Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 57, No. 3. Whole No. 328, March 1971

The Theft of the Dinosaur’s Tail by Edward D. Hoch[9]

Here is the 10th in the series about Nick Velvet, the contemporary Raffles. Nick Velvet, you will recall, is a thief with a unique “angle”: he steals only the bizarre, the baroque, end only if the object is valueless — never anything as mundane as jewels or cash.

Nick’s newest assignment is “out of this world.” All we ask is that you read the title, and if you don’t immediately plunge into the story we’ll be surprised. Imagine — hired to steal a dinosaur’s tail! Absolutely no kidding! And as usual in Nick’s most recent adventures, he has to be a topnotch detective in order to be a topnotch thief...

The affair of the Dinosaur’s Tail really began on the day of the Rockland County horse trials, when Nick Velvet met a man named Frader Kincaid. It was a gloomy October Sunday, with a definite threat of rain, and Nick had driven up because Gloria wanted to watch the jumpers.

“Nicky,” she had told him, “there’s nothing more exciting than watching those horses take the jumps with hardly a break in stride.”

Nick, who could think of several things more exciting to watch, had felt it was one of those rare occasions when he must humor Gloria, and so they’d made the trip to Rockland County. She proved to know more about horses than he’d imagined, readily explaining to his disinterested ear the features of a double oxer or of parallel bars.

“Isn’t it thrilling?” she asked at one point.

“I suppose so,” Nick replied. His eyes were following a tall, trimly built man on a chestnut mare. The man seemed to be one of the jump judges.

Presently there was some commotion across the field, and they could see that one of the horses had thrown its youthful rider at a water jump. The standby ambulance started toward the scene and the other riders were held at their starting point. The man on the chestnut mare watched for a time through his binoculars, then cantered over to Nick’s car.

“Looks like rain,” he said, smiling. “Enjoying the show?”

“We were until now.” Nick motioned across the field. “Is the rider badly hurt?”

“No, no! Just had the wind knocked out of her. It’s Lynn Peters, one of our new members. I’m afraid she’s not up to water jumps yet.” He seemed to remember that he hadn’t introduced himself. “I’m Frader Kincaid, master of the hunt here. You folks coming to the open house afterwards?”

“We’re not members,” Nick told him.

“Don’t worry about that — it’s open to all. The big house at the top of the hill. I’ll be looking for you.”

When Kincaid had ridden away, Gloria tugged on Nick’s sleeve. “I’d love to go for a little while, Nicky.”

He sighed and nodded, seeing there was no way out. “We’ll stop by.”

When Nick and Gloria arrived at the house on the hill two hours later, the party was already in full swing. A light rain had started to fall, but it hadn’t dampened any spirits. Middle-aged men and somewhat younger women in riding togs filled two large downstairs rooms, sipping cocktails while they chattered and giggled and generally relaxed. It was not Nick’s sort of gathering, but he knew Gloria would enjoy it.

“Glad you could make it,” Kincaid greeted them. It was obvious now that the house was his, and the party was his also. “Martinis all right?”

“Fine.”

He produced two with a smile and then hooked an arm around the waist of a passing girl. “This is Lynn Peters, who scared us all with her fall this afternoon. Feeling better, Lynn?”

She was young and sandy-haired, with cheeks flushed pink from drink or embarrassment. Her riding breeches and red corduroy vest fitted her well, and she was quick with a smile that included them all. “I’m fine now, Frader. My mount just didn’t like the looks of that water hole.”

Kincaid smiled benevolently, “Why don’t you girls talk it over while I show Mr. Velvet my den? I have a nice collection I’d like to show him.”

Nick followed the tall man through a door at the far end of the room, into a book-lined study that overlooked the valley where the horse trials had been held. “Beautiful country, even on a rainy day,” Kincaid commented.

Nick sipped his drink and asked, “How did you happen to know my name?”

“Oh, you noticed that? Once down at the Yacht Club someone pointed you out to me. I recognized you watching the jumps today and thought I might interest you in a business venture.”

“My business activities are strictly limited.”

Frader Kincaid moved around to the side of the desk, carefully resting his cocktail glass on a used envelope. “You’re a professional thief, Mr. Velvet, and that’s exactly the sort of venture I have in mind.”

