The Hansa Protocol by Norman Russell Read Free Book Online Page A

mutability, and we’re inclined to think it dates from about AD 940, which would make it contemporary with the Exeter Book, and perhaps written by the same scribe.’
    Dr Seligmann examined the pages carefully for a minute or two, and then slid them back into their envelope.
    ‘Yes, yes; you could well be right. They’re certainly genuine. But Anglo-Saxon texts are dubious things, Mr McColl, as you know, and I’ll need to verify the morphology and syntax of these passages before I can date them with any certainty. I take it that I can keep these pages for a while?’
    ‘Indeed, yes, sir. Let me pack them away again in the briefcase. I’ll leave it here with you.’
    Without waiting to be asked, the Scotsman picked up the envelope, and returned it to the briefcase, threading its leather thongs securelyinto their buckles. Then he stood up, and looked around the Belvedere once again with a kind of naïve interest that Seligmann found amusing. He watched as McColl put the briefcase down on top of a large crate covered in sacking, and fastened with iron hoops, which stood in the space beneath an iron staircase, curving upward to an unused upper chamber.
    Seligmann recalled an old Anglo-Saxon saying: Wyrd bith ful araed. You could translate that, roughly, as Fate plays strange tricks. That crate, like this young man’s visit, was another unexpected reminder of his early career as a specialist in Germanic philology. It had arrived that very afternoon from Chaplin’s, the carriers at Victoria, and it contained a gift of books from his old university of Bonn. They had written to him some weeks earlier, advising him that the gift was on its way. He and Schneider would open it tomorrow.
    ‘I was musing, McColl, on the old aphorism, Wyrd bith ful araed. ’
    ‘“Fate does odd things to a man”? Well, sir, that’s very true. And this is your academic library? A curious and very interesting place, isn’t it? All those tiers and tiers of leather-bound books ….’
    ‘Yes, Mr McColl, the Belvedere’s a curious and interesting place. But come, I have another visitor arriving any minute, so I must turn you out into the cold! Come back in a day or two, and I will have a written report ready for you. You can make an appointment with my secretary.’
    When Seligmann opened the door of the Belvedere, both men winced at the penetrating cold still clinging to the grass and blighted trees of the dank garden.
    ‘It continues bitterly cold, Mr McColl. Still, it’s only the third of January. It’s bound to change soon, and then we shall have snow. Lots of snow!’
    He bade the young man good evening, and returned to the snug warmth of the Belvedere, where he resumed his seat behind the desk.
    Had he been successful in hiding his anxious foreboding from his visitor? For some months now, he had experienced what he could best describe as an evaporation of trust in those around him. London, and Chelsea in particular, had been his sanctuary for nearly twenty years, but perhaps he had always misjudged his opponents. There was a new sense of menace gathering round him, which the arrival of his young and pretty niece from Germany six months earlier had done nothing to dissipate.
    There had been an estrangement between the two branches of the family, and he had last seen Ottilie when she was a little girl of ten, lively enough, he recalled, but ailing from some kind of affliction of the lungs. She had grown to be a very striking, lively and energetic girl, with a mind of her own, and a determination to get her own way in all things.
    Dr Seligmann looked apprehensively round the Belvedere. Was it still safe? He had taken to spending the bulk of his days and some of his nights in the old building, but nothing, he knew, could ever be safe. There was an unused floor above the study, and at times he imagined that he heard noises there. Only his fancy, of course, but even now, he felt that the building had subtly shifted its identity, and was hiding