From the introduction:
Open Eye investigators receives a call from Professor Van Fleet at the Reynolds Museum, a small museum attached to the University of London which maintains a valuable collection of artefacts from the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. Van Fleet is a tall, very thin man in his fifties, almost bald with a sharp beak-like nose and glasses. His voice is very soft and quiet and he behaves with great politeness.
A week ago, Professor Van Fleet was shown a nearly complete Etruscan wine bowl, of excellent quality and condition. The curious thingwas, it was shown to him by a band of teenagers who found it in the alleyway behind the Corinthian Building in the City. The kids brought the bowl to the museum in the hope that it ‘might be worth something’. Van Fleet and the museum’s patrons at the university would very much like to know how a valuable and potentially important artefact should end up discarded in a pile of rubbish. If there is an underground trade in such artefacts, the University wants it tracked down and stopped before more items of historical value are lost.
Van Fleet is to be Open Eye’s contact at the museum. The University of London will pay Open Eye’s retainer and fee.