The Scroll by Anne Perry Page B

steady and so dark as to be almost black. His expression was unreadable.
    The child tugged on his hand and her small fingers seemed to tighten on his even further.
    “The scroll is of great value,” the old man continued. “I hope you appreciate that?”
    “No one else is aware of it yet,” Monty assured him. “It isn’t actually listed in the papers, and I only discovered it … maybe half an hour ago. May I ask how you heard it was there?”
    The very faintest of smiles flickered on the old man’s face, and vanished again before Monty was sure whether it was amusement or something more like regret. “Many people know it is here,” he said very quietly. “They will come and offer you many things for it … money, but other things as well. Be very careful what you do with it, Mr. Danforth … very careful indeed. There is power in it you would be wise to leave.”
    Again Monty felt the coldness brush by him again, touching him to the bone.
    “What is it?” he said huskily.
    The old man drew in his breath as if to answer him. The child tugged at his hand again, and he sighed and changed his mind. He looked steadily at Monty, and there was long experience and a knowledge of evil and of pain in his eyes.
    “Be careful, Mr. Danforth. It is a dangerous responsibility you are about to take upon yourself. Perhaps you have no other honourable choice. That I understand. But it is a heavy weight. There is destruction and delusion in what you are about to pick up. Do nothing without great thought.”
    Monty found himself gulping, swallowing as if there were something in his throat. “How do I contact you, Mr. Garrett?”
    “You do not need to. I shall come back.” He shook the child’s hand off him impatiently and turned towards the door, pushing it open.
    Monty followed him to the street entrance. He opened it and the old man walked through, the child on his heels. The street beyond was shadowed, the nearest lamp was apparently broken. When Monty looked again there was no one there.
    Monty locked the door this time, not just the latch but the deadbolt as well, and went back to his room. He opened the tin again and took out the scroll. The vellum was soft to his fingers, almost warm. Was it as ancient as the old man had said? Aramaic? Perhaps from the time of Christ?
    If that were so, then it could be any of a number of things, real or imagined. How did it come to be in the Greville estate? In their travels could they have found something like the Dead Sea Scrolls?
    It was far more likely that they had been sold a fake. How difficult was it to make something of that nature? Or even to find an old scroll which might have been nothing more interesting than instructions to build a house, or lists of a cargo shipped from one port to another? Business writings abounded, just as domestic pottery far outweighed vases for ornament or the worship of gods.
    He unrolled it on the table and weighed down both ends, putting it directly under the light. It was not very long, perhaps a thousand words or a little more. That was a lot for a cargo list, and there were no drawings or diagrams on it, so any kind of a plan seemed unlikely.
    He peered at it, looking for patterns, repetitions, anything that would give him a clue as to what it was. It was the Hebrew alphabet, which he was vaguely familiar with, but Garrett had said it was Aramaic.
    He really had very little idea of what he was doing, and no chance at all of actually reading it, yet he found it almost impossible to look away. Was this some passionate cry of the soul from the tumultuous times of Christ? An account of power and sacrifice, of agony and resurrection?
    Or was it simply somebody’s laundry list which had chanced to survive, principally because nobody cared enough to steal it?
    Monty’s imagination created pictures in his mind, men in long robes, sandals, dusty roads, whispers in the dark, blood and pain.
    The light flickered and the shadows in the corners of the