Stylo de Lumiere Noire

He glanced up in surprise.

The black‑light pen or watermark stylus was a specialized felt‑tipped marker originally designed by museums, restorers, and forgery police to place invisible marks on items. The stylus wrote in a noncorrosive, alcohol‑based fluorescent ink that was visible only under black light. Nowadays, museum maintenance staffs carried these markers on their daily rounds to place invisible “tick marks” on the frames of paintings that needed restoration.

As Langdon stood up, Fache walked over to the spotlight and turned it off. The gallery plunged into sudden darkness.

Momentarily blinded, Langdon felt a rising uncertainty. Fache’s silhouette appeared, illuminated in bright purple. He approached carrying a portable light source, which shrouded him in a violet haze.

“As you may know,” Fache said, his eyes luminescing in the violet glow, “police use black‑light illumination to search crime scenes for blood and other forensic evidence. So you can imagine our surprise...” Abruptly, he pointed the light down at the corpse.

Langdon looked down and jumped back in shock.

His heart pounded as he took in the bizarre sight now glowing before him on the parquet floor. Scrawled in luminescent handwriting, the curator’s final words glowed purple beside his corpse. As Langdon stared at the shimmering text, he felt the fog that had surrounded this entire night growing thicker.

Langdon read the message again and looked up at Fache. “What the hell does this mean!”

Fache’s eyes shone white. “That, monsieur, is precisely the question you are here to answer.”

* * *

Not far away, inside Sauniere’s office, Lieutenant Collet had returned to the Louvre and was huddled over an audio console set up on the curator’s enormous desk. With the exception of the eerie, robot‑like doll of a medieval knight that seemed to be staring at him from the corner of Sauniere’s desk, Collet was comfortable. He adjusted his AKG headphones and checked the input levels on the hard‑disk recording system. All systems were go. The microphones were functioning flawlessly, and the audio feed was crystal clear.

Le moment de verite, he mused.

Smiling, he closed his eyes and settled in to enjoy the rest of the conversation now being taped inside the Grand Gallery.