The name on the vault was plain. It was simply Paul Riker with the date of his birth and then a blank. The stone tablet bearing the inscription was just below the figure of Shiva, the Destroyer.
Penny and Paul were gazing up at the statue almost as if it were alive.
“I’m scared,” Penny whispered.
“No wonder,” her brother answered. “I ought to have known better than to run up to an old tomb. It was a dumb mistake.”
“But a logical one,” Judy consoled him. “I might have thought it was a little house myself if I hadn’t recognized that statue from a picture I saw in a magazine. In India there are temples to Shiva, or Siva. I’m not sure of the name.”
“I remember!” cried Penny, brightening up as she thought of it. “It was Sita. Oh, no, that’s the name of the—”
“You know nothing about it,” her mother told her severely. “I know nothing myself except that Mr. Riker was fond of collecting things. It is like him to have a Hindu idol on his tomb. Years ago he was converted, as he called it, to mysticism. I remember some of the things he used to say. He and my husband’s father used to have long conversations about the journey a spirit must take before it reached nirvana, whatever that is. Well, perhaps he has taken it. Life was the journey, Uncle Paul used to say, and death the reward.”
She sighed, and added, “I only hope his nephew hasn’t followed in his footsteps.”
“His nephew?” asked Judy.
“Mom means my uncle,” Paul explained. “There’s old Uncle Paul and young Uncle Paul.”