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animals and the like. My mother actually had a diamond-encrusted miniature Pickworth peony designed by Fabergé.”
    â€œIs that so?” Bruce Fishbaum said in that same tone.
    â€œBut it’s the eggs that everyone remembers. The first one was made for Tsarina Marie as a gift from her husband, Tsar Alexander, in 1885. The brilliance of the eggs, of course, is that the egg is just a container for the surprise inside. For example, the peacock egg of 1908. The surprise is a mechanical gold and enameled peacock , sitting in the branches of an engraved gold tree with flowers made of enamel and precious stones. The peacock can be lifted from within the tree and wound up. Placed on a flat surface, it struts around, moving its head and spreads and closes its enamel tail.”
    â€œYou don’t say,” Bruce Fishbaum said.
    Great-Uncle Thorne’s face lit with excitement. “Or the rock crystal egg. Inside the rock crystal egg is a gold support holding twelve miniature paintings of the various palaces and residences significant to the empress Alexandra. Each location holds a special memory for Nicholas and Alexandra in the early days of their courtship. They were newlyweds when the Tsar gave it to her in 1896, after all.
    â€œThe large emerald on the apex can be depressed to engage a mechanism that rotates the miniatures inside the egg. Then a hook moves down and folds the framed pictures back, like the pages of a book, so two paintings can be fully seen at one time. Each miniature is framed in gold with an emerald on its apex.”
    He clapped his hands together in delight.
    â€œBut the pièce de résistance—” Great-Uncle Thorne began.
    â€œYou certainly know your Fabergé eggs,” Maisie and Felix’s mother said kindly. “But I came up searching for these two so Bruce and I could take them to his house for dinner.”
    â€œMy kids are home from boarding school, so I thought, Hey! Let’s get them all together,” Bruce said.
    â€œHe bought steaks to grill,” their mother said.
    â€œMost people believe Fabergé made fifty-eight eggs,” Great-Uncle Thorne continued, despite the looks their mother and Bruce shot each other.
    â€œOnly fifty-eight,” Bruce said. “How about that.”
    â€œI said,
most
people believe there were fifty-eight,” Great-Uncle Thorne corrected.
    â€œRight-o,” Bruce said, shrugging.
    â€œBut they would be wrong, those people,” Great-Uncle Thorne said, getting to his feet.
    â€œO-kay,” Bruce said slowly.
    â€œBruce got that macaroni salad you like, Maisie,” her mother said. “The one from the Sunshine Deli.”
    Great-Uncle Thorne was struggling with the clasps on the valise he’d brought with him into the Map Room.
    â€œLet me give you a hand, there,” Bruce said, bending to help.
    But Great-Uncle Thorne shooed him away.
    Finally, the clasps popped open and Great-Uncle Thorne reached inside, removing something wrapped in pale pink tissue paper.
    He set the object on the desk, then carefully unwrapped the tissue from it.
    Their mother gasped.
    â€œWhoa,” Bruce Fishbaum said softly.
    â€œHere it is,” Great-Uncle Thorne said, his liver-spotted hand resting on the very tip of the lost egg. “The fifty-ninth Fabergé egg.”

Chapter Four
    THE SURPRISE
    â€œW h . . . where did you get
that
?”
Maisie and Felix’s mother stammered.
    Great-Uncle Thorne placed the egg on his old desk so that everyone could get a good look at it.
    Larger than a baseball, beneath all of its ornamentation the egg was the purest white. Whiter than fresh snow. Whiter than clouds or angel hair. Four ribbons of gold radiated from its top, along the delicate curve of the egg, and all the way to the bottom. Each ribbon had a different motif carved into it. Cherubs. Roses. Wolves’ heads. And what appeared to be interlocking letter
R
s.
    Then there were the