“Lurking among the funerary entablature,” Adam said. Then when he saw the look on my face, he added quickly, “Hiding behind a tombstone, I mean. You were magnificent.”
I flushed slightly. This was twice I had been told I was magnificent—first by Feely, and now by Adam Sowerby.
I was not accustomed to dealing with such unexpected praise. I didn’t know what to say.
“I expect you’re wondering why I’ve come,” Adam said, rescuing the moment.
“Yes,” I said, although I hadn’t been.
“Reason the first …”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a test tube, in which something was twisted.
“Abracadabra,” he said, handing it to me.
I recognized it at once. “My hair ribbon!” I said.
“Stain and all.” Adam grinned.
“Where did you find it?”
“Where you dropped it. In the church porch.”
I am not a person given to blaspheming, but I came perilously close.
“Thank you,” I managed, setting it aside. “I shall analyze it later.”
“Why not do it now, so that I can watch?”
I was tempted to refuse, but the thought of glory did me in. Chemistry is such a lonely occupation that there is never an audience for its greatest moments.
“All right,” I said, with no further persuasion.
I put a bit of distilled water into a clean test tube, then carefully unscrewed the hair ribbon inch by inch from the glass container Adam had brought it in.
“Stolen from one of my germinating samples,” he said. When he saw my look of alarm he added, “I sterilized it first.”
With scissors, I snipped off the rather brownish-stained end of the ribbon and, with tweezers, immersed it in the water.
I lit a Bunsen burner and handed Adam the test tube and a pair of nickel-plated tongs.
“Hold it in the flame,” I instructed. “Keep it moving. I’ll be there in a jiff.”
I went to a row of bottled chemicals and took down the nitric acid.
“Take it off the flame,” I told him. “Keep steady.”
I added a few drops of acid to the water in the test tube.
“Thank you,” I said, taking over.
I heated the liquid slowly, swirling the test tube and watching as the water and the nitric acid quickly took up the stain.
I did this until the liquid had nearly evaporated, leaving not much more than a residue of sludge at the bottom of the tube. To this, I added a bit of alcohol, then filtered and set the mixture aside to cool.
“What kind of blood would you expect to get from a wooden saint?” I asked as we waited. “Blood from the arteries has more oxygen and less nitrogen, while blood from the veins is the opposite. Since a carved saint doesn’t breathe, what’s most likely to be the chemical composition of his blood?”
Adam said nothing, but he caught my eye and did not look away.
He had known at once that there was more to my question than chemistry.
When it was ready, I placed a drop of the residue on a clean glass slide and slipped it under the microscope. I was smiling even as the image came into focus.
Adam was breathing pleasantly over my shoulder.
“Look,” I said. “Four-sided prisms. Made up of acicular crystals. Like little needles,” I explained, in case he didn’t know the meaning of the word. “CH4N2O.”
“Clever,” Adam said. “Damned clever of you to think of it.”
I agreed with him totally.
“You said the hair ribbon was only ‘reason the first’ for coming. What was reason the second?”
“Reason the second? Oh, yes, I thought you’d like to know. They’re hoisting Saint Tancred from his tomb even as we speak.”
“What?” I said it with several exclamation marks.
“I thought you’d like to watch,” he said. “May I give you a lift?”
“Ra-ther!”