charmed, hopeful, yet cautious. Does that mean you,re not going to kill me? - was on the tip of his tongue. Or does all this just mean you will be talking softly and beguilingly when you try to do it like that loathsome Marrok?
But this was Felix sitting here, Felix across a table from him. He had to get a grip.
"You want your father,s personal effects," Reuben said, struggling not to stammer. "His diaries, you mean? And the tablets, the ancient cuneiform tablets - ."
"Reuben," said Simon immediately, hand up to cut him off. "Let,s not discuss the details of the personal effects until Mr. Nideck has made his intentions a little more clear."
"Ancient tablets?" murmured Arthur Hammermill, shifting in his chair. "What sort of ancient tablets? This is the first I,ve heard of ancient tablets."
"Yes, my father collected many ancient cuneiform tablets during his years in the Middle East," said the man. "And indeed, these are my primary interest, I confess, and his diaries of course. His diaries are very important to me."
"Then you can read his secret writing?" Reuben asked.
He sensed a quiver in the man,s gaze.
"There,s so much of the secret writing in the house," said Reuben.
"Yes, as a matter of fact, I can read the secret writing," said the man.
Reuben drew the letter to Marrok out of his pocket and pushed it across the table. "Did you perhaps write this?" he asked. "It appears to be in your father,s secret hand."
The man stared at the letter with a sober expression, but the expression wasn,t cold. He was clearly surprised.
He reached out and picked up the letter.
"How did you come by this, if I may ask?"
"If you wrote it, well, now it belongs to you."
"Would you tell me how you came by it?" he asked again with humble courtesy. "You,d be doing me a great service if you would let me know."
"It was left in the Inn in the town of Nideck for a man who thought of himself as something of a guardian for the house, and the things in the house," Reuben explained. "Not a very pleasant man. He never received it, by the way. I collected it after he,d disappeared."
"Disappeared?"
"Yes, he,s gone, he,s completely disappeared."
The man registered this in silence. Then:
"You,ve met this person?" Again, the eyes became soft, probing, and the voice was warmly polite.
"Oh, yes," said Reuben. "It was quite a challenging meeting." Here we go, Reuben thought. Get it all out. Go to the very edge of the cliff. "Very challenging indeed, for me and for my companion, my friend who,s sharing the house with me. It was, well, you might say, a disastrous meeting, but not disastrous, as it turned out, for us."
The man appeared to weigh this carefully, with little change of expression. But clearly he was taken aback.
"Reuben, I think we had better tend to the business at hand here," Simon suggested. "We can always arrange a time in the future to discuss other matters, if we agree here - ."
" ,Disastrous,, " the man repeated, ignoring Simon. The man seemed genuinely concerned. "I,m so sorry to hear it," said the man. Again, his tone was humble, gracious, and concerned.
"Well, let,s just say this person, Marrok, he objected rather strongly to my presence in the house, to my relationship with Marchent Nideck; he was offended by other things as well." "Things," it was such a weak word. Why couldn,t he choose another word? He looked to the man for understanding. "In fact, I,d say he was pretty angry about the way things had ... developed. He regarded me as a bit of a blunderer. He was very angry. But he,s gone, this man. Gone. He won,t ever be collecting that letter."
Simon made a series of little throat-clearing noises and was about to interrupt again when Reuben gestured for patience.
The man was studying Reuben, not saying a word. Plainly, he was shocked.
"I thought that perhaps you,d written this letter to him," said Reuben. "That maybe he came at your behest."
"Perhaps we should see that letter - ," said Simon.
Very carefully, the man removed the folded pages of the letter from the envelope, his finger running over the place where the envelope had been torn open.
"Yes," he said. "I wrote this letter. But I don,t see how it could have prompted an unpleasant meeting. That certainly was not my intention. The message is simple, actually. I hadn,t written to Marrok in ages. I told him that I,d heard of Marchent,s