Brimstone

"Yes, but first: the violin. How in the world-?"

"First things first. Tell me, Dottore-since I am a man who knows nothing about violins-tell me what makes the sound of a Stradivarius so perfect?"

The man seemed to relax, evidently realizing he was not dealing with a spy or competitor. "This is no secret. I would characterize it as very lively. It is an interesting sound. On top of that, it has a combination of darkness and brilliance, a balance between high and low frequencies-a tone that is rich but as pure and sweet as honey. Of course, each Strad sounds different-some have a fatter tone, others are lean, even harsh; some are thin and quite disappointing. Some have been repaired and rebuilt so many times they can hardly be called original. Only six Strads, for example, retain their original necks. When you drop a violin, it's always the neck that breaks. But there are about ten or twenty that sound almost perfect."

"Why?"

At this, the man smiled. "That, of course, is the question." He rose, went to the steel door, unlocked it, and swung it open, revealing two hard-disk recording workstations and racks of digital samplers, compressors, and limiters. The walls and ceiling were covered with acoustic foam paneling.

They followed him in, and he shut and locked the door behind them. Then he switched on an amplifier, pulled up the faders on a nearby mixing console. A low hum began to sound from the reference speakers set high in the walls.

"The first really scientific test done on a Stradivarius was performed about fifty years ago. They hooked a sound generator to the bridge of a violin and had it vibrate the instrument. Then they measured how the violin vibrated in return. An absurd test, really, because it has nothing to do with the way a violin is played. But even such a crude test showed the Strad gave back an extraordinary response in the two-thousand-to-four-thousand-hertz range-which, not at all coincidentally, happens to be the range of sound that the human ear is most sensitive to. Later, high-speed computers allowed real-time processing of a Strad being played. Let me give you an example."

He turned to one of the digital samplers, used an attached keyboard to select an audio sample, sent the output to the mixer. The sweet sound of a violin filled the room.

"This is Jascha Heifetz playing the cadenza of Beethoven's violin concerto on the Messiah Stradivarius."

A complex series of dancing lines appeared on a monitor sitting behind the mixer. Spezi pointed at them.

"That is a frequency analysis from thirty to thirty thousand hertz. Look at the richness of the low-frequency sounds! They give the violin its darkness, its sonority. And in the two thousand to four thousand range I mentioned, see how lively and robust it is. This is what fills the concert hall with sound."

D'Agosta wondered what any of this had to do with Bullard or the murders. He also wondered what Pendergast had written on the business card the man was still clutching in one fist. Whatever it was, it had clearly made this man remarkably cooperative.

"And these are the high frequencies. Look how they leap and flicker, like the flame of a candle. It's these transients that give the Strad that breathing, trembling tone, so delicate and fleeting."

Pendergast inclined his head. "So, Dottore-what's the secret?"

Spezi reached for the sampler and the music stopped. "There is no one secret. It was a whole catalog of secrets, some of which we've cracked, others we haven't. For example, we know exactly what kind of architecture Stradivari used. With computerized tomography, we can map a Strad perfectly in three dimensions. We know all there is to know about Stradivari's designs for the belly, backplate, purfling, f-holes-everything. We also know just what types of wood he used. We can make a perfect copy."

He turned to one of the computers, typed again, and the image of a beautiful violin appeared on its screen. "There it is. An absolutely perfect copy of the Harrison Strad, down to the very nicks and scratches. It took me almost half a year, back in the early eighties, to complete." He glanced over at them with a mirthless smile. "It sounds dreadful . The real secret, you see, was in the chemistry . Specifically, the recipe for the solution Stradivari soaked his wood in, and the recipe for his varnish. This has been the thrust of my research ever since."

"And?"

The man hesitated. "I don't know why I am inclined to trust you, but I do. The wood Stradivari used was cut in the foothills of the Ape

Pendergast nodded.

"Over the years, I've made hundreds of violins from wood treated this way, experimenting with the ratios and the length of time in solution. The resulting instruments had a big, brilliant sound. But it was a harsh sound. Something was needed to dampen the vibrations, the overtones."

He paused. "Here is where the true genius of Stradivari comes in. He found that in his secret varnish."

He moused up the computer screen, clicked through a few menus. A new image appeared in black and white, a landscape of incredible ruggedness, looking to D'Agosta like some vast mountain range.

"Here is the varnish of a Stradivarius under a sca

He leaned back. "Another problem. Even if you had all his secret recipes, you still might fail. Stradivari, knowing all that we don't, managed to make some mediocre violins. There were other factors to making a great violin, some apparently even beyond his control-such as the particular qualities of the piece of wood he used."