Free The Temple of the Muses by John Maddox Roberts

is wrong.”
    I turned and snapped my fingers. “My sandals.” Hermes slipped them on my feet.
    “Sir,” Amphytrion said, “it is not necessary for you to—”
    “Nonsense,” I said. “If there is trouble, I wish to be of any assistance I may.” I was desperate to get out of there.
    “Very well, then. Esteemed Theophrastus, please continue.”
    We left the dining hall with the old boy’s voice droning away behind us. The Museum was strangely dark and quiet at night, with its small slave staff gone off to their quarters, except for a boy whose sole task was to keep the lamps filled and trimmed.
    “What seems to have happened?” I asked the slave who had been sent to find Iphicrates.
    “You’d better see for yourself, sir,” he said, sweating nervously. Slaves often get that way when something bad has happened. They know that they are most likely to be blamed. We crossed the courtyard where I had seen the workmen assembling Iphicrates’s model canal mechanism the day before. It looked unreal in the moonlight. The slave stopped outside the study where we had seen his drawings.
    “He’s in there.”
    We went in. Six lamps provided decent illumination, enough to see that Iphicrates lay on his back in the middle of the floor, dead as Hannibal. A great vertical gash divided his lofty brow almost in two, from the bridge of his nose to his hairline. The room was a shambles, with papers scattered everywhere and cabinets thrown open, their contents adding to the mess on the floor.
    “Zeus!” Amphytrion cried, his philosophical demeanor slipping a bit. “What has happened here?”

    “For one thing,” I said, “there has been no accident. Our friend Iphicrates has been most thoroughly murdered.”
    “Murdered! But why?”
    “Well, he was rather an abrasive sort,” I pointed out.
    “Philosophers argue a great deal,” Amphytrion said stiffly, “but they do not settle their arguments with violence.”
    I turned to the slave, who still stood without the door. “Go and bring the physician Asklepiodes.”
    “I think it is somewhat too late even for his skills,” Amphytrion said.
    “I don’t require his healing skills, but his knack for reading wounds. We have worked together on a number of such cases in Rome.” I went to look at the cabinets. The locked one had been pried open and its contents scattered.
    “I see. But I must immediately report this incident to his Majesty. I imagine that he will wish to appoint his own investigating officer.”
    “Ptolemy? He’ll be in no condition to hear any reports or appoint any officers until late tomorrow morning at the very earliest.” I looked at the lamps. One had burned low, its wick smoking. The others flamed brightly.
    “Nonetheless, I shall send word,” Amphytrion said.
    From without we could hear the voices of a number of people approaching. I went to the door and saw the whole mob from the banquet crossing the courtyard.
    “Asklepiodes, come in here,” I said. “The rest, please stay outside for the moment.”
    The little Greek came in, beaming all over his bearded face. He loved this sort of thing. He walked to the corpse and knelt beside it, placing his hands beneath his jaw and moving the head this way and that.
    “Even the best lamplight is inadequate for really good analysis of this sort,” he pronounced. “Dedius Caecilius, would you place four of the lamps around his head, no more than three or four inches away?” He got up and began rooting about in the mess. I did as he
requested and within a minute he found what he was looking for. He returned with what looked like a shallow, very highly polished bowl of silver. He turned to the little group of scholars who peered in through the door.
    “Iphicrates was doing research on the use by Archimedes of parabolic reflectors. A concave mirror has the power to concentrate the light it reflects.” He turned the open end of the bowl toward Iphicrates, and sure enough, it cast a beam of