ITALIAN CAPRICE by JUDY KERR RATED FRPT

Alan, driving everyone crazy, is sent on holiday with TinTin and Virgil to let his lust for adventure run its course. But will they get more than they bargained for?

Prelude

It had only been a minor earthquake, just sufficient to set the seismographs deep in their London and Moscow university basements twitching with interest, but at its epicenter in the hills of northern Italy it had been enough to send the first floor of the conference block at the Lake Reno Institute of Antiquities telescoping into the ground floor, trapping thirty archeologists in a basement lecture theatre. International Rescue had arrived on the scene within an hour, and in another two hours the paramedics were reloading their unused stretchers: - for them, for the thirty people rediscovering the wonder of fresh air and sun, and for the slightly disappointed scattering of spectators, it was all over.

Virgil Tracy put both feet hard down on the pedals and the Mole hauled itself up the ramp by its own bootstraps and into the pod, the light silty soil of Lake Reno flying from the transporter's tracks. Parking as close to the pod's ribs as possible he opened the heavy hatch and climbed down, off the short ladder and onto the tracks, then down to the pod floor with a clang. A lump of turf followed him down from the tracks and he kicked at it, dribbled it out to the pod door and sent it flying, then started back down the ramp to collect the Excavator. It was early summer at the top of the world, and Europe was turned to the sun. The grass in the field was fresh and new, and a little way off the bowling-green smoothness of the conference block's lawn was broken only by the caterpillar impress the Mole had left on its way to the rescue. Beside the main buildings of the Institute the sun glinted on the gunmetal back of Thunderbird One; Thunderbird

Two, too big to land in the car park, had been diverted to the fields; hence the damaged lawn, and now the long walk back to fetch the Excavator. At the edge of the field a hoot made him turn his head: a jeep with the markings of the Italian police bounced towards him, its driver's blue forage cap set at a determined angle. It drove up and spun round him in a handbrake turn, stopping, he knew, with millimeter precision in the exact spot his brother intended it to.

"Nice work, Virgil." Scott leaned an elbow on the jeep's half-door. "Thirty lives saved and nothing worse than one broken collar-bone."

"Yeah, we did pretty well, Scott," Virgil agreed. "And the professor would've been okay if he hadn't tripped running back to save his lecture notes. They sure take their work seriously around here."

"Academics." Scott shrugged. "Who knows what makes 'em tick? Anyhow they're all still ticking, and I guess that's the important thing." He slapped the jeep's door. "I borrowed this to ferry the mobile control gear back to Thunderbird One; should take about ten minutes. Will you be ready?"

"I'll be ready to go." Virgil looked at the furrowed lawn. "You should see the Mole. We're going to have a real cleanup job when we get back."

"You're going to have a real cleanup job," Scott corrected. "As of tomorrow I'm working full time on the refit for Thunderbird One's launch bay." The jeep's engine revved and it strained on the brake. "Ten minutes, then. Call you when we're in the air."

The jeep roared away and Virgil set out across the lawn, following the Mole's trail towards the flattened conference block. He yawned; late evening at home, but here it was shaping up into a beautiful day. Some early summer flowers already blazed from their beds, spreading a soft scent that mixed with the fragrance of clipped grass, and in the distance beyond the Institute the blue edge of Lake Reno sparkled invitingly through the trees. He came to a barrier. Down the lawn's center a line of brick pillars had formed a climber-covered walkway, but several piers had collapsed, probably loosened by the earthquake and unable to withstand a second shaking as the Mole passed by. In a tangle before him lay an impressive rambling rose that had been about to burst into bloom but now clung limply to its fallen support, nipped in the bud forever. At its base a mesh of strong roots had pulled up a ball of soil the size of a table, making a shallow pit. He turned to skirt the wreckage, then saw something that made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle up slowly, one by one: stretched out at the shelving edge of the pit, palms together as if in silent supplication, were a pair of skeletal hands.

He blinked, but the hands remained. Swallowing he took a step nearer, then walked to the edge of the pit and looked down. The skeleton lay half-buried in the powdery soil, arm bones thrust forward and leg bones drawn up together in an odd and unnatural posture. The skull was tilted back, gazing at the sky, and the lower jaw hung open in an unnerving gape. In the cranium just beside the right eye-socket were two neat little round holes. He took off his cap, and knelt down for a closer inspection. Apart from the holes, which he tried not to look at, the bones were in good condition, their smoothness and lack of discoloration suggesting the unpleasant possibility of a fairly recent ownership. Around the sides of the pit some squarish indentations could have been the marks of a spade.

Over by the Institute buildings small figures moved around the car park and heavy fire department vehicles crawled in the ruins of the conference block, but the lawn and its gardens were deserted. He raised his wristwatch-telecom, touched a button at the side of the dial, and Scott's face appeared on the miniature screen. It frowned. "What's the matter, Virgil? You look like you've seen a ghost."

Virgil turned away from the perforated skull that drew his eye with a repulsive fascination, and shook his head. "It isn't quite that bad, Scott," he replied seriously, "but there's something here I think you ought to take a look at."

"You're right, Virgil, they certainly look like bullet holes to me." Scott stood at the edge of the pit, gazing thoughtfully down. "Probably a pretty modern gun, and high-powered, too." He crouched down. "Some blackening on the bone; could mean the shots were fired from close range. And there's something else. Look at these wrists."

Virgil knelt down beside him. "Something's been wrapped round them."

"Yeah, a rope," Scott said grimly, "and the ankles are the same. He must've been tied up. Tied up then shot."

The thing in the pit gaped up at them in eyeless horror.

"Gee, the poor guy," Virgil said feelingly. "It's murder, then, Scott."

Scott straightened up. "Yeah, but who knows how long ago? Those bones could've been here ten years, maybe even fifteen or twenty. We'll get the police over right away, but they won't have much chance of catching the culprits now."

"He must've been here before the rose bush," Virgil pointed out. Guess they planted the garden when they built the new block, and that was fifteen years ago, according to the plaque back there."

"Well, that's your answer, then. This would've been one big construction site at the time, full of plenty of nice convenient holes. Ideal for disposing of a body."

"But here?" Virgil stood up and looked around. "This place is full of professors and dusty old guys who wouldn't know one end of a gun from the other. They dig up old bones, they don't bury them."

Scott shook his head. "He could've been brought from miles away, virtually anywhere in Italy. This is a nasty business, Virgil, probably some kind of syndicate killing. And those kinds of crooks don't dump the evidence in their own back yard."

Virgil looked at the bony hands outstretched in their posthumous plea for succor, and frowned. "I just wish we could get hold of whoever did this, Scott. Doesn't seem right they should get clean away with it."

"Yeah. Well, that'll have to be up to the police." Scott turned to go. "This is one time International Rescue were too late. About fifteen years too late." He started for the jeep. "I'll get someone to take care of this while you load the Excavator, then maybe we can get home. Dad'll be worrying about us, I should've checked in five minutes ago."

Virgil watched the jeep bump back towards the Institute buildings, then, with a final reluctant glance at the contents of the pit, he set his cap back on his head and resumed his original course for the rubble of the conference block.

The Excavator sat on the buckled concrete at the edge of the ruins, its combined flail and scoop raised over the rock pile it had shifted to let the Mole through. Its tracks, smaller than the Mole's, had nevertheless collected their share of the Institute's turf, and Virgil wandered round it, knocking away the bigger lumps with his boot. As one dropped, something too regular to be a stone rolled away and settled, and he picked it up. It was a blackened little disc, coin-sized but perhaps a bit thicker, and crusted over with a rough, stony coat. He scratched at it experimentally and a chip detached, revealing a dull surface and some spidery lines that could have been writing, but could equally well have been worm tracks, except that worms didn't usually eat metal. The thought of worms brought some unpleasant associations, and he was about to consign his find to the rubble when an impatient tooting from the jeep at the edge of the car park reminded him of his original purpose, and he put a foot on the bottom rung of the Excavator's ladder, dropped the disc into his pocket, and promptly forgot all about it.

Jewel Song

"Virgil Tracy, you're in serious trouble." TinTin walked into the lounge, her expression severe.

"Why?" Virgil looked up from the piano. "What've I done?"

"You left a piece of metal in the pocket of your uniform, and it's fused the auto cleaner. Just when Grandma and I have a whole lot of washing to get through."

"Can't you boys ever learn to turn out your pockets?" Jeff Tracy rumbled irritably from behind the World News.

"I don’t remember any metal," Virgil protested. "And how do you know it was my uniform? They all look the same, without the sashes."

"Because it was the muddiest," TinTin replied firmly. She held out her hand. "Do you recognize this?"

Virgil took the disc and gazed at it for a moment. "Gee, I'd forgotten about that. Guess it's a case of guilty as charged."

"You'd better come with me, then. Grandma and I have already decided on the sentence."

"What's that?"

"You fix the auto cleaner. That's after you've drained it and cleaned it out. And that's after you've mopped the water off the kitchen floor."

"I thought finding a coin was supposed to be lucky." Virgil held up the disk and looked at it without enthusiasm. "Say, Alan, do you want this? You're interested in archeology. It could be real old, maybe Roman; I found it on the Lake Reno trip."

Jeff raised his eyes from the newspaper. "If that turns out to be some kind of antique I want it mailed straight back to the Institute - anonymously of course. We're not keeping anything that ought to be in a museum."

"Great, Virgil, thanks." Alan's face lit as he took the disc. "Wow, it's in bad shape, but we'll soon get that off." He weighed it in his hand. "Heavy, too. You never know, it could even be gold. I'll get Brains to clean it up right now. Want to come and watch?"

"He's got a prior engagement," TinTin reminded them.

"Okay, I'm coming," Virgil said, resigned. "See you lunchtime, Alan."

"If you're lucky," TinTin said.

"Is that it, Brains?" Alan asked impatiently as the tap washed the gray sludge down the laboratory sink. "If I'd known it was going to take this long TinTin and I would've gone for a swim." He looked at the blue square of the window with regret. "Sure is hot in here."

"There're a few things I-I'd rather be doing, too," Brains answered, a shade testily. "But if you want the last of this uh, encrustation removed without i-injuring the metal it has to be done properly. You don't get something for nothing, Alan: that's the first law of thermodynamics." He marched over to the other side of the room and lit a Bunsen burner with a pop.

"We've caught him at a bad time," TinTin explained in a low voice. "He's got the refit for Thunderbird One's launch bay on his mind at the moment, and he's working on some new circuits for a robot. He thinks he's made a breakthrough in fuzzy logic."

"New circuits?" Alan raised his eyebrows. "Well I hope they're better than Braman's." He glanced over to where the copper-colored robot drooped in the corner, arms limp at its sides and square head hanging forwards, like a hazard suit on a peg. "Brains lost interest in him pretty quick, didn't he?"

"Braman's logic always was a little fuzzy anyway, I'm afraid," TinTin said. "And his hardware's completely out of date now. You know, I'm sorry for Brains." She tapped her forehead. "His research department comes up with new ideas so fast his manufacturing division can't keep up. As soon as he's finished building something it's obsolete."

"Uh, almost ready." Brains returned to the sink, carrying a flask in a pair of long tongs. He set it down, added the contents of a test tube, and a cloud of stinking yellow fumes shot up with shocking speed, like a genie from a bottle.

"Oh, Brains!" TinTin complained. She reached for the door control pad but the door slid up unassisted, to reveal Virgil in the corridor outside. He stepped back hastily, wrinkling his nose.

"Whew. I had a message for Brains, but I guess I'll come back later."

"No, come in." TinTin stood aside to let the fumes roll off on an exploration of the corridor. "You're just in time. Brains has finished cleaning your find, only we’ve already discovered that it isn't what you thought it was. Tell him, Alan."

"It isn't a coin at all," Alan said, "it's a locket. It isn't gold, it's silver, and it sure isn't Roman. Brains reckons it can't be more than thirty years old."

"The ah, plating process is very distinctive." Brains upended the flask into a fog-filled tank. "I believe it's mainly used on more uh, economical articles." He fished in the tank and held out his hand. "There, you should be able to prize it open now."

"I don't care if it isn't valuable," TinTin said, "I think it's pretty." She took the disc from Brains's palm. The silver gleamed alluringly, still smoking slightly and sprinkled with a fine frost as the last traces of its carbon dioxide rinse sublimed. On its uppermost face the random worm-tracks were revealed as a tolerably well-executed image of a flowing fountain, circled by a tracery of vine leaves. A tiny hinge and clasp and a hairline crack around its perimeter betrayed the object's true nature, and TinTin carefully inserted a fingernail tip. "Alan's given it to me. I hope you don't mind, Virgil."

Virgil shrugged. "Guess it wasn't mine anyway. And it wouldn't look too good on Alan."

"Of course if there's any clue to the real owner we'll try to return it," TinTin went on. "That's why we want to get it open." She dug her nail a little deeper into the crack. "Brains thinks it was probably thrown away. It's..." The two halves of the locket sprang apart without warning, and her eyes flew wide in surprise.

She frowned, holding the jewel up like an open oyster for inspection. "Alan, look. Whatever does it mean?"

There was no faded photograph or brittle lock of hair; in fact the locket was empty. But on the inside of the back plate, as unexpected as a pearl, the following inscription had been engraved in a neat but slightly unsteady hand:

G I U L I A N A

2 7 0 M

Beneath it, a fine network of intersecting lines had been carved into the metal with care and precision. Each junction of the principle lines was distinguished by small circle, and across one of the circles was incised a large bold X.

"It's a road map," Alan said, astonished. "But who's Giuliana? And what's two-seven-zero M?"

Virgil leaned over his shoulder. "Looks like a heading. Two hundred and seventy degrees magnetic. Or magnetico, in their case."

"Could be miles," Alan said. "Two hundred and seventy miles."

"Miles from where?" TinTin asked. "Anyway they don't use miles in Europe, it's kilometers."

"Two hundred and seventy meters, then." Alan frowned. "From where the X is, maybe."

TinTin looked up from the locket and met Alan's eyes. "Alan! X marks the spot! Perhaps it's buried treasure."

"Perhaps it's u-utter nonsense," Brains said with a deprecatory little snort, giving the interior of the locket a cursory glance. "I'd take a bet that it never meant anything, except to this Giuliana and whoever her ah, Romeo may have been. It's my experience that people who carve things i-inside lockets are seldom in possession of their full uh, faculties."

Virgil stared at him in open curiosity. "What experience was that, Brains?"

"N-Never you mind." Brains colored. "You had a message, I seem to remember."

"Yes. Dad wants to see you about the refit."

"And the figures aren't ready," Brains fretted, shrugging out of his stained lab coat. "We may have to house Thunderbird One with Thunderbird Two while the bay's being stripped down. You'd ah, better come with me, Virgil."

TinTin followed them to the door. "I'm going to find a chain for the locket, Alan. Even if it is full of nonsense I'm still going to wear it. I'll see you in the lounge."

"See you," Alan murmured vaguely as the door closed. He picked up a pen and traced a couple of intersecting lines on the desk pad, connected them with a circle, then poked the pen into the circle's center and twirled it absently, making a small cross- shaped crater. "X marks the spot," he said thoughtfully to the empty room.

The atlas balanced on the edge of the dinner table slipped suddenly, toppling the sugar sifter that stood by the freshly-cut apple pie. Hit by the sifter a knife flew up, striking the loose lid of the mustard pot a glancing blow. Decapitated, the pot overturned into the pie.

"Oh, for Pete's sake." Scott sat with his spoon halfway to the pie dish. "Can't you be more careful, Alan?"

"It's okay for you," Gordon pointed out, "that would've been your second helping. I haven't had any yet."

Jeff Tracy lowered his Washington Herald. "If you boys would learn some manners and not read at the table this sort of thing wouldn't happen."

"Okay, I'm sorry." Alan retrieved the book. "But I'm on the verge of a breakthrough. I've found a match for the road pattern on TinTin's locket." The table set into an instant and determined silence, but he went on: "It's just outside San Giuliano, in Tuscany, so that explains part of the inscription as well. The back plate’s kind of buckled, and if you look the A at the end of Giuliana could just as easy be meant to be an O. The way I figure it, the treasure must be two hundred and seventy meters off the highway from where the X is. Problem is, in which direction? If I could just see the place..."

"That'll do, Alan." Jeff put the paper down with a slap. "If you can't find another topic of conversation you can leave the table. I told you I didn't want to hear that word again."

"Word?" Alan asked innocently. "Did I say something?"

"You know what I mean. Treasure. Lockets, maps, secret inscriptions; it's hogwash. And I'm not having it at my table."

Gordon choked.

"And that's enough from you." His father's eyebrows bristled dangerously. "Weren't you supposed to be careening the cruiser today?"

"Aw, but it's too late," Gordon complained. "It'll be dark by the time..."

"Not if there are two of you. Alan, you can help him. And you'd better start now, if you don't want your supper on the beach. Now move."

Left alone with Scott, Jeff sat back wearily and pinched his brow. "Something'll have to be done about this nonsense. Books, charts, hours shut up in his room - it isn't healthy for a boy his age."

"You mean Alan's buried treasure?" Scott poured himself a coffee. "Yeah, he hasn't talked about anything else for days; he's driving us all nuts. Every time Brains wants to get on the computer there's Alan, working his way through the chart bank. I was trying to find some plans in the library yesterday, and there wasn't just a book missing, there was a whole shelf."

"Alan?" Jeff asked.

"Alan. He'd just dumped them in a barrow and wheeled them into his room: charts, plans, technical manuals: the lot. He said it saved him time. I know things have been quiet and he's got nothing to do, but Brains and I are trying to work on the refit. Alan's been talking about a trip to Italy, and I almost wish he'd

taken one. That might save us time."

"You're right, Son." Jeff nodded. "I've already made up my mind. Alan needs to work this treasure business out of his system, and the best way to do that is to let him discover for himself that it's all horse feathers. He's been pestering me to let him take a vacation, and I'm going to do just that. Penelope's got a villa at a little place called Monte Thesauri; I’ve checked, and she's more than happy to lend it to us for a couple of weeks. TinTin wants a break too, but that's okay because the house is big enough for six. In fact it's perfect because if I remember correctly Monte Thesauri's not too far from San Giuliano. Which leaves us with only one problem."

"What's that?"

Jeff raised an eyebrow. "I should've thought that was obvious. I'd be failing in my duty to Kyrano if I let those two go vacationing alone. Apart from that I don't want them running around Italy unsupervised. TinTin's got common sense, but with the mood Alan's in I doubt that she could stop him digging up the

Coliseum if he thought there was a bag of gold under it. The trouble is that neither you nor I can be spared while the refit's on."

"Well, I don't know the answer," Scott admitted. "I'm sure Gordon would love to go along, but I guess he and Alan together'd be a recipe for disaster."

"No." Jeff shook his head decisively. "What's needed here is someone with maturity. Someone tolerant enough to put up with a few high jinks, but who can be relied on to keep an eye on those two and set them a sober, sensible example. And I think I know just the person."

"A vacation?" Virgil looked up at his father in surprise.

"That's right, Son." Jeff leaned on the piano, smiling down beneficently. "It's a long time since you've had a break. It'll do you good to get away for a while."

"But supposing we have a call? You'd never manage without Thunderbird Two."

"That's all taken care of. With Thunderbird One's launch bay out of commission for the next few weeks it's an ideal chance for Scott to put in some flying hours in Thunderbird Two, if and when we get a call. That means it's also an ideal chance for you to take a rest and enjoy yourself. How do you feel about a couple of weeks in Italy?"

"Italy? But that's where Alan's been talking about going."

"Exactly. Both TinTin and Alan are due for time off, and I've decided to let them go. But they'll need someone to keep an eye on them while they're there."

"You mean a chaperon?" Virgil asked, suspicion beginning to dawn.

"No, I don't mean that at all." His father's voice reverted to its normal dyspeptic growl. "I mean someone to keep this treasure craze of Alan's in check. You'll be staying at Penelope's villa, near what she tells me is a peaceful little village, and I don't want anything happening to change that. The last things we need are any embarrassing incidents that might reflect back on her. Do you understand?"

"But with Alan and me away that just leaves Scott and Gordon. What if..."

Jeff held up a warning hand. "No more buts. You and Alan will still be on call. You'll be traveling in Thunderbird One, which solves our problem of where to house it during the refit, but also means you'll be able to make it to the rescue site in plenty of time if there's an emergency." He reached out and clapped down the lid of the white baby grand with a finality that set the strings singing in protest. "Now, if you can tear yourself away from this thing you'd better start packing. If you boys spent less time moping around the house and got more fresh air we'd never have had all this trouble in the first place."

TinTin dropped the heavy suitcase in the disordered interior of Thunderbird One and looked around in dismay. "There're still a lot of books to pack, Alan. But there'll never be room for all these cases."

"We'll get some more in the hull space yet." Alan squeezed out from an open panel in the cabin wall. "The more information we take along the more chance we've got of finding the treasure." He inspected the suitcase for scuffs. "And take it easy, this is my personalized luggage."

"Well, you can carry the rest of it yourself." TinTin sat down in the control seat, tired, hot and cross. "I think Brains was right, anyway; there probably never was any treasure. Why can't we just forget about it and enjoy our vacation, Alan? Italy's so beautiful at this time of year."

"Why shouldn't we enjoy it?" Alan asked, surprised. "There might even be some spare time for sightseeing, if that's the sort of thing you want. Dad's arranged for a hire car to be waiting when we get there, and the villa sure sounds comfortable. It's got a fully equipped kitchen; you'll be able to put together some great meals. You always said you liked Italian food."

