“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.