion drew his sword, but in the same instant the huge Cappadocian twined an arm about the Prætorian’s neck and held him in a choking grip, while Balbus kicked his legs from under him, and caught at his falling weapon. The conventionally trained soldier is always at a disadvantage against irregulars who do not play fair, that is to say, not in accordance with professional tactics. Marcianus laughed once more, and then his eyes narrowed with suspicious astonishment.

  “You do not, slave, go on your knees for mercy?” he asked.

  “Even a slave,” replied Sollius, “can face death standing.”

  “But not here,” said Marcianus. “Here your body would be found; but I know of a place where it will never be found.”

  He moved swiftly and caught Sollius by the arm, and exerted force to drag him towards a kind of apse in the wall to the right. To his surprise, the slave did not resist, but docilely allowed himself to be led whither his captor would.

  “Bring the soldier after us,” commanded Marcianus over his shoulder, and he touched one of the bricks. The back of the apse swung open, and some stone steps were seen to descend into darkness. So that, thought Sollius, was the secret way down into the vaults known to the priests of Saturn.

  Marcianus, with his grasp still upon the slave’s arm, paused at the top of the steps, and whistled a few sharp notes. There came an answering whistle from below, and gradually a pale light diffused itself about the bottom of the steps.

  “Come,” cried Marcianus brusquely, and he led Sollius down.

  Behind them came the muffled noise of a sudden struggle, and Marcianus swore under his breath. He was about to turn back to see what was happening, though he could guess very well, when Sollius forestalled him by calling upward:

  “Decius! Decius! You are to come quietly. It is my order, and my orders are the Emperor’s! You know that. Come down quietly, Decius, and without protest.”

  In a sullen and contemptuous indignation the centurion allowed himself to be thrust down into the same underground passage of the vaults beneath the temple. The soft, diffused light which had dimly illuminated their descent was now seen to emanate from a lamp held high above the head of one dressed as a gladiator. The helmet, ornate and gleaming like gold in the lamplight, shadowed the face. With its fringe of metal teeth over eyes and nose, it was as good as a mask. The man turned as soon as they drew near, and led the way until they came to the grille.

  Marcianus laughed, and struck the gate of the grille with his hand.

  “Chained and locked,” he said jeeringly. “And yet – someone – passed through. That is a puzzle, slave, for even your exalted wits.”

  “My wits,” replied Sollius with a smile, “may not be exalted, but the entrance past this grille, at least, is no puzzle to them.”

  The other stared, and the lampbearer turned, and stared also.

  “Your last boast, slave,” mocked Marcianus, “is your most foolish.”

  Sollius spread out his hands in deprecation.

  “It is no boast,” he said.

  “How, slave? You know the way in through this grille?”

  “As well as – you,” replied Sollius.

  The lampbearer audibly caught his breath.

  “What do you mean, wretch?” cried the scented but not all-effeminate Marcianus, and he gripped Sollius by the shoulder.

  “I mean but this,” Sollius answered. “That I know how the theft was worked.”

  “And by whom?” demanded Marcianus, and he began to shake the man in his grasp.

  “Gently,” said the centurion gruffly. “I am still here.”

  “But unarmed,” the Cappadocian reminded him with a grin, and showed the Prætorian’s sword which he had taken from Balbus.

  “Answer me!” cried Marcianus, and his grip on the slave’s shoulder cruelly tightened. “Do you know the thief?”

  “No,” said Sollius simply.

  The other loosed him with a harsh laugh.

  “I think you know nothing,” he jeered. “But you are too cleverly nosy a fellow to be let live. Throttle him, Balbus!” he commanded. “Balbus,” he laughed, “is a Samnite wrestler, and knows how to throttle a man, I can tell you!”

  Balbus moved forward with a grim leer.

  “Wait!” said the man holding the lamp.

  Marcianus, Balbus and the Cappadocian stiffened where they stood.

  “You have forgotten,” went on the man with the lamp petulantly, “that I am here.”

  Marcianus raised his right arm in graceful salute, and was about to reply, when the other interrupted him:

  “Before this fellow is killed – and I shall enjoy watching Balbus’s strong thumbs! – I would learn what he knows. Slave, answer me: how is this grille to be passed through and not by its locked and chained door?”