TinTin regarded him icily. "I meant I like eating it, not cooking it. I do enough cooking as it is, when I'm not up to my elbows in grease helping Brains. This is my vacation too, you know, and I'm not going to spend it in a kitchen, however modern it is."

"But I just thought..."

"Well, you'd better think of something else." She lifted her chin. "If you just want a robot to do your housework why don't you go on vacation with Braman? I'm sure he'd be lovely company."

"Braman!" Alan almost shouted, "Braman! TinTin, you're a genius. That's it."

"That's what?"

"We take Braman with us, of course. Then he can do the cooking and the cleaning, and anything else we don't want to do. Brains won't miss him. And you can program him with the necessary instructions before we go."

"Perhaps," TinTin said doubtfully, "but I don't think Virgil will be very pleased. We've got too much luggage already."

"So we take something out. You can't need all those outfits. If we get Braman programmed and stowed now Virgil won't know a thing about it until we're there. Anyway he'll thank us when he realizes he doesn't have to cook his own breakfast." Alan stepped out onto the boarding gangway. "Come on, let's get busy. The villa may be modern but Monte Thesauri's way out in the wilds; there're probably a hundred things a robot could help us do. Somehow I've just got this feeling that he's going to come in really useful out there."

Pastorale

"I still reckon he's been useful," Alan said, watching as Braman cleared away the untouched plates from the alfresco breakfast table with a lobster tweezer-claw. "Okay, so he served the ham straight from the deep-freeze, and he forgot to cook the eggs again, but he is saving us work. With no dishwasher we'd have had to clean up that mess by hand."

"He made the mess. Anyway, if it wasn't for him there'd still be a dishwasher," Virgil pointed out. "Just as well Dad gave me a fund to replace anything that got broken. I just hope it holds out."

"I'm-sorry," Braman's synthesised voice apologised.

"Well, you can't say he isn't polite," Alan said. "And he's made pretty good coffee while we've been getting over our jet lag. If he'd just remember his cooking instructions he'd be perfect."

"Core-memory-boards-due-for-replacement-six-months-ago," the robot reported.

"Never mind, Braman," TinTin said soothingly, "you did your best. Just try to remember for the next time you cook breakfast: everything from the deep-freeze must go through the micro cooker."

Braman rattled off with the plates across the villa's small terrace and into the house, and TinTin looked around. Behind the breakfast niche warm orange bricks rose to a roof of red tiles, and at the foot of the terrace steps a pert yellow convertible sat on a gravel drive that ran through a garden of unpruned roses to exit under an arch in an ancient wall. Beyond the arch wooded hills sloped down to a green and brown chequerboard valley over which unseen dust scattered the light to produce a hot blue air-haze. She opened her traveller's guide. "It doesn't say much about Monte Thesauri in here. It's a pity we're so far from the village, but I suppose the privacy's an advantage. We wouldn't want anyone discovering that we've got

Thunderbird One hidden away in the barn."

"No, we wouldn't," Alan agreed. "And it's only three miles, anyway. Isn't there anything else to see around here?"

TinTin shook her head. "It says ‘some tourism, agriculture and viniculture, but less than formerly’, whatever it means by that. There're the remains of a Roman villa along the hill to the south of us, but there doesn't seem to be much left, apart from a few stones. It says it belonged to one of the last branches of the Julian family, and it once had its own Roman baths, and the biggest and lushest gardens in the whole of Italy."

"Wonder how they managed that?" Virgil asked. "This part of Tuscany doesn't get too much rain, and this area's parched, especially down in the valley."

"Yes," TinTin said, "and there's not much growing in the fields, either, except vines." She read a little more then looked up. "That must be the vineyard-owner's villa on the hill over there. It looks very impressive. Apparently he's one of the last of some noble family as well."

Alan snorted. "Seems like everything's dead or dying out in this place; even the village is falling to pieces. But isn't that the guy Penelope knows?" He frowned. "Antoni? Antonioni?"

"Antioni," Virgil said. "She said that she'd tell him we were coming and that we should drive over and look him up some time."

"Well, we haven't got time today." Alan glanced at his watch. "Now we've settled in, TinTin and I were thinking of driving to San Giuliano for a preliminary look around. Pisa's pretty near there, and TinTin's always wanted to see the Fallen Tower, so we can combine business with pleasure. You got any plans?"

"Plans?" Virgil repeated, puzzled.

TinTin smiled and took Alan's hand. "We thought we'd like, you know, the day to ourselves."

"Okay," Virgil said reluctantly, "guess I could stay here and soak up some sun." He looked at Alan. "But remember what Dad said. We're not just guests in someone else's country, we're

Penelope's guests too, so we have to keep out of trouble. If you come back here with so much as a parking ticket the vacation's over, okay?"

"Take it easy." Alan got up. "We're just going to look around, and see if we can find out any more about the locket. You put your feet up, try out some of that wine we got in the village. If we find the treasure, I promise we'll bring back your share."

A few minutes later Virgil watched the yellow convertible bowl down the drive. A hand waved, and then the car was gone, disappearing under the crumbling arch. He made his way into the kitchen, where Braman was washing up with the tap running into an overflowing sink. He mopped up the mess, explained the intricacies of tap and plug interaction to the robot, then selected a bottle of wine and a glass and returned to the terrace. Deciding it was a little early in the day he left the wine on the table, stretched out on a lounger placed invitingly in the shade of a potted fig, and closed his eyes.

He was woken by the soft crunch of tyres on gravel. A long American-style saloon had crept to a halt at the foot of the steps, and as he rose hastily a tall grey-haired man emerged, unfolding himself from the driving seat. The car's windows were tinted the same midnight blue as its bodywork, making it impossible to tell if there were any other occupants. The man looked up, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sun. "Buon giorno," he said. "You are staying here? Your name is Tracy? You are the friends of the beautiful English countess,

yes?"

Virgil advanced as far as the top step. "Buon giorno. Anything I can do for you?" he asked, cautiously noncommittal.

The man smiled. "Yes, give to Giuseppe your pardon. He comes uninvited to disturb your sleep, asks the foolish questions, and forgets that you do not know him, as you say, from the Adam." He bowed. "I am Giuseppe Antioni, of the Villa Antioni, and I come to welcome you to Monte Thesauri. You are the guests of my good friend Lady Penelope, and therefore the honoured guests of our village, also."

"Antioni?" Virgil said, his suspicions allayed. "Why didn't you say so before? Penelope told us about you. Come on up, I'll fix you a drink."

Antioni came up the steps. "Thank you. I have, as the English say, the big nose." He indicated his Roman features and laughed. "I have nothing to do, and I ask myself, the friends of my friend the beautiful Lady Penelope, what are they like? Perhaps they also have nothing to do, and perhaps my poor villa and my wine today they will be honoured with some company."

"Thanks," Virgil said sincerely, "but you've picked the wrong day. My brother and his girl have driven over to Pisa; guess they won't be back before evening."

Antioni spread his hands. "Then it is settled. I also have been left all alone: my little Francesca visits her mother's family in the north, and without her my house it is very quiet. You must be my guest for the day."

"Well, I..."

Antioni lifted the wine-bottle from the table. "You have the taste; you buy the best wine in the village. But the vino Antioni he does not go to the village, he goes to Roma, to Paris, to

London." He put the bottle down and a flicker of sadness crossed his face. "Although nowadays he goes not so much. Come, meet him for yourself."

Virgil grinned. "Okay, why not? Just let me fix up a few things, be right with you."

Inside the house he touched the button on his telecom to call Alan, then thinking about the crowds in Pisa he changed his mind. He went into the kitchen and made sure that Braman was safely deactivated, then found a piece of paper, scrawled ‘visiting

Antioni villa, back afternoon - V’ and clamped it into the robot's outstretched claw. Antioni was waiting for him in the car, and he settled into the passenger seat, breathing the exhalation of real leather and the plastic tang of ionised, conditioned air. On the dash a silver horse pranced across a burr-walnut field. "Great car," he said appreciatively. "Don't see too many of these around nowadays."

"I buy him new," Antioni replied with pride as they purred out onto the road. "But I buy him many years ago, too many for Alfredo at the garage. Each time I go he say signore Antioni, why you still drive this heap of trash? He has not the aerodynamics, he drink more benzina than the three-deck super tanker, and he park the same way." He patted the wheel. "But he is - how you say? - the aristocrat. We both belong to the past, I think: they make cars like him no more, and I have no sons. We grow old together."

Where the road wound down the hillside Antioni stopped the car abruptly on an overhang. "I show you my observatory. In this place you have the eyes of the hawk, you see everything."

Leaving the car they leaned on the low stone wall that guarded the drop, and Virgil looked down. The road branched beneath them, one thin ribbon leading on into the hills in the direction of the Roman ruins, the wider part looping back on itself several times before coming to rest in the valley below, where the vineyards and the terracotta roofs of the village baked in the heat. Beyond the soft green of the vines the thinly-sown fields were uniformly crisped, and a roofless farmhouse welcomed the road into the valley, like an outpost of desolation. In an odd inversion of the norm the surrounding hills, from Penelope's red-tiled roof to the Villa Antioni's marble colonnade, boasted a healthy growth of olive, cypress and pine. Antioni traced a line across the landscape, from his villa's gardens to where the patchwork of green and brown merged into the haze on the horizon. "From here I see what they fear to tell me. Here, does the road crumble in the village? There, does the

Sunflower crop fail on the farms again? To have much land is to have much worry."

"Gee, you mean all this is yours?" Virgil asked in amazement.

"The lawyers tell me so. When I was a boy my father lift me to the window and he say, Son, all that you see, one day it will be yours. And I think, Giuseppe, that day you will be a big man, with servants and many cars. But now, psshhh!" He shrugged. "Each year the rents they are due, and each year the villagers, the farmers, they come to me and they say signore Antioni, we cannot afford to pay. And I say okay, you pay me next year. What can I do? They have no work, no money. Only in the autumn, when the grapes are ready, and they come to work for me. And then I must pay them." He laughed.

The breeze stirred idly in the pines behind them, and on the road below a solitary tractor crawled towards the village. Nothing else moved. "Yes," Virgil said, "we got the impression no-one had too much to do round here. And we noticed the village was looking kind of run down."

"It is as you say," Antioni nodded sadly, "it runs down. In my father's day the vines they stretch to the hills, and there are many farms; you look and the green it is everywhere. Then the weather it change, and now each year there is more and more the brown. I ask the scientists from Roma, will it rain this year? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. They say it is the local microclimate, the sunspots, the global warming. But for us it is the tragedy. To bring water from the rivers in the north would cost many billions of lira, and I do not have such money. So we wait for the rain, but again this year it does not come."

"That's too bad. Won't your government help out?"

"They have their own problems." Antioni waved a hand dismissively. "I ask, and they send a man with the briefcase and the bad suit, to tell me nothing can be done. It is too late for my vineyards, it is too late for my friends in the village, but, he say, Giuseppe Antioni: you can save yourself. Your villa it would make the nice hotel, perhaps the golf club; we will give you the good price. Pah!" He made a face. "I stay here and I do what I can, but all the time my vineyards they grow smaller, and now when the people of the village say to me, signore Antioni, we need a new roof for our church, I must say I cannot help you. The days have grown very sad."

Virgil shook his head. "Guess there's not much point in saying this, but I sure wish there was something we could do to help."

Antioni smiled. "But you come to stay with us, and that is good. The tourists, they will keep our village alive for a little longer, and who knows, perhaps one day we will be sent a miracle." He turned back to the car. "Now come, I must show you the Antioni cellars, and we will see if my latest vintage it is ready for the table. You have the grave responsibility: it shall be your decision."

The door of the Villa Antioni swung back to reveal a portico of marble bleached whiter-than-white by the early moon. "Oh, no." Virgil groaned. "Guess I forgot all about the time."

"Is my fault," Antioni said contritely. "The vino he is the demon, he possess my mouth. He say talk, talk: if you stop then stop only to drink some more. And he is the bad driver; now I think I cannot take you home." He held out his car keys. "You must drive yourself."

"Better not," Virgil said hastily, "I've had a few glasses too, and that wine of yours is pretty potent stuff. But this is serious; don't want Alan and TinTin getting home and wondering why I'm not back." He frowned at the dark tree line encircling the villa's garden. "Maybe if I cut north through the woods there I'd strike the hilltop road. Then I could walk it pretty fast."

"Walk, through the woods?" Antioni asked, shocked. "But these are wild places; there are no paths, you will be lost. The last Italian wolf he push, as you say, up the olives many years ago, but the peddlers on the road, the farmers, still they speak of the strange noises in the night. My men return from the vineyards soon, they will drive you."

Virgil shook his head. "A few woodland noises won't bother me. And as long as I can see the stars I'll know which way I'm going; it's a little trick I learned in astronavigation class."

"As you wish," Antioni replied, unconvinced. "But remember, you must return, next week when my Francesca is here." He lowered his voice confidentially. "She is a good girl, but with no mother to show her the way, it is difficult. I buy the beautiful clothes, the jewels, but she will not wear them; in her heart is only her university, her books. When I say Francesca, it is time you find yourself the young man, she say padre mio, what use are such things?" He raised his hands in despair. "What kind of talk is that? But you must meet her."

"Okay," promised Virgil, who could picture Francesca only too clearly, "but we've got a full schedule next week. Could be difficult to get away." He started down the villa's steps, but

Antioni called after him.

"I forget, the day after tomorrow I give the dinner; my friends from the village will be here. You, your brother and his lady, you will be my guests of honour?"

"Sure," Virgil called back. "And thanks. The honour'll be all ours." He waved. "Addio."

"Arrivederci," Antioni called.

Under the trees the shadows welled up, and Virgil hesitated, wondering if he should have waited for Antioni's men after all. Then as his eyes grew used to the darkness he saw that between the stands of pine and olive moonlight slanted down to provide a pathway, and he followed it, working his way from one silver-lit clearing to the next. He began to enjoy his walk, and started to whistle. Tall, grave cypresses stood interposed between the olives and stunted pines like the columns of a roofless Roman temple: in the moonlight and with the warmth of the vino Antioni spreading from his stomach it was easy to imagine a dryad in the curves of every pine-bole, and he wondered idly what became of old gods when their worshippers had no more use for them. Did they simply fade away, dispersing with the perfumed smoke from the last sacrificial brazier, or were they still here, whispering among the cypresses on this soft and silver night, waiting for music to call them to some ancient rite? Only Music, he decided, had the power to encompass such a night, but what music would be fit for two-thousand-year-old gods he couldn't imagine. He stopped whistling, hearing an answering trill. There was a second's silence, and then the song of a nightingale burst from a nearby pine: the notes of Pan, bubbling up from the tiny pipes of the bird's throat like a spring. He listened transfixed as the sound rose and cascaded, its individual droplets breaking and rejoining in a gradual diminuendo as their originator tree-hopped its way off into the wood, serenading the night.

He walked on, preoccupied, the outline of a melody taking shape in his head. Humming a few trial bars he passed a square stone standing isolated in a clearing, and realised that the ruined Roman villa must be near. Beyond the stone the trees crowded in close and dark, and as he walked into the shadows he thought of the darker side of the myth, the Roman underworld with its cold river of forgetfulness and its avaricious ferryman, and the embryo tune shifted from a major to a minor key. The mild night seemed suddenly cooler and he lengthened his stride, then put one foot down and found empty space. He struggled wildly to regain his balance but there was no solid ground, just yielding leaves and branches, and he fell, rolling in a bruising sprawl down a seemingly endless ramp of earth to strike his head on a hard object at the bottom.

Some time later he opened his eyes onto total darkness and sat up, dizzy. His right hand and arm to the elbow were numb with cold; he touched his fingers to his face and found them soaking wet. He searched his mind for any explanation of where he was or what he was doing there, but his memory refused to co-operate, and a sharp shake of his head brought only a crippling wave of nausea. Automatically his hand went to his watch; he pressed a button and a cold grey light sprang up to illuminate the scene around him.

At his side the edge of a body of black water lapped gently on a bank of mud, its surface stretching off to disappear in darkness. From the other side of the narrow strip of shore a wall of stone blocks joined with perfect precision arched overhead, rising into the gloom to form the unseen ceiling of a high vaulted cavern. Behind him one of a pile of fallen blocks bore a smear of blood, and he wondered hazily whether someone had been hurt. A short distance away the rotten hulk of a wooden rowing boat was lying on the mud, and with no clear idea of what he was doing he staggered to his feet and started towards it. Something sticky was running down into his eye, and in the failing light of the telecom's emergencies-only battery the cavern was spiralling round at an accelerating speed, like a fairground viewed from a carousel. He reached the boat and looked down: gaping back up at him from beneath two empty eye-sockets was a wide-open, bony jaw. An almost identical picture projected itself onto his mind and he backed off in horror, colliding with a solid, irregular shape. He turned. Towering high over him a figure in a black helmet that might have been made from the darkness itself raised its heavy staff in the final upswing for a strike, while at his own eye level a giant dog with three sets of slavering jaws, one for each head, crouched at its master's feet.

Shocked, half-conscious and confused, he ran. The telecom's glow flickered out, but ahead a disc of moonlight marked the foot of the shaft that had been his entrance. With an agility that would have amazed him had he been in a fit state to note it he scrambled to the surface and knelt, breathing hard, staring back down into the hole. From the ground beneath him a shudder rose, swelling into a groan and then a howl that filled the surrounding woods: a distillation of all misery, all suffering and despair. Swaying back to his feet he set off again at an unaccustomed speed, stumbling through the undergrowth with as little care for the slap of the olive leaves in his face as for direction. At the wood's edge the trees thinned out suddenly, too quickly for any action to avoid the ditch that marked their boundary, and he fell for a second time, landing in a damp patch of weeds. He put a hand to his head, rolled over, and then what light there was at the bottom of the ditch went out.

"We're wasting our time." Alan drummed his fingers on the yellow car’s steering wheel. "Let's try the villa again; I’ll bet he's there by now, probably relaxing over a drink while we chase our tails round these woods." He frowned. "And he can't even be bothered to answer his telecom. He's sure going to get a piece of my mind when we catch up with him."

"Alan! Look over there!" The car's headlights made a loop across the road then returned sharply to face front, and it slowed to a crawl as Alan detached TinTin's hand from the wheel.

"Don't do that! It only needs one of us to drive. Hey, where're you going?" He stamped on the brake as TinTin opened the door, then pulled the car round with another shout of protest as she crossed the road and started precariously down the steep bank of the ditch on the other side. The circling headlights picked out a muddy figure at the bottom, and he stopped the car with its under shield jutting over the brink and jumped out.

"Alan..." The figure in the ditch struggled feebly to sit up. "The dead guy from Reno, he's down there in a boat. Guess he didn't have a coin... the ferryman wouldn't row him over. I couldn't help him, Alan. I've only got traveller's cheques."

"He's drunk." Alan scowled from the top of the bank. "It’s disgusting. He and that Antioni guy must've been soaking it up all afternoon, and now he's come reeling back and fallen in the ditch. I think we should leave him there for the night, it might teach him a lesson."

"Don't be silly, Alan." At the bottom of the ditch TinTin knelt down. "And you'd better come down; I can't pull him out of here on my own."

As Alan slithered down the bank Virgil grabbed TinTin's hand urgently. "Promise me you'll give me some money to get over the river, I don't want to stay back there... with him. And think of me. If I know you all think of me sometimes it'll make it easier. Goodbye, TinTin." He swallowed. "Gee, I feel sick."

"He could be delirious," TinTin suggested worriedly. "He's hurt, his head's bleeding."

"It's a scratch," Alan said, impressed nonetheless. "Okay. He doesn't deserve it, but I guess we'd better go for help."

"But he needs a doctor, Alan. We've got to get him to the car."

"How?" Alan asked reasonably, looking at the steep sides of the ditch. "Do you know how much a grown man weighs? I do. I'm not going to risk giving myself a…"

"Of course I don't know how much he weighs." TinTin stood upright and drew herself up to face Alan's chin. "And I don't care. If you don't do something, Alan Tracy, I'll never speak to you again."

Alan opened his mouth to protest, but the sound that followed was midway between a bray and a croak. Up on the road a pair of close-set headlamps swung around the bend, followed by the high narrow body of a tractor. In its trailer four large farm workers sat on a pile of vine-prunings, and bringing up the rear a small ancient man wobbled along on a gigantic Japanese motorcycle. With another squawk of excitement the tractor pulled over, and Alan scrambled up the bank to meet it. "Parli inglese?" he asked hopefully as the driver jumped down. "There's been an, er, accident. We could use some help."

"Help, si." The driver nodded energetically. "Giuseppe send." He turned to the men on the trailer. "Andiamo!"

"Thanks," Alan told him, trying unsuccessfully to help as Virgil was bundled up the bank and dumped without ceremony among the vine leaves. "We want to go back to the Villa Creighton-Ward. And we need a doctor. Dottore."

"Si. Il Dottore." The driver pointed to the motorcycle rider, who raised his visor to smile a toothless smile.

"He's rather old," TinTin whispered, taking Alan's arm nervously. "Do you suppose he can be a good doctor?"

"If he's as old as he looks he must be the best there is," Alan replied as the tractor started forward and Il Dottore hastily kicked his huge mount up into swaying equilibrium, like a mahout coaxing an elephant to its feet. "I just hope he's discreet. You realise that if this little escapade gets around we're going to be the laughing-stock of the village." He slammed the door as they got into the car.

