One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing (15 page)

“Well, yes. You know him?”

“No,” glowered Jumbo. “Sack him. He’s lazy. Lounges around too much.”

“Yuh ... well, yes ... maybe,” stammered the official.

“We don’t want to be disturbed,” said Jumbo. “Don’t let anyone near here. Okay?”

The official decided to leave. He nearly escaped. “Hey,” Jumbo called down the corridor after him. “Your restaurant ...”

“What about it?”

“Tell them to send up a dozen hot salt beef sandwiches. Okay?”

“They’re closed,” replied the official. For once, he actually enjoyed lying.

“Not till four thirty,” said Jumbo, calmly. “Tell ‘em, on rye, with cucumber pickle.” He turned away. “Okay, boys, set up the grid.”

It took the team ten minutes to lay down a neatly measured grid of white ribbon throughout the hall. The tapes were pinned to the floor at the sides and ends of the room. The squares were then counted and numbered on a graph-paper pad that Adam Gallows carried.

Jumbo Hooligan looked at Ulysses Pilgrim and nodded. “Right, baby, smell it out,” he said.

Ulysses had been leaning casually against the corridor wall while the others worked. His long hippy hairstyle seemed out of character with his grey working overalls with their padded knees. The cuffs, ankles and neckpiece were close-fitting and elasticized, like a racing motorist’s fireproof suit. A small leather pouch, containing his locksmith’s tools, was fastened to his belt. He reached into a hip pocket and pulled out a pair of thin black gloves. He worked them carefully on to his hands, pushing the skin-tight leather firmly down his fingers.

He loped to the doorway, glanced around the long hall, then squatted for a moment on his haunches. He lowered himself on to his hands and knees, and, with complete lack of self-consciousness, began an unhurried scrutiny of the hall floor--with his nose. Working across the width of the hall, then along its length, he sniffed, paused, made notes on a pad, and sniffed again. His complicated-system search took him over an hour. At last he stood up--his face dusty, the tip of his nose black where it had occasionally brushed the ground during a close sniff.

“Okay, Jumbo,” he called back. “I got it all.”

“Say, Ulysses,” Willie Halfinch looked curious. “What d’yer smell?”

“Dead brontosaurus.”

“Gee!”

Jumbo Hooligan moved his great bulk into the hall. “File your report. Ivor, you check the iron framework.”

He turned to face the remainder of his team. “Right. Now get busy. I want this job over. And, remember, fast.”

There wasn’t an investigation team in the whole of New York State to rival Jumbo Hooligan’s. What made them unique was how they worked.

At this early stage they worked to an orderly and practised routine. Immediately Ulysses had finished, Boots McGraw worked over the same areas with a battery-powered suction-cleaner.

As he completed each square yard of the grid, he removed a plastic bag from the cleaner and put it into an envelope and marked it with a number. When he’d finished, he packed the envelopes into his executive case and left.

Behind him came Huw Schwartz, the squad’s camera specialist. He photographed, in detail, every aspect of the hall, the plinth, the two remaining dinosaurs--and, because he was exceptionally enthusiastic, even Jumbo Hooligan and his fellow-members of the team.

Ivor, his brother, was the fingerprint man. He moved around with Huw, dusting, examining, and demanding even closer close-ups.

Adam Gallows, Hooligan’s deputy, helped where help was needed. At this stage, he had little to do. His work would come later.

Willie Halfinch was the weights and measures expert, a sort of mobile mathematical calculator. Willie roamed around the hall, measuring, rechecking, and measuring again, just to make sure. He judged lengths, heights and distances relating to everything. He loved measurements. He was finding it hard to resist Hooligan’s big feet. He guessed them at fourteen and a halves. Within an hour he had a list of measurements of everything on the fourth floor of the museum--walls, ceilings, corridors, doors, floor tiles, lift entrances, showcases, reconstructed skeletons and, for purely personal reasons, mental records of a rather pretty brunette schoolteacher escorting a group of pupils.

When he had finished measuring, he started weighing.

He hopped a lift to the basement, where one of the staff gave him a photograph of the missing exhibit and showed him to the Dinosaur Spare Parts Department Here, long rows of shelves held various bits of fossilised brontosauruses--tons of them.

