“What are you talking about?” Theo asked.
“My sister Deirdre. She has these dreams…. She sees things in them. Things that other people can’t see. I didn’t tell you, because I was afraid you would think I was crazy. That my whole family was.”
Theo’s eyebrows vaulted upward. “After our dream? Besides, the Morelands are always having…unusual dreams.”
Megan shrugged. “Well, I had difficulty believing it. But Da has always believed that Deirdre has special abilities. She dreamed about Dennis. She dreamed that he was asking her for help, that he had lost something precious. Da was certain that you had stolen something from Dennis. We thought that you two had perhaps argued about it. It was why we came to London—to find out what had happened, to recover this ‘precious’ object so that Dennis could find peace. It never occurred to us that the something precious was a person.”
“I have to get her back,” Dennis said earnestly. “That is why I came to you, Theo. You were the only person I could think of who could help me. I’m desperate.”
“Why has he taken her?” Theo exclaimed. “Has he gone mad?”
“I fear he has,” Dennis replied. “He has become obsessed with whatever keeps the villagers from aging.”
“He knows about that?”
Dennis nodded wearily. “Yes. Coffey came back. I noticed over the course of the next two or three years that other treasures went missing. That cloak and mask, for one thing. He was not able to take them with him the first time—he wouldn’t have had room for more than a few small items. But two years later, the cloak and mask disappeared. I suspected that Julian had taken them. The villagers were inclined to believe that the gods had simply used some of their belongings.” He shrugged. “But eventually I persuaded them to put guards in that cave, at least in the dry season, when Julian was most likely to come. And they caught him.”
“What happened?”
“We let him go.” Dennis’s expression hardened at the memory. “With his treasure. He threatened to reveal the existence of the village. That is what they fear most—the outside world discovering them. They think it will anger the gods, and they will lose all their magic. And I know it would destroy them.”
“So he blackmailed the whole village.”
“Essentially, yes. The villagers thought it would be easier and more pleasing to the gods to pay him a ‘tribute’ every year than to have the secret revealed.”
“Why didn’t they just put him in jail or something?” Megan asked. “I mean, he tried to kill you. He was stealing from them.”
“The years of peaceful living in that place have changed the villagers. They live without war or fighting. The ancient Incas used to sacrifice animals and even people as part of their religious ceremonies. But these people have grown to believe that they are blessed in part because of the lack of violence in their lives. They don’t even sacrifice animals now. They believe that the gifts of goldwork and food and such that they give the gods are sacrifice enough. They don’t have a jail. They could not bring themselves to harm Coffey, and they had no facility for locking him up. Jail is a foreign concept to them, anyway.”
Dennis stood up and began to pace. “Frankly, I thought about killing him myself. I am not sure if I could have done it, but I was sorely tempted. I suppose he had some inkling what I was considering, because he informed me that he had left a letter behind for his assistant at the museum. In it he detailed the location of the village and its treasure trove of Inca gold. If he did not return by a certain date, the assistant had instructions to read it and publicize it. I could not risk it. So, much as I hated it, I agreed with the others to let him take things. The best I could do was try to keep him from wholesale looting of the caves.”
“So that is how he has turned the Cavendish into such a fine museum.”
“Oh, yes, he is quite proud of the job he has done with it. He has apparently gained some degree of acclaim and respect among the academic world. But that is only part of what drives him. The fact is, he has used what he brought back here to gain wealth and power. Not just his increasingly important position as the museum’s director, but also power over people.”
“What do you mean?” Megan’s mind went back to the evening before, and the number of well-dressed men and women who had slipped secretively out of the museum.
“He didn’t keep all of what he stole for the Cavendish. He sold some pieces to collectors. Got a good amount of money for it. Enough to set him up in the lifestyle he prefers. But there is more. He attracted a following. He began to exercise control over them.”
“How?”
“Pieces of the treasure are not the only things he took from the village. He realized, of course, that the villagers must have an unusual ability to heal. He was stunned when he saw that I had recovered. Visiting the village as often as he did, seeing the people and beginning to pick up on their language—well, eventually he realized what I had, that these people have an enormous ability to resist injuries and diseases, that they live an amazingly long time. First he took some of the herbs. Apparently he was able to improve the health of his benefactor, Lord Cavendish. Others came to him. He helped them and charged them a great deal of money. He also started practicing a sort of religion. He was fascinated with the Incas and everything about them, including their spiritual beliefs. He began to combine what he knew about their religion with his own special touches. He burned the herbs and brewed them into tea, which he and his followers drank.”
“So they saw visions?” Theo mused.
“Yes. And, according to Coffey, this ‘religion’ helped to bring them more power and wealth. I am not sure how much of that is real and how much is simply his followers’ perception. I am fairly certain that he gained enormous power over Lady Cavendish, her wealth and the museum by ultimately speeding up her husband’s demise. Used improperly, some of those plants he uses can be very dangerous.”
“So he made the old man well, thus gaining trust and power, then he killed him and gained even more,” Megan commented.
Her brother nodded. “He is a wicked man, but he is clever. He does not miss many chances.”
“How do you know all this about him?” Megan asked curiously.
Dennis grimaced. “He told me. Bizarrely enough, I was the only person to whom he could speak freely. He couldn’t boast to his followers about what he was doing to them, and he feared putting himself under the power of any underling. But there I was. Unlike the villagers, I spoke his language, and I had some idea of the world in which he lived. And I was too far away from England to do him any harm with the police or his followers. He wanted to brag about what he had done, the things he had achieved. So he told me about them.”