• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

I took a moment to thumb the folder of woodblock prints done in the Shunga style by Utamaro. They were mostly of extravagantly clothed couples in various positions with their salient parts exposed and their expressions impassive. Strange to me that the Japanese do not appear to associate the erotic with the nude. No Greek ideal of the human figure. The prints were valuable, I guessed, unless they, too, were fakes.

One well-recessed cabinet contained a regular pharmacopoeia. We also found the holster to my gun along with extra ammunition in a trick drawer of a bedside table in the guest stateroom. The lieutenant photographed the items in situ before putting on a pair of latex gloves and placing the items in plastic evidence bags, which he sealed.

“That may very well be exculpatory,” he explained when we were by ourselves in the lounge. “It’s at least circumstantial evidence that von Grümh had the weapon in his possession.”

We were on the point of resorting to the cordless drill to start unscrewing bulkheads and decking when I checked again the pictures in the master stateroom. They were a series of eighteenth-century prints depicting warships under full sail. They had been affixed to the walls by an ingenious-looking device to keep them from slipping or falling during rough seas.

After a moment of fiddling with the device, I struck upon the right combination of flicking and pushing. The picture tilted forward in such a way that I could take it down. When I lifted it off the wall, I noticed a small lever, not part of the mechanism, that protruded slightly from the wall in the middle of it.

“Lieutenant,” I called. “I think I’ve found something.”

He came in with the expert. They watched as I gently moved the lever from a down position to an up position. Nothing seemed to happen. But Mr. Randall, poking about, noticed that the sill under one of the two rectangular portholes that flanked either side of the bed, had lifted ever so slightly.

Donning a pair of latex gloves himself, he lifted the solid piece of hardwood, which hinged back against the inner glass of the porthole. As I watched with a giddy sense of expectation, he pulled out two zippered canvas bags of rugged construction, each approximately eighteen by twelve by six inches in size. He placed the bags on the bed next to the picture I had removed and shone his flashlight into the cavity. “That’s all,” he said.

“Let’s hope it’s not booby-trapped,” the lieutenant said as he helped unzip the bags and spread apart the openings. I watched intently as they extracted several of what looked like those heavy leather stationery folders you find in the rooms of expensive hotels. He gave one to me, and carefully, on the bed, I undid the clasp that held it shut and opened it.

It didn’t surprise me for some reason that it contained no coins in the variously shaped circles cut into the matting in the interior of the covers. It hadn’t been heavy enough. The rest of them, ten in all, were empty as well. At the same time, something nagged at me. Something was heavy enough. And with that excitement that comes with discovery, I lifted up the print of the USS Boston under full sail. It was too heavy, considering that it was a reasonably simple if strong assemblage of wood, glass, and paper.

I handed it to the expert. “What do you think?”

“Yeah,” he said, and produced one of those knives with a retractable razor. With precision and care, he sliced the brown paper glued in place over the back of the frame. Beneath that was a fitted piece of thin cardboard. Using the edge of the blade, he gently pried this up. And there, in their custom-cut holes under a thin piece of transparent plastic, were at least two dozen ancient coins.

“I think those are they,” I said. “In fact, I recognize several of them. That one is a Mesembria War Helmet hemidrachm. And that is a Julian the Second bronze.”

We dismantled a few more prints, of which there were a goodly number. When the Dresden stater turned up in a smaller print