As on any ordinary day, he left the museum by a door at the rear of the basement. The usual staff entrance, it was secured with a Yale mechanism. Every employee had a key, though he did not need one to exit. He walked along the arcade to Queen’s Gate and turned south towards South Ken tube station. There, he showed his season ticket at the barrier, and plunged into the depths, breaking into a trot as a subterranean rumble warned of a train’s approach. Emerging onto the platform in its chasm, open to the darkening sky, he automatically turned to the west-bound side.
Then he remembered he was not going home. He had told them he had been invited to give a lecture in Cambridge and it would be easier to stay the night there. Swinging round, he made for the east-bound platform. The first train to come in was on the Inner Circle, but he took it anyway. The sooner he escaped the vicinity of the museum, the happier he would be. He could change at Mark Lane onto a District line train to Whitechapel.
A rosy dawn stained London’s sooty skies when he returned to Kensington. He was tired and hungry—he had felt conspicuous enough walking down the street among the bustling Hebrew population of Whitechapel without venturing intoone of their cafés to dine. Besides, he had no idea what sort of weird, foreign concoctions they ate.
He was also hurried. All too soon an army of housemen would arrive to sweep, scrub, dust, and polish. He had to be gone before then.
Haste and lack of sleep must not lead to carelessness, he thought, yet caution must not slow him. If he was seen, no conceivable excuse could explain away his presence at that hour of the morning.
Slipping in through the basement door, he made for the west end of the west wing, where stairs led all the way up to the second floor. That was the safest place to cross to the central block at this time in the morning. The constable on duty upstairs would be busy later keeping an eye on the housemen. At this dead hour, he was probably to be found with his colleagues in the police post on the ground floor, drinking endless cups of tea to stay awake. If he made occasional patrols, he might not even bother to go above the first floor.
In the dim dawn light, the Upper Mammal Gallery on the second floor was an eerie place. The gorillas, lurking in their artificial jungle, seemed about to pounce. Once or twice he could have sworn a chimpanzee or a monkey turned its head to watch as he trudged wearily past.
The human skeletons on the other side sent atavistic shivers down his spine. If they affectedhimso, he told himself, no uneducated boor of a policeman was likely to enter the gallery unnecessarily until full daylight drove the ghosts away.
Guarding the top of the main stairs, the massive marble statue of Sir Joseph Banks was a friendly figure in comparison. In Sir Joseph’s shadow he stopped to listen.
The huge, sound-deadening mass of the building weighed oppressively on his nerves now. He felt as if an officer could creep up silently behind him and tap him on the shoulder before he became aware of his presence.
Utter bosh! Police boots could be heard a hundred yards off, he reminded himself. He crossed to the stair head, stared down into the shadowy depths. Nothing moved.
Another shadow, he tiptoed down, turning right on the half-landing. More monkeys watched, a terra cotta troupe climbing the arch over the stairs, chattering at him silently.
Twenty minutes later, he returned by the same route and let himself out by the basement door.
The cleaners who polished the glass cases in the Mineral Gallery, their every move scrutinized by the constable on duty, noticed nothing amiss. Nor did the public, when they wandered in later to ooh and aah at diamonds and sapphires before moving on to the meteorites.
Naturally; nothingwasmissing. Yet.
That was Monday night and Tuesday morning. The following Friday he went out to Whitechapel after work, to make sure everything was proceeding according to plan.
Satisfied, he did not return until the Friday after, fortunately a sunny though cool and breezy day. He went at midday, setting off from the museum with his attaché case, as if to eat his luncheon sandwiches in Kensington Gardens. Only that day, the case contained no sandwiches. It was stuffed with banknotes, every last remaining penny of his nest-egg.
Sitting in the Tube, as it joggled its rattling way beneath the West End and the City, he wondered if he was crazy. He could turn around now, open a new Post Office savingsaccount, and redeposit his few hundred. No one would ever know what he had already done, what he planned to do tonight.
But he could not bring himself to abandon hope. Not when he had already paid over half the price, with no chance of recovering the money.
Besides, what he had to do tonight was no riskier than what he had already accomplished—if anything, less. He was cleverer than the police, cleverer than the museum authorities, cleverer than Pettigrew. He had the cool daring to complete the business, the patience to wait for time to cover his tracks.
Pettigrew always returned from his holiday laden with rock specimens. Until he had studied them thoroughly, he had little interest in anything already classified, catalogued, labelled, and locked away. Weeks, if not months, would pass before he discovered that the jewels in his display cases were all as false as the Cullinan “diamond.”
Stepping off the train at the Whitechapel station, he went up to the noisy, anonymous street.
The strass glass gems were ready. They looked to him just as good as the real jewels. Having—that night two weeks ago—taken photographs and minutely precise measurements of the originals, and matched the colours against dozens of samples, the old man swore he had made perfect copies.
“Better qvality you vill novhere get,” he declared. “Vunce zese stones are beautifully set, only an eggspert can ze difference tell. Your vife vill be proud to vear. You vant I tell you ze address mine cousin’s, can make rings, necklaces, bracelets, vhat you like?”
“No, thank you!” He lifted his attaché case onto the work table and opened it. “My wife has her own favourite jeweller. Here you are.”
Peering through thick spectacles, the old man watched him count out every note. Then he tenderly tucked each of his creations into its own little chamois bag. The exchange was made. Another bridge crossed.
He left it late, until even the most dedicated of his colleagues had surely gone home. It couldn’t be helped that that made his own presence the more questionable. He must not be seen!
This time, he had to put the keys back in Pettigrew’s desk. The gods were assuredly on his side. As he left the Mineral Gallery, nothing moved among the giraffes and okapis. Nothing moved on the stairs. No footsteps echoed. Turning left, he sped to the Keeper of Mineralogy’s office.
The key which had grated, he had taken to a locksmith to be smoothed. Now it rotated in the lock as easily as a spoon in a soft-boiled egg. He was in and out of the office in no more than ninety seconds.
He intended to leave via the giraffes and the back staircase at the north end, but as he came abreast of the main stairs to the second floor, he changed his mind. If he was spotted, the farther from the Mineral Gallery the better. It would be safer to go along the far side of the Central Hall. The stairs tempted him, arching over the hall below, but he resisted—far too exposed. Back he went and around, past the iron gate and Pettigrew’s office, past the entrance to the Lower Mammals: stuffed everything from aardvark to zebra.