"I suppose it's partly our fault," TinTin said. "After all, if we'd got back earlier we might have found him before anything happened. If only we hadn't spent so long driving home on those back roads, because you thought someone was following us."

"I didn't think it," Alan answered crossly, "they were. Just because it turns out they've rebuilt half of San Giuliano since our charts were last updated doesn't mean the treasure isn't still there, and we might not be the only ones looking for it. Anyway, we lost him." He gunned the engine. "But you're right: I'll have to let Dad know what's happened, and I suppose it'll be me who gets the blame. I figured the idea of Virgil coming out here was because we were supposed to need looking after, but it seems like it's shaping up to be the other way round. I guess we'd better just hope he doesn't ramble on about that ferryman stuff all the way back to the villa, or that those guys don't speak any English. I've never been so embarrassed in my life."

The gears crashed, and the yellow car rolled off in pursuit of the disappearing motorcycle. As the little cavalcade wound its way round the bend, a small two-door saloon, driven without lights, slipped quietly out from the darkness underneath the trees and followed it down the moon-shadowed road.

Water Music

The shutters clattered back against the orange brick wall, letting in the merciless mid-morning sun.

"How're you feeling?" Alan turned towards the bed. "I've brought you some of Braman's coffee; we thought it might help your head."

"Guess it might take my mind off it." Virgil covered his eyes. "What happened, Alan? I can hardly remember anything, and trying just makes the headache worse."

"Don't worry." Alan put down the coffee and perched himself on the end of the bed. "The doctor diagnosed mild concussion, but apart from that you're AOK. If you leave your memory alone it'll probably come back by itself, but if it doesn't it won't matter; we know what happened. You fell into a ditch."

"No, you're wrong. It was a cave."

Alan nodded. "That's what you kept telling us last night. Seems there was a lake in there too, and the skeleton you and Scott found at Reno, rowing a boat. And a six-foot-high dog with three heads. Antioni told us you did a bit of wine tasting yesterday afternoon; must've been pretty strong stuff."

"The boat, that's right." Virgil fingered the sticking plaster on his forehead tentatively. "It's coming back now. There was a lake down there; I put my hand in it. And I'm sure it wasn't a natural cavern, it was man-made."

"Okay, if you found yourself in a place like that why didn't you investigate any further? What happened to your sense of adventure?"

"I think it got home before me. But after that knock on the head I guess I just wasn't thinking straight. I was convinced I was... well, never mind. I thought I was somewhere you don't come back from. And that groan I heard coming from the ground. I'm going to keep hearing that in my dreams."

Alan raised his eyebrows. "You didn't tell us about that."

"Well, I think I heard it. It's all pretty hazy. Last thing I remember clearly is walking past a big stone; must've been part of that Roman villa." Virgil propped himself up on one elbow. "It was a real beautiful night, Alan. Seemed like the old Roman gods and goddesses might've been out taking the air on a night like that. Sounds crazy, but I really felt they were somewhere near. Then I walked into the dark and after that it's all like some kind of confused dream."

"Because that's exactly what it was," Alan said with the air of an analyst triumphantly nailing a particularly recalcitrant neurosis. "You've just explained the whole thing yourself. After your activity-tour of Antioni's cellars you must've been in a pretty impressionable frame of mind. While you were busy thinking about Roman gods and not watching where you were going you tripped, hit your head on a rock or something, then you toppled into the ditch. That's where your subconscious mind cooked all this up. You know Roman mythology as well as I do: their hell was underground, with a ferryman to row the ghosts over the river that made them forget about their lives on earth. And it was guarded by Cerberus; he was a three-headed monster. It all fits."

"But the skeleton in the boat, why should I dream that up?"

"That's easy. Must've been pretty nasty, finding that body at Lake Reno and you never know what's stuck in your mind until it pops out again. Right now you believe it all happened, but dreams sure can seem real sometimes."

"Maybe you're right." Virgil lay back. "I don't know what to believe. Guess I really put you and TinTin through it last night; I'm sorry."

"That's okay." Alan got up. "Better drink your coffee and get dressed, we're driving to the village for breakfast. You remember yesterday TinTin told Braman to put all the frozen food through the micro cooker? What she forgot to explain was that she only meant the food he was serving up at the time. She's cleaning up now, but there'll be nothing to eat until we've restocked the deepfreeze, and we'll have to look around for a new micro cooker as well. Oh, and Dad wants a word with you. Don't know what it's about."

When Alan had gone Virgil sat up, found his telecom on the bedside table and pressed the button. For a moment the screen was blank, then Scott's face appeared through a multicolored snow.

"That you, Virgil?" Scott's voice asked faintly. "You've got a transmitter problem, I can hardly see you."

"It's a power problem," Virgil replied. "Batteries must've got drained. Looks like they haven't recharged yet."

"I see." Through the snow Scott's face was unreadable. "I heard you had some trouble last night."

"You heard?"

"Yeah, you fell down a hole, wasn't that it?" Scott's eyebrows lifted a few millimeters but his face remained deadpan. "Well, could happen to anybody. I also heard you found something down there. That sounds interesting, Virg. What was it, a big white rabbit with a pocket-watch?"

"Now just a minute, Scott..."

"Okay, okay." Scott raised a hand. "Whoever you want to speak to better make it fast, before you lose contact. If it's Dad he's not around at the moment."

"Can you put me through to Brains?" Virgil requested. "I want to ask him something anyway. I'll give Dad a telecall later. Something tells me I've got a lot of apologizing to do."

All round Monte Thesauri's little piazza, a square clearing in the huddle of red roofs, narrow alleyways led in, their walls blank at street level except for a few shadowed doorways, but with brightly painted shutters and geranium-hung balconies above. On the buildings of greater importance in the square faded stucco flaked like sunburn to show the rendering beneath, but on the common houses the unprotected pinkish-orange brick was crumbling and patched with irregular daubs of gritty cement. At one side of the square a fountain with four imaginatively carved stone dolphins balancing a conch on their tails dribbled fitfully into

a low stone basin, and near it a striped awning under the gilded legend ‘RISTORANTE’ gave some other late breakfasters relief from the unrelenting overhead sun.

"I'm starved," Alan said as he stopped the yellow car in the informal park at the center of the square. "Let's eat before we shop. That place was okay last time we tried it."

Outside the restaurant, tables stood in two distinct groups separated by a pathway to the door. Most in the left hand group were occupied, mainly by villagers, but those in the group nearer the fountain were empty except for a few obvious tourists. Picking a sun shaded table close to the fountain's basin they sat down, and an aproned man with a monk's tonsure of graying hair ringing his head shuffled up to greet them, both hands extended in welcome.

"Eh, Americani! You come back, you like papa Luigi's food." He frowned, suddenly concerned. "But where you yesterday? You no eat at Giovanni's across the square? Very bad place." He patted his stomach and made a cutthroat gesture. "Two die already this year."

Alan shook his head. "We didn't go there. We've got enough culinary problems at home; that's why we're hungry now. I'll have the tagliatelle Luigi - the biggest helping you've got."

"What's all that money in there?" As the restaurant owner scribbled their orders TinTin pointed to a trail of drowned coins that lay scattered around the fountain's shallow pool like the spillage from a stricken Spanish galleon. "Do people just throw it in?"

"Sure, throw coin you get wish, just like the Trevi. But you get better wish here; she no used so much. You try, you have the pretty face: fortune she smile on you already."

"Antioni told me about that," Virgil said when Luigi had shambled off. "The villagers call it their lucky fountain. They rake the coins out at the end of the tourist season, to put towards the repair work that needs done around here."

"Looks like it hasn't been too lucky for them so far," Alan replied, gazing around. "Still, guess they'd have to save for some time to put this mess to rights." He looked at the desultory trickle of water dripping from the dolphins' beards. "Sure isn't very impressive, either. But maybe that's all part of the water shortage you were telling us about in the car."

"If only there was some way we could help with that," TinTin said. "You know, it isn't just the big disasters, is it? It's the little tragedies too, the little quiet tragedies that happen to people like the people here, all the time, all over the world, and no one to help them. It's very sad."

Virgil nodded. "That's just what Giuseppe said. It's depressing: the more missions International Rescue carries out the more you realize what we can't do. Like the guy we found at Reno; we couldn't do anything to help bring his murderers to justice, and we can't do anything here. Guess I could use Thunderbird Two to drop them an emergency field tank and fill it with water, but with all those thirsty plants around how long would that last?"

"I don't suppose even your father would have the money to provide the irrigation they need," TinTin replied. "But let's not be miserable on such a lovely day. After all, if the people here can stay cheerful what's the point in our getting depressed?"

"You're right," Virgil admitted. "Anyway, how'd you two make out in San Giuliano yesterday? Guess I didn't get the chance to ask."

Alan said nothing, but TinTin gave a little smile.

"It was all rather funny, really. We tried to follow the map on the locket, but the town's built round a natural spring and they're developing it for tourism; there's to be a big new spa. I suppose with more people taking the waters they had to improve their facilities. Poor Alan's X is under their new sewage farm."

"We don't know that," Alan said, a touch sharply. "Now they've re-routed the local highways I couldn't even be sure we were in the right spot."

"And it wasn't much better in Pisa," TinTin went on. "We had dinner, then we went into a jeweler’s to ask about the locket. Alan thought it might help if we knew roughly when it was made."

"And the guy couldn't tell?" Virgil asked.

"We never found out," Alan said gloomily. "He had some kind of attack while we were showing it to him, and we had to hunt about for his medication. He was okay, but we didn't like to bother him any more. Anyhow, it was getting late."

"Then on the way back Alan thought a little Fiat was following us," TinTin finished. "But it passed us going the opposite way when we left the villa to look for you, so it couldn't have been."

"Oh, couldn't it?" Alan's brow creased ominously. "Then I suppose I imagined it. And I suppose I imagined that that Alpha Romeo was behind us all the way into the village this morning, as well." He pointed to a black car parked next to a huge freight- hauler that had somehow managed to squeeze its way in through the toy town streets. "A thing like that could've overtaken us any time, but if you say so I guess neither of them could've been following us. Maybe someone just super-glued our back bumper." The orders arrived, and he dug violently into his pasta. TinTin and Virgil exchanged mystified glances.

"I expect neither of them wanted to overtake on these narrow roads," TinTin suggested. "After all, there must be some careful drivers in Italy." Her attention drifted to the freight-hauler. "I wonder what he's doing here. What do you suppose a lorry that size could be delivering in a little town like this?"

Virgil frowned suddenly and tilted his head. "Say, do you hear something?"

"No." Alan looked up from his plate. "Hey, wait, I do. A kind of whistling. Sounds like... Ow!"

A rapidly rising high-pitched whistle that seemed to come from the flagstones beneath them exploded into a shriek then into a whoosh, and a deluge of water from a clear blue sky drummed down onto the table's giant parasol, running off the ribbing like the streams from a dozen teapot spouts to pour into the cups and plates. The drumming subsided as quickly as it had begun, to be replaced by a sound like gentle rain, and as its wet and astonished neighbors turned their heads, the fountain settled down into an exuberant cascade within the limits of its basin, leaving the nearby tables dripping. At the dry group of tables on the safe side of the restaurant the villagers continued their conversations without a glance.

"Very funny." Alan glowered at his flooded tagliatelle as his dinner companions burst out laughing simultaneously. "It's okay for you, you had antipasto. I won't be getting anything else."

"Sorry, Alan, it's just your face," Virgil managed to apologize.

"Oh yeah? Well your mug doesn't look too great from where I'm sitting, either." Alan looked around, fuming. "We'll see about this. They ought to stop that thing up, before it ruins anyone else's dinner." Spotting Luigi at a distant table and ignoring TinTin's protests, he gave a peremptory wave.

"Fontana?" The Italian listened patiently, staring at the fountain as if just realizing it was there. "But she always same, come from deep spring, no-one know where. Sometimes plenty water, sometimes..." he shrugged. "How you like my tagliatelle?"

"It was very nice," TinTin put in hastily, "in fact we'd like another one and perhaps three more coffees as well. I'm afraid these have got a little bit cold."

"Never mind, Alan," she soothed as Alan scowled at Luigi's departing back. "Why don’t we try a wish while we're waiting, and give the fountain a chance to make up for getting us wet?" She rummaged in her bag and took out a couple of silver coins. "I'm sure the villagers won't mind dollars; the exchange rate's quite good at the moment."

Alan got up and followed her unenthusiastically, and Virgil watched them as they stood by the lucky fountain, a curious presage of disaster beating at his brow together with a gradually returning headache. One coin glittered up in an arc to disappear with a plop into the pool, and TinTin held out the second to

Alan, who took it and flipped it in. "Is that it?" Alan asked. "Can we sit down now?"

"Well, I think so." TinTin looked into the water. "I don't suppose you have to do anything else. Just wait and see if your wish comes true."

"Hogwash," Alan said. "If you want to believe that stuff it's up to you. Only reason I went along is because it's for charity, and if I didn't I know it'd be ‘skinflint Alan’ for the rest of the day." He kicked at the stone basin idly. "What did you wish for, anyway?"

"I wished something could happen to help the people here, if you must know," TinTin replied, a little coolly. "I think they deserve some good luck."

"Oh, I see." Alan's scowl returned. "And I suppose I don't, is that it?"

"Whatever do you mean?"

"I mean you could've wished me luck with finding the treasure. I'm going to need it after what happened yesterday. It's mighty fine: I'm in trouble and you go using up a wish on people you don't even know."

TinTin's chin rose angrily. "Alan Tracy, how can you be so selfish? Anyway it would be silly to waste a wish on something that doesn't even exist. With all that work going on at San Giuliano they'd have found something by now if anything were there, wouldn't they? You know that, but you won't admit it; that's why you've been in such a bad mood since yesterday."

"A bad mood?" Alan colored. "Let me tell you, if I'm in a bad mood it's only because I've been trying to carry out a proper investigation without any help from you. You've never taken this vacation seriously; all you want to do is drive round looking at things. Well, I can manage on my own. Permanently, if that's what you want."

"Hey, take it easy," Virgil said in alarm, but TinTin reached up with a trembling hand, unfastened the locket, and held it out on its chain.

"You'd better take this, Alan. I don't want it any more. I thought we might have some time for each other on our vacation, but now I can see that all you're interested in is your silly treasure. I'm going home: if you just want someone to carry this about you can put it round Braman's neck."

Alan glared at the locket, then snatched it and hurled it into the fountain's basin, where it sank on a chain of minute bubbles to disappear among the clutter of coins. TinTin made a futile grab for it then burst into tears; Alan turned his back and made off at high speed for the center of the square, almost colliding with the owners of the Alpha Romeo, who also seemed in a hurry to return to their car, and a moment later the yellow convertible screeched out of its slot and roared away. The villagers turned from their tables to gaze.

As TinTin raked in the water for the locket Virgil got up quickly. "Say, better not do that. There’re about two dozen guys over there who'll think we're helping ourselves to their church roof fund." He narrowed his eyes, trying to see through the sun flash on the surface, then took TinTin's arm and looked back to meet the hostile stares. "We won't find it this way, anyway. Come on, let's sit down. We'll think of something else."

At the table, the replacement food had arrived together with three undiluted coffees. Virgil settled the bill, then waited while TinTin sipped her drink. "Feeling better?" he asked.

"I think so." She wiped her cheek. "It was all my fault. I shouldn't have said that about the treasure, it's meant so much to Alan over the last few weeks. And I didn't really mean to give him back the locket." She paused, and another tear started down. "But driving off and leaving us like that, how could he? How are we going to get home?"

"He'll be back," Virgil reassured her, "don't worry. When he's gone a few miles and had time to simmer down, he'll remember us. But he's bound to be pretty sensitive about his treasure now it's starting to look like it might all have been a pipe dream. He's only twenty-one, TinTin. He's still got some growing up to do."

"I suppose you're right." TinTin sniffed. "But what are we going to do about the locket? I'll just have to come back here tonight when they're all asleep, and try to find it on my own."

Virgil frowned and shook his head. "You can't do that, honey, it's too dangerous. Anything could happen."

"But if we leave it Alan will think I really don't want it, and he'll be even more upset." TinTin's unsteady voice heralded the approach of a fresh flush of tears. "And I can't ask him to get it. I don't suppose we'll even be on speaking terms for the next few days."

Virgil looked up and saw the yellow car threading its way back down one of the narrow streets. "Hey, here he is now," he said hastily. "Better dry your eyes, and don't worry. Just as soon as he's in dreamland tonight I promise I'll come back and get the locket."

"Oh, Virgil, you can't." TinTin shook her head. "All the way into the village and hunting around in the dark just because of a silly argument, you couldn't." She dabbed at her eyes and looked up hopefully. "Could you?"

"Nothing to it," Virgil said, trying to display a confidence he didn't feel. "It's just a few minutes' drive, and one of our high-powered torches'll make the bottom of that basin as bright as day. I'll be back in no time, I'll slip you the locket in the morning, and no one else'll ever know I was here. It'll be our secret."

Nocturne

Just after midnight the light finally clicked out in Alan's room, and Virgil closed his own door silently and re-dressed. With the air still charged from the afternoon's high tension and the abbreviated sleep of the night before beginning to take its toll the small household had retired early, and for the last hour he had kept awake by padding round his room, not daring to settle on the bed, which still called like a siren, pristine and seductive. Slipping out in stocking feet he felt his way down the corridor, edged carefully through the creaky back door and tiptoed painfully across the yard. The moon, which the previous night had hung with its top left-hand corner obscured, like a coin being delivered through some cosmic slot above, was now completely full, and in the sharp division of silver light and shadow the barn doors stood slightly ajar. With a frown for Alan, whose turn it had been to lock up, he stepped into the darkness inside, and into the bone-crushing embrace of a pair of metal arms.

"Stop- thief." An indicator panel lit a few inches from his eyes and the unmistakable smell of warm oil and anti-corrosives drifted across. He backed up, trying to disentangle himself.

"Cut it out, Braman."

"Password," the robot demanded. "Alarm-will-be-activated-in- twenty-seconds."

"I don't know any password. It's me, Virgil; just check my voiceprint, will you?"

The indicator flashed thoughtfully for a few seconds, and then the grip relaxed. "Pass-friend."

"Pass, friend?" Virgil rubbed a jarred elbow. "No need to ask who programmed you. Try something useful for a change, and let's have some light. I want to get a few things from Thunderbird One."

In the dazzle of the robot's four-hundred-watt stare Virgil climbed the ladder, found his uniform in the cockpit store and pulled on the waterproof boots, then pocketed a torch and scrambled back down. "Okay, douse that light now. And when I've gone you'd better stand guard outside the barn. No point in alarms once someone's already got a look."

At the front of the house the car was missing from its usual spot, and looking around he discovered that Alan had managed to park it so closely under his own open window that there was no possibility of even pushing it away to start it elsewhere without detection. Three miles to the village meant about fifty minutes' walk; the outrun would be all downhill, an easy jog in the moonlight, but the thought of the return trip brought the image of his waiting bed back with a painful intensity. After last night short cuts were out, it would have to be the zigzagging road all the way. But a promise was a promise, and the night air a good antidote to sleep. Treading softly on the grass beside the drive he passed under the arch in the wall, and keeping the dark fringes of the woods on either side at a respectful distance he set off down the center of the silent road.

The shadows sliced up the piazza into sections of silver and darkness, one snipping the fountain in half so that two moonlit dolphins seemed to teeter on their chins in an impossible balancing act, their tails braced against nothing. In the black mouth of an alleyway Virgil stood and looked around. No slits of light showed behind shutters, blinds were pulled over the few shop fronts, and the car park was empty. The wall beside him was rough where the sun had sweated the sand out of the stucco, and faintly warm, a draining reservoir of the energy of the day; but under the ineffectual moon the village sat as blank and silent as if a plug had been pulled on it and its inhabitants, the current not to be restored until morning. As he crossed the square he saw that the fountain was comatose too, no more than a slumbering pulse of water wetting the dolphins' scales. Standing in shadow and moving deliberately to avoid a slip or a splash he tested the depth of the basin; the water failed to touch the yellow trim of his boot, and satisfied he climbed right in.

Something shifted under his heel, and he thought of what might happen to the object of his search if he stood on it. Belatedly appreciating the risk of using the torch in the open square, he waded gingerly into the moonlit half of the pool and crouched down. Over his shoulder the round moon stared with him into the water, and beneath the surface a hundred little silver discs gazed back up. He took a grip on one of the iron rings that were for some unfathomable reason fixed into the dolphins' mouths, and extended his arm: the water shivered and the hundred little discs broke into dancing thousands, and on the surface the moon's reflection fell apart in amusement. He waited for the water to settle, then began sorting through the coins.

Across the square the moon found something more interesting. In the mouth of an alleyway a dark shape detached itself from the shadows, and there was a practiced, well-oiled click. The moon, spotlighting the figure's hand, glittered on the short fat silencer of a long slim automatic pistol. As the figure hesitated, a second shape appeared on a neighboring corner, looked carefully about and then eased something from a holster at its belt. The silencer melted back into the shadows and the first shape withdrew.

The moon danced wildly on the surface of the water and Virgil frowned, trying to identify a coin-sized disc just beyond his reach. He leaned forward and caught it up, then something, a soft sound or a movement in shadow, made him turn his head. The moon fled behind a cloud, and he stood up. He waited, but the noise was not repeated: a cat, perhaps, or the crack of old stone settling in the night. The moon refused to return, and in the darkness he applied a fingertip to the object in his hand. The expected chain was missing, but the hump of a hinge and sharp little tooth of a clasp seemed to be there. The only way to be sure was to find a safe place to use a light, so he took the torch out of his pocket, dropped the disc in, and rested a hand against a dolphin to climb out. Then something with the force of a living projectile struck him in the back, the torch arced into the pool with a splash, and his arm was jerked up behind him at an agonizing angle.

