Nick wasn’t particularly enjoying himself at the ball, but he wanted to keep Phoebe and the other girls happy and not be a bore. The key from his grandfather’s house, still hanging on a string around his neck, felt like it was searing a brand in his chest. When would he learn what it actually opened? It had been a week since he and Phoebe were in Southampton, and they still hadn’t gotten anywhere.
Nick’s parents were seated at a prominent table, and his two brothers were at another table with their dates and friends. Nick had wanted to ask his brothers, Benjamin specifically, about Palmer’s challenge, but he didn’t feel like he could without the risk of their father hearing about it.
As he sat down, he felt a headache coming on, though it wasn’t from the champagne. When he had picked up his escort card containing his table assignment, the black stock calligraphed in gold read “Table 1603.” There was no table numbered 1603; there were only about forty tables, designated as One through Forty. He showed it to Phoebe, and found that he was actually seated at Table Fourteen with her.
Still, as he pocketed the card, it left him with an unsettled feeling.
After the salad course had been cleared, Letty Chilton, the chair of the Ball Committee, stood up to make a speech, her husband, Martin, sitting nearby. She was wearing a turquoise dress that made her look like she was dressed in one of the tablecloths. As she welcomed everyone from her position on the dais in front of the temple, the lighting created ghostly shadows on her face. Nick spaced out during most of the speech, as it was all about boring stuff like how proud she was of all the donors, how much work they had all done, and how much the Egyptian wing was a vital part of this city. Nick loved the Egyptian wing-it was a stone’s throw from his bedroom window-but he felt like Mrs. Chilton was using it as her own personal triumph, as if she were responsible for all the hard work that had been done by the curators, the scholars, the archaeologists, and the art historians.
Letty Chilton probably wouldn’t know an Egyptian artifact if she tripped over one in Central Park.
“In closing,” she said, “I’d like to say how grateful we are to our friends in Cairo for loaning us these glorious objects, here now at the Met for all the world to see. You have truly brought Egypt to those who might never experience it. Thank you.”
There was thunderous applause as Mrs. Chilton beamed at the crowd and then carefully stepped off the small platform.
At that moment, the power went out.
Patch had cued up the next song that was to play after Letty Chilton’s speech, as she had informed him that she loathed nothing more than the awkward silence that occurs after applause has died down but before conversation resumes. Patch was to fill this gap by starting up the music immediately-almost, she had implied, under penalty of death. (Letty Chilton had been victim to a terrible incident at the Metropolitan Club the previous year when she had given a toast and then there was no music for a full ninety seconds after it had concluded. The memory, clearly, had stayed with her.)
Now there wasn’t silence, but there wasn’t music, either. As the museum went dark, there was shouting and commotion. With all the candlelight, it wasn’t pitch-black exactly, but startling nonetheless.
Claire Chilton ran up to him, in a near hysterical fit. “Patch! What is going on? Why is all the lighting going out? Did you do something? All these cables! Did you knock something over?”
“Claire, I play the music. The lighting booth is over there,” he said, motioning to the other side of the room.
She scowled and ran across the room, though she was intercepted by her mother, who was equally hysterical.
Just relax, Patch thought. What were they all so crazy about? The lights would come back on when they came on. It was probably just a temporary outage caused by a surge in the power grid. All the extra lighting for the party was taking up an awful lot of juice, not to mention the klieg lights outside, which had been on since six P.M.
Then Patch heard something else: the sound of smashing glass from the west side of the room, followed by a few loud screams. Patch looked up, trying to determine through the crowd what was going on. The bodies crowded around the artifacts, as people made their way toward the exits. Patch wondered why everyone didn’t stay in their seats. With all the events that had taken place in the last ten years in New York City, even a mere power outage was enough to get people to panic.
As the crowd cleared around the west side of the room, the source of the smashing glass became clear: one of the display cases had been broken into from the side and was now empty. Patch felt a lump rising in his throat.
He had heard the museum’s head of security speaking with his guards earlier that day when he had come in for the sound check.
Because of all the extra power that would be required by the caterers, the lighting, and the sound-and because the museum would be doubly staffed with guards during the party-the museum had made an executive decision, that now, in retrospect, didn’t seem terribly smart.
To save power and try to prevent an outage, they had turned off the security alarms on all the cases.