I whistled through my teeth. 'Treasure-hunting! So this is the clod-brained agent Festus used to employ! The legendary man he met in Alexandria: Greece, eh? I bet he wishes he'd stayed there sunbathing on the Attic Plain!'

'I need a drink!' interrupted the sculptor desperately.

'Don't give him any,' snapped Pa. 'I know him of old. He's a drunken sot. He'll drain it and pass out on you.'

'Is that how you spent the bribe, Orontes?'

'I never had a bribe!'

'Don't lie! Somebody doled out a lot of money for you to do them a favour. Now you're going to tell us who paid you the money-and you're going to tell us why!'

'Bloody Cassius Carus paid the money!' my father suddenly shouted out. I knew he was guessing. I also realised he was probably right.

'That true, Orontes?' Orontes groaned in feeble assent. We had found some wine while he was unconscious. Pa nodded to me, and I offered the sculptor the wineskin, pulling it back after Orontes had taken one thirsty swig. 'Now tell us the full story.'

'I can't!' he wailed.

'You can. It's easy.'

'Where's Rubinia?' he tried again. He didn't care much about the girl; he was playing for time.

'Where she can't help you.' Actually we had shut her up somewhere to keep her quiet.

Pa swung closer and grasped the wineskin. 'Maybe he's frightened of the girl. Maybe she'll give him an earful if she finds out he's talked.' He took several deep swigs, then offered me a turn. I shook my head with distaste. 'Wise boy! For the heart of a wine-producing area this is dreadful vinegar. Orontes never drank for the flavour, just the effect.'

Orontes looked at his wineskin yearningly, but Pa held on to the dreadful prize. 'Tell us about the Phidias,' I urged. 'Tell us now-or Pa and I are going to hurt you much more than anyone else who's threatened you before!'

I must have sounded convincing, because to my surprise Orontes then confessed.

'I go to Greece whenever I can, looking out for bargains-' We groaned and sneered at his hybrid statues again, to show what we thought of that. 'Festus had an arrangement with me. I had heard where there might be this Phidias. I thought we could get hold of it. Some run-down temple on an island wanted to have a clear-out; I don't think they really appreciated what they were turfing on to the market. Even so, it wasn't cheap. Festus and some other people managed to put the money together, and he also lined up Carus and Servia as eventual purchasers. When his legion left Alexandria to fight in the Jewish Rebellion, Festus wangled himself a journey to Greece as an escort for some despatches; that was how he came with me to view the Phidias. He liked what he saw and bought it, but there was no time to make other arrangements so it had to go on with him to Tyre. After that he was stuck in Judaea with the army, so I was supposed to supervise bringing it back to Italy.'

'You were to escort it in person?' Pa queried. I guessed that was the usual system he and Festus had imposed to protect an item of large value. Either one of them, or an agent they really trusted, would have stuck with it every mile of its journey.

'That was what I promised Festus. He was sending a whole load of other stuff-nice goods, but minor quality by comparison-in a ship called the Hypericon.'

I poked him with the toe of my boot. The sculptor closed his eyes. 'Since the Hypericon sank while carrying the Phidias, and you're lying here annoying us, the rest is obvious. You broke your promise to Festus, and bunked off elsewhere!'

'That's about right,' he confessed uncertainly.

'I don't believe I'm hearing this! You let a statue worth half a million travel alone?' Pa was incredulous.

'Not exactly-'

'So what exactly?' menaced Pa.

Orontes groaned hopelessly and curled up, hugging his knees as if he was in some terrible pain. A bad conscience hurts some folk that way. 'The ship with the statue sank,' he whispered.

'We know that!' My father lost his temper. He hurled the wineskin at a Coy Nymph; it burst with a horrible squelching sound. Red wine trickled down her scanty drapes like blood. 'The Hypericon -'

'No, Geminus.' Orontes took a deep breath. Then he told us what we had come to find out: 'The Phidias that Festus bought was never on the Hypericon.'

LIII

I ran the fingers of both hands deep into my hair, massaging my scalp. Somehow this shock was not the surprise it ought to have been. Everyone had been telling us the Hypericon was carrying the statue; readjusting to another story took an effort. But some things which had made no sense before might now fall into place.

'Tell us what happened,' I commanded the sculptor wearily.

'There had been some mix-up. Festus and I took the Phidias to Tyre, but the rest of his stuff, things he had fixed up on his own account, had gone to Caesarea. Festus then told me he had to make himself look a bit official-'

'You don't say!' Pa was getting rattled. 'There was a war on in that region!'

'Well that's it!' Orontes exclaimed gratefully. He appeared to lack any grasp of world events. Perhaps this was understandable, when he saw my brother behaving as if the Jewish Rebellion had been arranged solely to further his own business commissions. 'Anyway, he went down to Caesarea to supervise his other stuff and to fix up a ship-what turned out to be the Hypericon.'

'So you were not using her before this?' I asked.

'Oh no. We were in military transports up to then.' Bloody Festus! 'I was left in charge of the statue. Festus told me before I brought it south to let one of the Aristedon brothers inspect it.' The name was familiar; I remembered Carus and Servia mentioning they used these people to ship goods for them. 'They were to verify it for the new owners, and until they did, Festus could not clear the banker's order.'

'So Festus was paid by Carus through a banker in Syria?'

'More convenient,' Pa muttered. 'He wouldn't have wanted to carry that kind of sum with him from Rome. And if his mates in Judaea had put up the stake money, he could pay them their profits straight away with less risk to the cash.'

'I see. But before Carus would cough up so much money, he wanted an agent of his own to see the goods? So how did you lose our statue, Orontes?'

He was really squirming now. 'Oh gods: I thought it was for the best: Aristedon, their agent, turned up in Tyre and approved the statue. I was supposed to take it by road to Caesarea, but with soldiers barging about on all the highways, I was not looking forward to the trip. It seemed a godsend when the Aristedon brother suggested that his clients would prefer him to ship the Phidias in his own boat, the Pride of Perga.'

'Did you go along with that?' demanded Pa contemptuously.

'I assume Aristedon gave you some form of receipt?' I added dangerously.

'Oh yes:' Something was not right there. He had gone pale, and his eyes were wandering.

'So you let him take it?'

'Why not? It meant I could stop worrying about it. And I could forget about coming home on the Hypericon. I wanted to go back to Greece. That way I could spend my commission from Festus buying stuff for myself.'

I weighed in: 'So you handed over the Phidias, let the rest of my brother's cargo take its chance with the Hypericon, flitted off to Achaea, then wandered back to Italy in your own good time?'

'That's right, Falco. And since it meant I escaped drowning, I'm not going to apologise!' It seemed a reasonable attitude-unless this clown had lost your family a small fortune. 'After I got home I discovered the Hypericon had sunk and Festus had lost all his gear.'

'So where in Hades is the Phidias?' grated Pa.

'I was just congratulating myself on having saved it, when I heard that the Pride of Perga had miscarried too.'