I looked at it as he held it up to the light, and my stomach got a queer queasy feeling. The object was a wing, carved of wood and lightly gilded. In form it was the sort of thing that might have been broken off a phoenix, or a golden bird in flight; but there was a quality about it that eliminated these possibilities and defined it as what it was—

“An angel’s wing,” I whispered.

Eight

I HELD THE PIECE OF WOOD IN BOTH CUPPED hands. I didn’t speak because, to tell the truth, I was afraid my voice wouldn’t be steady. I mean, that wing really got to me, and not just because it confirmed an almost abandoned hope. For the first time I visualized the thing we were after, not as a prize or a treasure, but as a work of art. I was seeing golden angels.

When I had suppressed this surprising burst of sentiment, I said with affected coolness,

“Game and set to you, Tony. You’re ’way ahead. But you haven’t won the match yet.” Reluctantly I put the carved wood down on the table. My hand felt oddly empty. “Do you realize this is the first solid piece of evidence we’ve found?”

“We’ve been distracted by side issues. I still am,” Tony admitted. “I can’t get that woman out of my mind. I keep seeing her—a girl with Irma’s face—standing in the flames and screaming.”

“Stop it.”

“Sorry. But—”

“Of course she haunts us,” I snapped. “Who wouldn’t be disturbed by a gruesome story like hers? If it weren’t for her resemblance to Irma, though…”

I let the words trail off, and Tony looked curiously at me.

“What?”

“It’s gone. I almost had an idea there, for a minute…. Let’s stick to the important question. We know now that the shrine did reach Rothenburg. It has to be here somewhere. Let’s have a look at those maps.”

We spread them out on the bed. They had been rolled for so many years it was hard to hold them open; they had a tendency to snap back on our hands like teeth. I leaned on two of the corners while Tony flattened the other side.

“Okay,” he said, after studying them for a moment. “This top plan concerns the remodeling of the east wing in seventeen hundred fifty-two. We needn’t worry about that. If there had been anything there, the workmen would have found it.”

I put the parchment down on the floor. The sheet underneath was yellower and the writing more faded.

“Here we have a general layout done in—early seventeenth century, wouldn’t you say? There’s no date. It’s not detailed enough to be of any use. Same for this…”

I added two more rolls to the one on the floor.

“Now here,” said Tony, looking with satisfaction at the next maps, “we get to red meat. These are plans of the Schloss as it was in the early fifteen-thirties. I’ll bet they were done by Burckhardt’s successor when he took over the title.”