There was no time to protest, or even turn his head. A hand reached round, the V of an elbow began to tighten about his neck, and the darkness grew grainier. As his legs weakened he turned to relieve the pain of his trapped arm, and pulled at the boa- constrictor elbow: the other man was strong, but not quite strong enough, and the hold came free. With the complaints of his still- raw bruises from the night before lending an extra fervor to the punch Virgil struck out, and a gasp and a muttered oath confirmed he had found his target. The grip on his arm relaxed, but then something cold, round and ominous jabbed into his ribs just below his shoulder blade, and he froze, raising his free hand in surrender.

"Turn around, and make it real slow," panted a very familiar voice.

"Alan!" Virgil whirled, and the torch that had been stuck between his ribs waved blindingly in his face.

"Virgil! What're you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same question. What did you have to go and lay into me like that for?"

"I thought someone was trying to steal the village savings. How was I to know it'd be you paddling around in here?" Alan scowled. "And you certainly gave as good as you got. You realize I'm probably going to get a black eye; how am I going to explain that to TinTin? Right now I'd like to make it a matching pair: one for you too."

"Hey, just a minute," Virgil said, his voice rising. "You started this. You could've broken my arm, and now you're blaming me. I ought to..."

"Ought to what?" Alan asked loudly. "Okay, let's try a fair fight this time, and we'll see who gets a black eye." He danced breathlessly. "That's if you're not too worn out."

"Worn out?" Virgil roared. "You just better look out for yourself, Alan."

"Come on, then!"

"Right!"

"Basta! Basta!" In the building above them a light snapped on and shutters flew back. There was a torrent of expressive Italian, then a female voice in the background said "Americani!" in shocked recognition, and the language changed.

"What you doing, uh? You crazy? You drunk? You want kill each other you go do someplace else; come back my ristorante for breakfast in the morning when you finished."

Virgil disengaged Alan's frozen grip from his arm and stepped out of the basin and into the square of light, blinking up at the open window. "We're real sorry; we wouldn't have woken you for the world. But I can explain..."

"You explain tomorrow. Explain why no bread, no pizza. Why papa Luigi his ovens are cold and he is still snoring. You play the horse in the night, I lose sleep, lose money."

Virgil studied his boots penitently, then remembering their dangerous significance stepped hastily back into shadow. "If you lose any trade we'll pay you back in full tomorrow, I promise. Now we'd better go, before we disturb anyone el..."

There was a high-pitched whistle and a whoosh, a howl from Alan and a splash, and the moon looked out as the fountain burst into life. Water from a dozen hidden pipes squirted to the roof-level of the ristorante to descend again in a million glittering moon-drops, then shrank back to hide the basin under a silver veil. Alan was nowhere to be seen. "Alan?" Virgil called.

There was another cry, more urgent this time and with a choking quality that made a cold knot tighten round Virgil's own throat in response. Under the curtain of water a head and shoulders struggled up from the basin like a beardless Neptune rising from the depths, then plunged back as if grabbed from behind, to disappear with a single despairing wail.

"Alan!" Virgil leaped for the basin. "Alan!"

"Mamma mia!" the woman's voice shrieked from above.

The jet from a dolphin's gaping mouth struck him full in the face, and Virgil closed his eyes. Hampered by soaked stiff clothes and working by feel in the torrent that seemed to be coming from every direction at once, he found a shoulder and followed it to an arm that was wedged into an iron ring like a wrist in a too-small bangle. He pulled, bracing himself on the dolphin's nose, and the arm slipped free. A hand gripped his jacket in an encouraging sign of life, and with his own arms under Alan's shoulders and his feet lead-heavy in boots filled with water he staggered backwards through the suffocating deluge to the edge of the basin. A growing knot of pajama-clad figures reached forward to help, and Alan was stretched dripping on the flagstones. Virgil tumbled out over the basin's rim and knelt down. "Alan, are you okay?" He gripped his brother's arm anxiously. "Speak to me, Alan."

Alan coughed and sat up unsteadily. "Of all the dad-blamed, gol-darned, dumb-fool things to do. Why can't you be more careful?"

Virgil stared. "But Alan, what..."

"Leaving that torch in there for someone to slip on. I might've drowned, or broken my neck first." Alan started to shiver. "But never mind about me. As it is I've probably only got pneumonia."

"If Dad heard some of the language you've been using tonight you might have a boxed ear to go with it." Virgil ran a practiced eye over Alan's sodden form and stopped at his tightly clenched fist. "You'll survive, but what's wrong with your hand? Better let me see, you might've cracked something."

"Nothing's wrong. I got what I came for, that's all." Alan opened his hand to reveal the locket, bright and unmistakable in the moonlight, complete with its glittering chain. "I must've grabbed it off the bottom of the pool while I was trying to stay alive in there, so I guess I've got you to thank for helping me find it, in a way. Say, what's the matter with you?"

Virgil shook his head dejectedly. "Seems I lost a couple of hours' sleep and walked all the way down here just to pocket a piece of junk. But forget it." He straightened up and looked around. A small crowd of fascinated spectators had gathered about the fountain, and in every building around the square and in some of the alleyways windows were lit and shutters hung open. Someone stepped in close, and he looked up to be blinded by a flash of light as an electric motor pumped film squeakily past an aperture eye.

"Grazie!" The camera owner beamed good-naturedly and handed down a dog-eared card. "Buona fortuna."

"What's it say?" Alan asked.

"Gazzetta Monte Thesauri," Virgil read out dully. "We're in the newspapers."

The yellow car was waiting in the service park at the edge of the village, and Alan climbed in and sat shivering behind the wheel. Virgil pushed him over and settled into the wet driving seat. "I'll drive. You're shaking so much you'll crash the car."

Alan sniffed miserably. "Do you reckon they believed us about why we were fishing around in their fountain?"

"Sure, they believed it. Enough people saw your little tiff." Virgil started the car. "What worried me were those photographs. Just as well you pulled your sweater down over that gun belt. You must've been crazy, wearing that."

"It was for my torch," Alan said indignantly, "and anyway, what about your boots? That footwear's pretty distinctive. Lucky he didn't snap that."

At the service park's exit a gigantic lorry had been parked untidily, eight of its sixteen wheels projecting onto the road. As Virgil pulled the car round to skirt it they saw the distinctive glow and pause of a cigarette being smoked in the darkness, and the convertible's headlights gave a brief glimpse of a figure standing by the high tailgate. "Say, that's the truck we saw at dinner-time." Virgil glanced in the mirror. "I'm sure that guy was wearing a business suit. And what's he doing here at this time of night?"

"You're mighty suspicious all of a sudden." Alan sneezed. "Come on, get your foot down. I'm freezing."

"Okay, okay. I've just never seen a truck driver in a pinstripe before, that's all. Anyhow you're the guy who wanted us to believe two different cars were tailing you."

"So I was wrong," Alan answered unconcernedly. "If there isn't any treasure no-one else can be looking for it, so there's no reason for anyone to follow us. TinTin was right; they must've been nervous drivers."

"There isn't any treasure?" Virgil repeated, nonplussed.

"Of course not. I realized that almost as soon as we got to San Giuliano yesterday: if there'd been so much as a dime buried on that site it would've been turned up. After that I only played along with the idea so as not to disappoint you and TinTin."

Virgil stared at Alan in amazement. "But then why'd you get so het up today? And why take the trouble to get the locket back?"

"For TinTin, of course," Alan answered through chattering teeth. "And if anyone got het up it wasn't me. I just wanted to let you and TinTin down lightly, only it seems she couldn't appreciate that. She's just a kid, Virgil. Guess she's still got some growing up to do."

Virgil opened his mouth but found nothing to say, so he closed it again and put his foot down, and the yellow car took off up the empty road.

"Poor Alan," TinTin said distractedly, scooping an armful of towels out of the cupboard. "I don't know why they call it the lucky fountain; it's been nothing but trouble for us. Poor Alan could have drowned."

"So maybe we were lucky," Virgil suggested. "It could've been a lot worse."

"I suppose so." TinTin frowned. "At least I've got my locket back and Alan's finally given up on the treasure, so perhaps now we can settle down and enjoy our vacation. But I just hope he hasn't caught anything. He's soaked through."

"Guess I got pretty wet, too. Are there any of those..."

"And there's more bad news, I'm afraid." TinTin added the last two towels to the pile. "Braman had another accident while you were away."

"What happened?"

"His power cells must have run low and he tried to recharge himself in the kitchen, but he wasn't compatible with the main. He just needs a new fuse, but the deepfreeze and the refrigerator didn't survive. I don't know what we're going to eat tomorrow."

Virgil frowned. "We have to do something before that robot starves us to death. Maybe we can come to some arrangement with Luigi; with him delivering our meals we wouldn't have any more problems, and it'd help compensate him for the disturbance tonight."

"That's a wonderful idea." TinTin hefted the mountain of towels and turned for the bathroom. "But I do hope Alan understands. He was so keen on the idea of Braman doing the cooking. Poor Alan."

"Sure, poor Alan," Virgil agreed, without very much conviction.

After TinTin had gone he searched through the cupboard, but not even a hand-towel remained, and taking a thin but dry sheet he went to his room. As he stripped off his wet clothes something fell out of a pocket and rolled under the bed, where it spiraled to rest like a settling coin. "Hey, I've done it again!" he said aloud in surprise, and knelt to retrieve the shiny silver disc. As he examined the object he had taken from the fountain and forgotten, bewilderment then intrigued astonishment followed each other across his face in quick succession, and after a moment he stood, then wrapping the sheet around himself he crossed to the writing-desk, found paper, a pencil and a battered plastic ruler, and sat down to make some rapid calculations.

Surprise

"You're being very mysterious." TinTin took the locket from around her neck and handed it over. "Can't you tell me what you want it for?"

"Just a little party trick I'm practicing for our dinner with Antioni tonight," Virgil answered. "I'll give it back safe and sound, don't worry."

"A party trick?" TinTin said, curious. "That doesn't sound like you. But then you've been acting strangely all day: shutting yourself up with Alan's books, and then driving off and not telling us where you were going."

"I just wanted to make some telecalls. I thought maybe Antioni could use his influence to keep last night's fiasco out of the papers, and I had to finalize our arrangement with Luigi." Virgil looked down at the locket. "Say, hope you hadn't planned on wearing this tonight."

"No." TinTin smiled happily. "Penelope said I could borrow anything from her wardrobe here, and that includes her spare diamond collection. With a few pins I should be able to manage a little party surprise myself."

"Wow!" Alan looked up from his watch as TinTin swept down the villa’s steps in a deep blue off-the-shoulder dress and a constellation of tiny brilliants that circled her throat and winked from a small tiara. "Didn't know we'd be dining with royalty. Lucky we had our tuxedos; we'd sure have been shown up."

Virgil frowned. "We still will be if we're late. Let's get moving. Who's going to drive?"

"Don't look at me." Alan shook his head. "I'm looking forward to trying out signore Antioni's famous red wine, and if the night before last's anything to go by that's not the stuff to take before you get behind a wheel."

"I'm not doing it either," TinTin said decidedly. "I've got all dressed up, and I'm not going to sit the evening out just so you two can work your way through the wine-cellars."

"That just leaves you, Virgil." Alan grinned. "It's only fair; guess you already sampled enough of that wine to last you the rest of the vacation. Better stick with grape juice tonight, it's safer."

"Now wait a..." Virgil began, but TinTin interrupted him.

"I know," she said excitedly, "none of us have to do it, after all. We'll get Braman to drive. That's one thing Brains did succeed in teaching him."

Five minutes later, after a brief but heated discussion and some fine adjustments to the car's control pedals, Braman sat stiffly in the driving seat grasping the wheel in two copper claws. Alan and Virgil stood on opposite sides of the car, regarding the robot with happy satisfaction and open distrust respectively.

"Now, Braman, are you sure you understand what you have to do?" Alan asked.

"Drive-car-respond-to-voice-commands. Boil-eggs-for-five-minutes."

"No, Braman," Alan said in alarm, "You're supposed to be running your driving program now. Forget about the cooking."

"Cooking-instructions-erased-from-memory," the robot responded obediently, as TinTin came down the steps with something in her hand.

"Are we ready?" she asked. "Look, I've found one of Parker's old hats; it'll make him look just the part." She balanced the peaked cap on Braman's tin cranium. "There, doesn't he look smart? Braman, say ‘Where to, Milady?’"

"Where-to-me-lady?"

"Mister Antioni's villa, Braman," TinTin replied, giving a fair imitation of Penelope's precise lisp as she settled into the back seat and held the door open for Alan. "And you'd better hurry. It's been such a long day at Ascot, and I'm afraid we're rather late."

To everyone's surprise the engine roared into life and Braman checked the mirror carefully, then looked slowly to the right and to the left. Virgil jumped hastily into the front passenger seat, Alan said, "Go on, Braman," and they were off down the gravel drive at a sedate and remarkably steady thirty miles per hour.

With the turn onto the road safely negotiated Alan sat back contentedly as the car picked up speed.

"See, Virg? I told you, he's a natural driver. I'm even thinking of taking him with me as my backup man next time I go out to Parola Sands."

"I still don't like it," Virgil said determinedly, eyeing the coppery chauffeur beside him with a frown. "How'd Brains teach him to drive, anyway? There's only the runway at home, and we don't have a road car."

"Oh, he used the simulator," TinTin replied. "The one he uses to teach you and the others how to handle new equipment."

"That's before we try it for real. I mean what did he actually drive?"

"Well he didn't, exactly," TinTin said carelessly. "There wouldn't have been much point on an island, would there? But the simulator session gave him full marks."

"You mean this is the first time he's driven anything?" Virgil turned round, his eyes wide with amazement. "Here, in Italy, after one simulator session? Alan, you stop him right now, this is crazy. We're all gonna be ki..."

"Look out!" TinTin shrieked.

From round a bend in the road ahead of them wheezed the ancient lorry that served the village as bus, mail-van and occasionally hearse. A group of villagers sitting on the rough wooden benches in the back turned their heads to look at the approaching car, and the driver took in its two dinner-jacketed occupants, the diamond-studded décolleté of their companion, and the gleaming figure in the driving seat, faceless under its neat gray cap, with his mouth sagging open in a wide O of disbelief. As his concentration wavered, then deserted him altogether, the autocarro drifted unchecked towards the opposite side of the road, heading straight for them.

Braman's reaction was exemplary. Kicking the engine into low gear with one metal foot, the robot steered straight for the rapidly diminishing gap between the oncoming lorry and the large outcrop of rock that bordered the road, wriggling the car through with inches to spare. The lorry swayed to a halt, its passengers standing to gape at the departing apparition, and Braman signaled his opinion of the vagaries of human drivers with a staccato burst on the horn and a flash of the car's taillights.

"Well, Virgil," Alan said, forcing his voice back down to its normal pitch with an effort, "Guess you wont be wanting any more proof that Braman can handle a car."

"No, thanks." Virgil turned his head to gaze back down the road to where a dark Alpha Romeo had pulled up on the bend, its driver hooting irritably at the obstruction. "But there's still one thing that worries me."

"What's that?"

"I don't know how Penelope's ever going to live us down."

"Fortune she has been kind to you," Giuseppe Antioni said, listening to the end of the tale as he handed round the plate of wine-preserved pears. "Riccardo Orsini he is not the careful driver, he brings for my friend Il Dottore here much business. But your robot he must be the marvel; you must pay many millions of

lira for such a machine. You are sure he will be safe, waiting outside?"

"He's better than anything you'd buy in Macy's," Alan admitted, "but he'll be okay. We left the car by your garage block, out of sight of the road, and TinTin's got his remote control in her bag, just in case. Anyway he wouldn't go off with anyone he didn't know." He shook his head at the pears. "Sorry, I couldn't. But it sure was a great meal."

"Yeah, it was fantastic." Virgil sat at the opposite side of the table, beside the wizened shape of Il Dottore, who seemed from the earlier introductions to have no other title, and who had gained a set of immaculate false teeth for his dinner engagement. Next to the doctor Alfredo the car salesman alternated cramming pears into his mouth with grinning over his wineglass at TinTin, and in the flickering light of two multi-branched candelabra at the ends of the table four other Italians nodded their agreement on the verdict.

"It was the best meal we've had since we arrived," Virgil went on, "and I've something here for you by way of thanks." He drew a slip of paper from his pocket. "Our father and I were talking about the trouble I caused the night before last, and we were thinking how to put things right. Alan told me the doctor here has some real fast transport; we saw it outside tonight, and it sure looks exciting. But we thought maybe his patients would appreciate something more comfortable, especially in winter, so this is a cheque for a regular paramedic wagon, with all the trimmings." He handed the slip to Il Dottore, who accepted it with thanks but with obvious mixed feelings. "Dad transferred the money today, you can draw it anytime."

"Bravo!" Antioni clapped his hands. "Again our town can hold up its head and say it is the safe place to have the accident. Five cases of my finest vintage shall go with you when you leave: it is for your father, he is the good man."

Alan nodded. "He's a real philanthropist. That's why he only stopped half the money out of Virgil's allowance; the rest's his gift. We're just hoping he doesn't find out about last night as well."

"Ah," Antioni said sadly, "I mean to tell you later, the bad news and the good dinner they make not the good companions in the belly. I speak to Gino at the newspaper, but he say, signore Antioni, you take the food from our bambinos' mouths; it is the only story we have in six months. And, he say, it is too late. We already sell it to the World News as the column filler." He shrugged. "I am sorry; I try."

"The World News?" Alan checked his watch, aghast. "But that means he'll be reading all about it just about now."

"More wine," Antioni said firmly, "then music, to drive such troubles away. For years my poor pianoforte he sits in my cold music room with only the woodworm for company, but my friend Virgilio he is the master of the keys. Perhaps he will play for us."

"Guess that instrument could want a spot of tuning by now," Virgil said hastily, "but I've something else that might be more pleasant to hear." He stood up, producing the locket and a bulky sheaf of notes. "It's this after-dinner speech I've prepared. But first maybe you'd let me show you a little magic trick I've been working on. Shouldn't take too long."

Alan and TinTin stared at the pile of notes in horror and Antioni looked dubious, but the other diners lifted their refilled glasses and sat back, prepared to watch the gioco di mano with a tolerant interest. Virgil hinged the locket open and let it twirl on its chain over the center of the table so that it flashed with a hypnotic rhythm in the candlelight, then he held it out to Antioni. "Okay. It's a vanishing trick, but just to show there's no cheating I'll let Giuseppe check this over before I start." He waited. "See anything wrong? Anything that means something to you?" Antioni looked at the locket, peered at the inscription inside, and then handed it back with a shrug and a shake of his head. Virgil closed both hands around the silver disc and chain and shifted a little nervously. "Right, now I'll need some quiet. This is the difficult bit." He bent his head, his brows lowering in concentration until his eyes were almost invisible. "Okay, that should do it." He opened his hands and Alan scowled and TinTin covered her mouth as a titter of embarrassed amusement ran around the table. The locket lay unaltered on his upturned palm, but its chain had disappeared without a trace. Virgil shook his head. "Guess I'm still getting the hang of this. I'll try again, but maybe Giuseppe'd better look the locket over just once more."

Antioni took back the locket and opened it with a slight show of impatience, then he looked up in surprise. "But the trinket he is not the same. And my name is here. I do not understand."

"Neither do I," Virgil said, "not all of it. So maybe it'd be best if I went right on to the speech." He reached for the pile of notes, and another silver locket, this time with a chain, tumbled from his cuff and clattered down onto the table. TinTin gasped. On the marble and in Antioni's hand two identical lockets gleamed in the candlelight, each with a tiny fountain and wreath of vine leaves stamped into its face with production-line indistinguishability.

"First thing I've got to do is make a few apologies," Virgil went on, "and the first one's for that crazy trick. Guess I'll never make a conjuror, but it seemed like an appropriate way to introduce the subject. Second apology's to all of you." He waved a hand to encompass Antioni, Il Dottore and the other Italians, then he picked up the locket with the chain. "We told you we were here on vacation, but the truth is we've been doing some treasure hunting too. Some friends of ours found this in northern Italy about a month ago; we guessed the inscription inside referred to some sort of hiding place in San Giuliano, so we came over to take a look. We drew a blank, but if we'd turned anything up you can believe me when I say it would've gone straight to the authorities." He paused to give Alan a meaningful look. "And the last apology's to Alan. He's done all the work on this, and I guess I didn't take his ideas too seriously, but something happened last night to change my mind. I found that locket Giuseppe's holding, and I found it in your fountain, though I didn't exactly know I'd got it at the time. There's an inscription in there too, and if you put the two together it makes a pretty clever key. I don't know about gold or jewels; there may even be something it's not too pleasant to find, but I believe something's been hidden, and not at San Giuliano." He sat down and spread out the sheaf of papers. "I figure it's right here, in Monte Thesauri."

"But what about the inscription?" Alan stared, astonished. "And the map? It all fitted."

"Sure, it seemed that way without the other locket. Sorry I kept you in the dark, Alan, but after you'd given up on the treasure I wanted to be sure of some facts before I got anyone's hopes up again. Now, if you all take a look at these drawings I've made it'll show you what I've managed to figure out so far."