Nick’s expression didn’t change. He simply said, “My fee is quite large — $20,000 — and I steal only objects of little or no value.”

“I understand all that.”

“What is the object you had in mind?”

Kincaid motioned toward the wall between the bookcases where an elaborate oil painting hung. It was an odd subject for a rich man’s wall — a prehistoric scene of two dinosaurs locked in deadly combat against a dank swampy landscape. “How much do you know of these things, Mr. Velvet?”

“Nothing I didn’t learn from the monster films when I was a kid.”

“I publish several lines of paperbound books, and this was the cover painting for a science-fiction novel. I liked the painting, even if the book lost money. Only one thing sells these days.” He grinned and chose a book at random from the case beside him. Nick needed only a glance at the bare-bosomed model and the sex-slang title to know the kind of book it was.

“You publish pornography?” he asked Kincaid.

“I publish what the people buy. One year it’s dinosaurs, the next it’s derrières. Makes not a particle of difference to me.”

Nick merely grunted. He was hardly in a position to comment on other men’s morals. “What is it you want stolen?”

Kincaid tapped the framed painting with his index finger. “This one is a Tyrannosaurus Rex, the largest flesh-eating creature that ever existed. Its teeth alone were eight inches long, and its total length was something like fifty feet. The Brontosaurus was larger, of course, but it ate only herbs and plants.”

“You seem to know a great deal about them.”

“It’s a hobby of mine.” Kincaid smiled with satisfaction. “But to get to the point, Mr. Velvet. You are familiar with the Museum of Ancient History in upper Manhattan?”

“Of course.”

“They have a fine complete skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex there. I want you to steal its tail.”

Nick Velvet simply stared at him, letting the words sink in. He had received some strange assignments in his career, but never anything like stealing the tail from a museum’s dinosaur skeleton. “Not the whole thing? Just the tail?”

“Just the tail. The last few bones of the tail, to be exact.”

“All right. How soon do you need it?”

“Before the end of the week. I do believe it was fate that brought you here today, just when I needed you.” He walked a few steps to a small wall safe and returned with a packet of money. “This much in advance. The rest when you deliver the tail.”

They shook hands and Nick pocketed the money. Then he left the room in search of Gloria. When he found her she was looking unhappy. “I never thought you were coming back, Nicky!”

“Didn’t you enjoy your chat with Lynn Peters?”

“Not really. She doesn’t actually know too much about jumping.” Gloria put down her glass. “Maybe we should go now, Nicky. They really aren’t our sort of people.”

“No,” he agreed. “I don’t think they are.”

On Monday morning Nick drove down to New York. He left the Major Deegan Expressway at 155th Street and crossed the Harlem River into Manhattan’s northern limits. From there it was only a five-minute drive to the Museum of Ancient History, a big rambling redbrick monstrosity that reminded him of the Smithsonian on a bad day. The parking lot was nearly deserted this early, and he pulled up near the front entrance.

Inside, the place was all that its exterior promised — high ceilings with dusty skylights, marble floors, an air of mustiness that seemed to filter right through his clothes. It was everything a museum of the 1920’s should have been, and if it was still that way nearly a half century later, one could only sigh with regret and remember those earlier, grander days.

Nick made his way through the Egyptian Room and the Etruscan Wing, coming at last to the Hall of Great Reptiles. And there it was, in all its baroque splendor — Tyrannosaurus Rex, towering 25 feet into the air and stretching back nearly 50 feet from head to tail. There was something sad and oddly dated about the hundreds of polished bones wired together as a memorial to this creature of long ago. After the indignities of the zoo, would modern animals be subjected to such extravagancies, too? He’d read somewhere that only 600 tigers remained in the world, and he wondered if some future generation might be forced to view the skeleton of a charging Bengal as he now-viewed this blanched relic.

He walked the full length of the great beast and paused to examine the jointed tail section. There was certainly nothing remarkable about the dozens of small bones that made up the tail. He bent closer across the rope barrier for a better look, but there was nothing to explain his assignment. He’d hardly expected a jeweled tail, for example; yet there must be some reason for the proposed theft.

Almost at once a uniformed guard appeared and called out, “Not too close there, mister. Them things are delicate!”

