The Emerald Storm by William Dietrich Read Free Book Online

came from a megalomaniac, I rather liked the piece.
    Now she put her hand on my arm. “I should have stayed with Horus,” she whispered. “Paris always smells wicked to me.”
    “That’s just the fish market and the plumbing. Let’s finish our business.” Our boy had also been playing quite happily with thimbles and spools, rolling the latter into the former while his nursemaid watched. I doubted he missed us a whit.
    So we returned to the back room. “Marie-Etienne?” I called. I thought he could have set out little cakes or a decanter of brandy to celebrate, but the room was gloomy. The clerk, oddly, moved behind us.
    “Are you here?” I repeated.
    The door slammed shut and shadows became animated. Half a dozen ruffians in tricorn hats and heavy black cloaks, dark as morticians, materialized from the gloom. The workshop was suddenly as crowded as a privy at the opera when the singing has gone on too long.
    “Damnation. Robbery?” I was so surprised that I was momentarily stupid. Then I realized we didn’t have the jewel to rob and felt momentarily cheered. “I’m afraid we have nothing of value, gentlemen.”
    “Not robbery, Monsieur Gage,” said their leader. “Arrest.”
    “Arrest?” I groaned with annoyance. Even though I try to do the right thing, people are constantly trying to incarcerate me. I make a poor prisoner, having a knack for escape. “For what this time?”
    “Withholding information from the French State.”
    “Information?” My confusion was growing. “About what?”
    “A significant archaeological discovery, the Green Apple of the Sun.”
    Were they greedy gendarmes or impatient historians? “It’s exactly such information that I’m seeking, not that I have. And arrest on whose authority?”
    “Minister Fouché.”
    “But he is no longer minister of police. Don’t you read the papers?”
    “He should be.”
    When Joseph Fouché had arrested me the year before, he was one of the most powerful men in France, his ministry the stronghold of Napoleon’s military dictatorship . . . but by his very success Fouché had become dangerously powerful, and Bonaparte had temporarily dismissed him. Napoleon liked to keep his acolytes off-balance. However, the ambitious policeman had left behind a police organization more efficient and insidious than the world had ever seen, and the reassignment of their superior to the legislature had apparently not dampened his investigators’ conspiratorial instincts. This bunch had decided to act as if their boss had never changed.
    “And you are?”
    “Inspector Leon Martel,” the ringleader said, his heavy cavalry pistol pointed at my midsection. His colleagues also had guns out. Their piggish gaze lingered a little too long on Astiza’s figure for my taste, and for policemen these seemed a loutish bunch. I tensed for the worst. “You must share with us what you know.”
    While Fouché had the sly, thin-lipped look of a lizard, Martel had the bright concentration of a cat, hazel eyes giving him a look of feline cunning. “You came into possession of a valuable jewel, and we require answers on its history.”
    “I know nothing. And where is my valuable? Where’s Nitot?”
    “It’s been confiscated, and the jeweler has been sent home.”
    “Confiscated? You mean stolen?”
    “It is you who stole it first, monsieur, from the pasha of Tripoli.”
    “Help! Thieves!” I cried.
    “No one can hear you. The real employees have been ordered to leave the shop for the day. You’ve no allies or hope of rescue.”
    “On the contrary, the first consul is my friend and patron,” I warned. “Look at my wife’s neck. She wears his pendant.”
    He shook his head. “He’s no patron when you hide secrets critical to the future of France. Present your wrists for manacles, please.”
    I’ve learned that hesitation with unpleasant people only encourages them; it’s best to establish immediately where the relationship stands. I was also heartily