Il Dottore produced a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles and leaned over to blink at the sketches, and the rest of the diners clustered round Virgil's chair. One sheet of paper bore a copy of the inscription and intersecting lines from TinTin's locket and on a second the cryptic message

A N T I O N I

3 6 0 M

was penciled in above a hastily drawn lion's head. On a third sheet was a rough map of the village and the surrounding hills, with two neat crossed arrows in the top left corner indicating north, south, west and east.

"Right." Virgil pointed to the second sheet. "Now Giuseppe'll confirm that this is the inscription in the locket I found in the fountain." Antioni glanced at the jewel in his hand and nodded, and Virgil went on: "Three-six-zero M's pretty like the two- seven-zero M we found in our locket; it doesn't make sense. In this case it can't even be miles or meters, because there's no starting point. But there's one thing the numbers have in common: they're both cardinal points of the compass. Three-six-zero degrees is due north, and two-seven-zero degrees is due west."

"A heading!" TinTin exclaimed. "Two hundred and seventy degrees magnetic. That's what you said right at the beginning."

"Yes, but then I didn't believe it myself. Anyhow, it started to look like what we had were two magnetic compass bearings, one north and one west, from two different places, one of those places maybe being the Villa Antioni here."

"Triangulation!" Alan slapped the table. "Triangulation. Of all the..."

Virgil nodded. "It's basic navigation. Find two points whose locations you know, trace a line from each of them in a given direction, and where the two lines cross is the place you want to pin down, usually your own position." He picked up the map. "So all I needed was the point to trace my west line from, and that wasn't easy. San Giuliano was out; it had to be somewhere local. Then I remembered that Roman villa, the one that belonged to the Julian family, and I took a look at some of Alan's books. Guess it's only sensible: they call it the Villa Juliana."

"And Gi replaces J in the Italian language." Alan shook his head bitterly. "So it was Giuliana, and not Giuliano, after all."

"Maybe. But when you see where I ended up you might want to go back to your original theory." Virgil pointed to where two ruled lines crossed on the map. "Due north from here and due west from the ruins of the Villa Juliana puts you in the middle of the woods. Right on the spot where I fell down that hole."

"But Virgil, we've been through all that," TinTin said. "You know it never happened."

"I'm not so sure. I drove over there this afternoon; okay, I didn't find a hole, but I found the clearing and the stone just like I remembered it, and just where the lines cross. Maybe that cave wasn't all imagination."

Antioni shook his head. "But it is impossible. We have no caves here, no holes. The earth she does not permit it."

"That's right," Virgil agreed. "After the accident I spoke to the guy who built our robot; engineering's his specialty, but he's pretty smart on most things. He said this area had the wrong geology for natural caves, but when I mentioned that ruined villa he came up with a suggestion. According to the books that place must've been something to see in olden times, with gardens and fountains and bathing pools, but I couldn't figure out how they managed to get so much water together, even if there was a little more rain about then. But he told me that the Romans used to excavate water-storage tanks; the ground near some of these old villas is honeycombed with them. That might explain my underground lake, too."

"Our ancestors were the great engineers," Antioni said, "but even they could not conjure water from the rocks. Without rain such a store would have dried many years ago."

"Could be evaporation's slower below ground. But water or no water, somewhere like that'd make a great hiding place." Virgil took up the copy of the Giuliana inscription. "When we first saw these lines we thought they made up some kind of road map, but the plan of a dozen cisterns connected by pipes or tunnels might look pretty much the same. I figure something's down there; maybe valuables, maybe not, but I don't think whoever engraved these lockets did it just to pass the time." He turned to Antioni and the other Italians. "That's about it. How one of these turned up where our friends found it and the other in your lucky fountain beats me, but since it's your fountain and the X is in your woods I guess it's up to you to decide what happens next."

"But what can be done?" Il Dottore asked. "If you cannot find again this hole in the woods how can we?"

Alan frowned. "And I don't understand where the rest of the engraving in the other locket comes in. What's a lion's head got to do with this, and why's there a piece of string in its mouth?"

"It is a snake." Antioni looked up in amazement from a closer examination of the chainless locket. "The lion and snake, the old badge of my family. But only in the carvings of our mausoleum is it now remembered, and no-one enters there for twenty years."

"Perhaps there's another entrance to these cisterns," TinTin suggested in sudden inspiration. "After all, if someone meant to come back for their treasure they wouldn't want to have to tumble down a hole to get it, would they?"

"A secret passage!" Antioni said, enraptured. "Since I was a boy I search my house for such a thing." He lifted one of the heavy silver candelabra from the table. "Lights, my keys! It is sense: the archaeologists say our mausoleum he sits on the foundations of the Roman bathhouse. Come; we have the wine, the conjuring, the speeches: now we will make the treasure-hunt."

Dusk in the gardens of the Villa Antioni had a ghostly quality, pale flowers and marble statuary glowing from the shadows as if possessed of their own inner light. At the top of some steps, where a pair of stone greyhounds was growing coats of moss, TinTin stopped to catch her breath. Ahead the candelabrum of

Antioni halted before a somber-faced building standing in a ring of trees, and on the road beyond the gardens the tail lamps of the car taking the less adventurous dinner guests to home and bed dwindled to two pinpoints of red. As she watched them disappear something else caught her eye: a large and vaguely familiar lorry sat dark and silent on the turn of the road, behind a streamlined car whose color might have been blue or black. "Alan," she called.

"What is it?" Alan's torch waved back from the direction of the mausoleum.

"I'm not sure..."

"Well come on, then. We've just found the right key."

TinTin joined the group as the key turned in the lock. The beams from the torches held by Alan and Virgil illuminated the building's blank brick frontage, and clasped in Alfredo's hands the other candelabrum from the dinner table spilled its shaky glow across the ironbound door. Il Dottore watched with interest as Antioni removed the key and pulled at the door; it creaked open and a spider abseiled in panic down its inner surface and scuttled off into the dark. Antioni held his candelabrum high. "Come," he said. "We go in."

Rondo

"Ow!" Alan lifted his stubbed toe. "It's pitch black in here. Wonder what's over this way?"

"Don't, Alan." TinTin clutched his sleeve nervously. "There might be… you know."

"No-one rests here now," Antioni said, coming over in a flickering pool of light with the candelabrum. "The village boys they break in, they have the nightmares, and everyone say signore Antioni, this is your fault. So twenty years ago we spread the dust of my ancestors in the vineyards. It is the greatest vintage I ever produce." He sidestepped slowly along the wall, the candlelight illuminating a surface of marble blocks, then stopped in front of a large lion's head carved in bas-relief. In the animal's jaws a stone snake clamped its own tail in its fangs. "This is what I look for. If there is the hidden way it will be here."

"Say, you could be right." Virgil held his torch close to the marble. "There's a crack running right down the wall here."

"And one this side," Alan added, excited. "But this place isn't Roman, it's medieval."

"In those times many things were remembered that now are forgotten," Antioni said. "But what do we do?"

"Push," Virgil suggested. "Or maybe that's too simple."

At the first count of three nothing happened, but at the second attempt there was a shriek that echoed through the bones of the building, and a door-sized square of marble with the lion's head in its center swung inwards so rapidly that Alan, Alfredo and Virgil followed the curve of their applied force and went with it, ending in a confused sprawl on the dust on the other side. “So it was that simple." Alan picked up his torch and looked around the brick-walled passage in awe. "We could be the first people through this door in a thousand years. It's medieval alright." He got up. "Hey, and there're some steps down here."

"Yeah." Virgil dusted himself down. "But I think we should leave our exploration of those until the morning, when we can organize a proper expedition. We've proved there's some kind of tunnel; that's a pretty good start for tonight."

Antioni stepped into the passage, the smoke from the candles gathering in an inverted pool under the arch of the roof. "But we cannot go back now, hesitation she does not make the rich men. At the bottom of these steps there may be..." He raised his free hand expressively. "Who knows?"

"That's what worries me," Virgil said. "Anyway, it must be a mile at least to the spot where that X is marked."

"Let's just see where the steps lead," Alan suggested. "No harm in taking a quick look, then we'll know what to be prepared for when we come back tomorrow. I'll go first. Virgil, you bring up the rear."

The darkness was thick and almost tangible, and as they descended a chill far heavier than the evening cool above invaded the air. In the wavering candlelight and in the torch beams they could see their breath condense in a fine fog before them, and, as if their postulated treasure already surrounded them, gems of moisture glittered from the walls. TinTin pulled her thin wrap tighter round her shoulders and started counting the stone steps. After a hundred, maybe a few more, Alan stopped suddenly and the beam of his torch swung up and down, slicing up empty darkness. "This is it," he said, "we're at the bottom."

The stairwell opened at a right angle into a wider passage, and they trailed out in slow single file, peering at their new surroundings in the inadequate light. Massive stone blocks like the bricks from a giant's play-set lined the walls, four courses forming a tunnel some eight feet high. Other huge rounded blocks arched over without obvious means of support to form a claustrophobic ceiling, and from their chiseled surfaces the small sounds of moving feet were thrown back magnified but dull and flat, as dead as the masons who had dusted down their work and left it nearly two thousand years before.

"Wow, real Roman masonry." Alan's fingers, pressed against the wall at eye-height, came away slicked with a colorless slime, and he sidestepped to avoid the few inches of dark water that lay in the center of the slightly dished floor. "Looks like we found your storage tanks, Virgil, or at least a passage between them.

If there was a bathhouse here this tunnel might've brought its water supply. Only thing I don't understand is the smell."

"Yeah." Virgil sniffed. "There isn't one."

"And that water must've been lying here for years. This place should stink."

"Right, it doesn't make sense. And that's part of the reason why I don't think we should hang around. Come on, we've seen what's down here, now let's get back." Virgil started off to retrieve Antioni, whose candelabrum was a faint light about fifty yards down the tunnel, and Alan turned to investigate a shadowy recess in the wall. The embrasure was wide, the span of his outstretched arms, its inner surface faced with small rough bricks: medieval again. One or two bricks were loose, and he poked at them idly.

Beginning to shiver under her cover of chiffon and cold diamonds, TinTin watched Virgil returning and fell in behind him hopefully. "Are we going?" she asked, but before she got a reply Alan's voice carried down the tunnel.

"Hey! Come here, I think I've found another... aaaaggghhh!"

"Alan!" TinTin screamed.

Close and loud, but dull, as if through an immeasurable depth of earth, there was the grind of stone on stone, followed by a sudden violent blast of air. The tiered candles of Antioni and Alfredo puffed out, extinguished like two birthday cakes raked by the output of an immense pair of lungs, and the light from Alan's torch disappeared. In the darkness footsteps ran; Alfredo yelped and there was a clatter and a splash.

"Stay close, TinTin," Virgil shouted, but he reached out to find no one there. A boom like the sound of a giant manhole cover being dropped from above reverberated through the tunnel closely followed by another, then the air was suddenly still and the only noises left were confused shouts.

As the lights went out TinTin raced for Alan's last known position, cannoning blindly into someone as she ran. The wildly circling beam of Virgil's torch crossed a black bay in front of her as it flew, and she saw something else: a narrowing chink of gray in the recess that was not torch or candle light. She threw herself into the gap, and a moving mass slammed her in the back and rushed her on like an insane revolving door, shutting behind her with a deafening boom. She fell, landing on something soft, uneven and faintly warm. Horrifyingly, it moved.

"Get your knees off my chest, I can't breathe," Alan gasped.

"Alan!" TinTin scrambled up. "Oh, Alan, what happened? Where are we?"

Dimly visible in the gray gloom Alan sat up, his dark dinner suit powdered with pale brick-dust. He looked round at another passageway, low-roofed and even narrower than the first. "I don't know. One minute I thought I'd found another door in the wall, then there wasn't any wall. I must've touched something." He got to his feet and examined the featureless barrier that a few seconds ago had been their entry point, pushed at some bricks experimentally, then shook his head. "It's no good, it probably doesn't even open from this side. Wish we had the torch; guess I must've dropped it when that thing gave way."

"I lost my wrap, too." TinTin folded her hands miserably round her freezing shoulders. "Couldn't we just shout? If we let the others know where we are perhaps they can open the door from their side."

"Don't count on it." Alan thumped the brick and the resulting sound was muffled and obstinately solid. "Even if they did hear us through that we might've stopped shouting a long time before they found the hidden catch. Like maybe months." He saw TinTin's look of fear and took her hand reassuringly. "But don't panic. This light must be coming from somewhere; let's see what's up this way."

At the end of a short cramped walk and a climb up a long slope was a cobwebby grating, and Alan pushed it aside and struggled through the low mouth of the passage. He straightened with difficulty as TinTin followed him. "I can't figure this... looks like we've come out behind some kind of rack." He started to edge towards the dim light. "Doesn't look like moonlight; reckon we must still be underground. Can't be... Hey! Well, I'll be doggoned." He stepped round the end of the rack, and TinTin slipped out to stand at his shoulder. In the vast vault stretching all around them, in casks, kegs, barrels, tuns, bottles, half-bottles, magnums, jeroboams and tiny tasting glasses on a table, was wine. Glowing a dull ruby under the low safety lights it lined the walls in floor-to-ceiling racks; still yeasty with last summer's vigor it oozed from swelling casks that stood like great oak boilers over their drip-trays, and in a graded row of bottles it waited on the table with the glasses, as if someone had just been making their selection for dinner. TinTin stared, round-eyed.

"Alan, we're in…"

"Yeah." Alan nodded. "The famous Antioni wine cellars. We've come right back to the villa. If Antioni's really been looking for secret passages all his life he sure isn't going to be much help on a treasure hunt. His place's got more holes in it than a Swiss cheese."

"At least we're safe," TinTin said. "But what about the others? They still don't know where we are."

"You're right." Alan pointed to some stone steps and an open door. "That looks like the way out. Better get back over to the mausoleum again before someone calls out the guardie. Guess they'll be getting pretty worried about us by now."

"What're we going to do?" Virgil gazed at the torn chiffon wrap and the fragments of Alan's torch, then started to re-examine the blank bricks of the recess in desperation. "There must be a door here somewhere, they couldn't just have vanished."

Antioni gave his re-lit candelabrum a last pass across the bay and stepped back, roughly pushing Alfredo aside. "Pah! It is useless; with these lights we shall find nothing. If this stupido did not throw his candles into the water perhaps we would have the chance."

"Is not my fault," Alfredo responded sulkily, "someone push me in the dark. Perhaps you, Giuseppe Antioni."

"Io?" Antioni tapped his own chest. "When you fall I explore, I am far away; I think your great feet they trip you themselves. Buffone!"

"Listen, this is serious." Virgil turned away from the wall. "They could be running out of air back there, they might've fallen into some bottomless pit, anything. We'll have to get help." He pointed to the stone staircase. "You go on ahead; I'll find something to mark the place. Don't want to waste any time when we come back with some digging equipment." He waited as the footsteps receded, and then tried his telecom. The watch's dial display faded, but for some reason the power cells still hadn't recharged and the screen stayed as black as the surrounding darkness. That was the end of any hope of getting through to Alan, even to give a reassurance, and the end of any chance of summoning help from home. He turned and started up the steps.

"Madonna!" A sudden shout from Antioni echoed down the stairwell, and he quickened his pace: at "Dio mio!" from Alfredo he began to run. Breathless, he reached the head of the stair to see the three Italians standing in a pool of candlelight at the end of the short passage, and with a sudden sinking intuition he shone his torch between them. The beam was scattered back by the countless calcite crystals of a solid wall of marble: the entrance door was closed.

"Mamma mia, mamma mia, mamma mia," Alfredo repeated endlessly as they searched without success for so much as a fingernail-grip on the smooth stone. "We cannot get out; we starve."

"Basta!" Antioni cut short the recitation and looked at the salesman's rounded form with narrowed eyes. "If we starve you at least will be the last to go. Keep your breath, we push."

"That won't work." Virgil shook his head helplessly and stepped back. "It's pretty obvious it only opens inwards, and it must weigh over a ton. When the other door opened the pressure differential in the air must've blown this one shut. And we can't pull it, there's nothing to get a grip on."

"Then we wait." Antioni held his watch to the light. "In ten hours it is breakfast-time, and it will be discovered that we are missing. We tell the others we visit the mausoleum; they will put, as you say, the two and two together. We will be found."

Virgil frowned. "It might take a bit more than two and two to find us in here. Anyway, Alan and TinTin may not be able to wait that long; we don't know what sort of shape they're in." He took a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. "This is the plan of the tunnels I copied from TinTin's locket. Shouldn't take me much more than twenty minutes to reach the spot where the X is marked, then if I can find that hole I'll get to the village and fetch help." He turned for the steps. "Guess you'd better settle down here."

"No." Il Dottore shook his head. "In this cold is not good to sit and wait; we will come with you. And do not worry; I think your two friends are safe for some time. Where the wind blows is also the air."

"Okay," Virgil agreed reluctantly, "but this time let's stick together, and no explorations. Could be any kind of trouble waiting down there: up to now all we've learned for sure about this place is that it's dangerous." Sending the torch beam ahead he led the procession back down the steps again, the candles of Antioni casting a flickering ring of light in the rear. At the foot of the stairs he paused to ensure that the others were following in close order, then the little party passed on, grim- faced, into the dark.

"It's useless." Alan stopped to catch his breath, his shoulder to the marble lion's-head. "We'll never shift it, even between us. What I can't figure is how it got closed in the first place."

"Perhaps it was that wind," TinTin suggested from the darkness beside him. "But the important thing is that the others are trapped in there. There must be some way to get them out."

"What we need is more pushing power." Alan straightened up. "We could drive to the village and try to bring someone back, but after last night I guess no-one's going to take us seriously, and languages aren't my strong point anyway. Do you know the Italian for secret door? We could be there for hours."

"What can we do, then, Alan?"

"Call out International Rescue, what else?" Alan replied, taking a step towards the square of moonlight at the mausoleum's entrance. "I'm going to get Thunderbird One over here: we'll haul that door open even if we have to smash this oversized tombstone into a million paperweights to do it. There's a teleradio in the villa, we can say you called IR out on that while I drove for help. When it's all over I can just turn up again. I'll say I got lost."

"Alright," TinTin said dubiously, "I suppose we haven't much choice. You'd better clear it with your father first, though."

"Don't worry, I'll contact him as soon as I'm in the car. Now come on, let's get back to the villa. There's no time to waste."

The moon picked out the villa's marble bestiary as they crossed the grass. A centaur cavorted in a clearing, its flanks splashed with the pale light; nearby a Venus primly averted her eyes, her own modesty preserved in a whitened drapery of stone. Beyond her, down a slope and under the trees, a third patch of brightness stood out. It moved. "Alan." TinTin caught Alan's sleeve as they reached the sleeping greyhounds at the top of the steps. "There's a torch!"

"You're right." Alan stared. "Someone's there. But why are they coming up that way?"

"And Alan!" TinTin's grip tightened. "Look over there!" Across the lower part of the gardens, beyond the little box maze and the well-kept lawn, the villa's gates stood open. Backed in between them was a massive lorry, its tailgate dropped to show its empty interior, and parked just behind the lorry was a fast-looking dark-colored car. "Alan, that's the lorry I saw when we first came up here. And I'm sure it's the same one that was in the square yesterday."

Alan nodded. "And it's the same one that Virgil and I saw last night. And that's the Alfa Romeo that followed us into the village yesterday morning."

"What does it mean?" TinTin asked, glancing nervously at the approaching torchlight.

"It means I was right all along: someone has been tailing us, and someone else is after the treasure." Alan ducked down behind a stone greyhound, pulling TinTin after him. "Quick; I think it might be a good idea if we kept out of sight."

Where the trees ended at the top of the slope three torch beams emerged, followed by three figures who stepped out onto the grass fronting the mausoleum then stopped, swinging their lights about as if to recover their bearings. In the hand of the last man out the unmistakable shape of a pistol with a wide silencer was outlined by the moon, and as they turned towards the mausoleum's entrance the two others reached for their inside pockets. TinTin's hand flew to her mouth. "Alan! They've all got guns."

"Yeah, and it sure won't take the three of them long to get that door open. They'll be able to see where we've been by the marks in the dust, and then..." Alan peered over the greyhound's back. "We came on our treasure hunt for fun, but these guys mean business. And it looks like they'll stop at nothing to make sure their business is profitable."

"But Alan, that means that Virgil and the others could be in terrible danger."

"Not if I can help it." Alan slid round to the greyhound's rump and put a foot on the top of the steps. "It just means I've got to get Thunderbird One back here quicker than ever. I won't get the car out now with that truck blocking the way, but the doctor's bike might just about squeeze through."

"But how will you get it started?"

"I've learned one or two tricks from Parker that should help, but there's only one set of headgear, so you'll have to stay here." Alan took a step downwards. "Promise me you'll stay put and not move a muscle. You'll be perfectly safe, just as long as no-one sees you."

"All right, Alan," TinTin said, resigned. "I suppose there's nothing else I can do, is there?"

"Good girl."

From behind the greyhound's back TinTin watched Alan as he crept down the steps, vanishing into the shadows at the edge of the maze. The three gunmen had disappeared into the depths of the mausoleum, leaving the moonlight to the statuary. She shivered, wishing for her oldest pullover in exchange for the designer gown and comfortless diamonds, then put down her bag and sat back against the greyhound's mossy side to wait. After a few minutes there was a cough and a snarl from the distant road, presumably

Alan kicking the motorbike into protesting life, then the engine sound deepened, began to move and roared away. At the door of the mausoleum a figure appeared and looked around, but apparently satisfied turned and melted back into the dark. There was silence, then a familiar shriek: the grind of marble on marble.

