Page 129 of Pandora

Dora reaches out a finger. Then, very slowly, she presses her fingertip into the nook, brings it away again.

There, on the pad of her finger, is the black outline of a face.

The face of a bearded man.

“Impossible,” Edward breathes.

Dora looks at him. She is smiling. It is, he thinks, the first time he has ever seen her truly smile.

“Do you know who this is?”

“The old man,” he says, as if there can be no other answer.

“Edward. It is Zeus!”

He blinks at her. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s a key!” At his blank expression she gets to her feet. “Look,” she says, striding over to the Bramah safe. She pulls out the key from its lock, brings it back for him to see.

“My parents had this safe installed years ago. It’s fireproof and self-locking, so they knew that anything they put in there would be protected. The key to it is gold and black. Hezekiah asked me about a gold-and-black key. This key, I thought,” she says, holding it up. Edward looks at it. Gold, filigree detailing on the stem, a revolving oval jet disk. “And I bet anything that this is the key Hezekiah tried. But it didn’t work. He tried the wrong one! He didn’t realize, did he, that there were two. He must have been trying to access the chamber from above but when he saw it was sealed in stone—”

“He tried to break his way through.”

“Exactly.”

“All right,” Edward says. “So where is this second key?”

Dora immediately turns away and disappears up the stairs.

“Where are you going?” he shouts after her. “Be careful!”

“I found it,” she is saying from above, “weeks ago, when I was looking for some of my father’s old wares! A gold-and-black key, a key I used to play with as a little girl. I didn’t remember at first, I couldn’t think clearly, couldn’t understand what my uncle meant...”

He hears frantic jangling, the sounds of objects rolling across the floor, and then she reappears, almost skips down the stairs, and Edward watches her with his heart in his mouth.

“For God’s sake, Dora,” Edward groans, “be care—”

She is holding out her hand.

In her palm is a key, almost identical to the safe key clutched in her other hand. The only difference... He takes a deep breath.

Imprinted in the jet is the face of a bearded man.

The face of Zeus himself.

***

It fits perfectly.

There is a click, a series of whirrs, the heavy scrape of pulleys and weights. And then a door—large, two feet thick—slides back and then across, a deep rumble against stone.

Dora holds the candelabrum high, its candles flickering brightly. She steps forward and Edward follows, can scarce believe what he sees.

The chamber is filled to the brim with antiquities.

There are rows upon rows of ancient pottery, urns and amphorae of all shapes and sizes, hundreds of plates decorated in red and white and black. Minoan, Mycenaean. There are marble statues, glass chalices, porcelain busts, terracotta figurines. All the riches one could dream of, kept safe just for Dora, in this one hidden room.

“Merciful heaven,” Dora whispers. Her voice cracks. “How can this be? Is this really all mine?”

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