The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [93]
When the second Arnhaldt had modernized the house, he had also installed a generator in the building next to the stables. Valentin glanced up at the house. There were no lights at the windows, just small ones over the main doors.
The door to the generator house was unlocked. Valentin slid inside and flipped the switch, cutting off the power and plunging the place into total darkness.
He had already figured out where the security scanners were likely to be. Avoiding them, he made his way cautiously to the back of the house near the kitchen quarters. Even though it was dark he knew from the plan he’d memorized exactly where he was going. The crenellated battlements made slinging a rope child’s play, and he was up in a flash. After searching the acres of roofs for his bearings, he walked lightly over to the west wing, secured his rope to the battlements, looped it around his waist again, and lowered himself until he was standing on a window ledge. He took a deep breath. This was the tricky bit. If he was wrong all hell would break loose.
Working quickly, he cut a pane of glass, removed it intact, and slid open the window catch. He listened for a moment but there was no sound, and he breathed again. He had been right. The security system worked from the electricity supplied by the generator, and there were no supplementary batteries. The Arnhaldts were notorious tightwads, and Ferdie must have other things on his mind than updating a system that had been there since the 1950s.
The rest was easy for a man of his training. The study looked sinister in the thin beam of his flashlight as it picked out the dark-paneled walls, the somber paintings and heavy furniture. On the desk was the pad with the drawing of the emerald, just as Genie had described it. He turned the flashlight back on the walls, staring speculatively at the paintings. He knew that, with German logic, would be the place the first Arnhaldt had put his safe. Not behind the Sargent portrait though, nor the violent Hieronymus Bosch, nor the gloomy Rembrandt over the fireplace. He smiled as the light picked out the small anonymous landscape.
Safe-breaking is a difficult job, but this safe was so old it didn’t even need blowing. He just fiddled with it for a while, listening as the mechanism clunked into place like an old player piano. He grinned as he swung open the door. Ferdie must feel pretty secure to leave his home as vulnerable as this. There was nothing much inside, just a couple of manila envelopes. And a square blue leather box, just the right size for the Ivanoff emerald.
It gleamed under his flashlight like pure green ice-water, and he touched it tentatively. It felt as cold as it looked and he shivered. No matter what his father said, he could not believe that this immense jewel had belonged to his own grandmother. Yet he had been to the libraries and studied the photographs of the Ivanoff family, and when he had looked at Misha, it was himself he was seeing. He was the one who looked like Prince Misha Ivanoff.
He shut the box with a sharp click and returned the emerald to the safe. He opened the envelopes, glancing through the contents rapidly: the leases for the mines in Rajasthan dating from 1920 and granted to Arnhaldt by the USSR; a photograph of Princess Anouska wearing the tiara and two other pictures, one of a wedding couple and the other of the bride with a young girl. Startled, he flicked the light between the two faces, Anouska’s and the little girl’s, then he glanced back again at the wedding picture of Eddie Arnhaldt and his bride.
Valentin heaved a sigh of surprise: He had found more than he bargained for. There was something else in the envelope, a small piece of paper with the number of a bank account and a name. The Kazahn Shipping Line. He stared at it, memorizing the information, and then he replaced everything in the safe and