One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing Read online

  Nannies aren’t emotional, she reminded herself. She took a deep breath and clenched her fists. “Steady, Hettie, old lass,” she said, quietly. “Chin up, chest out, firm step. There’s work to be done.” She was sure that a Charmaine-Bott would only be involved in something very necessary.

  She looked up the steps to the museum. An important message, Master Quincey had said with his dying words. Hettie gulped. Of WORLD importance. It HAD to be delivered. It was in room thirteen.

  The young nanny was sitting on the museum steps, very pale. Hettie thought of correcting her for getting dirt on her uniform, but she stopped herself. She rested a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “It’s all right, Melissa,” she said softly. “Just sit quietly for a few minutes. Wait for us, we’re going inside the museum.” Melissa nodded.

  Hettie adjusted the strap round baby Simone’s waist, and straightened the child’s sun bonnet, then she climbed the steps to the museum entrance. Room thirteen, Master Quincey had said. She looked for an attendant.

  “Sure, lady, you mean the Early Dinosaur Hall,” said the uniformed man. “Everyone wants the Dinosaur Hall. You know, lady, that dinosaur’s nearly two hundred millions of years old. You get that? Millions. Take the elevator. Fourth floor.”

  The Scots nanny took the lift to the fourth floor. Room thirteen, its number in gold paint, was easy to find. Hettie remembered more of the 25th Earl’s last words. “ ... Message ... microdot... In largest beast.”.She looked inside the room. “Lawks!” she exclaimed. “The dear laddie could hardly have chosen anything bigger.” She walked in. Dominating the centre of the hall, and flanked by two lesser giants, was the fossilized skeleton of one of the largest creatures ever to roam this earth--a brontosaurus.

  Hettie made her way to the limestone plinth on which the three petrified monsters stood. She glanced about her. There were two visitors at the far end of the hall. She waited until they had gone, then she squeezed under the guard-rail and climbed on to the plinth, close to the head of the sixty-six-feet-long brontosaurus. She listened for a moment, to make sure no one was near. Then, gritting her teeth and holding back a shudder, she stuck her hand into the beast’s jaws and felt around. She found nothing. She was surprised. It seemed the obvious place to hide a message. She looked for another hiding place. Inside the rib cage, perhaps? She searched as carefully as she could, again with no success. Puzzled, she examined the tail bones. She tried to visualize the size of the message. She recalled the 25th Earl’s words. “A microdot,” he’d said. Would that be bigger than a pea? She decided it would probably be smaller. It must be pushed into one of the bones, then. There were hundreds. It could be anywhere. She made another fruitless search. Then came the sound of approaching footsteps.

  Hettie sighed. Sadly, she left the hall

  William Badenberg boasts that he is 2,922 today. Days, that is. Actually, he’s eight years old, and he’s enjoying himself. Birthdays are one of the few times when he sees his mother and father together. They’re not divorced. It’s just that Mr. Badenberg is always busy being successful.

  “It’s William’s birthday on Tuesday,” Mrs. Badenberg cabled him in Zurich.

  “Fine,” Mr. Badenberg cabled back. “Fix him a cocktail party. Buy him a new car.”

  “At eight?” cabled Mrs. Badenberg.

  “At any suitable time,” replied her husband.

  A telephone call to his Swiss office ended the confusion. Mr. Badenberg cancelled forty-three appointments, took two days from work, and flew home.

  William has twenty guests, suitably chosen from Mrs. Badenberg’s social blue book, and all children of the right sort of people to know.

  They are enjoying a lobster barbecue on the Badenberg patio. They are being entertained. They like Sammy Davis, Jr., Danny Kaye and Julie Andrews. Mr. Badenberg is glad he hired them. He knows that, otherwise, he wouldn’t have known how to entertain one child--let alone this lot. He is standing beside the french windows, anesthetizing his conscience with martinis. He is feeling guilty about his neglected business.

  Mrs. Badenberg flicks her teeth with an elegant fingernail. She’s worried. She’s wondering if the nannies’ champagne has been correctly chilled.

  The nannies are a social conundrum. Mrs. Badenberg often discusses them with her friends. The nannies are efficient, polite, perfectly mannered and correct, but diffident. They never mix with their employers--even when encouraged. They prefer their own, elite, company.

  While their charges giggled at Danny Kaye, the nannies sat and chatted in the lounge. They sipped the champagne, and nibbled cracker biscuits generously coated with caviar. They seemed relaxed, but Mrs. Badenberg knew their lynx-eyes missed nothing. She hoped she’d chosen the right year.

  Mrs. Badenberg popped her head round the door of the lounge and looked. As usual, they sat in small knots, chatting quietly. No matter how often the nannies met, the cliques remained unchanged. They weren’t grouped by ages or salaries. She could understand a social gap caused by nationality, but these nannies were all British. She whispered to her own nurse.

  “Everything satisfactory?”