Willie removed his wristwatch--it upset his delicate balance. Then he picked up various bones and weighed them in his hands. He prided himself on never being more than a quarter of an ounce per pound out in his judgment. After he had tried weighing a few of the smaller fossilized bones, he was able to estimate the heaviness of the larger pieces--without even lifting them. He studied a hefty pelvis lying on the floor, then jotted down its weight in his notebook.

Upstairs, on the fourth floor, the Dinosaur Hall was now almost empty. Only Adam Gallows remained. He stood in one comer, arms folded, just looking. Then, he walked around the hall a few times, stopping occasionally. He went into the corridor. He looked in both directions and then strolled down to the tall window. He examined the window frame, grunted to himself and opened it.

He made his way down to the ground floor and round to the front of the Planetarium. He liked to have a quiet and undisturbed look, on his own. By the time he’d returned to the museum entrance, a car was waiting to take him back to Hooligan’s office.

Petrov and Carl, Isaac and Ahmed, delegated to watch Gallows, ran to their various forms of transport as he drove away. They had a lot to report, too.

“Sam Ling ...” raged Lui Ho, pacing around the small square of the sewer headquarters. “Has it occurred to you that many of my ideas, of which you constantly keep reminding me, may have been discarded by me because they were not suitable?” He groaned. “Every genius has a weakness--even I. You exploit my weakness. My genius provides me with many wonderful ideas. My regrettable memory allows them to be forgotten.” He swung round to face his deputy. “However, I do remember suggesting that we should totally destroy the museum, the fake dragon and the nanny- ladies. Had we followed that suggestion, we would not be in difficulties now.”

Sam Ling tried to console him. “That unfortunate fire could not have been foreseen, even by your genius, Comrade Leader. It was responsible for our losing the prize we have sought so diligently. However, it will be a simple matter for us to redeem the situation by keeping a careful watch on the nanny-ladies at their residences. Sooner or later, they will go again to the dragon, and when they do, we will be there also.” He smiled at Lui Ho. “If you so desire, when we have captured the fake bones, we can dispose of the nanny- ladies in any manner you think fit.”

“The spin-drier,” said Pi Wun Tun.

“After they have satisfied our personal pleasures,” added Fat Choy, with slow emphasis.

Chou-Tan waved his two sling-supported arms, like a white bat. “I believe we have all behaved with true professional initiative at the fire. I feel we should be recommended for a People’s Republic citation. We are indeed extremely fortunate to have such an inspired leader as Lui Ho, whose strategy in deliberately wrecking the fire engine saved us from the ideological error of extinguishing a blaze in the United Nations’ Building.”

“For as little as a third of our annual espionage budget,” muttered Sam Ling, under his breath.

“At times like these, I wish I wasn’t an atheist,” grunted Pi Wun Tun. “At least the Americans have got someone to blame when things go wrong. But we . . .”

“Things do not go wrong for the loyal in the People’s China,” shouted Lui Ho. “I have not committed a single error.”

“Only multiple ones,” breathed Sam Ling, quietly.

“We will work according to the rules laid down in the People’s Spy Manual by our beloved Chairman,” continued Lui Ho. “We know the fake dragon is somewhere near the river, perhaps in chests on the river bottom. Even so, we will discover its whereabouts. We will follow the nanny-ladies at all times. You will stay closer to them than worms in a Mandarin’s bowels. They will do nothing ... pick their noses, spit, pluck their armpits, scratch their arses, pass water, or clean out their ears without your knowing.”

“I shall also make a note of anything to do with the fake dragon,” said Fat Choy, conscientiously.

“Such dedication will ensure you long life,” snapped Sam Ling. He turned to Chou-Tan. “Transmit to Peking that we want a submarine to stand off the coast, ready for the moment we need it. The rest of you--get working on those women.”

Jumbo Hooligan pulled back the curtain separating his office from the operations room. He walked over to the long blackboard that was already marked into squares. He picked up a piece of chalk, counted squares on the board, and drew in the dinosaur plinth, and the wall cabinets of the burgled hall.

“Okay,” he rasped. “Let’s have it. What did you get, Pilgrim?”

Ulysses shook his long hair. He was back in his normal, eccentric clothes. He drawled. “I got ... er ... Boss, I got plenty. First, I got dust smell bad. Too much dust. Always get it in public halls. I got Central Park earth smell. I’d expected that, anyway, as the museum’s next to the Park. I got plenty of paint smells, turpentine--you know, that sort of thing. And I got brake fluid smell near where the painters were working--maybe one of them stood in a garage on the way in one morning. I got the usual dog smells. I got good smells on the limestone plinth, though.”

