“Listen to me. Hume. I have a quest that demands patience, courage, faith, a will that is relentless. If I shared it with you, could you bring to it these qualities?”
“Try me,” I said firmly. “If it is a task that demands action, and if it concerns this clock, I am with you heart and soul.”
“It does concern the clock. But it is a hundred-to-one shot, with the odds all against us. If you fail, at least you will have your legend. If you succeed, you will share equally with myself. I have needed one for this quest in whose honesty I could have absolute faith. I have thought of you, but only to mistrust you. If I trust you now, will you follow where I shall lead?”
“Try me,” I said again.
CHAPTER VI
He unbuttoned his frock-coat (I had never seen him wear any garment less formal) and took out of it a slender little volume in vellum covers. He passed it to me in silence. I opened it. It was a manuscript copy, roughly stitched together. I recognized the handwriting as that of St. Hilary.
“Well?” I asked curiously, returning it to him.
“This is a crude translation of certain passages in the Diary of Marius Sanudo, a Venetian who lived about the beginning of the sixteenth century. I made this translation in the Royal Library at Vienna the other day. The Diary is one of the rarest books in the world. You are wide enough awake to listen to it for an hour or two?”
“It concerns the clock?”
“It concerns the casket and the clock. You may imagine these extracts as being divided into two chapters. Chapter I–concerning the jewels and the casket; Chapter II–the clock. My remarks may be supposed to constitute a third chapter. You have heard of Beatrice d’Este, the Duchess of Milan and wife of Ludovico the Moor?”