Trojan Gold Read Free Page B

did have premonitory chills when something awful is about to happen to me. Then I might be able to avoid it.
    I dragged my purpling superior from the papers he was examining. Once inside, we examined my find.
    â€œHa,” Schmidt cried eagerly. “Blood!”
    â€œMud,” I said shortly. “Schmidt, your imagination is really deplorable.”
    â€œThere is no return address.”
    â€œOh well, I tried. Now I can forget the whole thing.”
    â€œBut, Vicky—”
    â€œBut me no buts, Schmidt. Don’t think it hasn’t been fun; we must meet and pick through garbage again someday.”
    â€œWhere are you going now?”
    â€œTo the library. I have work to do.”
    I had work to do, all right, but not in the library. I stayed there only long enough to get the book I wanted. Then I took it upstairs to my office.
    The snow was falling more heavily now; it formed a lacy, blowing white curtain around the walls of my room. I felt much better. Nothing like a little exercise and a yelling match to restore a lady to perfect health after a night on the town. I spreadmy clues out on the desk and settled down to study them.
    The envelope first. There was no return address, at least not on the part of the envelope that had escaped the obliterating stain. After prolonged rummaging in my desk drawers I found the magnifying glass Schmidt had given me for Christmas one year. Schmidt expected me to use it while I crawled around on the floor looking for clues in the dust—something I hardly, if ever, do. I actually had used the glass a time or two in the preliminary stages of authenticating a work of art; sometimes all it takes to spot a fake is a close-up look at the brush strokes or the machine-drilled “wormholes.”
    On this occasion the Holmesian accessory was of no help. Under magnification, the blurred letters of the postmark were larger but no more legible. The first two letters might have been a B and an A. Bad something? There are hundreds of towns in Germany named Bad Something. The opaque dark stain covered most of the back of the envelope and a good third of the front, including the areas where one might have expected to find a return address. Even under the lens I couldn’t see any traces of writing.
    I filled my sink with water and dunked the envelope. It was of heavy paper coated on the inside with a thin layer of plastic, which had prevented the stain from spreading to the inner wrapping. I was wasting a lot of time on something that was probably a peculiar practical joke; but when I returned to my desk and opened the reference book from the library, I knew why my curiosity had been aroused. Gerda had been only half right. Superficially the photo I had received did resemble the famous photograph of Sophia Schliemann decked out in the gold of Troy. But mine was not a picture of Sophia. It was of a different woman—wearing the same jewelry.
    Not the same jewelry—a copy. It had to be a copy, because my photograph had been taken quite recently. The woman’s hairstyle, the photographic technique, and a dozen other subtle clues obvious to a great detective like Victoria Bliss proved as much.
    Besides, there was a calendar on the wall, visible behind the woman’s shoulder. It read “May 1982.”
    The gold of Troy had vanished, never to be seen again, in the spring of 1945.
    I felt it begin—a warm, delirious flush of excitement rippling giddily through my veins. A harbinger of adventure and discovery, of mysteries solved and treasure restored to an admiring world? More likely a harbinger of certifiable lunacy. I slammed the book shut and planted both elbows on it, as if physical restraint could contain the insanity seeping from those pages like a dark fog, inserting sly tendrils into the weak spots of my enfeebled brain. I swear the damned book squirmed, as if struggling to open itself.
    I pressed down harder with my elbows and dropped my head onto