Jumbo Hooligan began chalking up a long list of smells on the board as Pilgrim continued: “The strongest smells were in the area D four to ten. I got good ones there. You’re going to think I’m nuts, but I’m right. I got women smells. Not men. I got the smells of two, maybe three different types of feminine soap. And lavender. Very strong. I got a tea smell on square E seven. Leaves smell, not tea bags--with milk, not lemon. I got a deodorant smell on square D nine. And I got a definite rubberized canvas smell in two separate places, covering square D four and E four and again at D eight and E eight. I also got a cheese smell and a bread smell on square C seven. One other thing I think’s important. I got a talcum powder smell, very odd, on D one, two and three. I guess that this is where they crawled in under the canvas. The smell was very distinctive.”

“Talcum powder and lavender?” queried Jumbo. Ulysses nodded. “Anything else?”

Ulysses checked his notebook. “Nope.”

Jumbo swung his attention to Boots McGraw.

“I got quite a lot that backs up Uly’s sniffer.” He opened his notes. “My machine got the talcum on D one, two and three, the same as Uly. But I also got it in single grains in the whole of the area covered by C, D and E, six, seven, eight and nine. I guess the traces would be too slight for his smeller. It’s baby powder. I got two small tea leaves in E seven. I had them checked out. It’s a strange brand that Limey’s drink a lot. Called Earl Grey--it’s a perfumed tea. It’s imported by Leo Mathieson’s. Only sold in about fifteen shops in New York. I got a list of them.

“I got quite a few hairs--a mixture of male and female. Some of it’d been around for quite a while. Some was dropped recently. I don’t think they’re a lot of help at the moment, but they’ll be useful when we have suspects to check out later.

“I got skin scales in several places, but mostly again in the D one, two and three areas. It confirms that this is where they crawled under the canvas. I also got two different types of stocking threads. One, on D two, is a coarse fiber, not used much today. I’d say probably the type worn by an older woman, or one with varicose veins. The second thread is from a cheap quality nylon--called Heaven’s Above. These tights retail for about half a buck in most stores.

“I got the usual mixture of dust that you’d expect in a public place, but I got a crumb of bread in C seven. It was from a pre-sliced loaf, white, American flour. Could be one of several bakers.

“There were some various colored wool fibers. A couple in very pale pastel shades. Some could have blown on to the plinth, or even have been dropped off the canvas sheet. Maybe useful, maybe not. Also got a couple of shreds of denim, from the framework. I’m checking that out.”

He stopped for a moment, wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and continued.

“One good one. I found a flake of plastic from the top surface of a shoe. It’s black. The shoes are imported but are produced specially in France for Denny Lewisham’s Shoe Parlour des Dames on Lexington. He’s only had three sizes in the range. They’re straight fours, fives, and sixes. B fittings. Square toes. Low heels. Teenagers like them. That’s about it.”

“Good,” said Jumbo Hooligan. He pointed at Ivor.

“I checked the plinth, Boss. Very difficult to find anything on the rough limestone. First, I went all over the two small dinosaurs. Plenty of fingerprints on those, but when I classified them, I found they could mostly be accounted for by the museum staff. There were a lot of prints on the bones nearest the guard rail, probably museum visitors who just stretched out and touched them.

“Then I checked the iron frame of the brontosaurus. Whoever worked on the frame wore gloves. I picked up some patterning in the dust on the frame, fancy stitching.”

Ivor began to grin. “You want me to prove I’m going nuts, boss?” He paused. “I also got a nipple print near the top of the metal frame.”

Jumbo stared.

“Sure, boss. A nipple--you know, the strawberry on the sundae.”

Hooligan’s team laughed.

“Huw’s got pictures of everything,” continued Ivor. “And I had him blow up some of the bolt heads that held the bones to the frame. They’re mighty interesting. Most of the hexagons are badly damaged. Whoever loosened them used an adjustable wrench. It was poor quality and sprung a little when they strained on it Another thing, quite a few of the heads showed that someone had tried to tighten them before realizing they loosened the other way.”

Ivor interrupted himself.