Read Online Fortress of Ephemera: A Gothic Thriller by Eric Christopherson - Free Book Online Page A

Simon Ritchie, so Howard had visited the Columbia campus in Morningside Heights, posing as a reporter from the Times in order to obtain information on the excavations, particularly the disbursement of their finds. A university administrator had denied his request, though not before Howard had learned from a secretary where the records were housed. That night he'd broken into the building where they were kept—being a professional burglar, after all—and skimmed by flashlight all the extant documentation on the Langley-Ritchie expeditions, pilfering key pages.
    “Twelve hundred and sixty-three artifacts were collected from the area once known as Lydia,” Howard said, hovering over Noah. “Each one logged, described in exquisite detail, and later earmarked for distribution. The Smithsonian Museum, down in Washington, D.C., received the bulk of the artifacts, followed by the Metropolitan Museum here in New York. There were a number of donations to other museums across the country, and Dr. Ritchie, under the auspices of Columbia University, retained scores of relics for his department. Lastly, there were seventy-nine artifacts earmarked for the private collection of Colonel Langley, an eclectic mix of items, I must say, and prominent among them forty gold coins, 'staters' from the time of Croesus, referred to in the documents as 'the Lydian Croeseids.' ”
    “There must be some mistake,” Noah said.
    “Each coin a vivid yellow,” Howard said, “being of pure gold. Weight approximately ten point eight grams. Oval-shaped with the 'confronting foreparts of a lion and a bull' on one side of the coin, and an 'incuse punch' on the other.”
    “A clerical error, surely.”
    “Sound familiar, Mister Langley?”
    “No, I've never seen any such coins.”
    “Where are they, Mister Langley?”
    “They're not here. I swear to you—by all that is holy—we haven't got them.”
    “I'm not a patient man, Mister Langley.”
    “Over the years my father gave away much of his private collection, to old friends, to museums, and bequeathed still more of it in his will. There's nothing left of it here in the house.”
    “I don't believe you. Runs against the family grain.”
    “Why don't you have a look around?” I said to Howard. “See for yourself.”
    “Funny joke, Mister Trenowyth.” He bashed the side of my skull with his wrench in the same sly manner in which he'd bashed Patrolman Cox minutes before, and I too dropped to the floor on one knee. “Got anymore?”
    I shook my head, not so much in answer to him, but to clear it of the darkness encroaching my vision from the edges. I recall Miss Buxton's grip on my shoulders and yet her expressions of concern seemed to emanate from far away, or through some wall or window pane, as the darkness overtook me . . .
    When I returned to the world we inhabit while conscious I found my body more or less supine on the floor of the trail with Miss Buxton cradling my head in her lap and stroking my forehead. The blow, as it would turn out, had fractured the orbital bone encasing my right eye, and the swelling had already reduced my peripheral vision. (I'm sure you'll recall, Doctor, that when I first arrived here I looked as though I'd caught a mighty left hook from Jack Dempsey.)
    From somewhere nearby I heard the scuffling of men, and a voice I recognized as Noah's cry out. I raised my head from Miss Buxton's thighs to find my client—well, I'd been fired by this point, so ex-client—being stripped against his will of more clothing, though he wriggled from the robber Cormac with a wild energy, slapped at garment-grasping hands. I got to my feet.
    “Hold still, old man,” Cormac said, brandishing his buck knife, “or you gonna bleed.” The threat worked—until the knife returned to its sheath at Cormac's hip, when Noah resumed.
    Of course the little man's resistance, whether driven by panic or moxie, proved ineffectual in the end. Cormac enlisted Willie's help, and together they