Heart-thumping time, I thought. It would take only a policeman to walk along and start fussing about a car parked in the wrong place to set Cassavetes and Todd on the road to jail.
‘... horses are now going out on to the course. Foursquare in front, sweating up and fighting jockey Ted Nester for control...’
We reached the front of the stairs. I turned back towards the office, but Jik took off fast down the corridor.
‘Come back,’ I said urgently. ‘If that steel gate shuts down...’
‘Relax,’ Jik said. ‘You told me.’ He stopped before reaching the threshold of the furthest room. Stood still, and looked. Came back rapidly.
‘O.K. The Munnings are all there. Three of them. Also something else which will stun you. Go and look while I get this door open.’
‘... cantering down to the start, and the excitement is mounting here now...’
With a feeling of urgency I trekked down the passage, stopped safely short of any electric gadgets which might trigger the gate and set off alarms, and looked into the Munnings room. The three paintings still hung there, as they had before. But along the row from them was something which, as Jik had said, stunned me. Chestnut horse with head raised, listening. Stately home in the background. The Raoul Millais picture we’d seen in Alice.
I went back to Jik who with hammer and chisel had bypassed the lock on the office door.
‘Which is it?’ he said. ‘Original or copy?’
‘Can’t tell from that distance. Looks like real.’
He nodded. We went into the office and started work.
‘... Derriby and Special Bet coming down to the start now, and all the runners circling while the girths are checked...’
I put the radio on Wexford’s desk, where it sat like an hourglass, ticking away the minutes as the sands ran out.
Jik turned his practical attention to the desk drawers, but they were all unlocked. One of the waist-high line of filing cabinets, however, proved to be secure. Jik’s strength and knowhow soon ensured that it didn’t remain that way.
In his wake I looked through the drawers. Nothing much in them except catalogues and stationery.
In the broken-open filing cabinet, a gold mine.
Not that I realised it at first. The contents looked merely like ordinary files with ordinary headings.
‘... moved very freely coming down to the start and is prime fit to run for that hundred and ten thousand dollar prize...’
There were a good many framed pictures in the office, some on the walls but even more standing in a row on the floor. Jik began looking through them at high speed, almost like flicking through a rack of record albums.
‘... handlers are beginning to load the runners into the starting stalls, and I see Vinery playing up...’
Half of the files in the upper of the two drawers seemed to deal in varying ways with insurance. Letters, policies, revaluations and security. I didn’t really know what I was looking for, which made it all a bit difficult.
‘Jesus Almighty,’ Jik said.
‘What is it?’
‘Look at this.’
‘... more than a hundred thousand people here today to see the twenty-three runners fight it out over the three thousand two hundred metres...’
Jik had reached the end of the row and was looking at the foremost of three unframed canvasses tied loosely together with string. I peered over his shoulder. The picture had Munnings written all over it. It had Alfred Munnings written large and clear in the right hand bottom corner. It was a picture of four horses with jockeys cantering on a racecourse: and the paint wasn’t dry.
‘What are the others?’ I said.
Jik ripped off the string. The two other pictures were exactly the same.
‘God Almighty,’ Jik said in awe.
‘... Vinery carries only fifty-one kilograms and has a good barrier position so it’s not impossible...’
‘Keep looking,’ I said, and went back to the files.
Names. Dates. Places. I shook my head impatiently. We needed more than those Munnings copies and I couldn’t find a thing.
‘Jesus!’ Jik said.
He was looking inside the sort of large flat two-foot by three-foot folder which was used in galleries to store prints.
‘... only Derriby now to enter the stalls...’
The print-folder had stood between the end of the desk and the nearby wall. Jik seemed transfixed.
Overseas Customers. My eyes flicked over the heading and then went back. Overseas Customers. I opened the file. Lists of people, sorted into countries. Pages of them. Names and addresses.
England.
A long list. Not alphabetical. Too many to read through in the shortage of time.
A good many of the names had been crossed out.
‘... They’re running! This is the moment you’ve all been waiting for, and Special Bet is out in front...’
‘Look at this,’ Jik said.
Donald Stuart. Donald Stuart, crossed out. Shropshire, England. Crossed out.
I practically stopped breathing.
‘... as they pass the stands for the first time it’s Special Bet, Foursquare, Newshound, Derriby, Wonderbug, Vinery...’
‘Look at this,’ Jik said again, insistently.
‘Bring it,’ I said. ‘We’ve got less than three minutes before the race ends and Melbourne comes back to life.’
‘But—’
‘Bring it,’ I said. ‘And also those three copies.’
‘... Special Bet still making it, from Newshound close second, then Wonderbug...’
I shoved the filing-drawer shut.
‘Put this file in the print-folder and let’s get out.’
I picked up the radio and Jik’s tools, as he himself had enough trouble managing all three of the untied paintings and the large-print folder.
‘... down the backstretch by the Maribyrnong River it’s still Special Bet with Vinery second now...’
We went up the stairs. Switched off the lights. Eased round into a view of the car.
It stood there, quiet and unattended, just as we’d left it. No policeman. Everyone elsewhere, listening to the race.
Jik was calling on the Deity under his breath.
‘... rounding the turn towards home Special Bet is droppng back now and its Derriby with Newshound...’
We walked steadily down the gallery.
The commentator’s voice rose in excitement against a background of shouting crowds.
‘... Vinery in third with Wonderbug, and here comes Ring-wood very fast on the stands side...’
Nothing stirred out on the street. I went first through our hole in the glass and stood once more, with a great feeling of relief, on the outside of the beehive. Jik carried out the plundered honey and stacked it in the boot. He took the tools from my hands and stored them also.
‘Right?’
I nodded with a dry mouth. We climbed normally into the car. The commentator was yelling to be heard.
‘... Coming to the line it’s Ringwood by a length from Wonderbug, with Newshound third, then Derriby, then Vinery...’
The cheers echoed inside the car as Jik started the engine and drove away.
‘... Might be a record time. Just listen to the cheers. The result again. The result of the Melbourne Cup. In the frame... first Ringwood, owned by Mr. Robert Khami... second Wonderbug...’
‘Phew,’ Jik said, his beard jaunty and a smile stretching to show an expanse of gum. ‘That wasn’t a bad effort. We might hire ourselves out some time for stealing politicians’ papers.’ He chuckled fiercely.