“Sorry. Just wanted a good look. Know where these bones came from?”

The guard moved closer, friendly now. “Out west somewhere. It tells on the sign. In most of these skeletons we have to use some fake bones. It’s impossible to find one of these things complete.”

Nick nodded and turned away, not wanting to show too much interest. “It sure was big,” he said by way of conclusion, and drifted back to the Etruscan Wing.

He might have passed directly through to the Egyptian Room if he hadn’t recognized a familiar face bent over one of the glass display cases. It was that of Lynn Peters, the girl he’d met at Kincaid’s house. Her flushed cheeks and sandy hair were unmistakable, even if she was not wearing her riding costume.

“Hello there,” he said. “I believe we met yesterday after the horse trials.”

She turned, the fresh young smile coming naturally to her face. “Oh, it’s Mr. Velvet, isn’t it? I had a nice chat with your wife last evening.”

“Gloria’s just a friend,” he corrected her amiably. “But what brings you here? I don’t see a single horse in the whole place. Not a live one, anyway.”

“They’re having a special exhibit of antique jewelry, including some pieces from ancient Egypt.” She led him to a nearby case filled with what looked to him like beaded trinkets. “That necklace of gold and jasper and amethyst is from the twelfth dynasty — two thousand years B.C.! Can you imagine?”

She seemed genuinely excited by the necklace, and Nick had to pretend a mild interest. Almost at once he noticed another guard, watching them from a high balcony that ran around the room. “This place is alive with guards, isn’t it? Don’t they trust anyone?”

Lynn Peters brushed the long hair from her eyes. “They’ve had some trouble — a number of robberies during the past couple of years. The latest one, a few months back, was the last straw, I guess. Someone stole the famous Pliny diamond, one of several brought from India to Rome about the year 60 A.D., and described by Pliny in his writings.”

Nick grunted, vaguely remembering having read something about the robbery in the papers. “I don’t know much Roman history, but I always thought Pliny was a politician of some sort.”

“Pliny the Younger was, but his father was. a naturalist. He wrote a thirty-seven-volume Natural History, which still survives. The diamond that bears his name is a really fabulous stone, almost priceless. Though of course it doesn’t have the brilliancy of modem gems.”

“Why is that?”

“The art of lapidary wasn’t fully developed until the middle years of the Eighteenth Century — around 1746, to be exact. Before that, very little was known about the faceting of diamonds to give them the sparkle and brilliance we know today.”

“You speak like a true authority.”

She smiled at the compliment. “I’m studying to be a lapidarist. I work at the diamond exchange on West Forty-seventh Street.”

“An unusual occupation for a young lady.”

The grin turned impish. “Did you think I spent my life falling off horses?”

“Hardly.” He was watching the guard on the balcony. “Just what happened to this Pliny diamond?”

“It was stolen from one of these showcases, just as other jewelry had been earlier. An alarm sounded when the glass was broken, of course, but by the time the guards got here there was no sign of the thief. Each of the thefts happened during the daytime hours, which is why they now have a guard assigned to every room. At night they have an elaborate alarm system, and two guard dogs patrol the place.” She chuckled at the thought. “I always imagine the dogs carrying off the dinosaur bones and burying them somewhere.”

“That stolen diamond would be difficult to dispose of, wouldn’t it?”

“Not if it was cut up and refaceted. Pieces of a necklace from a similar robbery turned up with a fence in Boston. Museum robberies have been quite a problem around New York ever since the Star of India was stolen from the Museum of Natural History back in 1964.”

Nick nodded. The watching guard made him nervous, and he didn’t know how far their voices might carry in this high-ceilinged room. “Look,” he decided suddenly, “I have to be going. Can I drop you anywhere?”

She shook her head. “This is part of my homework.”

“Is this Egyptian stuff valuable, too?”

Lynn shrugged. “Depends on what you mean by valuable. To a collector it would be priceless, though it’s not the sort of thing a fence would care to handle.”

He nodded and started for the door. “I’ll see you around. Don’t fall off any more horses!”

