“Well?”

“Well what?”

Tony sat down beside me and reached out.

“Oh, come off it,” he mumbled. “Don’t be that way. No reason why we can’t be civil, is there?”

“Civil, is it?” I said, into the hollow between his neck and his right shoulder. “Hmmm…I wasn’t the one who started this stand-off business, you know.”

The succeeding interval lasted a shorter time than one might have expected. All at once Tony took me by the shoulders and pushed me away.

“I can’t concentrate,” he said in an aggrieved tone. “Why did we start this silly fight in the first place? I haven’t been able to think of anything else for months. It’s interfering with my social life and my normal emotional development.”

“You challenged me,” I reminded him. “Want to take back what you said?”

“No!”

“Then we’d better kiss and part. I can’t concentrate on any other subject either; and we aren’t collaborating, are we?”

“No…”

“Only?”

“Only—well, we could compare background notes, couldn’t we? Nothing significant, just research. So we can start out even.”

“Hmmm,” I said. “Why the change of heart?”

“It isn’t a change of heart. I’m not asking you to give anything away, and I’m not going to tell you anything important. Only—well, Nolan bugs me. I didn’t realize he was so hot on the trail. And if I can’t find the thing myself, I’d rather have you get it than Nolan.”

I didn’t return the compliment. If I couldn’t find the shrine, I hoped nobody would. But his suggestion made sense. I didn’t have anything that could be called a clue; maybe he did. I had nothing to lose by collaborating.

As it turned out, I didn’t gain much. For the most part, Tony’s research duplicated mine.

We had both gone back to the old chronicle, which contributed very little except a description of the shrine. If my appetite had needed whetting, that description would have done the trick.

According to the chronicler, the reliquary depicted the Three Kings kneeling before the Child—the “Anbetung der Könige,” as the Germans put it. The subject was popular with European artists in earlier, more devout, eras, so it is not surprising that another version of the Anbetung, by Riemenschneider, should exist. This one is a bas-relief, on the side panel of the Altar of the Virgin, which he did for the church at Creglingen, not far from Rothenburg. So when I pictured our shrine I pictured it as he had done it at Creglingen, only in the round instead of in relief. The design was simple and forceful—the Virgin, seated, with two of the kings kneeling before her and the third standing at her right. Of course I knew the Drachenstein shrine wouldn’t be quite the same, but the subject was only open to a few variations. Since the old chronicle mentioned angels, I gave my visionary shrine a few of Riemenschneider’s typical winged beauties—not chubby dimpled babies, but grave ageless creatures with flowing hair and robes fluttering in the splendor of flight.