Free Temple of the Jaguar God by Zach Neal Page A

you can’t get it out of
there, can you?”
    Finally
he looked up.
    “ I’m sorry, Doctor Fawcett. We had no idea of what Mister
Syrmes was like. Or what he intended to do.”
    Melody
ground onwards.
    “ Let’s just say he double-crossed us—all of us. I suppose you
could say some of us deserved it. Some of us maybe should have seen
it coming. But it would have inevitably come out, Gerald. Doctor
Fawcett. There never was a Peter O’Dell, millionaire, from Newport,
Rhode Island. There never was a Melody O’Dell, there never was a
William Syrmes—or a Gerald Day. It’s easy enough to see—now, at
last, that we were never going to get away with it.”
    Jeremy
stood, transfixed. His uncle’s face was a study. That was one thing
for sure.
    “ I see.”
    There
was a long silence, and then Uncle Harry said it again.
    “ I see.”
    Jeremy
cleared his throat.
    “ And—and you were all in it?”
    “ Mister Smith was genuine. He was also extremely thorough. A
very tough young man. That’s probably why Mister Syrmes shot him. I
don’t even know the bastard’s real name, he came to us and put the
proposal to us. We were, er, working certain clients in London at
the time, but this one sounded special. He had to have the…the
right kind of people.” Her voice broke, realizing perhaps just what
kind of people that meant. “He told us that he needed to get as
many people as possible in the party, the sort of people that he
could count on…”
    Criminals—real, proper criminals, just like the kind you read
about in the paper, thought Jeremy. Her and O’Dell were con
artists, is what he thought she was saying—or trying to say it,
anyways. They had pooled their resources, and invested heavily into
an operation that had gone badly wrong.
    He and
his uncle were lucky to be alive, on sober reflection. She didn’t
actually say that—
    “ Is there more?”
    There
was nothing but silence, punctuated by the sound of the birds on
the other side of those billowing curtains…
    “ Were you planning to kill us?”
    She
shook her head, the tears finally flowing.
    Mister
Day cleared his throat.
    “ No, sir. We were going to grab the gems, tie you up, and steal
the boat—everything Mister Syrmes did, basically. You would have
eventually gotten out.” His face was bleak. “And she’s right. We
were going to get caught.”
    He shook
his head at his own stupidity.
    They’d
been thoroughly used.
    Uncle
Harry sought out Jeremy.
    Heaving
a deep sigh, Uncle Harry asked one final, perhaps rhetorical
question.
    “ What, in the hell, are we going to do now?”
    Jeremy
shrugged.
    “ Beats me, Uncle Harry.”
    Beats me.
    “ Where did the artifacts come from?”
    Day,
perhaps realizing cooperation was his only hope, answered for the
two of them even as Melody put the gun down on the
table.
    “ Syrmes had stolen them years before. He worked at a big museum
in Caracas. He’s very convincing, and he weaseled his way in
somehow. Think of all the English-speaking tourists they get.
Anyways. He grabbed as much as he could carry, and booked out. He
was on the run, and he had no choice but to find safe keeping for
them. Those artifacts are pretty well-known. Someone will recognize
them. I don’t know what the real crime was, originally, back in
England. Probably murder, knowing him. His whole life was like
that. But then, he was fortunate to get back home with a new name
and a new face. And after all that time, four years later, he runs
into you and your little talk at the Explorer’s Club. You can
imagine how it hit him—now is my chance to go back. Now is my
chance to recover the jewels. Now is my chance to be rich…” He’d
been dreaming about it forever, but he didn’t have the
resources.
    He
sighed deeply.
    “ And that, Doctor Fawcett, is basically the whole
story.”
    The big question, and it was odd to hear Mister Day say it,
but what were they going to do with us
two, as he put it.
    And as Uncle Harry said, that was one