By the end of the week, with the help of one more phone call from Agent Resnik, who had somehow ingratiated himself with the Lodge during his inquiries, we had managed to secure an appointment with the personal assistant to the Grand Master of Pennsylvania. I felt badly that Cathy had to take a day off work, though it was a Friday, and it didn’t seem to bother her at all. In fact, she seemed quite enthusiastic, in some ways even more than Sam and me. I don’t think Sam or I had any illusions left by then. There was every chance that the search for Abe Best’s storage box would be a wild goose chase: another story of groping around in the dark and coming up with nothing; the story we had inherited from those who had gone before us; the consistent story of the quest for the van Eyck loan certificates for more than two hundred years. All the same, we were almost out of time now, and we had been given a lead; we had to follow it. If nothing else, I tried desperately to persuade myself, what was true of Abe Best must be true of any other Mason of his period. Perhaps there were others who had stored papers at the Lodge, and perhaps there was information to be had there.
The Philadelphia Masonic Temple at One North Broad Street, just across from the City Hall, is a justly famous piece of late nineteenth-century grandiosity. If you didn’t know what it was, you might think it to be a civic building, some local dignitary’s personal folly, or even a splendid old hotel. The most promising aspect of it from our point of view was that, although it is a building in everyday masonic use, the Temple is also a magnificent museum and repository of masonic documents and artifacts. The Pennsylvania Lodge claims to be the third oldest in the world and traces its roots back to the Grand Lodge in London, long before the War of Independence. Virginia and one or two other lodges dispute that claim, but there’s no doubt that the Pennsylvania Lodge goes back to at least 1730 – the year of Jacob’s birth – and perhaps even further. They have a remarkable collection of antiquities to back up their pedigree. And that may have played some part in the way we were received. We had taken an early flight, and were at the Temple by eleven o’clock.
John Macey, personal assistant to the Grand Master, dressed very formally in a dark suit, a black bow tie, and white gloves, made us welcome and settled us in his office with cups of coffee. Cathy was ready to brandish her passport, but John didn’t seem particularly interested in seeing it.
‘Agent Resnik filled me in to some extent on what you’re looking for,’ he said. ‘I know all about the case you’re bringing on behalf of Brother Jacob van Eyck’s family, of course. Do I understand correctly? You believe that there may be documents here at the Temple that back up your claim in some way?’
‘That’s correct,’ I replied. ‘We believe that one of Jacob’s Brethren took charge of some important documents of his, not long before his death, and delivered at least some of them to the Treasury in Washington. It’s important to us to discover who that person was. We haven’t been able to trace him as yet, but we are sure that he would have been a fellow member of the Pennsylvania Lodge.’
John nodded. ‘I’m sure you’re right about that. Brother van Eyck’s first instinct with something as important as that would be to trust a Brother, and, of course, the Best family would be a natural choice. They were a very prominent masonic family, and they were near neighbours of the van Eycks at the time, weren’t they? There must have been a lot of contact between Abe and Jacob.’
I was impressed. John had been doing his homework.
‘That’s why Cathy is with us,’ I replied. I opened my briefcase and handed him a document. ‘This is a printout from the LDS ancestry site, proving her descent from Abe Best. She’s brought evidence of identification with her.’
Once more, John didn’t seem too concerned about it. He glanced at the family tree.
‘I’m quite sure you wouldn’t have brought an impersonator with you, Miss Harmon,’ he smiled. ‘Besides, despite the rumours you may have heard to the contrary, these days we Masons try not to be too secretive; we try to be open with information that may be useful to those with sympathetic causes.’
‘Such as those seeking justice for a Brother?’ Sam asked.
He smiled again. ‘Of course. But I won’t pretend that we’re not interested in the outcome of your case for our own reasons. It wouldn’t do us any harm to have yet another important American figure in our masonic history. The Grand Master is very well aware of that. Our heritage is very important to us, and if Brother van Eyck is indeed a true American hero, it would be a significant feather in our cap.’
I nodded. ‘In that case, would you be prepared to tell us whether Abe Best had a storage box in the Lodge, or whether you may be in possession of any documents of his?’
John stood.
‘I can do better than that,’ he replied. ‘Come with me.’
We left his office and took a narrow, winding set of stairs down two floors. It led into a corridor linking a number of anonymous-looking rooms identified only by numbers on the doors. About halfway along the corridor, John stopped and opened a door to our left with a large key. The room contained several filing cabinets and what looked like large boxes, some made of wood, others, apparently more recent, metallic. The door was heavy and fitted tightly into its aperture. The room felt cold. As the door slammed behind us, I looked around and saw that the room was air-conditioned. Not only that, panels on the wall suggested that the inside temperature was being carefully monitored and kept within a narrow range. We were in a controlled environment, designed specifically to store fragile documents and artifacts under constant conditions to prevent deterioration.
‘Many members of the Lodge have had storage boxes over the years, obviously,’ he said. ‘It’s standard practice. The boxes in use today are in another part of the building. They don’t require any particular storage conditions, and Brothers can access them whenever they wish. It’s just like having a safe deposit box in a bank.’
He indicated the stacks of wooden boxes.
‘But these older ones require careful storage. What you see here are what we have left of the older deposits. Most of the very old ones were probably claimed and taken away by a Brother’s family after his death. Many were simply lost over the course of time. This building was completed in 1873, but before that the Lodge had been accommodated in various places, beginning with the Tun Tavern. Along the way, boxes may have been taken out and never returned, or just gone missing.’
‘It’s still quite a collection,’ Sam observed.
‘Yes, and the good news is that a few years ago the Grand Master decided that the Lodge should be free to make use of anything stored here – items that haven’t been claimed, or even looked at by anyone, for fifty years or more.’
‘Free to make use of them?’ Sam asked.
‘For the purposes of our archives. We’re in the process of cataloging them, making an inventory, and anything of real historical interest may find its way into our historical exhibit. We’ve already added quite a few items that were stored down here. The result is that we’ve opened all of our archives, not only to our own researchers, but to anyone who has a legitimate interest in seeing them.’
He smiled.
‘That’s why I haven’t troubled you for your passport, Miss Wallace. The fact that this inquiry is being made on behalf of the van Eyck lawsuit is more than enough to get you in through the door. As long as the Grand Master is satisfied that it’s a legitimate inquiry, there’s no problem, and we’re more than satisfied in the present case.’
Sam and I exchanged glances.
‘And is there…?’ Her voice trailed away.
John gestured us to follow him to the far corner of the room to our right.
‘After I spoke to Agent Resnik yesterday, I came down here and looked through the indexes. I found this.’
He indicated a large wooden box, obviously very old, placed on top of a stack of similar boxes. It had a three-digit number faintly scratched on the top left-hand corner.
‘According to our records, this would have been Abe Best’s box. We’re not absolutely sure of that. Any original labelling is long gone. But it was found with other boxes known to date from the same period, and there is some evidence to link the box number you see there with Brother Best. So, we will have to see, won’t we?’
Sam and I looked at each other again.
‘You haven’t opened it?’ she asked.
‘No. The box is locked, so my guess is that our researchers haven’t gotten around to it yet, and I don’t remember seeing any reference to Abe Best documents in any of our exhibits.’ He smiled. ‘I confess that I was on the point of opening it yesterday; it was quite a temptation. But then I thought, as you were coming and as there’s a family connection, I would leave it to you.’
He picked up a long metal tool that had been lying on the floor alongside the stack of boxes.
‘This will open pretty much any old lock you’re liable to come across.’
He handed the tool to Cathy.
‘Would you like to do the honours, Miss Wallace?’