A Letter of Mary - Laurie R. King [109]
"Do you remember that ball? Odd, wasn't it, that she should have a Chinese artefact? Such a lovely thing it was, with that pearl buried in it. She mentioned it, come to think of it, when I was driving her back to the station. You made quite an impression on her, the way your hands seemed to figure it out by themselves while you carried on with some story about Tibet. I wonder what happened to it? It looked so incongruous on those bare planks, like the silver tea set complete with spirit burner pouring Earl Grey tea through the silver strainer into rough clay—"
I stopped abruptly. Something had changed in the room, and I sat up startled, half expecting to see someone standing in the doorway, but there was no one. I pulled out my handkerchief and wiped the spilt brandy from my hand and the knee of my trousers, then took up the glass again to settle back into the cushions, but when I turned to my companion to make some sheepish remark about the state of my nerves, the words strangled unborn. Meeting his eyes was like brushing against a live electrical wire, a humming shock so sudden, my heart jerked. He had not moved. In fact, he sat so still in his chair that he looked as if he might never move again, but his eyes glittered out from the hardened brow and cheekbones, intent and alive.
"What did you say, Russell?" he asked quietly.
"How incongruous the ball and the tea set looked—"
"Before that."
"How she saw your hands as an extension of your mind when—" I stopped. The barest beginnings of a smile lurked in the grey eyes opposite me, and I continued slowly, "when you opened the ball."
"Yes."
"Dear God in heaven. Master of the Universe, how could I have been so unutterably dense?"
"Bring the box, will you please, Russell?"
I flew up the stairs to the heap of bags I had thrown in a corner and returned with the gleaming little depiction of paradise that was the Italian box. I held it out to Holmes. He took up his heavy magnifying glass, and after a minute he shook his head in self-disgust and handed both objects to me. Once I knew to look, I could easily see that the decorative carved line forming the lower border was not just a surface design, but a crack, no wider than a hair. The box had a secret base, but there was not the remotest hint of a latch or keyhole.
"I'm not going to tear this box apart, Holmes," I said, though we both knew that it might come to that, and the realisation brought a sharp, almost physical pain.
"I shall endeavour to prevent that from becoming necessary," Holmes said absently, absorbed in the box.
"Do you think you can open it?"
"Dorothy Ruskin thought I could. She may have been impressed by my parlour trick, but I doubt that it led her to endow me with godlike abilities. I don't suppose she made offhand mention of any of the box's attributes, as a help?"
"Not that I remember."
"Then it should not be terribly difficult. Ah, here. May I borrow a hairpin, Russell?"
He found the tiny pressure points fairly quickly— two of the giraffe's jet spots and one of the monkey's eyes had infinitesimal and unnoticed dents in the adjoining wood— but beyond that he was wrong, it was difficult, extraordinarily so considering the age of the thing. After two hours, he had found that by pressing in a certain sequence with varying pressures, he could loosen the bottom, but it would not come free. I went to make coffee, and when I brought it in, he was looking as frustrated as I have ever seen him.
"Leave it for a while," I suggested, pouring.
"I shall have to. The nearness of it is maddening." He stood up, stretched the kinks from his back, placed his right hand gently on the box, and leant forward to take his cup. We both heard the click, and we looked