One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing (3 page)

“Good morning.” The nannies nodded a welcome, like a row of porcelain Buddhas.

Hettie smiled, thinly. The four friends shuffled along, so she could join them on the bench. She parked the carriage and set the brake.

“Didnae sleep,” she said.

“It’ll take time, dear,” replied Emily.

The other three nannies nodded again.

“No,” sighed Hettie. “It’s no just Maister Quincey’s death. It’s something else. We must tell you. We need your advice.”

She explained exactly what had happened on the museum steps and the last words of the 25th Earl.

“There you are,” exclaimed Melissa, dramatically. “He really
was
a British spy! Spies always carry suicide pills.”

Hettie was shocked. “Spy? Away with you. Charmaine-Botts would never be spies. The Silver Greyhound. We saw it, behind his lapel. He was a royal courier. Spy, indeed! Really! He was delivering a message. It must have been for Her Majesty the Queen.”

“Well, my dear,” said Emily, kindly. “You really mustn’t blame yourself for his death. I’m sure the queen would understand. But what are you going to do? Tell the British Ambassador?”

“No,” said Hettie, firmly. “Maister Quincey said not to trust ANYONE. We’re sure he wouldn’t have meant you, of course,” she added, hastily. “You’re friends. Good friends.” Hettie dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief. “It was his dying wish, you know,” she said. “That message must be very important. It’s just got to be found and sent to the queen.”

“By registered post,” added Una. “That’ll be safe.” Emily’s pince-nez dropped from her nose, as she nodded, enthusiastically. She fumbled for them on her lap, amongst the confusion of her knitting wool, then tugged at the cord that suspended them from her neck, reeling them in like a fisherman. “Yes. AND I’ll help you to find it.”

The nannies’ heads wagged agreement. “We’ll ALL help,” said Susanne.

On, across the wilds of Central Park, advanced the small British contingent. The nannies always marched, never strolled, backs straight, heads up, chins pulled well back on to their chests. And they marched in column, in order of seniority.

Hettie led them ... because she had been a royal nanny. Her buxom figure and broad back almost obscured the view of her second-in-command, Emily. Behind the leaders strode Una, middle-aged and allergic to men, followed by the red-headed Melissa, and, as long as she could keep up with them, seventeen-year-old Susanne.

The eyes of the natives watched them.

“Der sterilized, Charlie,” whispered one of the watchers, as the column strode past.

“Don’ be ‘diculous. Dames ain’t sterilized. Only cats.”

“Nuts! I mean like an operatin’ theater. Like when they castrated me.”

“Circumstanced you, you mean.”

“Yeah, that too.” The heads turned and watched as the last of the nanny squadron disappeared round a bend in the path.

It was a bright morning, with just enough breeze coming in from the sea to clear the automobile fumes and smoke mist from around the tall buildings at the end of the park. The previous evening’s rain had washed the dust from the leaves and grass, and the park had a fresh, rinsed look.

The nannies trundled their carriages along the side of the boating lake and through the tree-lined groves to Central Park West. By the time they’d arrived, they felt sticky and damp under their starched board-like aprons.

Hettie stopped opposite the American Museum and pushed the traffic light button on the crossing in front of the building. A small jam of carriage-pushing nannies built up behind her.

The crossing lights changed to green. A tattered yellow cab grated to a halt. The driver leant out of the window.

“You chicks a parade or sumpting?” he called. The nannies stuck their noses into the air and ignored him. Una blushed.

They parked their carriages by the steps at the front of the yellow stone building. “Knowledge” declared huge letters over the museum entrance.

“Susanne, wait here.” Hettie pointed towards the base of the Theodore Roosevelt statue guarding the entrance. “Watch all the perambulators. And take care of the children. Don’t talk to any strange men, and if you want to sit down, then sit with your back straight.”

Skirting the spot on the steps where the 25th Earl died, Hettie led the others into the shadows of the great entrance hall. It was quiet, almost church-like, after the noise outside. The sun shone through the heavily- screened windows behind them. The stone columns threw long shadows ahead.

“Ugh!” gasped Una, looking at two primitive, carved wooden heads, on pillars, in front of them. She shuddered. There was something almost evil about these ebony guardians to the upper floors of the building.

Hettie ordered her squad up to the fourth floor.

“Just along here,” she hissed.

