The Alien Artifact 9 (Novelette) by V Bertolaccini Page A

and
managed to reveal faded landscape shapes, before it had faded …
From 1568 … Which was why I was at the hospital …”
    “ What the treasure was marked there
…?” I asked, surprised.
    “ I also knew the archaeologists and
scientists were investigating there … I believe the person that
drew the map was being chased – and being chased by soldiers – and
hid it …
    He grabbed his pipe off the table and began
smoking.
    “ Who could have chased him?” I
asked.
    “ It was dated 1568! Mary Queen of
Scots had a battle there, and I believe it was her valuable jewels.
The royal jewels of a famous queen! I think she was visiting
someone at the site, and had even taken her jewels there, as
perhaps her enemies were after her and the jewels, and she gave
them to someone there … To perhaps keep for her … The person must
have been a good friend, and perhaps a soldier, and had either been
seen taking them or was just chased by the other soldiers there
…”
    “ So there are incredible valuable and
historical jewels hidden somewhere … Do you believe they’re under
the hospital?”
    “ At first I thought it could be there!
There were two marks!”
    “ What about all the tunnels and the
cavity …”
    “ That is something else! It is far
more advanced technology, and it was all recently built
…”
    “ What happened next?”
    “ I think someone took the jewels off
him! And he could have died! Or at a slightly later time used the
map to find them and move them to another safer location nearby …
Where he had intended to get them!”
    “ Was there another mark on the
treasure map?” I gasped, and stared at him intensely.
    “ I think the person, surely a
relative, in fear of his life, took them to the safest place he
knew, and marked it on the map, with different writing, in a
different style, which faded, and he hid it somewhere near the
house you were investigating, with the supposed haunting
…”
    “ As the place is marked about
there?”
    “ Correct! Which is why I want your
paranormal scientists to investigate there! You’ll need the
archeologists ...”
     

Chapter 27
     
    The Killer
     
    At a lane between two buildings we rested
against a wall waiting for the killer, who was predicted to arrive
by Marple, and he stood puffing away at his pipe, now tired of it,
predicting the killer’s arrival, and I wondered how he knew he
would arrive, and at that time, but he would not tell me, and I
gasped when I saw someone pass a house window going somewhere, and
thought of hiding, but Marple ignored it.
    Although, a few minutes later, he jumped
upright, as he spotted something, fully alert, and scrambling
movements and panic-stricken curses came from the house we were
monitoring, a house across a road at the end of the lane, and in
the darkness of the lane we watched a dark figure rush out the
building, and enter another lane beside the house, and the police
came racing out of their cars and started chasing him.
    As we ran after them, keen to catch and
discover the identity of the killer, a man rushed out the house he
had been in, shaken and holding a handgun, and saw he was gone and
put it away inside.
    I could not believe how accurate Marple had
predicted the killer’s attack at the house, and I realized the
killer might be getting away, and that we might not get the chance
to catch him again, and I watched Marple and the others realize it
and run after him, and I ran with them, as more and more police
cars came racing in everywhere, with their sirens blaring at full
blast.
    The police clearly believed that they were
chasing the killer, and I realized where he was heading, and
towards a nearby cemetery, and I saw his dark shape in the distance
rushing there, as other figures shifted towards him.
    At another street Marple told a policeman
getting out a police car that the killer was going to arrive a the
other side of the cemetery, and he rushed back in his vehicle, and
we rushed up to the vehicle and he