  “Perfectly, ma’am,” nodded Nanny Hettie. Mrs. Badenberg left, pulled the door closed behind her, shrugged, and joined the children on the patio.

  “Terrible, terrible thing to happen,” said Hettie, resuming her interrupted narrative. The other nannies in her five-strong coterie nodded in sympathy. “Poor, dear wee Maister Quincey. And after all these years. Such wonderful people, too, the de Bapeau Charmaine- Botts.”

  “Very thad, Nanny Hettie,” lisped Susanne Martyn, the youngest nurse of her group, her blonde hair streaky from the reflected white of her uniform.

  “We brought him up. He had dreadful measles ... and mumps. But he was always very brave.”

  “He must have been. He passed on heroically,” said Melissa, the nanny who had made the countdown on the museum steps. “You could tell he’d had the right sort of training. Quite calm and collected. Really a credit to you, Nanny Hettie.”

  The old nanny shook her head. “Not really, lassie. It’s blood that matters. We do our best, but without the right blood ... nothing.”

  The other nannies nodded again.

  “Foreign Office, wasn’t he?” asked Emily Biddle, the oldest member of Hettie’s clique. Her hair stood out like porcupine quills. She blinked through a pair of pince-nez. “I can remember his grandfather. Victoria Cross--Zulu War, I think.”

  Melissa leant forward, confidentially. “The Earl said he was doing something very important when he died. He said ...” A sharp jab from Hettie’s elbow cut her in mid-sentence.

  “But, he ...”

  “Nothing,” said Hettie, firmly. “What he said was quite private.”

  Melissa bit her lip. The other nannies nodded in agreement with Hettie. What the 25th Earl had said at his moment of death was no one else’s business but his nanny’s.

  Nanny Hettie MacPhish had three layers of bags under her eyes. She hadn’t been sleeping. Every time she’d closed her eyelids, she could see the 25th Earl’s face. Every time she’d tried to rest, she could hear his voice giving her his last instructions.

  She walked her baby carriage in the morning sunlight. Master William, suffering from party stomach, was at school. His sister, two-year-old Simone, waved a fresh teddy-bear at passers-by. Mrs. Badenberg insisted there was nothing more unhygienic than a dirty teddy- bear. “Simone must have a new one every day,” she ordered. “Out of the plastic wrapper in the morning-- into the trashcan at night.”

  Hettie didn’t agree, of course. Who ever heard of anyone throwing away a teddy-bear? How could a child grow to love a teddy this way? Still, every employer had her foible. Hettie partly obeyed Mrs. Badenberg, and placed a regular order at Macy’s store. But she didn’t throw away the used bears. By Christmas, she calculated, she’d have nearly two hundred to send to the children’s hospital.

  Until the 25th Earl’s death, the bears, sitting in waiting regiments along the shel
ves lining her small apartment, had eyed her with affection. Now, she felt, their once-friendly faces showed mistrust.

  Forty-three years a nanny, thought Hettie. Forty-three years since she was seventeen. Six satisfied families, including a period with the royal family. Five perfect references. She reached forward and checked the push-chair safety straps, tidied the coverlet and bunched the pillow behind Simone. The face of the 25th Earl stared up at her.

  She aimed her push-chair at the park gates and along the path towards the seat where she would meet her friends. They were already there. They sat, like four white slats of picket fencing, on the long seat facing the Delacorte Alice-in-Wonderland monument.

  Old Emily was knitting another waistcoat for Tarzan, her pet parrot. He was as eccentric as his owner, and nervous. He’d been reared in front of a television set. He was unable to speak, or whistle, but gave a convincing imitation of his jungle namesake--and he’d plucked his chest naked. Emily spent all her spare moments knitting him gay, miniature waistcoats to replace his colourful feathers and keep out the chill, while Tarzan dedicated his life to unknitting each new psychedelic garment. It was an endless competition for both of them. Emily daily devised intricate new stitches which she hoped were unravelable. But by bedtime each evening, Tarzan was naked again. He’d sidle along the perch and swing upside-down on the bars until Emily dressed him in his new woolly. He’d sleep warm and cosy on his swing, then, with his ape-man yodel, would begin his sartorial beakwork the following dawn.

  “Good morning.” The nannies nodded a welcome, like a row of porcelain Buddhas.

  Hettie smiled, thinly. The four friends shuffled along, so she could join them on the bench. She parked the carriage and set the brake.

  “Didnae sleep,” she said.

  “It’ll take time, dear,” replied Emily.

  The other three nannies nodded again.

  “No,” sighed Hettie. “It’s no just Maister Quincey’s death. It’s something else. We must tell you. We need your advice.”

  She explained exactly what had happened on the museum steps and the last words of the 25th Earl.

  “There you are,” exclaimed Melissa, dramatically. “He really was a British spy! Spies always carry suicide pills.”

  Hettie was shocked. “Spy? Away with you. Charmaine-Botts would never be spies. The Silver Greyhound. We saw it, behind his lapel. He was a royal courier. Spy, indeed! Really! He was delivering a message. It must have been for Her Majesty the Queen.”