The corridor grew darker. At last Hettie stopped outside a large doorway.

“Here. This is it. This is the place Maister Quincey hid the message in.” Hettie nodded towards the panelled opening. “It’s in there.”

They crowded beside her and peered into the half gloom. “Oh, Lord,” said Una. “What a terrible thing.” “It’s horrible,” breathed Melissa.

“And huge,” said Emily, holding her pince-nez away from her nose like lorgnettes. “Its a dinosaur.”

The prehistoric monster’s craggy, sepia-coloured head, as big as a rubbish bin, snarled down at them. Its back arched upwards to a gigantic rump, twelve feet above the nineteen-ton slab of limestone plinth. Rib cages, like the unfinished hull of a Viking sailing ship, were supported by brown leg bones, each almost as big as the nannies themselves. The castellated tail drooped down and seemed to go on forever.

Hettie stepped back from the display and tried to view the entire monster from farther away. Then she beckoned her friends until they were huddled in a tight group. She glanced towards the monster. “He said it was in there. At least, he said it was in the largest exhibit. This is the biggest. If Maister Quincey said it was there, then it has to be. He never fibbed. It’s in there, or ON there. Some sort of a message, somewhere.” The four nannies searched. For an hour and a half they examined the dinosaur. They poked, prodded and peered. They looked from a distance when other visitors or an attendant entered the hall. But when they were alone, they climbed on to the plinth and scuttled around the skeleton.

They found nothing. At last, they gave up the hunt.

The entrance to the New York headquarters of the Tse Eih Aei, Red China’s espionage service, is by means of the middle telephone box in the block of three in front of the Plaza Hotel. Drop a coin into the instrument, dial 834927, press the concealed knob behind the cable outlet, and you are lowered into a damp and clammy room in an underground alley off one of the main sewers. The room stinks of joss sticks, opium and alligator chop-suey. It is made habitable only by the smell of perfumed bathwater and high-class sewage from the hotel.

The room is badly lighted, and steam from the sewer condenses on everything, dribbling in rivulets down the mildewed walls. Boots, shoes and leather belts turn mouldy green in a few days. Spy cameras grow exotic fungi on their lenses. But this HQ has advantages; it’s reasonably central, near the subway and bus routes, and, most important of all, it costs nothing. Dollars are preciously guarded by the Chinese People’s Republic.

The twelve-foot-square room is crammed and cramped. Six bunks, in tiers of three, line two opposing walls, like berths in an opium den. A third wall holds the radio transmitter and receiver, topped by a large, crayoned poster quoting Mao Tse-tung’s 1964 exhortation to the Congolese: “People of the World, unite and defeat the U.S. aggressors and all their running dogs ... Monsters of all kinds shall be destroyed.”

The fourth wall is shortened by the passage leading into the sewer, and by the entrance to the small lift. A coin-operated spin-drier and an electric cooker stand close by. Two curling pictures of Mao Tse-tung stand on shelves on this wall, above the drier and the stove, and between pots and pans used for preparing the spies’ meals.

The centre of the room is occupied by a warped plywood table, its edges frayed with cigarette bums, its centre stained by tea-cup rings. There are only six chairs, filched from the open-air theatre in Central Park. There’s no room for a seventh, so at full meetings, one of the agents has to sit in the background, on a bunk, or on the spin-drier.

There is a meeting on at present. The language is Cantonese. Wo Dung, who was in charge of the party assigned to capture the message from the 25th Earl, is making his report.

“Then, this long-nosed white devil ... how would you describe him, comrades? Perhaps as one of the mountain lake lotus-blossoms, enveloping in delicate leaves the deadly haspnich beetle? He sidesteps adroitly, and therefore my well-cast lance passes within the thousandth of a millimetre of his heart. And he runs like a forest hare up the balustraded staircase of the lower museum section.”

“So . . . ?” sighed Lui Ho, the group leader and political commissar.

“However, Comrade Leader,” interrupted the sarcastic tones of Fat Choy. “Wo Dung did score a minor triumph. His well-cast lance transfixed a bear--a Russian bear.”

Lui Ho’s skeletal face showed neither pleasure nor anger. He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a copy of the Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung. He placed it on the table in front of him, and studied the red plastic cover. Fat Choy noticed that the exact centre of Lui Ho’s bald head was beginning to change colour. It was the spy-squad’s only indication of their leader’s humour. The centre of his pate chameleoned to a maroonish yellow. Lui Ho was angry.

