“Then you’re a member of the public, sir,” the constable said patiently.
“No, no, not at all. I work at the British Museum.”
“This is the British Museum, sir, Natural History branch.”
“Exactly! And I’m from the main institution in Bloomsbury, so I haven’t a key to the back stairs. So just be a good fellow and let me through.”
“I can’t, sir. I’ve me instructions, haven’t I. And it’s no good going on asking me why, ’cause I haven’t been told, not proper, not so’s to be able to tell you.”
“Hello, Mr. ffinch-Brown,” Daisy intervened, recognizing him instantly when he pushed his spectacles up on his nose. “I don’t expect you remember me—Daisy Dalrymple. Mr. Witt introduced us. Did you come to see him?”
“I did,” said the anthropologist testily, “but I finished my business with him some time ago. Do you know what all this to-do is about? Why won’t they let me leave in peace?”
“I can let you leave the gallery now, sir,” said the guard, who had spoken briefly with Constable Neddle, “but I must ask you to go to the refreshment room upstairs and wait there. You two, too,” he added to the young couple.
With an air of utter bewilderment, they meekly followed Mrs. Ditchley and the children out into the Central Hall. Shepherded by Neddle, ffinch-Brown followed not at all meekly, with Daisy.
“The refreshment room!” he exploded. He really was remarkably like Mummery in temperament. His voice did not get quite as loud, perhaps because he worked off surplus energy by waving his arms. “Wait in the refreshment room? For what, may I ask, for what?”
Daisy glanced back at Constable Neddle, who rolled his eyes. Taking this as permission, she outlined the situation.
“No great loss,” said ffinch-Brown contemptuously. “Any fool can polish up rocks, but Ralph Pettigrew had the unmitigated gall to think he could make flint tools that I—I!—would be unable to distinguish from the genuinely primitive article.”
“The ones he claimed he found in a cave in Cornwall?” Daisy asked as they started up the main staircase towards the statue of Sir Richard Owen.
“No, no, those don’t remotely resemble worked implements.” He rubbed his hands in remembered glee. “You should have seen his face when I confirmed Witt’s verdict. That was when he swore he could deceive me with flints he had chipped and flaked himself. Ha!”
“Impossible?”
“Impossible,” affirmed ffinch-Brown, but with a trace of uneasiness. Then, cheering up, he said brightly, “Well, now we shall never know, shall we?”
Suppose Pettigrew succeeded in deceiving him, Daisy thought. The mineralogist would never have kept quiet about it. In that case, to what extent would the anthropologist’s reputation suffer? And what had he been doing since he finished his business with Witt? Quarrelling with Pettigrew?
Ascending the second flight, Daisy glanced up at the bronze bust of Captain Fred Selous, big-game hunter, bronze elephant-gun in hand. It was hard to believe primitive man had hunted big game with nothing but flint weapons.
“How is Mr. Witt’s experiment going?” she asked. “Has he duplicated the marks on the mammoth bones?”
“Not just mammoths, my dear young lady. I was contemplating certain grooves on the giant sloth’s tibia when—”
“Fräulein?It is Miss Dalrymple?”
Daisy swung round. The Grand Duke of Transcarpathia was coming up the stairs behind them.
“Hello, where have you sprung from?” she asked with a smile.
“I have notgesprungen!I walk.”
“It’s just an English expression. Where have you been?”
“I vas de Irish elk regarding. Irish, pah!” he said angrily, “In mine contry also vas once dis magnificent beast, but de English dey must all take to self, de elks, de jewels, everysing!”
“So you were in the fossil mammal gallery? I didn’t see you there.”
The Grand Duke turned sullen. “Dis de police also say. Lurking dey say, vhy you vas lurking behind de elk? Vhat is lurking,bitte?”
“Er, sort of hiding,” Daisy explained.
“Hiding? I not hide, but if I am not seen vhen de police come, I not at once rush out. To myself I remind, here in England I am not Grand Duke, only a damn foreigner!”
