Read The Scroll for Free Online Page B

the bishop, his face filled with a scalding contempt.
    The smell of old smoke seemed heavier, catching in the throat.
    The bishop moved into the room and his place in the doorway was taken by the scholar, a smile on his handsome face, a fire of intense curiosity blazing in his eyes.
    Hank looked at Monty. “Perhaps we had better begin the bidding?” he suggested.
    Monty cleared his throat again. “I do not know what the scroll is, or whether it is authentic or not. Each of you has offered to purchase it, as it is. Please make a bid according to what it is worth to you.”
    “Where is it?” the bishop demanded.
    “Hush man, it is of no importance,” the scholar cut across him. “Mr. Danforth will provide it, when the time is right. We don’t want to risk having it destroyed in another fire, or do we?”
    The old man smiled. “How wise of you. I fear destruction is what the bishop’s purpose is. He will pay any price to that end.”
    “May the fires of hell consume you!” the bishop shouted hoarsely.
    “The fires of hell burn without consuming,” the old man said wearily. “You know so little. The truth is deeper, subtler and far better than your edifice of the imagination …”
    The bishop lunged forward and picked up the hurricane lamp. He smashed it on the floor at Monty’s feet. “Betrayer!” he cried as the flames spread across the spilled oil and licked upwards, hungry and hot.
    The scholar, who had been watching Hank, charged him and knocked him over, seizing the small attaché case he had been carrying. He picked it up and made for the window, leaving Hank stunned on the floor.
    It was the old man who took off his coat and threw it over Monty, smothering the flames at his feet, catching his trousers already burning his legs.
    But the oil had spread wider and the sofa was alight. The billows of black smoke grew more intense, choking, suffocating. The bishop was lost to sight. Hank was still on the floor and Judson Garrett was bending over him, talking to him, pulling him to his feet.
    Dimly through the black swirls Monty could see the child hopping up and down, her face brilliant with glee, her eyes shining with age-old evil as she watched the fire grow and swell, now reaching the old man’s clothes as he lifted Hank up. He was strong, his hair dark again, his face young. He carried Hank over to the window, smashed it and pushed him through as the fire burned behind him, swallowing him up.
    Monty fought his way to the door and out into the hall, gasping for breath, the heat all but engulfing him. He flung the front door open and fell out into the cool, clean night. Behind him the flames were roaring up. There was going to be nothing left of the house. He must find Hank, get him out of the way of exploding debris.
    He was as far as the corner of the house when he saw Hank staggering towards him, dizzy but definitely upright.
    “Monty! Monty!” he called out. “What happened to Garrett?”
    Monty caught Hank by the arm. “I don’t know. We’ve got to get away from here. It’s all going up any minute. Those dry timbers are like a bomb. Come on!”
    Reluctantly Hank allowed himself to be pulled away until they were both seventy yards along the road and finally saw the plume of flame burst through the roof and soar upwards into the sky.
    A cloud of crows flung high in the air like jagged pieces of shadow, thousands of them, tens of thousands, all shouting their hoarse cries into the night.
    “Did anybody else get out?” Hank asked, his voice shaking.
    “No,” Monty answered with certainty.
    “He thought the scroll was in my case,” Hank said. “The bishop. I’ve had that case for years.”
    “What was in it?” Monty asked.
    “Nothing,” Hank replied. “He would have destroyed the scroll.”
    “And the scholar would have published it, no matter whose faith it broke,” Monty replied. “People need their dreams, right or wrong. You have to give them a new one before you break the