Wo Drag, the second-in-command, failed to notice the ominous warning. He giggled as he continued. “And then, dear Comrade Leader, our Indian braves ... You should have seen them in their warpaint. They attacked, but were frustrated by a woman ... a schoolteacher. I would have killed her, but she had many children with her. Therefore, I ordered the warriors back to the ship.”

“So . . . ?” sighed Lui Ho, his scalp colour now nearing purple.

Wo Dung smiled. “But, oh, illustrious War Lord, our closely pursued enemy agent committed a fatal manoeuvre. With his monstrous capitalist footwear, he stamped on the feet of one of those long-nosed nanny- ladies often to be seen in Central Park, guarding the offspring of the aristocracy. Whereupon, affronted by his sudden aggression, she smashed him in the face with her handbag. He fell--dead. By a ruse, pretending qualifications in medicine, I examined him. He was NOT carrying the message.”

“Sam Ling,” said Lui Ho, in a soft voice. “Tell me, why did Wo Dung fail in this assignment?”

Third-in-command Sam Ling eased his Adam’s apple over the collar of his tunic. His drooping moustache moved. His lips stayed still. “Simple reason, Comrade Leader. Unsuccessful assassination alerted enemy agent, who evaded pursuers and had time to secrete or pass on the message before having coronary.”

“So . . .” sighed Lui Ho. He polished condensed steam off the lenses of his spectacles with the side of his thumb. “Sam Ling, you are promoted to second-in- command.” He belched, loudly, then jerked his head at Wo Dung.

“But, beloved Comrade Leader. Our Illustrious Country’s choicest...” began his demoted deputy.

“Elimination,” said Lui Ho, firmly. The other spies grabbed Wo Dung, swung him off the ground and forced him, feet-first, into the spin-drier. His pleas became muffled as he disappeared inside, and silent when the door was slammed against his face. Lui Ho nodded. Wo Dung’s face stared mistily out through the glass.

Pi Wun Tun, round-faced treasurer of the group, rummaged in his pocket then slotted a handful of coins into the machine.

“It’s not only his failure, but also the elaborate imperialistic manner in which he explains it,” commented Lui Ho, his head returning to its normal parchment yellow. “He’d make a better poet than spy, and poets are nothing more than drones in the hive of the People’s Republic, and flies in the ointment of the Tse Eih Aei. Watch closely, and realize that extensive and honourable labours have their rewards for all, while incompetents and misfits are a capitalist luxury.” He pressed the spin-drier starter switch. The machine shuddered. Wo Dung’s face righted itself, then jerked upside-down again. The drum gathered speed until the face fattened out and revolved into an indistinguishable blur. Lui Ho twisted the control switch over to the maximum position and smiled. “And how the earnest worker’s morale, in our beloved China, will be elevated when they learn that the late Wo Dung lost his life as the result of a revolution in America!”

Lui Ho looked around the small room. “With one less, now all can sit.” He opened a large notebook on the table in front of him. “So, we can assume that either the Englishman delivered the message, or that he failed to deliver the message.”

“So ... so ... so ... so ... so,” agreed the other spies.

“Therefore, as the Western pigs have not yet exposed the plan, I have deduced that the message has not been passed.”

“So... so... so... so... so.”

Lui Ho looked at his five spies, “then where is it?” He hammered the plywood table with his fist. “Fools, it must be in two of several places. It is either in the museum, or ... or it is with those long-nose nanny-ladies. If it is in the museum, it’ll be like looking for a noodle in a haystack. Not possible to find. But ... if it is with the nanny-ladies, undoubtedly it will reach the running dogs, and this must not happen. So, we must act as follows. We eliminate the nanny- ladies--tonight. You, Fat Choy, will deliver explosive packages to their apartments.” Lui Ho paused. “The remainder will attack the museum building with phosphorus grenades. It will be totally destroyed. Attacks are to be made simultaneously from all sides.”

“So ... so ... so ... so . . .” said four of the spies. “Possibly not so . . .” said the fifth.

“Not so, Sam Ling?” asked Lui Ho, coldly. His eyes forced themselves to narrow even more.

“No, Comrade Leader,” said Sam Ling. He pictured Lui Ho playing a musical gong in Central Park, while half of New York burned. “Your original idea is much better.”