The Woodcarver's Secret (Samantha Sweet Mysteries) (35 page)

“It doesn’t mean that every
bottle is bad,” said one of the cousins. “We can check more of them.”

Nikolaus picked up his box and
bade the vintners goodbye. Out in the sun again, the box was now nearly a
golden brown and he remembered how the box used to change when he held it; he
had always assumed the glow of the wood meant something good. Too bad for the
vintners that it had not worked its good powers on their wine. It occurred to
him that the artifact might contain both good and bad influences. Did its owner
or its location make a difference?

“Here, Dad, I can hold that for
you,” Johann offered as they began the walk back toward their car.

Nikolaus relinquished the box and
felt his energy immediately drain away. In Johann’s hands the box had gone dim
again. A heavy weight seemed to press upon Nikolaus’s chest. He looked around
the village of his youth, seeing the half-timbered buildings and millennia of
history one last time before he fell to the cobbled street.

*
* *

Johann and Krystal Schenke sifted
through the rooms full of their father’s possessions. So much to deal with! It
was probably the fact of his upbringing during the Great Depression and the
War, they suggested to each other. Doing without, having so little as a child,
including losing his parents so very young. Maybe that was the sort of thing
that led a man to become such a hoarder.

No matter. With both parents gone
now and each of the siblings involved in new lives, new relationships, they
simply had no choice but to clear it all out. They had agreed—the sale of the
apartment in Zurich and what items might be salvageable would be split and used
to establish themselves.

“Keep whatever you want,” Johann
said. “Personally, I’m not interested in any of this old junk.”

“I’ll take Mother’s dishes and
the family photos.”

“What about that box? The one he
found that day—” Neither of them could quite believe how quickly their father
had collapsed and died, right there on the street, his old heart condition
choosing that particular weekend to take him.

She shook her head. Their father
had loved that old box but for them, the memories associated with it would
always be painful. “We’ll sell it at the flea market.”

Two weeks later, set up at the
Flohmarkt
Kanzlei
, she watched
with mixed feelings as people took away furniture and kitchenware, clothing,
collections of Hummel figurines, coins, stamps … her father, it seemed had
collected anything that caught his fancy. A large man in a dated three-piece
suit meandered between the tables, looking at every item with concentrated
interest but passing most of them. At her second table he stopped abruptly and
picked up the wooden box, the one item Krystal most wanted to be rid of.

“What’s this, then?” The man
murmured, almost as if he were speaking directly to the box, but then he looked
up at her. “Do you know the history of this piece?”

He spoke English with a heavy
Irish brogue and despite the direct questions he had friendly blue eyes and
thick hair that had many threads of silver among the once-blonde mane. She
repeated the little she knew about how her father had retrieved the box after a
Nazi soldier threw it away and the fact that it had been hidden away in a
cellar for decades. The man’s eyes grew sharp and he studied every angle of the
box.

“It’s very pretty,” Krystal said,
although it wasn’t the least bit true.

“Yes …” He stared at the object
as he fished into his pocket for some francs and handed them over without
realizing it was far too much. He walked away before she could give him his change.

*
* *

Terrance O’Shaughnessy caught the
early evening flight from Zurich to London, connected to Shannon and arrived
home in Galway close to midnight. Only seven p.m. on the American east coast;
someone would surely be in the office he intended to call. He picked up the
telephone and got the overseas operator.

“The Vongraf Foundation.”

“Doctor Ernest Hollingway,
please.”

The director came on the line
almost immediately when Terrance gave his name.

“Mr. O’Shaughnessy! How nice to hear
from you again.”

“I have a box, which I believe is
a mate to the other one.”

A quick intake of breath, a
stretch of silence.

“Could it
be
the other?”

Terrance considered that. He had
held the box on his lap during the flight, studying and contemplating its
facets.

“I don’t think so. From my
recollection of the data you had for it, that one had certain …
other
qualities. I made no notes, of
course, but I can give you the dimensions on this one.”