TinTin bit her lip. The door was open, and perhaps relief would already be turning to horror for the little group trapped inside. If the gunmen were looking for treasure protests of ignorance as to its whereabouts were unlikely to be treated with sympathy, and who knew what could happen before Alan returned with Thunderbird One? She felt entirely helpless, ineffectual, and searched with increasing desperation for any idea that might help to even out the overwhelming odds. Then a sudden realization came to her, and being careful not to raise her head above the greyhound's protecting flank she reached forward and took something out of her bag.

Planet Suite

Virgil put the map back into his pocket and shone the torch ahead. "Okay, this should be it now. That last right should've brought us straight to the cistern where the X is marked, and it looks like the tunnel's widening out here." He stepped forward and Antioni and Il Dottore moved to follow him, but Alfredo turned to stare back into the darkness, tense.

"Listen, I hear the steps again."

The four men stood stock still, but an oppressive silence built until even the tiny sounds of breathing were smothered by its weight. Antioni broke it irritably. "There is nothing. If you hear steps the great feet they are your own; it is the echo."

"Could be water dripping," Virgil suggested, "and it could be pretty far off. Sound seems to carry a long way in these tunnels." As he started forward again the receding walls on either side of them abruptly vanished, and the torch beam stabbed out into emptiness. Rising, it found a new wall of close-fitting concave blocks that arched up into impenetrable darkness, and swinging back it picked out a line of stone pillars, evidently supporting an unseen roof. The close, deadened atmosphere of the tunnels was gone, and the blackness suddenly held a cathedral- scale silence. He stopped, and the echoes scattered like a flight of bats into unfathomable depths as he spoke. "This is it. But it's enormous. That ceiling must be over fifty feet above us." He turned the torch down to survey the ground ahead, and the beam was mirrored by a motionless expanse of black water. "And there's the lake, just like I remembered it!"

Antioni stooped for a stone and threw it, and after a second there was a splash and a dull thud. He moved forward and tested the water's depth with the toe of his shoe; his laces remained dry. "It is not the lake, it is the puddle. It is like the water in the tunnels, perhaps five centimeters deep, no more."

"Okay, but I wish I could figure out why it's here," Virgil answered, running the torch beam across the apparently limitless surface. "When I was putting my theory together I called the weather bureau in Firenze because I thought rain might've seeped in from outlying districts, but they say the only place it's rained in the last two weeks is the northern hills. And it sure couldn't make it from there."

Antioni shrugged. "We have no springs, the geologists assure me; even our fountain they say it is the freak. It must be as you say; evaporation is slower here. But we waste time. Our candles they will not burn forever."

"Right." Virgil took a last look at the enigmatic lake. "The quicker we find that hole, the quicker we'll be back with help for Alan and TinTin. Come on, but let's keep together. If I didn't imagine the lake maybe I didn't imagine a few other things."

With the guttering light of the candelabrum at the rear they followed the wall of the cistern, picking their way along a curve of muddy shore. Alfredo and Il Dottore walked between the candles and the searching torch beam, Alfredo hesitating occasionally to turn his gaze back into the dark. Taken unawares he stumbled as Virgil stopped dead in front of him, and the little group cannoned to a halt. "Mamma mia." Antioni said it this time. "What is the matter?"

In answer Virgil shone the torch ahead. Just within the limits of the beam's reach, barely adhering to a keel that rose up out of the mud at a drunken angle, was the gray and rotten planking of a wooden dinghy. He drew a deep breath. "This is what I was afraid of. I said we might find something unpleasant down here, and it's beginning to look like I could be right. You'd better wait here while I check it out."

"I will come too." Il Dottore followed him. "You tell the story of bones in a boat many times while I treat you. If they exist is my concern; if they do not is my concern also."

Antioni and Alfredo hovered at a distance while Virgil and Il Dottore bent over the boat. In the steady beam of the torch and the calm light of rationality the skeleton was no longer a specter, just a pathetic tumble of bones and a pair of rugged leather boots in a crumbling colander of wood. Beside the boots were the remains of a haversack, and coiled in the dinghy's bow was what had once been a good length of stout rope.

"So I didn't imagine him either," Virgil said with a slow shake of his head. "The poor guy; looks like he came equipped for some sort of caving expedition. Wonder how he got in?" He turned to Il Dottore on a sudden thought. "Guess it was a guy?"

"A young man," Il Dottore confirmed with a nod and professional detachment, "not more than thirty, I think. He dies recently, less than twenty years, and there are no signs of the accident. I think it is likely he starve."

"It's pretty likely," Virgil agreed, looking at a familiar-shaped tin lodged in the bones of one dead hand. It was badly dented, as if it had been pounded against some hard surface, and on its label the S, the P and the A were still readable, though the M was a conjecture under a stain of rust. "Provisions," he went on quietly, "and there's more in the bag here. Looks like he couldn't get those openers to work." He eased the tin gently from under the bony claws, then dropped it with a start as Il Dottore gave a shout.

"Carlo! The left hand he has no little finger. Is Carlo Vincini!"

"Carlo?" Antioni came forward under the light of the candelabrum to look down on the skeleton with a shudder. "It cannot be! But you are sure?"

"Yes, yes!" Il Dottore examined the bones excitedly. "You think I do not know my own work, Giuseppe Antioni? The third finger he misses his top joint also; you remember I have to amputate both when his hand it is caught in the till of Luigi Montefiori."

"Carlo was not the good man," Antioni explained in answer to Virgil's puzzled frown. "His parents they work for me when he was a boy: he steal from the shopkeepers, he cheat, he follow the women and he insult them. When he is no longer a boy he follow the women and he insult their husbands. We send him to the army, but there is the accident and his officer he is killed by his own field gun. They make no charges, but Carlo he is out of the army and back to trouble us once more. Then his brother Pietro disappear, and everyone say Carlo he has murdered him for his few honest savings." He shook his head. "It was very bad. They find no clues, although they ask many questions at Lake Reno."

Virgil stared at Antioni across the rotten hulk. "What did you say?"

"Lake Reno Institute, in the north. Pietro he was the good boy, the quiet boy, he study there to be the archeologist. I see him when they come to make the excavations in my gardens. Then he disappear, and his little apartment they find it has been - how you say? - turned over. Everyone suspect Carlo because he visit his brother for the first time in many years, then when he also vanish they say he runs from the police."

"Gee, then there could be a real connection between these two sets of relics, after all," Virgil muttered, gazing down at the remains while the others watched him uncomprehendingly. "That could explain a lot, maybe including what he was doing down here.” He turned back to Antioni. “When did all this happen?"

Antioni made a face in the flickering light. "Ten, perhaps fifteen years. It is a long time, I cannot remember." He bent down and held the candelabrum low over the bones. "And all that long time he has been here, while we have forgotten him. Whatever he has done, I think now we can only forgive him."

Virgil nodded gravely. "Guess you're right. But I've got a feeling that the Reno police'll want to know all about him, especially if it turns out he kept his army pistol, and that they just might be able to fill you in on what happened to Pietro." He turned away from the boat and probed the darkness with the torch beam. "But first we have to get out of here. That dinghy worries me; I can't figure out why he needed it when the water's just a few inches deep."

"Mamma mia, mamma mia," Alfredo began again in a high, nervous voice. "Doors, water: trouble, trouble. We never get out; we starve, like him. Mamma m..."

Out of the blackness all around them came a low vibration, quickly mounting to an appalling hollow groan that set the fabric of the cistern resonating in an oscillating, all-encompassing assault of sound. Antioni paled under his candles and Il Dottore covered his ears, but Alfredo opened his mouth in a howl of despair and turned and bolted into the dark. "He's panicked," Virgil shouted urgently over the slowly settling echoes. "Quick! Better grab him before he gets lost or does himself some damage."

A blood-freezing cry from somewhere ahead suggested that pursuit might already be too late. Virgil, outpacing Antioni on the slippery mud, reached the approximate location of the yell then fell headlong, tripping over something stretched unmoving in the slime. Retrieving the torch he sat up and turned the beam back, fearful of what it might find, but Alfredo sat apparently unscathed a few feet away, his face rigid and his eyes upraised. On the mud two stone paws on giant forelegs were thrust forward out of the gloom, and above them, at the height of a standing man, three dog-faces sprouting from a single muscular neck snarled down three eternal snarls through cages of never-yellowing calcite teeth. At the upper limit of the torch's pool of light a massive human figure sat enthroned, one hand on its pet's stone leash, one carved into a lifelike grip around its sculpted staff.

"Cerberus!" Virgil stared up, his eyes as wide as Alfredo's. "So I didn't imagine any of it."

"Plutone!" Antioni pulled up, breathless, gazing up at the helmeted figure in awe as the torch picked out its contours. "The Nameless One, lord of the underworld. But such a statue! And to find it in such a place!"

Virgil scrambled up and helped Alfredo to his feet. "Take it easy. And don't worry; you've nothing to be ashamed of. He sure spooked me too, when I first saw him." He turned the torch beam back up at the god, still trying to shake off disbelief. "It's fantastic. He must be thirty feet high."

Abruptly the air began to tremble and the great groan rose round them for a second time, now louder and accompanied by a strengthening breeze that signaled the end for half of Antioni's failing candles. In the deeper dark Alfredo raised his head to gape at the statue as if half-expecting to see the giant lips parted, but the torch beam had moved on to the lake. The water that had once been mirror-still was now in rippling motion, its edge creeping slowly towards them across the mud. The groan rose and fell again.

"Water!" Virgil shouted in the excitement of sudden revelation. "Air and water, that's it! It must've been water moving through these tunnels I heard the night before last, and that's what we're hearing now."

"Water makes this noise?" Il Dottore asked, incredulous.

"Yes. Don't you see? When we were at Luigi's we got soaked by your lucky fountain, but that only happens to the tourists. Because you know to keep clear, and you also know that before it performs there's always a warning whistle. That's the water pressure forcing the air up some hidden pipe. This place is a network of sound boxes and pipes, but they're bigger pipes, so you get a moan, not a whistle. It's just like a church organ: the wider the pipe the lower the pitch. That's what's been scaring your travelers on the woodland roads all these years."

"But the water?" Antioni demanded, his voice's own pitch rising with each lap of the lake's approaching edge. "There is no fountain here. Without rain how can there be the water to flow through the tunnels, to make the church organ? From where does it come?"

"I don't know." Virgil took out the map and smoothed it in the torchlight, then pointed to the top of the sketch. "This whole system's closed, except for these two tunnels leading north. Maybe they're dead ends. Or maybe they lead right off the plan."

Antioni leaned over to look, then spoke, his voice suddenly no more than a husky whisper. "Of course. For years Monte Thesauri has prayed for the water, and for years it has been here. The aqueduct."

"Aqueduct? But Roman aqueducts were surface constructions."

In the flickering half-light of his few sputtering candles Antioni shook his head vigorously. "From ancient times the underground channels - the qanats - have been used. The Julians they were most important men; if there was no rain for their cisterns water may have been brought from any distance. Perhaps even from the hills in the north."

"The northern hills?" Virgil's eyebrows drew down in a deep frown of concern. "But the weather bureau said there were showers in the north the morning we were soaked by your fountain, and again that evening when Alan nearly drowned, and they forecast a downpour for tonight. If the fountain's fed by those tunnels, that would explain why the geologists couldn't trace any spring." He swung the torch beam back to the shrinking strip of shore. "And it means we could be in danger. If those slime marks on the walls are anything to go by the water level in here could get pretty high, and we've no idea how quickly it'll rise. Come on! If we want to stay alive we'd better get moving, and fast."

As he finished speaking, the new and totally unexpected sound of a bullet ricocheting from Pluto's stone throne sent Alfredo diving back for the mud and put the echoes to flight yet again. "Freeze!" an unknown voice yelled, and three alien torch beams stabbed dazzlingly through the dark. "And throw down those lights. If you want to stay alive you'd better stand right where you are!"

The barn's sliding roof closed up beneath him, drawing over its camouflage of simulated tiles, and Alan transferred his attention from the control panel to the radio. "Okay, I'm in the air. Should only take a couple of minutes to reach Antioni's villa, then I'm going to give those crooks the biggest..."

"You'll do nothing of the sort." Jeff Tracy's voice was stretched taut between the opposing forces of worry and anger. "This is a police matter, and they should've been called in right at the start. Gordon's seeing to that now, but in the meantime you'll confine yourself to observation. Walking into that tunnel and starting a gun battle can only have one outcome."

"But maybe they've brought Virgil and the others out by now. I could..."

"No! You won't use Thunderbird One's armaments to endanger innocent lives, especially your own brother's. You haven't the weapons experience to start taking pot shots, and even if you hit the right target you can't blow someone to pieces just because you saw them carrying a gun. We have to establish exactly what's going on, and don't forget that TinTin's in the danger area too. Whatever made you leave her back there I simply can't imagine."

Scowling, Alan pushed forward on the horizontal flight control with more than necessary force, and the rocket-plane bucked, its attitude indicator screeching a warning as its tail swung up, pivoting about its central axis to finish higher than its snout. The boosters flamed on in a fiery cross behind it, and Alan, smacked in the back by the differentially accelerating control seat, managed just in time to pull into a skyward loop as the moonlit woods below streaked backwards, melting into a blur. The safety bolts released, freeing the wings from the fuselage, and he frowned at the gyro, making up his mind on a course.

"Alan?" Scott's voice came from the radio. "Dad's getting John to scan for the locater signal from Virgil's telecom; it may not do any immediate good, but at least it'll tell us exactly where he is. Now remember, I'll be standing by the mike in case you need any help."

"Help?" Alan echoed. "With what? Doesn't sound like I'm going to get the chance to do anything but sit around and watch."

"Yeah, well don't worry too much about that at the moment. If worst comes to worst not too many thugs'll stand up to a dose of low buzzing, and there are a few other things we can try. But right now you just concentrate on your flying, and remember to give yourself plenty of time to stop. Leave it ten seconds too late and you'll be touching down in Sicily."

On the control seat's integral display two green lights clicked on, and outside at the end of their tracks the unfolding wings locked into position with a clang. Stabilized, Thunderbird One passed high over the single stone that sat silent in the clearing in the woods and disappeared into the night, on a heading for the

Villa Antioni.

"Someone's probably on their way here to rescue us right now." Virgil scowled, standing his ground as the fat man in the pinstriped suit dug the muzzle of the revolver into the front of his muddied white shirt. "We told you, we don't know any more about this place than you do, and if you don't put these weapons away you're going to be in real trouble with the police. Who are you, anyway, and why've you been following us around? We saw you last night and your truck in the square yesterday: that suit of yours isn't difficult to identify."

"Mebbe 'es tellin' the troof, Max." The rat-faced man guarding Antioni, Il Dottore and Alfredo and hanging on to the pilfered candelabrum with a bulldog tenacity laughed. "They ain’t exactly togged up for no treasure 'unt themselves. P'rhaps they got lorst on their way to the local opera house. Oh, solo meo."

"Silence, Jimmy." Max increased the pressure of the gun. Both men held Carlsson Cobra double-action revolvers, rugged weapons but inaccurate, although at point-blank range the slight misaim was unlikely to be of more than academic significance. A third man, small and expressionless, stood behind his confederates meticulously wiping the damp from a high-powered automatic pistol with his precisely folded pink pocket handkerchief. The Carlsson's muzzle prodded again and Max held out the crumpled map. "If you know nothing perhaps you'd explain why you're wandering round with this in your pocket." He glanced up at Pluto, staring down impassively from the darkness. "And why your wanderings should have brought you to this particular spot. We didn't book three expensive plane seats out from London just to play games, and we aren't put off by bluffs. No one's coming to rescue you. We saw that car leave: the only people who know you're here are tucking themselves snugly up in bed, and if any of you want to be doing the same thing ever again I suggest you try being sensible, and just tell us where they are."

"They?" Virgil repeated, increasingly angry and perplexed. "You keep saying ‘they’. I don't know what you mean. Now for Pete's sake will you at least let the others go? That water's probably too deep to get back through the tunnels already; we should all be trying to find the escape route."

The third man came forward, the pistol balanced in his hand with a comfortable familiarity, and Max and Jimmy fell back respectfully to let him pass. In the torchlight the black mouth of the silencer tracked across Virgil's short, broad ribcage. "Alright, we've wasted enough time on you. Try one last question: we're looking for a double-crossing snake called Carlo Vincini. I think you know where he is."

"Sure, I know where he is," Virgil answered truthfully, "he's right over there. If you let the others go I'll take you to him."

The small man's face hardened in suspicion and he opened his mouth to speak, but Alfredo suddenly let out a moan and pointed into the dark. "Ah, mamma mia! I hear the steps again. Carlo Vincini he is there, he is coming!"

Into the ensuing silence of surprise intruded the lap of rising water, then another more distant and surreptitious sound: an intermittent grating scratch, like the careful placement of iron- shod boots on rock. There was a tinkling fall of tiny stones.

"He's right, McCoy." Max turned to the third man. "Someone's there. Vincini's clearing out the merchandise while we're kept occupied with them!"

"Ow?" Jimmy's torch beam probed the dark. "Where's 'is light? He'd 'ave to be a flippin' owl. Any'ow, noises carries down 'ere, that's 'ow we follered them. Might be miles away." He swung the torch apprehensively on another thought. "Might be rats."

"Shut up." McCoy indicated Virgil and Alfredo with a jab of the pistol. "You two, in front where I can see you; the two pensioners can walk with me. We're going to see what's happening over there, and if there's any trouble on the way signore, candlestick here'll go down so fast you won't even hear the splash, understand? Now get moving."

With the pistol's silencer nuzzling Antioni's spine the four prisoners found themselves herded into water that was thigh-deep and cold, wading away from the shore in a direction that Virgil estimated to be directly opposite to the entrance tunnel, and which led away at a tangent from any hope of the escape shaft. "Vincini!" McCoy yelled at the top of his voice, but only the echoes replied, and as they fluttered back to roost the sounds began again; soft scrapings and shufflings moving in a slow but confident progress, like the footfalls of something with no need of light to find its way.

"This way." McCoy turned the column with a wave of his torch. The mud underfoot dipped suddenly, the water rose waist-high, and Virgil saw a blacker patch in the darkness and recognized the gaping mouth of another tunnel. As they passed there was the distinct tug of an outflow; presumably the inflow was at the other side of the cistern, from the tunnels through which they had come in. He compressed his lips, thinking of Alan and TinTin. Past the eroded channel the ground continued to rise, and some slimy steps led up from the water to a dais of massive stone blocks. As they climbed onto the dry platform there was another stealthy sound, and the beams from the torches swung forward in unison then froze, illuminating the silent reception committee that awaited its uninvited visitors in the dark.

Enthroned at the rear of the dais, against the curve of the cistern's wall, a Jupiter of Olympian proportions gazed down with stern dignity from a marble head at least forty feet above the ground. Beside the king of the gods a standing Neptune raised his trident perhaps a few feet higher, and at the end of the platform a Mars approximately Pluto's size pointed a warning sword. A Venus to satisfy the dreams of a mountaineer stood admiring the winged headgear of a gigantic Mercury, and at the feet of these supplanters of the Titans a chaotic scrum of smaller figures, many only half-assembled, stared back at the torches through lapis or oyster shell eyes: a bewildering sculptor's body shop of faces, limbs and torsos ranging from exquisitely minute to unnervingly life-size, with here the white or warm veined pink of marble, there the verdigrised burnish of bronze or the dull sheen of copper, and in many, many places, too many to take in at the first disbelieving stare, the cold pale gleam of gold.

Finale

"The treasure." Antioni spoke the words quietly and almost matter-of-factly, and no other voice broke the silence to disagree. In Jupiter's great marble face the lapis eyes were an ethereal shade of cerulean blue, and at the front of the dais a bronze Diana stood with quiver and drawn bow as if to forbid any further worldly incursion. Gold drew the eye everywhere, and Jupiter's feet, if not quite buoyed up by clouds, rested on a marble stool supported by four golden lions the size of Clydesdales; but for the first few seconds it was wonder at the scene before them, and not the thought of its commercial worth, that left its discoverers open-mouthed, prisoners and gunmen gazing side by side in a moment that seemed somehow to stand outside time, and beyond human enmities. After their initial paralysis the hands of Max, Jimmy and McCoy found the strength to set the torch beams exploring the rest of the dais, then when the little group began to speak it was in a cathedral hush, low and almost reverential.

"Cor, it's them," Jimmy whispered from the top of the steps. "An' after all these years. It's better'n Disneyworld. They're wunnerful."

"Wonderful things," Virgil said softly, nodding. "Carter, the Egyptologist, said that when he first looked into Tutankhamen’s tomb. But Carter never saw anything like this." He looked around, dazzled by the ranks of glittering eyes and colored drapery, the angry red ochre on Mars's face, and the gilding and silvering on a thousand mail-coats, swords and shields. "But I don't understand. I've never seen Roman statues so bright."

"They have been protected," Antioni replied in a low voice. "Why they are here I do not know, but I think when they come they are almost new, cared for, perhaps straight from their temples. In museums we see such figures as thousands of years of the sun and wind have left them, but this is how they were intended. It is the greatest treasure of art ever found." He shook his head, lost for more words. "Bellissimo. Bellissimo."

