Dagger Magic

Somerville's grizzled eyebrows climbed. "That's asking rather a lot, considering it's my name on the sign-out. I can't alter the production book for you, Noel."

"I wouldn't ask it," McLeod said. "Forty-eight hours - and we'd be careful."

"I don't know…"

Adam was familiar with production-log procedure, and fully understood Somerville's concern.

"We'll be more than careful, Inspector," he assured him. "If it would make you feel any happier, Noel and I would be prepared to offer you a solemn pledge to that effect - for the sake of the widow's son."

His use of the Masonic phrase earned him a sharp look from Somerville, who glanced then at McLeod.

"Is he on the level?" he asked.

McLeod inclined his head. "And on the square. It's important, Jack."

"So I gather." The Strathclyde inspector pursed his lips. "If I were to let you have temporary custody of the flag, what exactly would you be planning to do with it?"

"Do you really want to know?" McLeod asked with a wry smile.

"On second thought," Somerville said, "maybe not." He drew a deep breath. "Seeing as how it's you who's asking," he ventured, "I suppose I can let you have the flag on trust. You said forty-eight hours?"

"Hopefully, no longer," McLeod said, with another oblique glance at Adam.

"Quite hopefully," Adam agreed. "At the most, seventy-two."

"This keeps getting more complicated," Somerville grumbled, "but all right. Come on out to the front office while I take care of the necessary paperwork."

"Thanks," McLeod said, handing the flag to Peregrine to deposit in his sketchbox. "I'll make sure you don't regret this."

As the two police officers began heading for the door, Adam summoned Peregrine with a glance and then said, "I think we'll wait for you in the car. I'm going to use your cell phone to make a call."

Lady Julian Brodie's jewellery studio was situated on the upper floor of her handsome Edinburgh town house. Even on grey days, the big windows and louvered skylight kept the room flooded with natural light, sufficient for all but the most exacting work. The walls were lined with low counters supporting a wide array of tools and apparatus, including an enamelling kiln, rolling mills, and a centrifugal casting unit. The air was permanently redolent of hot metal, borax solution, and pickling acids, but years of exposure had rendered Julian cheerfully oblivious to the atmosphere associated with her chosen avocation.

Today, to the background accompaniment of an old D'Oyly Carte recording of The Mikado, she was finishing a commission for an old friend, a graduation present for his granddaughter, soon to receive her law degree. The piece was a golden miniature of a disk-shaped bronze mirror of the T'ang dynasty, the detailing inlaid in silver, the whole thing hardly larger than a 50p. piece. Creating the wax matrix for the design had been a fiercely demanding task, involving much close work under a magnifying glass; but though Julian Brodie was nearly seventy, the infirmity that now confined her to a wheelchair had done nothing to diminish the sharpness of her eye or the steadiness of her hands. She had just begun maneuvering a flawless blue-tinged moonstone into a bezel replacing the center boss of the original design when the telephone chirruped from across the room.

Humming a line from "Three Little Girls from School," Julian spun her wheelchair around and headed over to where she had left the portable telephone she habitually kept near her when left alone in the house, for Grace Fyvie, her live-in companion and housekeeper, had gone out to do the shopping. She turned down the stereo before picking up the phone.

"Bonnybank House."

"Julian, it's Adam," said a familiar male voice. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything critical, but have you got a moment or two to spare?"

"For you, my dear Adam, always," she said warmly. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm ringing on Noel's cell phone," came his tense reply. "I need to pick your brain."

"Of course."

His reminder of the need for circumspection, coupled with a friendship that went back to Adam's earliest childhood, warned her that what was to come was not a casual inquiry.

"I've stumbled onto a rather curious artifact that looks as if it must have come from someplace in the Far East," he told her. "Have you ever seen, or do you know anything about, a sort of Oriental dagger with a triple-edged blade and a hilt carved with some kind of grotesque heads?''

Julian's brow narrowed thoughtfully. "This begins to sound familiar. Can you tell me more?"