The Crane Method – Chapter 10: Death Sentence
The darkness in the dining room was compact, almost solid—a mass of blackness that the hiss of gas turned into a chemical snare. Caspian Crane pressed the Winter Egg against his chest, feeling the chill of enamel through the silk of his shirt. The air became a caustic enemy, scorching his lungs with every ragged breath. He heard the dull impact of a body striking marble, followed by Lady Penhaligon’s sudden silence. Somewhere in the room, Sasere appeared to have regained his professional composure, for the muted sounds of a brief struggle reached Crane’s ears.
Caspian did not wait for the tactical unit to ignite their strobe lights. He knew the layout of the mansion by pure aristocratic instinct for survival. He crawled beneath the mahogany table, using the tungsten handle of his umbrella to probe his way between the noble wooden legs. His fingers grazed shards of Meissen porcelain—splinters of luxury now useful only for slicing his palms. He reached the threshold of the service door, the one men with rifles tended to ignore as unworthy of their display.
He emerged into the garden beneath a drizzle that now felt like the greatest of mercies. He did not look back. He crossed the myrtle hedge with a clumsiness that cost him a strip of his charcoal-gray jacket and any remaining notion of dignity. His escape was clean thanks to the blind spots Sasere had unwittingly revealed in his blueprints. He reached the rear gate, vaulted onto the pavement, and vanished into the shadows of a city sleeping, oblivious to the chemical eruption on the hill.
The gray light of dawn slipped through the slats of the blinds with the ease of a judicial verdict. Caspian Crane shut the door of his apartment with an effort that drew a deep groan from his throat, feeling the cold of the handle pierce his torn silk glove. The escape from the Penhaligon mansion had left soot in his lungs and a burning stab in his left shoulder. The silence of the foyer returned the echo of his own fractured breathing—a stale sound competing with the drip of a distant pipe.
He leaned against the door, letting his weight sink into wood already cracked by neglect. He recalled the chaos of barely an hour before: the shattering glass, the hiss of gas, and that tactical unit entering with murderous obsession. Sasere had vanished into the dark, and Lady Penhaligon’s cry had been extinguished beneath the blow of a rifle butt.
He dragged his feet toward the sitting room, leaving a trail of ash and mud across the Istanbul carpet. The umbrella with its tungsten handle—now dented and stripped of its usual sheen—struck the floor with a dull thud. Caspian did not turn on the lights; the pallid clarity of dawn was enough to contemplate the ruin of his attire.
He stopped before the hallway mirror. The image returned by the glass was that of a man who had just lost a private war against gravity and betrayal. His linen suit, once a piece of tailoring that granted him an air of superiority, hung in tatters. His white shirt clung to his skin with sweat and chemical residue. A bloody cut marked his cheekbone, and his eyes were bloodshot from the gas.
Crane let out a dry laugh that dissolved into violent coughing.
“I look like a detective from a cheap novel,” he muttered to his reflection, his voice like sandpaper scraping sandpaper. “All I’m missing is a wide-brimmed hat and a gambling addiction to justify this spectacle of ruin.”
He turned away from the mirror in contempt and walked toward his private office, a corner of precision born from the necessity of never being deceived.
The silence there felt almost aggressive after the mansion’s uproar. Crane set the umbrella on the counter, listening to the metallic echo of tungsten striking stainless steel. He felt the viscous mud drying on his cuffs, a dark crust flaking onto the clean surface. The scent of antiseptic soap—a chemical trace that always restored his control—began to displace the odor of gas still clinging to his hair. His joints cracked sharply as he leaned over the table, a physical protest he accepted with the resignation of a man well acquainted with his limits.
He entered and switched on the lights, whose white glare revealed a stainless-steel table covered with test tubes and reagents arranged with technical deliberation. He placed the Winter Egg upon the rubber surface. The object gleamed beneath the lamp, intact despite the assault that had nearly cost him his life.
His fingers trembled—not from fear, but from adrenaline abandoning his body. He took a pipette and drew a measure of nitric acid from a dark vial. He knew that a true diamond would suffer no alteration from such a substance; the firmness of pure carbon was the only dogma he trusted.
He placed a drop of reagent upon the Egg’s central gem. He observed the contact with the concentration of an executioner. Within seconds, the liquid began to bubble, and the stone’s brilliance dulled, turning milky—a vulgar composition betrayed. The acid devoured the surface with insulting ease.
Crane leaned back, bracing his hands against the edge of the table. The burn in his shoulder intensified as he contemplated the proof.
“Low-grade glass,” he said, savoring the bitterness. “A copy wrapped in a shell of pretension.”
The absurdity of the situation drew an acid laugh from him. Lady Penhaligon had handed him a lie—or perhaps someone had switched it in the cellar before she ascended to the dining room. The gas-and-glass assault had been a battle over costume jewelry.
And yet something still failed to align. Sasere was not a man to risk his hide for a shard of glass. The contortionist served interests unsatisfied by trinkets. Caspian took up the Egg again, weighing it. He turned it beneath the light, searching for a seam, an irregularity.
He felt unusual resistance at the base. Authentic Fabergé eggs were known for delicate, nearly imperceptible opening mechanisms. This object possessed a strange rigidity. Crane took a precision scalpel and began to pry at the junction between enamel and golden base.
The metal yielded with a faint crack. Caspian applied force, ignoring the pain in his arm. Suddenly, the base detached, revealing a compartment absent from any art catalogue. There were no hidden gems, no clockwork marvel.
Crane extracted a small rectangular object encased in polymer. A USB drive—technology jarringly at odds with the object’s nineteenth-century aesthetic. The solidity of the chip within its housing indicated that this was the true content. The glass and gold were merely a Trojan horse designed to transport information.
He walked to his desk, where a computer station remained powered on. His fingers flew over the keyboard. He connected the drive to a reader and waited. The monitor flickered, illuminating his exhausted face and the mud-stained shirt.
Rows of data, figures, and names filled the screen—enough to banish fatigue. They were not art records. They were files of illegal police transfers. Accounts in tax havens, payments to nonexistent informants, massive diversions from the national police pension fund into shell companies.
The numbers allowed no doubt. Crane read the names of commissioners and politicians tied to a web of corruption that made Lady Penhaligon’s fraud seem childish mischief. He understood why Sasere had the support of official trucks.
He reclined in his chair, letting the bluish glow of the monitor bathe his expression of cynical triumph. The glass Egg—an object he had scorned—contained the weapon needed to set the foundations of power ablaze. His new position was a death sentence. He was no longer an insurance expert. He held a truth no one wished to see published.
“Well,” Crane whispered, as a dangerous smile curved his lips, “it seems I’ve just become the most wanted man in the city. I hope Lady Penhaligon keeps enough bourbon in her cellar…
… "
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