A cold, eerie feeling gripped Nordberg. There was only one solution …
He came to his feet, now moving almost marionettelike, as if his actions were being controlled by an Arne Nordberg he had never known. He went to his bookshelf again, but this time to bring down his pharmacopoeia, carrying it back to the lamp. He sat and pulled the heavy volume into his lap, leafing through its pages. He would require a poison that could be introduced in liquor, for he was sure that a man like Knud Christensen drank. The poison would have to be slow-acting, for Nordberg had no intention of watching the giant die, or be caught in those frightening hands should the oaf suspect what was happening to him. And then Nordberg paused, thinking, again as if his thoughts were those of a stranger, as if he were standing to one side watching Arne Nordberg think, and being able to read those thoughts. There were certain pills, drugs of some sort, which could not—or, rather, should not—be taken with alcohol. A strong dose of one of those drugs in a bottle of liquor … And if, for some reason, an autopsy should be ordered, the cause of the suicide, or accidental death, would be all too evident.
He sat and coldly made his plans for the following day, but one small part of his mind kept praising him for his courage, for his ability to recognize a situation and take the necessary steps to handle it. Another portion of his mind, though, kept hoping his nerve would not fail at the proper moment.
The pharmacist who furnished him with the sleeping tablets was careful to caution him not to drink anything alcoholic while using the pills, and Arne Nordberg assured him that he was quite aware of the consequences of doing so. He next stopped by his office, which was in the next block, to advise his secretary that he had been taken ill on the way to school and would not be able to take any classes that day—which was easily believed with his high color, his feverish eyes, and his shaking hands. He then drove to the bank and withdrew two thousand kroner, which left his balance woefully thin. But there was nothing to be done about it; this was no time to be niggardly.
His next stop was at a liquor store. Again he decided not to be cheap, and purchased a quite expensive bottle of whiskey. His coldly calculating brain, now directing him almost without his volition, told him that the drugs he had purchased might well cloud the otherwise water-clear aquavit, but they would be invisible in the amber color of scotch whiskey. Besides, scotch whiskey, at those prices, made a more prestigious present.
He then got into his car and started for Gedser. At a rest area he pulled from the road, and in a secluded area he carefully opened the bottle of whiskey and inserted the pills. He recapped the bottle and shook it to dissolve the pills, and then held it to the light; there was no sediment visible. He put the bottle into his handbag and pulled back onto the highway for Gedser, forcing himself not to think of the bottle by his side, concentrating instead on what he would do when he had his hands on the treasure.
There were two choices: one, should he turn the treasure in to the authorities? There was no doubt that if he did so, his fame would be great. He could see it in all the scholarly journals, every historical or archaeological publication: Professor Arne Nordberg, the man who discovered the long-lost Schliemann treasure! It could and probably would mean advancement. At the very least it would mean, it had to mean, the publication of a paper on how and where the treasure had been located. He would bring in the history of the treasure, a history of the Schliemanns, Heinrich and Sophie. No university press in the world would turn that paper down!
On the other hand, selflessness was fine, but here he would be with a fortune in his hands, if only he had the slightest idea as to how to exploit the situation. How on earth could he make a decent sum of money from his possession of the treasure? Assuming, of course, he managed to get his hands on it—but the thought of not getting his hands on it was just too terrible to consider, so he put it out of his mind. No, he would get the treasure one way or another. But what then? As far as he knew there had never been any reward offered for the recovery of the collection. Nobody had ever considered it lost, merely taken a bit illegally by the Russians and hidden away all these years. Possibly if he were to contact someone in the Russian Embassy? But if the Russians had managed to lose the treasure, if someone had managed to steal it from them, letting them know he had it could be suicidal.
And one could scarcely put an advertisement in the newspapers saying that one had the treasure for sale, could one? Obviously, one could not. Still, there simply had to be some way to get at least a portion of the great value of the treasure. With the amount of money he was considering—an amount that made his head spin just thinking about it—he tried to picture all the things he could do, all the places he could go, all the girls he could have. The thought of the pleasures that could be purchased with unlimited funds brought a twinge to his loins, but he put the sensuous thoughts aside for the time. First he had to get his hands on the treasure.
His palms were damp with sweat where they gripped the steering wheel, holding it as if to sustain himself. He pressed harder on the accelerator, hurrying to Gedser, forcing himself not to think of the bottle in the bag beside him.
