“No, he was a little busy just then. But it appears he sent his right-hand man.”
She showed him a letter from a French bureaucrat, summarily dismissing the previous administrator of the archives—Monsieur Maurice Weinberg—and cosigned, in a crabbed, precise hand, by the Reichsführer himself. The letter appointed in his place an emeritus professor of philosophy and theology at the University of Heidelberg. A man named Professor Dieter Mainz.
Dieter Mainz, whose name had appeared on all of those library request cards at the Laurenziana, too.
Olivia looked like she had struck gold. “I knew it!” she said. “They were tracking Count Cagliostro all along.”
But were they tracking him in search of La Medusa? David thought with horror. And what if they had found it? What if it had been but one tiny item in their massive plunder of Europe? So much of the treasure looted by the Nazis had been destroyed in the war, or lost. And plenty more was still stashed away in secret vaults, under aliases and forgotten code numbers, from Brussels to Buenos Aires.
“But do you want to know the best news yet?” Olivia said.
“What?” He could use some good news.
She held up her hand, covered with dust from the box and papers. “Nobody else has come this way in a long time.”
It was a good point, and he was glad she had made it. This was a trail no one else had blazed, though whether it led anywhere was still an open question.
When they had completed their review of everything else in the box, which included several pamphlets printed in France and extolling the power of the magic Cagliostro had uncovered in ancient Egypt, they closed up the carton, replaced it, and threaded their way back to the museum director’s office. It looked as if it had once been a large recital hall, and had a desk at one end and a long table covered with rocks and chisels and tools at the other. Professor Vernet was turning the handle on a vise, to crush a stubborn specimen, when Olivia said, “Thank you for your help.”
The professor looked over his shoulder, turned the crank one more time, and said, “Happy to be of assistance, mademoiselle.”
His eyes, David noted, never left Olivia.
Brushing the rock residue from his hands and removing his apron, he offered to escort her—them—to the doors of the museum. All the way, he engaged Olivia in a discussion of her work, where she had studied, how she liked Paris, while David followed along. In the portico, Vernet took her hand, and while assuring her again that he was available for consultation at any time—“Did I mention that I live quite close by?”—David idly surveyed the Board of Governors plaque. Several dozen names were listed, in no particular order, and while most of them meant nothing to him, some were famous from the worlds of French politics and finance.
And one, in gilded letters near the bottom of the last column, nearly bowled him over.
“Excuse me,” he said, brashly interrupting an inquiry into Olivia’s plans for dinner, “but it appears you have a Monsieur di Sant’Angelo on your board?”
“Yes, what of it?” Vernet replied, miffed at having his pitch cut short. “He has the best eye for gems in all the world. We often consult with him when something especially rare comes to our attention.”
“He lives here?”
“Oh yes—in a grand old house in the Sixteenth Arrondissement, on the rue de Longchamp. Number 10. He has a business there, by appointment only.”
Was it possible? David thought, his mind racing. When Cagliostro had written that the Gorgon belonged to Sant’Angelo, did he mean a person by that name, and not a place? Was he referring to an ancestor of this very man—perhaps a jeweler in his own day? Had the count left La Medusa in his keeping when he fled Paris one step ahead of the mob?
“Has the family lived there long?” David asked.
“Oh, as far back as anyone can remember. Long before the Revolution, that much is certain.”
“And have they always been jewelers?”
“In a manner of speaking. Collectors as much as purveyors. Why do you ask?”
“No reason, just curious,” David said, intervening to free Olivia’s captive hand from Vernet’s grasp. “I can’t thank you enough for all your help, but we do have to go.”
Olivia looked relieved to regain her freedom and allowed David to steer her toward the doors.
“Wait—if you are interested in Cagliostro and his practices,” the professor said, in a last-ditch effort to lure them back again, “you might also like to see Franz Mesmer’s iron rods. We have them in storage!”
“Next time!” David called out, as Olivia waved farewell, and they hurried down the steps of the museum and into the chilly dusk.
Chapter 24