Each time Nick Velvet was handed an assignment like this he reminded himself of the Clouded Tiger affair, some years back. In that one he’d been hired to steal a tiger from a zoo and it turned out to be only a means of drawing attention from the real crime being committed at the same time. The same trick had been tried with Nick on other occasions too, but he was usually able to see through the ruse and bow out in time. He didn’t like being played for a patsy, and he had a suspicion that Frader Kincaid was trying to do just that.

No man, Nick felt, not even a dinosaur enthusiast, could have any use for the bones from a Tyrannosaurus tail. It seemed much more likely that Kincaid was connected with the museum thefts, and that he was using Nick simply to get by the added security precautions so he could enter the museum behind him and pull off another jewel robbery.

It made sense, in a way, and it might even explain why Lynn Peters had been at the museum. She _t;might be working with Kincaid, watching Nick to see when he would pull the job. She might even be the lapidarist who cut up the gems for Kincaid after the robberies.

Thinking about it, Nick turned his car north and headed toward Kincaid’s big house on the hill. He wanted another chat with the man before he undertook the theft of the dinosaur’s tail.

When he reached it in mid-afternoon the big house was quiet. It was possible that Kincaid was in the city, but the elaborate study had indicated he did much of his work at home.

Nick was in luck. Kincaid himself answered the door on the second ring. “Well, Mr. Velvet! Don’t tell me you’re bringing the tail to me already!”

“No, not quite.”

“Well, come in for a drink, anyway. I was just dictating some business correspondence on my machine, but I always welcome a little break. This big place gets lonely.”

“That was quite a party last evening. We enjoyed it.”

“My pleasure! Who would have thought that fate would bring you to me at the very moment I needed your services?” He led Nick into the study and opened a well-stocked liquor cabinet. “Is Scotch satisfactory?”

“Fine.”

“What brings you here? Are there any complications?”

“Somewhat. The number of guards at the museum has been increased considerably since a recent string of thefts.”

“That should present no problem to a man of your skill, Mr. Velvet.”

“It doesn’t, really.” He accepted the drink and took a sip. It was good Scotch. Expensive. “But as you know, I never steal things of value, like cash or jewelry. Nor do I allow myself to be used as a decoy for such thefts.”

Kincaid smiled indulgently. “But, Mr. Velvet, by the very nature of your chosen calling you invite people to take advantage of you. After all, what truly valueless object would be worth your fee of $20,000, even to an eccentric like myself?”

“Then you admit you haven’t told me the whole truth?”

“What other explanation could there be?”

“Some jewels have already been stolen from that museum, and more are on exhibit now. You could be using me only to provide access or diversion while your own gang carries out the real theft.”

“Gang, gang! Mr. Velvet, I’m a businessman, a publisher. I don’t have any gang!”

“Then why do you really want the dinosaur’s tail?”

Kincaid sighed and put down his drink. “Come with me, Mr. Velvet. I’m going to show you something very few people have ever seen.”

Nick followed him across the study to a small door that might have led to a closet. Surprisingly, it opened to reveal a narrow staircase to the basement. In that moment, descending toward the unknown, Nick’s first thought was of a velvet-lined chamber where Kincaid might act out the orgies of his pornographic books. Then he remembered a story he’d real as a boy — about a man who bred giant ants, and he wondered if some living creature from the distant past might be awaiting him in Frader Kincaid’s basement.

The first thing he saw as Kincaid snapped on the lights did nothing to relieve his mind. Nick had paused only inches from the gaping jaws of a dinosaur’s skull. He jerked back quickly and looked around. The entire basement workroom was filled with bones — skulls, ribs, shinbones, jawbones. They hung from the ceiling and they littered the rows of shelves that circled the room.

“What in hell is this?” Nick asked.

Frader Kincaid smiled at his reaction. “My hobby, my avocation. I told you last evening of my great interest in prehistoric creatures. Here I find a way to enjoy that interest and even make a little money out of it.” He took down one of the jawbones and handed it to Nick. “This particular one is carved from wood and, as you see, highly polished. But I have others of molded plastic and even of bone. Bones made out of bone!”

“You make these? But what for?”

“I sell them to museums. A complete skeleton of a prehistoric reptile or mammal is very hard to come by. Many museums, especially the smaller ones, often possess only a few bones from a Mammoth or a Brontosaurus. They want to reconstruct a complete skeleton, and the only way to do it is to use a number of artificial bones. That’s where I come in.”