  Sollius caught his breath. It was barely perceptible, and he mastered himself at once. He did not think that his involuntary start had been noticed, and he answered as calmly as he could:

  “Sir, will you lift your lamp higher – and nearer to the grille?”

  The other moved a pace or two, and raised his lamp. Again Sollius caught his breath, but again checked himself, and went on as calmly as before:

  “It needed two men. I knew that as soon as I was sure that the gate had not been opened by the – thieves. One man remained on this side of the grille; the other climbed through the upper part, stole what he would, passed it through to his companion, and then, with his help – without his help it would have been too difficult – climbed out again. That was how it was done.”

  “But that is folly,” blustered Balbus. “There is not space enough between any of the bars, upper or lower, for a dog to be pushed through. How could a man, climb he ever so high, squeeze through the bars?”

  “I will show you,” answered Sollius. “Your – friend – has raised his lamp in exactly the right place! Look! Those three bars in the upper part of the grille beyond the crossbar have been sawn through, and replaced by being simply mortared together again. That was clever. They look so right, and so strong, still! I say again, it was clever. If the bars had been sawn in the lower part of the grille, that is to say, below the cross-bar, it might have been found out at any time, even by accident; but, having sawn them asunder in the upper half, there would be no occasion at all for them to be touched, even accidentally, for who, unnecessarily, would climb the grille? And who would examine them with any closeness – except an elderly slave who is too easily suspicious? Have I answered you?”

  “Has the time come?” asked Balbus the Samnite, extending his hands with their fingers spread open.

  “So we, Gaius there and I,” pursued the man wit
h the lamp, “are the thieves?”

  Sollius nodded.

  “Both of you sawed the bars and afterwards replaced them; you, I think – yes, you, certainly, for your lamp picked out the very place without hesitation – climbed in; and your confederate helped you to climb out again, and received the sacks with the jewels and the gold.”

  “Shall we deal with him?” cried the Cappadocian impatiently.

  “Wait,” commanded the other, and his voice, though strangely young in its tone, had authority. “What would you tell the Emperor, slave, if you lived to tell him anything?”

  “That I had accomplished the task he set me,” replied Sollius instantly.

  “Could you, then, name the thieves? Though I am honoured, as you showed, by your suspicion,” went on the young, authoritative, and now sarcastic voice, “you could not, I think, give me a name.”

  “If I am not to live to tell the Emperor anything,” answered Sollius carefully, “does my knowledge matter?”

  “That, at least,” interjected the Cappadocian, “is a good, sensible remark! Balbus – ”

  At the sound of his name the Samnite wrestler edged nearer to his intended victim and again thrust out his hands with their fingers spread wide. The Cappadocian, leering in anticipation of a fine sight, and anxious not to miss a single instant of it, had grown careless. Decius saw his opportunity. He twisted aside, and in the same movement deftly wrenched his own sword from the other’s grasp.

  “Ha!” he cried in a loud voice. “Quick! Get behind me, slave!”

  And he sent up a challenging roar as when in some battle in Mesopotamia a Roman legionary should invite a Persian “Immortal” to single combat. Sollius, however, did not accept his counsel to seek shelter behind him; instead, he set his back to the grille, and fixed his eyes on the man with the lamp.

  The fight that followed between Decius and Marcianus, the Cappadocian, and the Samnite was as brief as it was savage. The centurion, who was no fool and knew well what he was about, raised as much clamour as he could, shouting, stamping and clashing steel against steel, for both the Samnite and the Cappadocian were armed with long knives. His armour protected him against any but the shrewdest thrust in the right place, and he was too skilled in his trade to lay himself open unwarily. He had not waited for their attack, but had taken the offensive right from the beginning, and very early in the proceedings had reduced his enemies to two – for the man with the lamp took no part in the struggle at all – by wounding the Samnite severely in the right arm. But almost immediately after he had thus lessened the odds, the event which he had expected, and for which his deliberate noisiness had played, came to pass, and the vaults were rushed by the guard which was on watch above at the ordinary entrance to them from the temple.