He picked up a tape measure and
carefully checked height, width and depth of the box that now sat on the desk
in his study. He could hear Hollingway moving about, the sound of papers
rustling. With each measurement the director uttered a soft
no
.

“The size is slightly different,”
said Hollingway. “We’ve no proof that the box—or boxes—have an ability to
change their characteristics.” Not in that way. Both men knew that they did
change in other ways.

“So there are two?”

Hollingway evaded the direct
question. “I would like to send one of our researchers to inspect it
personally, to take additional data. If you don’t mind.”

“I’d be delighted. I could bring
it there, if that would be more convenient.”

The Vongraf director paused only
a fraction of a second. “Your choice, Terrance. Your reputation as a collector
of unusual artifacts is widely known and we always value your input.”

“I shall be on the Friday
afternoon flight.”

Terrance hung up the phone with a
rush of excitement. He had heard rumor of The Vongraf Foundation at the age of
twenty, had studied their work despite the low-key nature of the organization
and had been thrilled at his previous chance to visit their laboratory once. Of
course, that had been decades ago when both he and Hollingway were much younger
men. He gave the box a pat on its lid and decided to pour himself a little
toddy to calm himself enough for sleep.

The telephone rang before he left
his study. The clock over the mantle showed that it was nearing one in the
morning. It must be someone from The Vongraf calling back. He hoped Hollingway
had not changed his mind.

“Yes?” he answered.

“Mr. O’Shaughnessy? I am calling
about a certain artifact which I understand has come into your possession.”

The voice was unfamiliar—male,
accented, Eastern European perhaps; certainly no one from The Vongraf would make
that statement without first identifying himself.

“Who is this?”

“Let us say that I represent a
very esteemed collector.”

“I’ve no idea what you mean.”
Terrance’s heart thudded as he worked at keeping his voice level.

“Oh, I think you do. You were in Zurich
only this morning … am I right?”

“What do you want?”

“We would like to see the item,
to examine it, to make an offer to purchase it.”

“I have nothing that’s for sale.
Good evening to you, sir.” Terrance dropped the receiver onto its cradle before
the man could speak again.

His pulse raced and he scanned
the room. Clearly, the man was talking about the box—it was the only new item
he’d brought home from his recent trip. But to know he had been in Zurich, to
know he would be awake at this hour … to know, perhaps, that he was in
communication with The Vongraf Foundation already. Someone was watching him.
And that person or organization wanted the box.

He moved through the house
quickly, checking that all doors were locked, all draperies drawn. His hand shook
as he poured two fingers of whiskey into a heavy Waterford glass. He’d been
about to go to bed and leave the box sitting out on the desk. Now he decided
that would not be nearly secure enough. He cleared some files from a desk
drawer, placed the box inside and locked it, dropping the key into his pocket.

The whiskey went down smoothly
and he forced himself to think rationally. He should get the box to the
foundation as soon as possible. Picking up the phone he booked the next flight
into Washington National airport.

*
* *

Two Metro stops from the airport
and after a short walk through Alexandria, Virginia’s, historic streets,
Terrance approached the building. He’d rested little, feeling that every face on
the plane, every casual jostle as he passed through the airport, immigration
and customs might belong to the voice behind last night’s disturbing telephone
call. He had managed to reach his goal without incident. The old warehouse of
red brick with white trim revealed nothing unusual from the outside but behind
that Colonial exterior The Vongraf Foundation housed some of the most modern
laboratory facilities in the world.

“Terrance! I’m surprised—I
thought you said Friday.” Ernest Hollingway ushered him, luggage and all, into
his private office.

Terrance told him about the
late-night telephone call, the eerie feeling of being observed, the
impossibility of sleep.

“My dear man, of course you had
to come.” The jovial courtesy covered the other man’s obvious concern over
these new events. “Well, we can begin our tests right away. Of course, you know
that we do not keep the artifacts that we test. The box belongs to you and only
you shall decide upon its disposition.”