“Amazing,” was all Nick could say.

“I can furnish a single bone or a dozen. Generally I go right to the museum and work on the skeleton myself, fitting the missing bones in place. They close off the room for a time, and I do my work.”

“Are there many New York museums that do this sort of thing?”

“All of them use reproductions in one form or another. I suppose the largest must be the giant blue whale at the American Museum of Natural History. Many people viewing it believe that it’s stuffed, but actually it’s a complete reproduction, carefully formed in every detail. I don’t work on anything that complex, though. I stick to bones.”

“And you need the tail of the Tyrannosaurus to serve as a model?”

“Of course! I must have it, and soon.”

Nick Velvet sighed and avoided the gaping jaws. “All right,” he said at last. “I’ll steal it for you.”

“I’d be most grateful,” Kincaid said with a smile, and led the way upstairs.

Nick spent Tuesday morning checking out one more point, just to ease his mind. The Egyptian jewelry on display at the museum had little market value. It was not to be compared with the Pliny diamond and other stolen pieces. Nick now felt certain that he’d been wrong in suspecting another jewel robbery.

When the museum closed its doors at six o’clock, Nick was still inside. He’d already decided that the theft must take place after hours, despite the alarm system and the dogs. The daytime guards in all the rooms were obstacles he could not safely overcome. A quick test had shown him that they were quite professional and not the sort to be diverted by firecrackers or an escaped mouse. Besides, Nick estimated he would need at least two or three minutes to cut through the wires that held the tail bones in place. So it had to be at night.

When the guard in the Egyptian Room turned away for an instant at the sound of the closing buzzer, Nick had simply stepped into one of the large upright sarcophagi against one wall and pulled the lid almost shut. The guard passed once, glancing around, but apparently assumed that Nick had left by the other exit. He flicked off the light switch and Nick was alone in his own dark tomb. The sarcophagus was far from comfortable, being a bit shorter than Nick’s six feet, but he knew he would have to remain inside for at least an hour.

Through the crack in the lid he watched the dusky remains of daylight filter through the overhead skylight until the Egyptian Room settled into total darkness. Then at last it was night, and he slipped from his cramped hiding place to move silently through the darkened halls. It was easy to spot the electric eye alarms in each doorway, and just as easy to avoid them by bending very low. They would have trapped only the most amateur of thieves. He entered the Etruscan Wing and crossed the marble floor toward the Hall of Great Reptiles. So far, all was well.

Then he froze, hearing a guard’s voice far off, echoing through the lonely building. It was answered by the barking of a dog. Nick listened and moved a bit faster.

Avoiding the electric eye at the entrance to the Hall of Great Reptiles, he made his way toward the enormous white skeleton in the center of the room. He took a moment to shine his narrow-beam flashlight at the walls, but there was nothing except the tall dusty display cases filled with fossils and petrified footprints from ages ago. He wondered why he’d done that and then realized there was something wrong. It was — what? — a feeling that he was not alone here?

He tensed his body, but no sound came. Then he allowed the flashlight to return to its target on the dinosaur’s bony tail. He went under the rope and clamped the flashlight to his left wrist, leaving both, hands free. As he had assumed, the individual bones were strongly wired together, but a few quick snips with his wire cutters should free them.

The ominous feeling came again, and this time he knew that someone else was in the room. He raised his left arm slightly, until the flashlight beam targeted a black-clad figure crouched like a cat some ten feet in front of him. Despite the black knit cap that covered her sandy hair, he had no trouble recognizing Lynn Peters.

“What in hell are you doing here?” he whispered harshly.

“The same thing as you,” she said with a grin, sliding closer across the polished floor. “You hid somewhere after the place closed, so I did the same thing.”

“But — you mean you’ve been following me?”

“Of course. You’re the famous thief Nick Velvet, aren’t you?”

“Where did you hide?” he asked, ignoring her question.

“In the Ladies’ Room. The male guards never think to check it. I had this black outfit on under my raincoat, just in case. You’re after the jewelry, aren’t you?”

He shifted the light from her face and brought out his wire cutters. “No, I think that’s your game. If you really knew anything about me, you’d know I don’t steal anything valuable.”