It was late afternoon when Nordberg finally arrived at the Christensen home. He had hesitated several times before finally stopping at the post office as being the least noticeable place at which to ask directions. Knud Christensen was fixing a harness in the barn when Nordberg pulled into the driveway, turned off his noisy engine, and climbed out. The sound of the ancient car’s asthmatic wheezing brought Christensen to the doorway. He frowned and walked down to greet his unexpected guest.
“Professor Nordberg? But, I thought—”
Nordberg shrugged a bit self-deprecatingly.
“I found it was impossible for me to break my appointment for Saturday,” he said lightly. “A faculty tea, and I’m expected to address them, you know. And I’m busy every other day for the next several weeks. But since I had made a sort of promise to you”—he smiled—“and since it was a nice day for a drive, I thought—” He allowed the words to slide into silence. Fortunately for him, it did happen to be a nice day, although he had not noticed it until then.
“Good! Good!” Christensen said, pleased at the professor’s presence. It would save him from four more days of wondering at the possible value of his find. It did not occur to him to be suspicious in any way of this erudite man, a relative, even though a distant one. Knud Christensen was not by nature a suspicious person. He tilted his head in the direction of the house. “It’s—the things—are in there.”
He led the way, knowing the neighbors would think it strange for him to be having a guest who boasted a car, even an old one, but also knowing that a visit from a relative could easily be explained, especially after the tragedy he had suffered. Inside the house, the curtains drawn, Knud lit a lamp and dragged the heavy steel case from the closet. He reached in, fishing out the four packages, and carefully unwrapped them, placing their contents down in small piles. He then looked up at the professor anxiously.
“Well? What do you think?”
Nordberg could scarcely keep his hands from trembling as he reached for a small gold cup and brought it up to his eyes for closer inspection. He pursed his lips in his most professional manner, studying the cup with ill-concealed disinterest. Inside he was chortling, for he was positive he was actually looking at the missing Schliemann treasure; the night before, in Schliemann’s own book Ilios, he had seen that same cup in illustration. But there was no indication of his feelings in his expression of disdain. He put the cup down and picked up a necklace, sure as he did so that the quadrangular beads would be seventy in number, just as Schliemann had described it. The Schliemann treasure! And he had it in his hands, practically! He would have liked to ask the clod for more details as to how he had managed to come on the treasure, although with the collection in his hands he now knew he would never turn it over to any authorities for the puerile purpose of mere academic credit. It was worth a fortune, tons of money, mountains of money! He tossed the n
ecklace down carelessly and with a final sigh made a sort of sweeping motion with one hand, a gesture that took in the entire collection, obviously condemning it to oblivion.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and actually managed to look a trifle chagrined. You should have been an actor, he said to himself, and drew his lips into a grimace of pity. “But it’s what I was afraid of. You see”—his voice took on the tones of confidentiality—“after you left yesterday, I had the pieces you brought me checked by our engineering laboratory. And discovered what I suspected, that they were an alloy of tin and white metal. The cheapest sort of costume jewelry, the sort of things servants buy in the cheap bazaars. And not particularly good examples of even that. I had hoped that some of the stuff you had here might be of better quality, but it all appears to be the same sort of—of—” He hesitated and then shrugged delicately, hating to hurt the other man’s feelings. “Well, to be frank, junk.”
Knud’s face had been slowly falling during this recitation. Although he had feared such a report, especially after his visit to Copenhagen the previous day, his disappointment was still visible. He looked at the pieces piled on the floor and shook his head disconsolately, not knowing what to say.
“I know,” Nordberg went on sympathetically. “I can understand how you feel. I’m disappointed too.” He looked at Christensen with what he hoped was a look of compassion. “Tell me—ah—cousin, what do you plan to do with this—this—these things?” His hand indicated the piles of pieces on the floor.
Knud raised his shoulders and tried to smile. “I have no idea. Try to sell them to the local bazaar, I suppose. Or for scrap.” He stared at the pieces, wondering what insane motive had driven him to dive for them. And to sacrifice a good anchor for them. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t. Maybe donate them to the church for their next raffle. They ought to be worth something.”
“Not very much, I’m afraid,” Nordberg said, and frowned as he considered the problem. A possible solution seemed to occur to him. “I can make a suggestion, if you should be interested. I have a collection of curiosities, of junk, if you will. Things without value, such as these. Conversation pieces, you know. If you would be interested in selling them to me, they might be amusing to some of my friends—” He hurriedly raised a hand. “I couldn’t pay very much, of course, but then the stuff isn’t worth very much, if anything. But I’m sure it would be more than the church would ever get trying to raffle such things off. Or more than you could get from the local bazaar …”
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.
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