"Cut the chat," McCoy snapped, and the spell was broken. "We've waited a long time for this, and we're not waiting any longer. Vincini wouldn't tell us where to find his treasure, but now the last laugh's ours. Let's get the cutting gear."

"You mean this is Carlo Vincini's treasure?" Virgil asked.

Max looked at him curiously. "You really don't know anything, do you? Pietro Vincini's treasure. But since dear Pietro's been resting in peace by beautiful Lake Reno for the last fifteen years I believe it's finders keepers."

"Wait a minute, how do you know that Pietro's dead?" Virgil stared at McCoy's high-powered pistol in growing suspicion. "Seems no-one else round here knows what happened to him, including the police."

"Yore big mouf, Max." Jimmy spat. "See wot you done now?"

"Unless Carlo Vincini didn't kill his brother after all," Virgil went on. "Unless you killed him. Unless you tried to make him tell you where the treasure was, then when he wouldn't answer, you shot him dead."

"That's enough!" McCoy stepped forward, raising the pistol. "Not so bright, are you, smart guy? If you were you’d keep thoughts like that to yourself; they can seriously shorten your life. But in your case none of you are going to get the chance to squeal on us, because you aren't going to be around long enough. Line them up, Max."

"We're going to top 'em?" Jimmy asked, his mouth hanging open. "All of 'em, 'ere, just like that?" He looked around the audience of Olympian eyes. "An' in front of them? It don't seem right."

"Shut up, or you'll keep them company," McCoy snarled. "They've seen us, they know where the stuff is, and now they know about Vincini. I said line them up, Max!"

But Max wasn't listening. In the midst of the melee of statues a human-scale version of Jupiter sat on a long throne, together with a bronze Minerva, and a third image half-hidden at the bench's end. As Max's torch jerked towards it a powdery cloud of dust rose from the seat, and there was the sound of creaking and grating, like joints of unimaginable age being coaxed into reluctant life. While the frozen watchers struggled with varying degrees of success to come to terms with a childhood nightmare turned to shocking reality in the dark, the unidentified god at the end of the bench flexed first one metal ankle then the other, and then rose ponderously to its feet.

"Aaagh, it's come alive!" Jimmy dropped his gun and stumbled backwards with a shriek. "We're dead men, Maxie; it's a judgment on us!"

"Braman!" Virgil shouted in undisguised relief. "How did he get here?"

In acknowledgement the copper god gave a graceful sweeping bow, then reached up and doffed its head politely, bathing the scene in a high-tension glow from its innards and leaving a nerve-bundle of wires sagging between neck and trunk. Horrified, Jimmy fell on his face, and unperturbed by the divorce from its visual systems the headless copper torso took up Jupiter's eagle-topped staff and waved it threateningly at Max.

"It's just a damn robot, you idiots," McCoy shouted. "Get it!"

All hell broke loose. Max took off for the end of the dais, letting fly a wildly inaccurate round from the Carlsson over his shoulder as he ran. The robot, its head unit back in place but misaligned, giving it a permanent squint to the left, pursued him, searchlight on and arms outstretched. Jimmy ran in their wake screaming, though whether in terror or in an attempt to distract the enemy it was impossible to tell, and Antioni and Il Dottore dived for the dais as the pistol pumped bullets down the line of McCoy's torch beam with a low, dry cough. Virgil, grabbing up Jimmy's dropped gun and turning to run for cover, collided in the dark with one of the cistern's supporting pillars, then a ricochet pulverized the stone inches from his eyes and he staggered backwards, blinded. Something like an angry bee zipped past him as he blinked the dust away, then a shaking hand fastened onto his shoulder and Alfredo pulled him to the ground.

"Your robot!" Antioni lifted his head to yell above the scream and whang of wildly flying shots. "Command him to attack. Has he no weapons?"

"He's got a laser gun." Virgil raised his own head as far as Alfredo's restraining arm allowed. "But he's not programmed to use it against people. All he can do is grab them, if he doesn't get shot to pieces first." He checked the appropriated revolver for ammunition, then flattened himself on the stones as a round from the automatic whistled directly overhead. "What we have to do is knock out that pistol. With that thing out of action at least he'll have a chance of keeping them occupied while we get away."

The pursuit had reached the far end of the dais, Braman embracing Jimmy, who was kicking and howling, and Max firing uselessly at the robot's armor-plated head. McCoy stood a short distance off aiming more considered shots at Braman's back, where a thinner shell surrounded the vital central processing unit.

"But to hit the gun from here it is impossible," Antioni objected. "It is the too small target."

"Don't worry," Virgil said grimly, disengaging Alfredo's arm and raising himself on his elbows to sight along the revolver's muzzle, "I'm a pretty good shot." In the gyrating lights the pistol was a vague shape protruding from the end of McCoy's stiffly outstretched arms, and Virgil waited for the brief illumination of a wheeling torch beam, adjusted his aim, and squeezed the trigger. As its stiff mechanism tightened the Carlsson gave an unexpected buck, and the bullet, departing from the path carefully calculated to send the pistol flying from its owner's grip, instead hit Braman's head and bounced into the darkness above, covering the little tableau of antagonists in a theatrical snow of dust. He pulled the trigger again, but the Carlsson jammed. McCoy whirled round.

The pistol intruded into the dazzling cone of McCoy’s torchlight like a shark circling the golden ceiling of light over deep water: just as small, remote and deadly. Virgil saw it move, gauging the range to Antioni and Il Dottore behind him, to Alfredo by his side and finally to himself, still propped on his elbows gripping the useless revolver. It made the gunman's intentions as clear as if he had voiced them himself: ‘first you, and then the others’. "Run!" he heard his own voice shout, and he tried to roll aside for the temporary cover of darkness, but found his muscles rigid, clamped steel-tight. Not that it mattered; the bullet, like the bull in the field, would certainly make it to its object before he could.

Then two things happened almost simultaneously. Alfredo jumped to his feet shouting, the pistol wavered indecisively and its bullet amputated the tip of Mercury's staff in an explosion of vaporized marble. Next as the gun jerked determinedly back to its original target Braman ejected Jimmy, still yelling, and turned to face an awkward problem.

The robot's compact central processor was capable of making its mind up in nanoseconds about most things, but now two imperatives jockeyed for position, and the indicator panel behind Braman's radio-speaker nose flashed on and off with increasing rapidity. Of the group of human beings in the darkness one set, subgroup friends, was about be annihilated by the other, subgroup enemies. Subgroup friends had to be protected, doubly so as a direct order had lately been received to that effect, but as most of subgroup enemies were out of immediate reach the only possible action was to shoot. However subgroup enemies also fell into group human beings, who were sacrosanct, therefore the only possible action was to do nothing, sacrificing subgroup friends. With a light smoke rising from the audio sensors on either side of its head the robot strode swiftly into the torch lit no-man's-land between the opposing parties like an actor sweeping onstage for the final apocalyptic scene of a classical tragedy, then stretched both arms to their fullest extent, grabbed hold of two great stone pillars, and heaved.

”Braman! No!" Virgil yelled, but it was too late.

Ever afterwards Virgil fervently wished he couldn't remember exactly what happened next, but the sight of the collapsing columns was etched firmly into his memory, together with the unpleasant sound of screams that were almost, but not quite, drowned by the thunderous roar of falling masonry. All light was extinguished, perhaps by the destruction of its source or perhaps by the choking cloud of stone and marble dust that rose to thicken the air, but from somewhere in the blackness nearby an incantation in Italian, possibly a prayer, gave the hope that at least he wasn't going to be the sole survivor. Silence followed the last stone down but for a moment he stayed prudently where he was, flat on his face with his arms crossed over his head, until a shallow wave of water washed past his cheek turning the dust to mud, and he sat up, coughing. Near his hand a lost torch still shone in the water, and he picked it up: by its mud-spotted light he saw Alfredo in his new role as hero helping Il Dottore to his feet, and he breathed a sigh of relief as Antioni's voice came from the darkness behind him.

"Per amore di Dio! What happened?"

"Braman brought the roof down." Virgil looked up, but the unrelieved darkness overhead suggested that a more accurate statement might be that the blocks lining the cistern's ceiling had descended; presumably a thick roof of rock and earth still remained. He got to his feet and surveyed his companions anxiously. "Is everyone okay?"

Antioni nodded. "We are alright. But I think that is more, as you say, than can be said for the men of the guns."

"Yes. And I’m afraid it's more than can be said for Braman." Virgil swung the torch round, and they saw that the end of the dais had gone, hidden under a mountain range of broken blocks that stretched beyond the light and on into the depths of the cistern. Most of the statues were untouched, but the great figure of Mars had been toppled by the fall, its severed head lying upside down on top of the debris like a monument to the futility of conflict. Of the gunmen, their weapons or the robot there was no sign. Virgil frowned down at the cold flood creeping up round his ankles. "This water's rising even faster now. The statues are in mint condition, so I'd guess it doesn't usually get this high. There was an outlet tunnel just beyond that rock fall; could be the rubble's blocked it up."

"Then we must hurry!" Antioni grabbed his arm. "With no outlet the whole cistern it may fill. Perhaps we swim for a while like the corks in the wine-vat, then..." He snapped his fingers. "In this roof there is no bung. We must find the escape shaft at once."

"But the escape shaft's behind the rock fall, too." Virgil swung the torch beam in desperation. As it passed over the statues a single star of light lingered puzzlingly on the tip of Diana's bow, and he turned his eyes upwards. Just above Neptune's ear a tiny chink of moonlight perforated the darkness, and an almost invisible shaft of silver slanted down. "Look!" He pointed. "Maybe that fall did leave us with a chance, after all." Beneath the chink Neptune's arm jostled Jupiter's broad shoulder, from which tiers of marble drapery, possibly climbable, stepped down to the great stone throne. He turned the torch beam onto the lion footstool. "Okay. You three'd better start climbing, while I check that rubble. If anyone's still alive under there with the water rising at this rate they won't have a hope and we can't leave them to die like that."

"Is the fool's errand." Antioni shook his head as a new surge of water brought the level rapidly up to their knees. "No-one can have survived. There is no time."

"No," Il Dottore agreed, "is too late. Listen, the stones move! The water lifts them as if they are driftwood; we are finished."

The torch beam reached the rubble just in time to show one massive block tilt forwards with a rumble, shouldered up by some emerging powerful force; but instead of the expected torrent from the gap behind it a fountain of blue sparks was followed by a blaze of light. Virgil stared, then sprang forward, splashing across the dais with a shout. "That isn't water, that's Braman! Come on!"

Scratched, dented and with one claw torn away to leave a stump intermittently sputtering low-tension sparks, the robot was already dragging a dazed Max from a lifesaving hollow that had been formed by the falling rocks. With less personal padding Jimmy had suffered more bruising, and kept up a steady low whine of complaint as Alfredo put a supporting shoulder beneath his arm. Using the pink pocket-handkerchief Il Dottore swiftly did what he could for McCoy's shattered right hand, but shook his head eloquently.

"Perhaps the world now is the safer place," Antioni suggested. "But quickly! He will be no further danger if he drown, and neither will we. We must get to the throne of Giove."

They fought their way across the dais through rapidly deepening water, Braman encouraging the gunmen with an occasional prod from the spitting copper stump. As they reached Jupiter's footstool the familiar groan echoed through the cistern again in a dismal accompaniment to Jimmy's keening, but behind it was a new sound, a distant but slowly swelling crash and boom, like a strong wind approaching through a forest.

"A wave!" Virgil struggled to hold up the torch and support Il Dottore in his climb out of the breast-high water. "A wave coming down the tunnels! What we've seen so far's just some gentle lead- water; that must be the main flow. Hurry, climb for your lives! If we're not clear of the water when that crest hits we'll never get out at all." Suiting action to words he followed the others up, scrambling for a foothold on the wet stone, then the oncoming roar drowned out all other sound, and he barely had time to throw his arms around a golden lion's neck before a wall of black water crashed over them.

"There's absolutely nothing happening down there," Alan told the radio. "It's as quiet as a graveyard. I mean..."

"Alright." His father's voice was edgy. "Is there any sign of TinTin? Is she still there?"

Alan craned his neck to see through the open view port, and far below a tiny figure waved up in the moonlight. "Yes, she's okay, but there's no-one else around. Guess I'd better land."

"No, save that for a last resort. You're known there, and it's vital that we preserve our security if that's possible without endangering life. The police should be there soon, and remember that Gordon gave your name when he called them. When all this is over I want to be sure that you and TinTin get your stories straight."

"Yes, Father." Wondering what to do next, Alan heard Scott's voice in the background, then his father's growl again.

"Alan? John has just pinpointed Virgil's signal. It's very weak, and almost a mile north of the location you gave us."

"A mile north? But that must mean..."

"I don't know what it means, but you'd better get over there right away. When John first detected the signal it was nearly forty feet below ground, but now it's rising steadily. I heard what you said about the water in that tunnel, and I don't like the sound of it. Gordon's re-directing the police, but it'll take time for them to get there so you'll have to use every bit of speed you've got. Now get moving, and keep your radio link open.

I'll give you the co-ordinates as you fly."

The chink was too narrow. Holding on to the wreath of marble shells that circled Neptune's brow Virgil stopped to recover his breath. The climb had been relatively simple, helped by the fact that the giant statues seemed to have been assembled hurriedly, their constituent blocks offset to provide what with a little ingenuity and a stretch could pass for a stair, but with soaked clothes and chilled muscles it had been long and demanding, and now despair reinforced weariness as he looked at the rock just above him. From the other side of the crack, about four feet away, came the warm, earthy smell of a wood in the night-time, and a gentle sound that might have been the hiss of the breeze in the olives. The moon had moved on a little, and overhead a single star hung, remote and unattainable. He slipped one arm into the cleft and tried to work his shoulder in after it but gave up, foiled by the narrowing faces of rock. The world and safety remained four feet away, unreachable.

He looked down. Braman's searchlight cast a bar of radiance over Jupiter's lap, where five tiny figures stood just above the encroaching water, faces upturned, waiting for their scout to return with the good news of a climbable route to escape. Above them on the marble drapery Alfredo patiently held up the torch, providing illumination for the descent. Lost for any other course of action he prepared to turn back then hesitated, hearing a new sound overhead. Perhaps an inter-continental jet, its passengers relaxing, movie-watching, unaware of the real-life drama being played out below; but no, something more familiar. Except that that was impossible. Then a voice, raised to make itself heard but still barely audible, came from the blank telecom on his wrist.

"Virgil? Do you read me? Shout if you do, I've got my receiver on full power. If you can't manage a voice message use your Morse button; send me an FAB."

"Alan!" Virgil lifted the telecom close to his face, slipping on his marble foothold in excitement. "Alan! Are you two okay?"

"Virgil! Of course we're okay. I'm in Thunderbird One, right above you. Are you okay?"

"No! Listen, there's no time to explain, but there's seven of us down here who're going to drown if you can't open up a hole to get us out. There're a few feet of rock to get through; you'll have to use a Tectonite missile."

"A missile?" Alan's voice repeated, horrified. "But that's crazy, Virgil. I'll be firing blind. Suppose I hit the ground above you? If you're not crushed to death you'll all be blown to kingdom come."

"Not if you aim for my signal." Feverishly, Virgil started to unfasten the telecom's strap. "I'm going to wedge my telecom into this crack. You can home in on the locater beam; the others are far enough off for safety."

"Okay," Alan agreed with a trace of reluctance, "but you'll need time to get clear. Will a minute be enough?"

"Plenty."

"Right," Alan said, tense now but determined. "From when you say ‘now’ I'll give you exactly sixty seconds. So you'd better be ready to get moving."

"FAB," Virgil acknowledged, a sense of relief springing from the certainty of their imminent escape already beginning to wash over him. "When you've gotten through, you’d better lower your chain ladder. And hurry, Alan; we haven't got much time."

"Take it easy. Just get that transmitter in place and..."

Silence. Virgil froze, his hand holding the telecom already extended into the crack. "Alan? Alan!"

The moon had continued its clockwork progress across the sky, and the light hitting the crack was slanting, less illumination penetrating to the dark below. In the gloom the telecom stayed obstinately silent, and no amount of shaking, experimenting with its alignment or pressing the button to cut in its reserve power succeeded in producing the slightest pulse of life from it again. "Alan!" Virgil shouted two or three times in an agony of frustration, but there was no response, and overhead the sound of engines swelled and faded in a perplexed circling. Too much talk had drained the small battery’s final reserves, and now there would be no locator signal, and no way for Alan to make his shot in safety.

In the darkness below the beam from Braman's searchlight had become a double shaft, and Virgil realized with a shock that the duplication was reflection, from water lapping round the robot's chest. In the glow from the torch he saw that Jupiter's lap had vanished, and that where it had been a cluster of black dots was drifting in the moving lights: heads bobbing in the water. He stared for a moment then, wedging himself into a marble mussel-shell, he raised the telecom, and with teeth gritted and eyebrows drawn down began tearing it to pieces. The faceplate hit Neptune's ear, tinkling away into the dark. The miniature machine's interior was black, but probing with a finger he found the catch he wanted, and something detached; a hard, stamp-sized mass with a putty center. Throwing the case after the faceplate he pulled himself gingerly to the top of the mussel-shell, his limbs stiff with cold and the strains of the climb. He reached up again into the crack, the putty stuck the stamp to the rock, and he gave it a stiff blow with side of his fist. Then he took a deep breath, turned back to face the water, and jumped.

When awareness returned he was floating, arms locked round something moderately buoyant, and a bruise that felt as if it might have been caused by a collision with a truck racking his side as he coughed the last of the water out of his lungs. A sudden sharp crack made him look up: above Neptune's ear was a firework display, a Roman candle pouring sparks into the dark. For a second he wondered what it was, then remembered the plastic explosive, and his grip tightened in hope. The blinding white light faded, but in its place only a thin chink of gray light remained. As thin as before. It had been a vain hope anyway, for what use was thermal explosive against rock? Rock that had formed the impregnable roof of Pluto's palace for two thousand years, and that now would be there long after the underworld had gained seven new recruits. He clung tighter to his floating support and a piece broke off; it was sodden wood. A crumbling plank from a disintegrating row boat.

There was a tremendous detonation. Deafening echoes screamed around the cistern in chaos then escaped it altogether, disappearing through the rapidly opening hole above Neptune's head where the rock was steadily, incredibly, being vaporized away. A downpour of incandescent fragments hissed into the water around the statue's chest, then as the steam rose and cleared there was a miraculous panorama of serene, star-filled sky. A dazzling light shone down and a great voice thundered out, amplified to Olympian strength.

"This is International Rescue," Alan's voice boomed, distorted by volume beyond all recognition. "You're going to be okay now. I'm sending down a ladder; climb on to it one by one. There's plenty of room for everybody."

By the time the gunmen had been herded onto the flexible metal ladder and the Italians had climbed on after them, the water was lapping Neptune's beard. Virgil, treading water where Braman clung precariously to the marble curls, gestured to the robot to go first, but an answering wave of the sparking cattle-prod arm suggested that compliance would be easier than argument, and he hauled himself wearily out of the water. He felt the chain-link structure brace as Braman gripped the bottom rung with his one remaining claw, then the ladder lifted away, and as the robot's heels cleared the smoking crater water rising round the prongs of Neptune's trident spilled up out of the hole to wash over the site, flowing on in a million moonlit rivulets down the hillside and into the valley, to disappear into the parched earth.

Farewell

"Isn't it wonderful?" TinTin looked around at the garden-party scene outside the Villa Antioni, where noisy crowds in a holiday spirit and Sunday-best clothes clustered round trestle tables loaded with food and wine. "I know everyone here has always seemed cheerful, despite everything, but it's so good to see them looking really happy." On a clear patch of lawn some revelers had begun an impromptu dance, and from somewhere nearby a small band started up a jaunty tune. Alan picked up a strawberry, warm from the sun, from a great dish on one of the tables and popped it into his mouth.

"Mmmm, that's great. And I guess there's going to be plenty more of these around here now that the village's got its very own Roman irrigation system."

"Right." Virgil nodded. "Antioni tells me there's a small army of engineers waiting to clear away that rubble and get the system back in working order just as soon as the museum guys have finished moving the statues out. Seems the government doesn't mind helping now the costs have dropped a little, and with a few pipes they'll be able to bring the water right down to the fields. There's always plenty of rain in the northern hills, so it should pretty well guarantee them a year-round supply."

"I'm glad the statues weren't too badly damaged," TinTin said. "What with Braman then Alan's missile I suppose it's a miracle they survived at all. But it was a good idea of yours, Virgil, to use your emergency Thermite charge to show Alan where to aim after your locater signal failed."

"Well, I didn't exactly..." Virgil began.

"No, it was a great idea," Alan insisted, "with the light and heat that came up from that crack I could've zeroed a whole flight of missiles in. Except that I only needed one." He looked mildly disappointed.

"One was enough," Virgil said decidedly. "But you did pretty well too, Alan: that was great shooting. If it hadn't been for you, and TinTin sending Braman in, I guess the end of the story could've been a whole lot different."

"It isn't the end of the story yet, though, is it?" TinTin asked. "We still don't know where the statues came from, who those gunmen were, or if they really shot Pietro Vincini. But that could be why Signore Antioni wants to see us in the villa. Perhaps he's got some more information."

"Maybe." Alan glanced at his watch. But if we're going to see him we'd better hurry, we're supposed to be leaving in hour. Although I still don't see why we've got to hightail it back to Base, when the party's only just beginning. Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought we just saved this town from dying of thirst, and solved the Lake Reno murder mystery into the bargain. Dad knows the police turned up in time to grab those creeps as they climbed off the ladder, and I didn't even have to land, so there was no security breach. You'd figure he'd want to give us a medal, not a rocket. Besides, there's still a week of our vacation left."