“But you’re working for Kincaid,” she insisted.

“I have what I want right here.” He snipped away at the wires, carefully disengaging about fifteen inches of the tail section. The bones felt zero-cold in his hands.

Then suddenly they heard voices nearby, and the barking of a dog. “Come on,” Nick snapped. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

“What are you doing with those bones?”

“Stealing them.” He grabbed her arm.

“But the jewelry—”

“No time for your jewels now. If those guard dogs catch our scent we’re in trouble — big trouble.”

He led her back through the Etruscan Wing, grasping her wrist with one hand and the dinosaur’s tail with the other. The voices seemed farther off, and for a moment he relaxed, certain they were going to make it.

“Duck under here,” he warned. “It’s an electric eye.”

She ducked, but not low enough. Instantly a clanging alarm bell shattered the silence. “Damn!”

“I’m sorry.”

He tugged her and broke into a run. “A fine burglar you’d make!”

“I never pretended to be one.”

“Then what in hell are you doing here?”

There were shouts and running footsteps now, and up ahead the lights were going on. “Nick, I’m scared!” she cried as the barking of the dogs sounded closer.

“You should be. Right now I’m scared myself.”

They had reached the main hall of the museum, and the front exit was only a hundred feet away. But already they could see the guards converging. Someone spotted them, shouted to the others, and more lights came on.

“Run!” Nick told her.

Their running footsteps echoed on the polished marble as they retreated toward the Egyptian Room. He remembered the mummy cases, but knew the dogs would sniff them out in a minute.

“There’s no way out, Nick.”

Ahead, appearing suddenly like some hound of hell, a large German shepherd blocked their path. Nick reversed direction, dragging Lynn with him.

“I–I can’t—”

The dog started after them, so close they could hear its panting as it ran. “I know just how Sir Henry Baskerville must have felt,” Nick gasped.

“We can’t make it,” Lynn moaned.

Nick slid to a sudden stop and pulled a handful of capsules from his pocket. The dog was only twenty feet away, coming fast, as Nick hurled the capsules to the floor, breaking them.

“What’s that?” Lynn asked.

The dog slowed its charge, turning its nose to the floor. “Come on! That’ll only divert him for a minute or two.”

“But what—?”

“It’s a chemical that looks like blood and has a strong meat scent. Fishermen use it to attract good catches. I thought it might distract the dogs for a minute if I got into a jam.”

The German shepherd had paused, sniffing, but already it was losing interest in this new odor. It turned again toward them. “Now what, Nick? I can’t run any more.”

“There they are!” a guard shouted from the corridor ahead of them.

Nick sighed and braced himself. “Through the window. It’s our only chance.”

“The window!”

“We’re on the first floor. It’s no worse than falling off a horse.”

Ten minutes later, bruised, cut, and out of breath, they sat in the front seat of Nick’s car as he pursued a winding route through upper Manhattan.

“Do you always cut things that close?” she asked him.

He tried a relaxed smile, and it didn’t feel bad at all. There was a glass cut along one cheek, but it wasn’t deep. “Not usually. I hadn’t counted on your being there. What about your car?”

“I parked it a few blocks away, just in case. But they’ll find my raincoat in the Ladies’ Room.”

“Any identification in it?”

“No.” She grinned at a sudden thought. “My, won’t they be surprised when they discover the only thing missing is the dinosaur’s tail!”

“Sorry you didn’t have time for the jewels.”

“Look, Nick — Mr. Velvet — I was only there because you were, the same as yesterday. I thought Kincaid hired you to steal that jewelry.”

He took one hand from the steering wheel to rub a bruise on his arm. “But why would you care anyway, unless you were after the jewelry yourself?”

“Those things aren’t worth much in the open market, but the diamonds that were already stolen are worth a fortune. There’s a $5,000 reward for the Pliny diamond alone, and I mean to collect it.”

“You mean you’re—?”

She nodded. “Not a lapidarist at all, but an insurance investigator. Sorry to disappoint you.”

“But what about the horses and the jumping?”

“I joined the group recently, to get close to Kincaid. I’m not much of a horsewoman — that’s why I fell on Sunday. You see, Kincaid was doing some work at the museum the same day the Pliny diamond was stolen. The insurance companies are suspicious of him.”

