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many books and several shiny things Dev would love to have poked at, if he didn’t have anything else to do for a few hours.
    “What’s going on?” Harry leaned on one worktable.
    “I want you to take a look at this, and tell me your impressions.”
    Dev reached into his innermost pocket and retrieved the small leather bag he’d found in his bureau that morning. He opened it and carefully dropped Léonie’s ring onto a piece of dark velvet lying next to Harry’s elbow.
    “ Oohh damn …”
    Harry’s muted whisper of interest was immediately followed by the lighting of a lamp and the appearance of a massive magnifying glass, mounted on a stand.
    Thus equipped, Harry pulled up a tall stool and sat in front of the ring, pulling the glass over it and peering through with focused intensity.
    Dev pulled up a matching stool and took a seat.
    And waited.
    Patiently.
    Then he got up and poked around at things, and then sat down again.
    For about an hour and a half…while watching Harry squint, mutter, turn the ring over, move it again, adjust the lamp, pick the ring up with tweezers, examine it and put it down again.
    Finally, when Dev’s backside was growing numb, he broke the silence. “Uh, Harry? What do you think? Can you tell me anything about this ring?”
    Harry jumped. “God, I’m sorry. I get lost in my work sometimes. When it’s a special piece.” He leaned back and rubbed his eyes. “You’ve got a special piece, here, Dev. A very special piece.”
    “I guessed as much after the first hour you spent looking at it.”
    “You asked. Don’t complain if I take my time.”
    “I’m not. But I’m very anxious to hear your thoughts. It’s important, Harry.”
    “You’re right. This is important.”
    Harry slid from his stool and walked over to one of the bookshelves, finally selecting a dog-eared tome and bringing it back over to the table. He put it down in front of Dev and thumbed to a certain page.
    “Look.” He pointed at the illustration.
    Dev blinked. It was a sketch of some kind of Egyptian wall painting, probably taken from an archaeologist’s notes. Dev had seen them before, especially after Napoleon had raided some of the tombs and commissioned a huge body of work on Egyptian antiquities.
    The first volumes of his Description de l'Égypte had been published several years before, and they had contained many such illustrations.
    But it was the hand of the figure that Harry pointed to.
    The one wearing a ring almost exactly the same as the one on that table.
    Dev’s jaw dropped.  “Jesus.”
    “Quite. Actually not quite. About a thousand years earlier.”
    “You’re telling me that Léonie has a ring that’s from an Egyptian dynasty close to…” he stumbled over the maths, ”… three thousand years ago ?”
    “Give or take, yes.” Harry nodded. “It’s not the same ring, Dev. It’s a smaller version.”
    Dev looked again, realizing that the long braided tail was actually a beard. So this was a man wearing the ring. Perhaps a king…
    “You think perhaps this is the wife’s version?”
    Harry pursed his lips in thought. “I’d hate to say yes or no on that, but the jeweler in me tells me that it was made either for a woman or for a child. Simply by virtue of its size.”
    “Damn. How on earth did she get it?” Dev stared at the page, scarce believing his own eyes. “I thought it might be a couple of hundred years old. The gold is soft to the eye. Aged.”
    “Very observant. Yes, the aging has certainly taken place. But given the millennia rather than centuries, I’d also suggest that there may once have been engravings or carvings on it. It’s not just the surface that’s worn, it’s the decorations that have worn off .”
    Dev shook his head. “I’m speechless. I have no idea how she got this, or if she knows how old it could be.”
    “There’s something else.” Harry moved to a tool bench and fussed through a box, finally digging out a tiny pick. “Pull that