[Êàðòèíêà: img_48]
“Are you all right?” Peter asked, putting his paws on the edge of the plinth and peering up at him.
“I think so,” Boris muttered. And then he added, “Ow!” as a small bone fell on his head. “Ow! Ow! OW!” Another bone fell, and another, and another – until Boris was sitting in a small pile of bones and half the tyrannosaurus’s tail had disappeared.
Boris shook himself and looked at the bones scattered all around him.“Ooops!”
“That’s not good,” Tasha said, putting her paws up next to Peter. “Oh, that’s really not good.”
Boris looked at her hopefully.“We couldn’t just … sort of hide them behind the curtains?” he suggested. “Would anybody actually notice?”
“Yes!” Tasha glared back at him. “Of course they would. This is the most popular gallery in the museum – and this is the most popular dinosaur. I don’t know why. It’s got useless paws.”
[Êàðòèíêà: img_49]
“I expect the visitors like the teeth,” Peter suggested. This dinosaur did have absolutely enormous teeth, some of them almost as long as a kitten’s tail. Was it his imagination or was the tyrannosaurus’s head turned a little more towards them than it had been before? The long sharp teeth and the huge empty eye sockets seemed closer than they had been a moment ago. Peter knew the tyrannosaurus was only a skeleton, but he could have sworn that the massive dinosaur was not happy.
“So…” Boris poked the bones with his paw and they rattled together spookily. “You think we ought to put it back together? That might be a bit … tricky.”
“You are such an idiot,” Tasha muttered, jumping up next to him to look at the bones.
“It’s his fault.” Boris nodded at Peter. “I was supposed to land on him. He moved.”
“I didn’t! You just missed by miles,” Peter protested. “Anyway, why should I have to stay still and let you squish me?”
Boris shrugged.“I suppose you’re right.”
Peter jumped on to the plinth to join them. He peered at the pile of tail bits and then up at the big gap in the middle of the tyrannosaurus’s tail. “It’s all supposed to be held together with those wires,” he pointed out. “We just need to thread the bones back on. In the right order.”
“But there are so many,” Tasha wailed. “And the Old Man will be coming round soon.”
“Then we’d better get on with it,” Peter said grimly. It wasn’t his fault that Boris had crashed into a dinosaur, but it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been there. He didn’t want to give the museum cats a reason to throw him out.
He blinked and thought about what that meant. The museum belonged to him too. He wanted to stay.
[Êàðòèíêà: img_50]
Tasha hopped down from Boris’s back, where she’d been balancing, and peered up at the tyrannosaurus’s tail with a frown. She’d been threading tail bones back together for what felt like hours. Pretty soon the Old Man was going to turn up – or Ma was going to come looking to see why they’d missed supper. She wasn’t sure which would be worse.
“Are you absolutely sure there isn’t another bone?” she asked Peter. “There’s a hole in that tail. Just look.”
There was– a big hole as well – right in the middle, where nobody was going to miss it.
“You stuck it together wrong,” Boris said accusingly. “Ow, Tasha, you’re too heavy. My bones are going to fall apart in a minute.”
“We can always leave you to sort it out by yourself,” Peter suggested. “Go ahead if you don’t want us.”
“I didn’t say that,” Boris muttered sulkily. Then he added, “Thank you for helping me,” in a very fast whisper that anyone who wasn’t listening carefully would have missed.
“What on earth are you three doing?”
All three kittens had been staring up at the gap where the missing bone should be. Now they whirled round in panic and another bone fell out of the tail on Boris’s head. He was used to it by now and hardly even flinched.
[Êàðòèíêà: img_51]
Bianca stood by the side of the plinth, every hair perfectly in place, looking up at them in horror.
“Did Ma send you to find us?” Tasha asked, but Bianca wasn’t listening.
“You broke an exhibit…!” She looked daggers at Peter.
“It wasn’t Peter, it was Boris,” Tasha said swiftly. “He banged into it.”
“Oh… Surprise, surprise.” Bianca glanced behind her. “But you have to fix it. Now! The Old Man’s in the Egyptian Gallery, he’ll be here any minute.”
“We can’t,” Peter explained. “There’s a bone missing. We’ve looked everywhere for it.”
“This is even worse than the Old Man thinking we let rats eat his sandwiches!” Tasha wailed. “This is a disaster. We never damage the exhibits, never, never, never. It’s the most important rule!” She huddled down into a little ball and shuddered.
Boris was still sitting under the tyrannosaurus looking a bit dazed and Bianca was twitching her tail in panic. Peter laid his ears flat, thinking hard. They had only moments before the Old Man came by. Somehow, they had to disguise the big hole in the dinosaur’s tail. “Maybe we can use something else to fill in the gap for now,” he murmured.
“Something else like what?” Bianca demanded, looking around. “There isn’t anything!”
“Something white, and about the size of – the size of—” Peter broke off, staring at Bianca.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?” The white kitten stepped back nervously.
Peter prowled towards her, eyeing her white fur. Bianca squeaked, twitching her fluffy tail away from him.“Leave me alone!”
Peter shook himself.“I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just – you’re the same colour as the bones!”
Bianca scowled.“Yes, I’m a white cat. Obviously. I have beautiful fur. Is this really the time?”
But Tasha had looked up and was eyeing Bianca too.“She is! She’s the same colour! Oh, Bianca, you can be the bone!”
“I beg your pardon?” Bianca said.
“She needs to hurry,” Peter said, his ears stiffening up straight. “I can hear the Old Man whistling. Quick, Boris, shove his sandwiches back under the chair. We don’t want him noticing that they’ve been moved. He needs to be in and out of this gallery as quickly as possible.”
Boris made a wobbly jump down to the floor and pushed the sandwiches back. Then he sat by the chair, shaking his head from side to side.
“Is he all right?” Peter whispered to Tasha.
“He looks the same as normal to me,” Tasha said. “Anyway, this is all his fault. He deserves to have a headache. We can sort him out later. Right now we need to get Bianca up there, somehow.”
The Old Man’s whistling was getting closer and closer, and the two kittens looked hopefully at Bianca. The white kitten glared back, her blue eyes haughty.
“I really don’t know what you two are talking about,” she hissed. “But I don’t like it.”
[Êàðòèíêà: img_52]
“We need you to be the missing bone,” Peter explained. “You can hold on to the skeleton with your claws. It’ll be easy, honestly.”
“Just for a minute or so while the Old Man shines his torch over the skeletons,” Tasha put in. “Otherwise he’s definitely going to spot the hole.”
“I don’t look anything like a dinosaur bone!” Bianca said, horrified. “It’s all manky and old and – and lizardy!”
“It’s only for a minute,” Peter pleaded.
“No!”
“Of course you don’t look anything like a bone,” Tasha said, gently bumping noses with her sister. “You’re ever so much prettier. And your fur’s all sparkly white, not yellowish like a bone. Oh, Peter, I don’t think it’s going to work! It’s just impossible. The Old Man will never think Bianca’s a bone. Not even Bianca could act that well.” She saw Peter open his mouth to argue and dropped one furry eyelid in a slow wink.
“Oh – er, no. You’re right.” Peter sighed heavily. “We’re sunk. I thought Bianca was going to save us all, but it’s just too hard, even for her.” He glanced sideways at Bianca – were they being too obvious? But the white kitten was preening and fluttering her whiskers.