"Guess it's what might've happened that worries him," Virgil said. "Okay, no-one suspects we're connected with International Rescue, and no-one was seriously hurt, but like I said, it could've been pretty different. And there's the damage to Penelope's villa, to say nothing of the work Brains is going to have to put in on Braman." He turned towards the house. "But you're right, we'd better move. Because after we've seen Giuseppe we've got to find somewhere that'll deliver a new deepfreeze and a micro cooker in half an hour. Then there's that little matter of the rewiring in the kitchen."

As they entered the villa's dining room, an unexpected expanse of sunlight and cold marble in contrast to the candlelit intimacy of two nights before, Antioni was ushering out a man with an attaché case, who stopped to pump their hands enthusiastically then set off down the corridor with a skip in his step.

"He goes the wrong way." Antioni shook his head resignedly. "No matter, they will redirect him from the kitchens. He is the Director of Museums at Firenze; I give him something to calm him down. When he first leave twenty minutes ago he forget his keys; he come back for them, then he forget his car. He starts to walk, back to Firenze."

"And on cloud nine all the way, it looks like," Virgil said. "You wanted to see us?"

"Yes." Antioni indicated two men, one in the elaborate uniform of the Italian police and one in a conservative suit, who sat at the far end of the long table. "Commissario Veretti, of Firenze, and Sir Anthony Aston, from the English branch of the Interpol. After you speak to their interviewers yesterday they wish to have the talk with you themselves."

Both men got to their feet, and Sir Anthony held out his hand. "Don't worry; we haven't decided to take you in. Now that we've put our facts together we think we've a fairly clear picture of what's been happening here, from the first discovery of the Monte Thesauri treasure right up to when International Rescue pulled you out of that water-tank. If you've time we'd like to run the story by you; I think you've a right to hear it, and perhaps you'll be able to fill in some of the details as we go." They sat down, and he settled back comfortably. "The reason I'm here is that our mutual friends now in custody happen to be a little gang my London office has been very anxious to catch up with for some time: specifically three dealers in stolen objects d'art and antiques, by the names of Maxwell Brodie, Jimmy Regan and 'Doc' McCoy. If you think the last sounds familiar, you're right. McCoy was nicknamed after a kindly character in an old space opera, but the name's about all they have in common: we haven't a more dangerous thief on our books. But let's start at the beginning." He turned to Veretti. "The story really begins fifteen years ago with poor dead Pietro Vincini and the Commissario here has been up at Lake Reno doing a little research into that young man's archaeological work."

Veretti nodded. "It seems from my talks with those who knew him that Pietro was the timid man, of the delicate health and the romantic temperament, but in his work he was the genius. His specialty was the translation of the Latin dialects, and at the Institute of Lake Reno are kept some obscure records, inscribed on the wax tablets, found at the excavation of the Villa Juliana many years ago. Always these have been said to be indecipherable, and the experts have dismissed them as the humdrum accounts of the household, but Pietro, we believe, applied his skills, perhaps at first just for the interest, and found out otherwise. When fifteen years ago the new excavation in the gardens of signore Antioni here was planned Pietro begged permission to take charge, and this was granted. How he found the tunnels we cannot know, but from the memories of those who helped on the excavation it is clear he took great interest in the mausoleum; also he hired the mini-digger from the local farm, yet the helpers say this machine was never used for their assistance. We can only guess that his search was guided by some clue in the wax writings; from the marks inside the mausoleum we suspect he used the mini-digger to push open the hidden door. Then he mapped the tunnels, again with the help of the writings, and found the fabulous statues. What was his intention then? We do not know, but from our picture of his character it seems likely he meant only to wait for the fitting moment, then announce his great discovery to the academic world."

Sir Anthony nodded his agreement. "But I'm afraid that's where bad brother Carlo comes in. It's local knowledge that Carlo'd been watching the excavation for some time, and somehow he managed, perhaps by the liberal application of alcohol, to get his brother to tell him what he'd found. He also succeeded, not to Pietro's credit, in convincing him that profit would be preferable to impoverished fame, and that his beautiful statues would be better off in the rarefied air of some foreign collector's strong room than they would be being coughed over by tourists in an Italian museum. So an agreement was reached, and through a crooked friend Carlo contacted Brodie, Regan and McCoy."

"And that's how you know Pietro told Carlo about the statues?" TinTin asked. "From questioning those three?"

"That's right, m'dear." Sir Anthony smiled. "I'm glad to say that they've been singing quite sweetly since we got them caged; most of the rest of our story derives from their statements. Anyway, our gang, scenting riches beyond their wildest dreams, flew over, meeting Carlo and Pietro in a restaurant in Pisa. Buyers, shipping arrangements and cuts were discussed, but on one point they couldn't agree. Pietro had never told Carlo exactly where the treasure was, and he now refused point-blank to tell his new partners, until the cash Carlo had described in such enticing terms was actually on the table. The dealers objected violently: after all, they had to make the initial arrangements, and Pietro's health was delicate. Did he expect them to take all the risks, when a simple bout of influenza might rob them of their reward? Well, finally Pietro suggested a compromise. He left the restaurant, and was gone for so long that his companions began to suspect a trick; he returned at last, however, with two identical cheap silver lockets that he'd bought from a nearby jeweler. Inside each locket, he explained, was engraved exactly half the information required to locate the treasure. On its own either set of directions would be useless, but put together they'd form a key which would guide its possessor straight to the hoard. He held the lockets out, closed, and told Carlo, as the dealers' representative, to pick whichever he liked; he, Pietro, would keep the other. Should anything happen to him the jewel would pass to Carlo in the natural course of events. There were more objections, of course, but Pietro, who seems to have had that deep streak of stubbornness sometimes found at the core of a timid personality, was obdurate, and his partners had to be satisfied. The dealers left to contact their middle-men in Switzerland, and Pietro returned to his work at Lake Reno to wait for their call."

As Sir Anthony paused for a sip of water TinTin turned to Alan in amazement. "But we had dinner in Pisa, before we took the locket into the jeweler’s next door. Alan! It might have been the very same restaurant, and the very same jeweler."

"I think we can safely assume it was," Sir Anthony replied, "but that comes in a little later. We're now at the least pleasant part of our story, and with apologies to the lady I'll try to keep it brief. It seems Carlo was already scheming to get Pietro's share of the profits, or perhaps he wasn't unwilling to see his brother put beyond the reach of any dangerous pricklings of conscience forever; in any case he told the dealers what we have no reason to think was anything other than a downright lie: that Pietro was about to betray them to the police. Needing no further prompting Brodie, Regan and McCoy drove straight to Lake Reno, but Pietro wasn't in his apartment. They searched for his locket, didn't find it, then went on to the Institute, where they discovered Pietro working late alone. There's no need to go into the unpleasant scenes that followed. Sufficient to say that Pietro stubbornly refused to answer any of their questions, and that McCoy's short fuse burned out before they'd learned the location of either the statues or the locket. The Institute was having gardens laid out, and as they disposed of the body under a newly-planted bush they discovered the locket in the most natural place it could be, and where they'd never thought to look for it: around Pietro's neck.

The inscription they copied down by the light of a pocket-torch; the locket, being incriminating evidence, they trod into some soil that had been raked for the laying of turfs, and then they made their escape." Sir Anthony paused again. "And that's the last part poor Pietro played in the story. Until a month ago, when there was a little earthquake up in the north here. But I think the Commissario is better qualified to tell you about that than I."

"Ah, the earthquake." Veretti stretched his legs. "Perhaps you read about it in the newspapers? The International Rescue came to Lake Reno, it was all very exciting. But what was not in the newspapers was that the International Rescue heroes found not only the living earthquake victims, but also the dead bones of Pietro Vincini. His identity was not realized at the time, as his case was closed five years ago and the computer records lost. Some professors of the Institute remembered his disappearance, but I think no-one paid them much attention until I made the visit yesterday."

"And that earthquake must've turned up Pietro's locket as well," Sir Anthony added. "Which is presumably how your friends came across it while they were holidaying up there."

"Yes," Veretti went on, "it is strange; after the discovery of the remains the Institute was closed to the public until the thorough search for clues had been made. I should like to talk to these friends of yours: to know exactly where they found the locket would be interesting."

"I'm afraid that'd be difficult," Alan answered quickly. "You see, we couldn't really say where they are now. They're the kind of guys who just drop in out of the blue and then take off again without leaving a forwarding address. Guess you know the type."

"But what happened next?" TinTin interrupted impatiently. "Surely once the dealers had Pietro's locket they could just put the two inscriptions together and find the treasure."

Veretti nodded. "That, we think, was Carlo Vincini's fear. It is likely he realized too late that if the Englishmen murdered Pietro and took his locket they had no need to stop there. With Carlo's locket and no Carlo they would have the statues, and no fourth man to complicate the division of their profits. But if he was afraid, then still the lure of the treasure was very strong. In the lockets Pietro used the compass directions: the archaeologist must be the surveyor, and he was familiar with such things. He knew that Carlo with his army training would also understand when both were brought together, but Carlo had the extra clue. In his locket was the lion-head and we know that as a boy, he trespassed in the Antioni mausoleum: he would have seen the carvings there. It seems certain that he broke in again, and found the door left open by his brother. That year there was much rain in the north and undoubtedly the tunnels were flooded, but obtaining from the village the torches, food and the small boat he planned to find the treasure, carry out what small pieces he could before the Englishmen returned, then escape to sell his goods in the south, where fewer questions are asked. Later, when the men he feared had gone away, he could return to recruit some of the less formidable helpers and work his goldmine at his leisure."

"Of course a lot of this has to be conjecture," Sir Anthony explained, "although we do know about the dinghy. Signore Antioni remembers it being stolen from a local farmer who was keen on his sea-fishing trips, and presumably the other equipment was obtained in much the same way. But now Carlo Vincini had another problem."

"A large problem," the Commissario agreed. "What was he to do with his locket? It was essential to his plan that the Englishmen did not find it, but he dared not destroy it: there might be the clue in some detail he had missed, and his draftsmanship was too poor to copy it. It might be lost from a pocket, especially on his exploration of the tunnels, and being what my friend Sir Anthony describes as the man's man it is likely that Pietro's method of carrying it never even entered his head. So he looked around for the hiding-place and came up with the brilliant idea, perhaps the first and last of his life. One more silver coin among the hundreds in the fountain would not be noticed; he knew the money was not gathered until the season's end, and having been the regular visitor to the basin to supplement his income since his youth he could be reasonably certain that no-one else was active in that area, and that his cache would be safe. So by night he slipped the locket into the fountain, pulled his boat on its trailer up the hill to the Villa Antioni, and was never seen alive again."

"And in all probability we'll never know exactly why he died," Sir Anthony said. "That entrance could have closed any time a strong flow of water changed the air pressure, and as the shaft you fell down seems to be a fairly recent collapse he may have found himself without an exit. Or perhaps he underestimated the complexity of the tunnels, and without the map on Pietro's locket to help he became hopelessly lost. Anyway, when our dealers returned he was gone, and so was their chance of the loot. They looked everywhere, but neither Carlo nor his locket was to be found. Driving into Pisa they identified the jeweler who'd sold Pietro the lockets, and demanded to know what he'd engraved on them. They were disappointed: the man told them Pietro had asked to stand for a while and watch the engraving-machine at work on some other bauble, then had paid him a handsome sum to hand over the lockets, shut up shop, and drink a slow beer in a nearby cafe. No threats or physical persuasion could make the jeweler change his story, so leaving him with some cash as an advance and the promise of more if he could discover the locket's whereabouts, they drove back to Monte Thesauri." Sir Anthony shook his head. "One almost feels sorry for them. Perhaps they even ate at that restaurant by the fountain, discussing their problems with the key to the treasure only an arm's reach away. But Carlo had done his job too well, and after a few weeks they flew home to attend to more pressing business. The jeweler from Pisa, following instructions, made regular calls to his new employers, but with nothing to report interest soon waned and the whole affair was almost forgotten. Forgotten, that is, until a young couple walked into a shop in Pisa fifteen years later, and showed the proprietor something that brought on a nasty attack of his asthma...

"Well, there's not much more to tell that you don't know already. When the jeweler recovered he dug out an old notebook and made a triumphant telecall; he did omit to inform our gang which locket had turned up, but they probably wouldn't have cared anyway. A lead was a lead, and for the goods Pietro'd described, it was worth following even fifteen years on. They took the next plane over, and the jeweler, who'd run for his Fiat and tracked his targets to their home, albeit with some puzzling diversions on the way, led the dealers to the Villa Creighton-Ward, where they took up watch. They'd hired a fast Alpha Romeo for their own use, and even, with remarkable optimism, a lorry to receive the treasure immediately it was found. That you should have the locket they now knew to have come from Lake Reno and should be in Monte Thesauri seemed to them too great a coincidence: either you already knew the location of the statues or were on the verge of discovering it, and that car and lorry stuck as close as glue, determined to be in at the kill."

"Which is just what it might've been, if TinTin hadn't thought of Braman," Virgil said. "Gee, that's some story. I guess if TinTin and Alan'd chosen a different shop, things might've been more peaceful, but Pietro's murderers would never have been brought to justice. Though it seems Carlo was partly responsible for his brother's death, too."

"Well he certainly paid for it," Alan said. "You remember the old legend of the Furies? How they lived in the underworld, and chased round and tormented anyone who'd been guilty of some unnatural crime? It must've been pretty much like that for him: paddling round and round in the dark and never finding a way out, starving with all that food in front of him, clawing..."

"Okay, Alan," Virgil said, seeing TinTin's face pale. "What I still don't understand is how those statues got into a water-storage tank in the first place, and how anyone could hope to get them out without being spotted. You've seen the size of some of them."

"The Director of Museums have the theory," Antioni replied. "When the emperor Jovian suppress the pagan religions in the fourth century there was much destruction; temples they vanish in the flames and many works of art perish with them forever. But the Julians they stand by the old beliefs, and they were the rich men. To move the images of their gods to the secret place of safety would not for them be the difficult task. Perhaps they hope their store is only temporary, that the winds of belief they may change again, but it does not happen. They fade away, and their villa it falls to ruins like the temples, but in the safe hiding-place their gods remain. They wait for the more enlightened times."

"And it's a great thing for posterity that they did," Sir Anthony said. "I'm no expert, but apart from the sheer beauty of those things I'd say their archaeological significance must be incalculable. The entrance tunnel seems to have been found in the medieval period and used as a sort of bolthole from the villa, but it looks as though superstition prevented any further exploration, which is probably all to the good. As to how our friends meant to get the statues out - well, the larger ones are constructed in sections, which explains how they were got in originally, but I doubt if much time would have been wasted on those anyway. The smaller items would be more saleable; particularly the gold, and I dare say that lorry would have been stuffed with as much of that precious metal as possible. Anything that didn't find a buyer could always be melted down, and of course with the marble figures a broken-off head here and an arm there would have been much easier to transport, but still interesting to any collector."

"That's terrible," TinTin said, shocked. "I'm certainly glad we found Carlo's locket before those criminals did. What will happen to the statues now?"

"Some go to Roma, some to Firenze," Antioni answered, "they are too valuable to stay here." He smiled. "But we will not miss them. Our whole village have the invitation to visit them any time we wish, and soon they make the plaster casts for our own museum here in Monte Thesauri, to bring the tourists and the televideo crews from all over the world. Luigi he dream already of two ristorante, perhaps even the hotel. But for us the true treasure it is the water: it will put bread on our tables not just for the tourist season, but for all months of the year."

"So it looks like your lucky fountain turned up trumps after all," Alan said. "Seems it's a happy ending for everyone, except Pietro Vincini's murderers. What'll happen to them?"

Sir Anthony closed his briefcase and rose. "The Commissario and I are off to discuss that now, but I think I can confidently say that the only art likely to pass through their hands in the next decade will be in a prison rehabilitation class." He frowned. "One thing we couldn't work out. Carlo left his locket in that fountain fifteen years ago, and each year the coins have been dredged out for the village restoration fund. Yet you found it still there, and bright as the day it was pressed. Now that's food for thought, eh?"

"Oh, we know the answer to that." TinTin smiled. "Signore Antioni explained: when the coins are taken out anything that isn't legal tender gets cleaned and put back for the next season. If people see silver there already they're more likely to throw in some themselves. It's the old proverb ‘money draws money’, I suppose."

"Guess we'd better be getting along, too," Alan said when the two policemen had gone. "TinTin and I want to find Luigi before we leave, say our goodbyes." He got up and shook Antioni's hand. "So long, and thanks for your hospitality. Sorry we caused so much trouble round here; maybe once we've gone things can get back to normal."

"Trouble?" Antioni shook his head gravely. "You and International Rescue, you are the heroes of Monte Thesauri. If not for you, we have no museum, no tourists, no water, no future. I hope that you will return soon: our village will always be open to you, and we will be waiting."

As the click of TinTin's heels faded down the corridor he closed the door and turned to Virgil. "They go. And now I have something of the great importance to discuss with you; it must be, as you say, for our ears only. It concerns the International Rescue."

"International Rescue?" Virgil repeated, a small knot of uneasiness tightening in his stomach. "What about them?"

Antioni smiled. "You are not the good actor: I think you know already what is in my mind. When we are in danger how does the International Rescue reach us so quickly? Before the police, who come only from San Giuliano? Without the map reference, in the hills of the tiny Tuscan village how do they find us? And that they are first on the scene when Pietro Vincini is found, it is the strange coincidence. We are both the intelligent men; I think that perhaps we both know the answer."

Virgil shifted uncomfortably. "What’s that?"

"But is it not obvious?" Antioni spread his hands. "The International Rescue it is the Italian organization. There are many woods here still, many wild places; why could not some corner of our land shelter the heroes' base? So, their operatives speak with the American accents, but pffft! Many nationalities must play their humble part in such a team. It is the proud thought."

"It sure is," Virgil said with relief, "and you could be on to something there. But maybe we shouldn't spread it around. Not too much, anyhow." He got up. "Now I'd better get moving, we have to get home right away for a meeting of our own organization. Guess you could call it a kind of debriefing."

"But you cannot go," Antioni objected, "My Francesca returns today, I expect her any moment." He searched in his pocket. "Two tickets for La Scala for the day after tomorrow; she adore the opera. It is a long way; I mean to accompany her, but now with this..." He gestured towards the hubbub outside and shrugged. "I had the hope you would do me the honor."

Virgil shook his head. "Sorry, I'm late already. We have to shop before we leave, replace one or two things that Braman had problems with at Penelope's villa." He stepped towards the door, but it opened as he did so and a young woman came in, tall and unexpectedly fair, with an intriguing combination of golden hair and dark doe-eyes, and a faultless figure that needed only her simple dress, and no expensive jewelry or Rome couture, to display it to perfection. She smiled at Antioni.

"Father! I look everywhere for you."

"Francesca." Antioni took her arm. "This is my friend I tell you of. But he cannot stay, not even for the opera of Milano. The business meeting it is more important."

"Father tells me all about you," Francesca said, still smiling. "I am very sorry you cannot stay."

"So am I," Virgil said, aware that he was staring and trying not to. "Well, I er, suppose I'd better be on my way. Thanks for everything. Maybe we'll take you up on that invitation to come back some day." There was a short silence and he searched for something to fill it. "I uh, guess that's it. Arrivederci, then."

"Addio, my friend," Antioni said.

"Looks like it's time to go." Alan pointed to the yellow car pulling round from the villa's garage block. "Glad we caught up with Luigi, I wouldn't have liked to leave without saying goodbye."

"And I wouldn't have liked to leave without saying goodbye to these." TinTin patted the greyhound's mossy nose. "I almost felt I'd got to know them while I was sitting here that night. But come on, we'd better not keep Virgil waiting."

With a last look at the mausoleum they descended the steps, passed the box maze and crossed the lawn towards the gates and the car, where Virgil waited scowling in the driving seat. "I wonder what's wrong with him?" TinTin asked in a low voice as they approached. "He was alright about Braman's accidents, and our quarrel and the fountain, even about having a gun pointed at him by those criminals and being half-drowned, but now he seems in a terrible mood all of a sudden. Still, who could ever understand men?" She took Alan's arm happily. "I suppose they do have their good points. After all, it was your idea to bring Braman, and if you hadn't been so convinced the treasure was in San Giuliano we'd never have ended up in Monte Thesauri, where it really was. By the way, do you know what Monte Thesauri means? Monte's mount or hill, I suppose, but what about the other bit? The auto-translator doesn't seem to recognize it."

Alan shrugged. "Could mean nowheresville for all I know. Why does it matter, anyway? Especially now we're leaving."

"I'm not sure," TinTin answered uncertainly. "After all they say ‘what's in a name’, but I can't shake off the feeling that if we'd known the meaning from the start we'd have found your treasure much more quickly. It's very odd."

"I'd say it's mighty odd." Alan frowned indignantly. "If you had to come up with a weird idea like that why wait till now to do it? We could've done with any sort of clue a few days ago." His frown deepened into a scowl. "Come to think of it, all of us have been acting pretty odd right through this vacation; we haven't been ourselves at all. Who wrote this stuff?"

"I don't know." TinTin smiled. "I suppose it's just the price we have to pay for being so famous. But I must admit I'm looking forward to getting back to the Island and a little bit of normality. Come on, let's go!"

F I N E

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