Brown Stains, II

 [Rescued from Drafts]

The Dan Brown villain plots...

A single bell chimed on Mal’akh’s grandfather clock, and he looked up. Six thirty P.M. Leaving his tools, he wrapped the Kiryu silk robe around his naked, six-foot-three body and strode down the hall. The air inside this sprawling mansion was heavy with the pungent fragrance of his skin dyes and smoke from the beeswax candles he used to sterilize his needles. The towering young man moved down the corridor past priceless Italian antiques—a Piranesi etching, a Savonarola chair, a silver Bugarini oil lamp.

Wow. antiques. But hold it, etchings, even Piranesi etchings - and I yield to nobody in my admiration of the Carcieri -

aren't priceless: they're multiples, and they go for comparatively small sums.