“He makes bones,” Nick explained. “For dinosaurs. That’s what he was doing at the museum.”

“Maybe that’s just a cover.”

Nick ran his fingers over the length of tail bone at his side. “We’ll find out soon enough. We’re going to Kincaid’s place.”

The lights were still burning when they reached the house on the hill, and Kincaid greeted them at the door. He couldn’t quite mask his surprise, though, at seeing Lynn. “Well, hello. I thought you two barely knew each other.”

“We’ve gotten friendly,” Lynn explained. “We’ve been through a lot together.”

But Kincaid’s eyes were on the length of wired bone that Nick carried in his left hand. “You did it! You stole the Tyrannosaurus tail!”

“I did it,” Nick agreed.

“Splendid, splendid! This calls for a drink while I get you the rest of your money.”

Nick accepted the bundle of bills and stuffed it into his pocket without counting. By now he was used to payments in cash, and it felt like the right amount. “I should tell you that Miss Peters here is an insurance investigator. If you’re wise, you won’t carry out your scheme to recover the Pliny diamond.”

Kincaid’s face went white. “What are you talking about?”

Nick saw that Lynn was listening intently, so he hurried on. “You do work for the museum. Surely they would have allowed you to take a plaster cast of the tail bones for your models. No, Mr. Kincaid, you didn’t pay me $20,000 because you wanted to have the tail, but rather because you wanted the museum not to have it. I asked myself what they’d do without this tail segment, and the answer was obvious. They’d hire you to replace it with a reproduction.”

Kincaid lowered his eyes. “You’re right. I needed the work.”

“Enough to pay me $20,000 so you could get a job worth maybe a few hundred? I think not. But you were working in the museum on the day the Pliny diamond was stolen. And that started me thinking. You said yourself that when you fitted an artificial bone they usually closed off that room of the museum while you did your work. That means, at least for a brief period, the guard would probably be removed — or he wouldn’t be watching you too closely. The jewelry at the museum now isn’t worth your trouble, but suppose the Pliny never left the building. Suppose you simply broke the display case, removed the Pliny and hid it somewhere. Somewhere, say, in the Hall of Great Reptiles.”

“That’s crazy!”

“Is it? You couldn’t risk carrying it out of the building on your person with alarm bells ringing all around, but you could hide and return for it later — a week or a month later, if necessary. But what happened after the Pliny diamond was stolen? The museum tightened its security by placing a guard in every room. The Pliny was still there, safer now than ever, except that the museum didn’t know it.”

“Of course!” Lynn Peters breathed at his side. “That would explain everything.”

Nick nodded. “It would certainly explain why you were so pleased to see me on Sunday, Kincaid. You knew I couldn’t be hired to steal the diamond for you, but if I could steal part of the dinosaur, the museum would ask you to come down and fix it. Alone in that room you could retrieve the Pliny from its hiding place.”

“You’ll never convince anyone of that story, Velvet.”

“I’ve convinced Miss Peters already, and I’m sure she’ll be able to convince the museum officials. You were growing nervous and wanted me to steal the tail soon, which means the hiding place isn’t too safe. I think a search of the room will turn it up quickly.”

Kincaid bit his lip and looked from one to the other. “I have money. I’ll pay you both well.”

“I already have my pay from you,” Nick said.

“A deal?”

“That’s up to Miss Peters now. But if you tell us exactly where the Pliny is, I think she’d allow you enough time to catch a morning flight to South America.”

“South—”

“They must read dirty books down there, too. You could start a whole new life.”

Kincaid made a sudden motion toward the desk, but Nick stopped him. “No guns, please. Nothing like that.^,

“Where’s the Pliny?” Lynn demanded.

He stared at the carpeted floor for a long moment before he answered. Then he said, so softly that they could hardly hear, “On top of one of those tall display cases along the wall. I just threw it up there. The cases are so dusty I knew they were rarely cleaned or even examined.”

They left him in his house on the hill, and as they drove away Lynn asked, “Is your work always this much fun?”

“Sometimes. When there’s somebody like you along.”

“What are you thinking about right now?”

He turned to her and grinned. “You know, in a sense that damned dinosaur had a jeweled tail after all.”