“Thank you. I shall give it some
thought when I am more rested.”

“Of course. We must get you into
a hotel, right away.”

Terrance picked up his camera bag
and unzipped the top. “I want to leave this with you rather than carry it with
me through the streets. Pardon my paranoia.”

“Of course.” Hollingway’s eyes
fixed on the box as soon as Terrance pulled it from the bag.

“Oh, yes, this is definitely a
bit larger than the previous one, although none of us here today were able to
see or handle that one. Plus, that one had small stones mounted on it, whereas
yours is plain. The first one came through our facility in 1910. But there are
photographs—lovely old sepia things—and of course the dimensions of the box are
recorded in writing and diagrams were made. Have you had any unusual experience
with the box yet?”

Terrance shook his head. “No,
although I have had it in my possession only a little over twenty-four hours
now.” Hard to believe. “I understand there were documented cases of the other
box eliciting certain reactions …”

“Oh yes, one owner of the first
box claimed that the wood changed color and became warmer as it was handled.
Only one of our lab people, the director’s secretary, got the same reaction.
Some were a bit disappointed in that. I suppose everyone would like to think
they have the magic touch.”

“Perhaps it’s the mood of the
holder at the time,” Terrance suggested. “As I said, I’ve not spent a lot of
time with this one yet, and what time I had was, shall we say, stressful.”

“From our scientific research, we
know that the first box was carved from wood taken from a tree struck by
lightning. There’s a certain molecular anomaly to it. My hypothesis is that the
lightning strike infused the wood with a certain receptiveness to the
electrical impulses given off by some people. We all have varying sensitivities
to electrical charges. My guess is that when the box comes into the hands of a
person with the right—for lack of a better term—wavelength, that’s when the
reaction is triggered. Until we test it we won’t know whether your box has any
of these properties.”

“Well, then, I shall let you get
on with it.” Terrance pushed the box across the desk and accepted the receipt
Hollingway wrote out for him. Suddenly, he could hardly keep his eyes open.

*
* *

A band of brilliant sunlight
showed around the edges of the blackout drapes in Terrance’s hotel room. He
stared uncomprehendingly at the red numerals on the bedside clock. It took a
moment to realize that he had slept through half a day and all night and that
it was now nearing noon of the next day. He rubbed grains of sleep from his
eyes and sat up.

Excitement took over—today he
might learn the results of the Vongraf study. He rushed through showering and
dressing and forty minutes later was being escorted into the laboratory where
Ernest Hollingway in white lab coat was examining something under a microscope.
He looked up at Terrance with a triumphant expression.

“It’s the same,” he said. “We
shaved a tiny sliver of the wood and I’m thrilled to say that the molecular
content is identical. Your box came from the same tree as the first.”

Terrance realized he was holding
his breath. All his years of travel and the hundreds of hours browsing items in
foreign bazaars and jumble sales in a quest for something of true historic and
perhaps mystical value.

“Can you tell whether it has the
other properties we discussed? Is it—” He couldn’t bring himself to say the
word ‘magical.’

“That is, naturally, the harder
thing to prove. As I surmised yesterday, often these artifacts react
differently with different people. Would you like to spend some time with it?
Handle it a bit more? Now that you are rested you might find a connection with
it.”

Terrance knew that his eagerness
must be showing on his face.

“All right, then. My assistant
took the box into my office awhile ago. You know where that is. Go on up, if
you’d like.”

Terrance climbed the stairs to
the same third-floor office where the two men had spoken yesterday.
Hollingway’s office was at the end of the hall and Terrance could see a light under
the door. He turned the knob and walked in.

Standing over the desk, arms
braced on each side of the wooden box, was a young man of about twenty, dark
haired with a shadow of unshaven stubble. A trancelike fascination surrounded
the lab assistant and a greedy smile stretched his mouth. His deep-set eyes
were fixed on the wooden box, and he didn’t seem to realize that Terrance had
come into the room.