  “Well, my dear,” said Emily, kindly. “You really mustn’t blame yourself for his death. I’m sure the queen would understand. But what are you going to do? Tell the British Ambassador?”

  “No,” said Hettie, firmly. “Maister Quincey said not to trust ANYONE. We’re sure he wouldn’t have meant you, of course,” she added, hastily. “You’re friends. Good friends.” Hettie dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief. “It was his dying wish, you know,” she said. “That message must be very important. It’s just got to be found and sent to the queen.”

  “By registered post,” added Una. “That’ll be safe.” Emily’s pince-nez dropped from her nose, as she nodded, enthusiastically. She fumbled for them on her lap, amongst the confusion of her knitting wool, then tugged at the cord that suspended them from her neck, reeling them in like a fisherman. “Yes. AND I’ll help you to find it.”

  The nannies’ heads wagged agreement. “We’ll ALL help,” said Susanne.

  On, across the wilds of Central Park, advanced the small British contingent. The nannies always marched, never strolled, backs straight, heads up, chins pulled well back on to their chests. And they marched in column, in order of seniority.

  Hettie led them ... because she had been a royal nanny. Her buxom figure and broad back almost obscured the view of her second-in-command, Emily. Behind the leaders strode Una, middle-aged and allergic to men, followed by the red-headed Melissa, and, as long as she could keep up with them, seventeen-year-old Susanne.

  The eyes of the natives watched them.

  “Der sterilized, Charlie,” whispered one of the watchers, as the column strode past.

  “Don’ be ‘diculous. Dames ain’t sterilized. Only cats.”

  “Nuts! I mean like an operatin’ theater. Like when they castrated me.”

  “Circumstanced you, you mean.”

  “Yeah, that too.” The heads turned and watched as the last of the nanny squadron disappeared round a bend in the path.

  It was a bright morning, with just enough breeze coming in from the sea to clear the automobile fumes and smoke mist from around the tall buildings at the end of the park. The previous evening’s rain had washed the dust from the leaves and grass, and the park had a fresh, rinsed look.

  The nannies trundled their carriages along the side of the boating lake and through the tree-lined groves to Central Park West. By the time they’d arrived, they felt sticky and damp under their starched board-like aprons.

  Hettie stopped opposite the American Museum and pushed the traffic light button on the crossing in front of the building. A small jam of carriage-pushing nannies built up behind her.

  The crossing lights changed to green. A tattered yellow cab grated to a halt. The driver leant out of the window.

  “You chicks a parade or sumpting?” he called. The nannies stuck their noses into the air and ignored him. Una blushed.

  They parked their carriages by the steps at the front of the yellow stone building. “Knowledge” declared huge letters over the museum entrance.

  “Susanne, wait here.” Hettie pointed towards the base of the Theodore Roosevelt statue guarding the entrance. “Watch all the perambulators. And take care of the children. Don’t talk to any strange men, and if you want to sit down, then sit with your back straight.”

  Skirting the spot on the steps where the 25th Earl died, Hettie led the others into the shadows of the great entrance hall. It was quiet, almost church-like, after the noise outside. The sun shone through the heavily- screened windows behind them. The stone columns threw long shadows ahead.

  “Ugh!” gasped Una, looking at two primitive, carved wooden heads, on pillars, in front of them. She shuddered. There was something almost evil about these ebony guardians to the upper floors of the building.

  Hettie ordered her squad up to the fourth floor.

  “Just along here,” she hissed.

  The corridor grew darker. At last Hettie stopped outside a large doorway.

  “Here. This is it. This is the place Maister Quincey hid the message in.” Hettie nodded towards the panelled opening. “It’s in there.”

  They crowded beside her and peered into the half gloom. “Oh, Lord,” said Una. “What a terrible thing.” “It’s horrible,” breathed Melissa.

  “And huge,” said Emily, holding her pince-nez away from her nose like lorgnettes. “Its a dinosaur.”

  The prehistoric monster’s craggy, sepia-coloured head, as big as a rubbish bin, snarled down at them. Its back arched upwards to a gigantic rump, twelve feet above the nineteen-ton slab of limestone plinth. Rib cages, like the unfinished hull of a Viking sailing ship, were supported by brown leg bones, each almost as big as the nannies themselves. The castellated tail drooped down and seemed to go on forever.

  Hettie stepped back from the display and tried to view the entire monster from farther away. Then she beckoned her friends until they were huddled in a tight group. She glanced towards the monster. “He said it was in there. At least, he said it was in the largest exhibit. This is the biggest. If Maister Quincey said it was there, then it has to be. He never fibbed. It’s in there, or ON there. Some sort of a message, somewhere.” The four nannies searched. For an hour and a half they examined the dinosaur. They poked, prodded and peered. They looked from a distance when other visitors or an attendant entered the hall. But when they were alone, they climbed on to the plinth and scuttled around the skeleton.

  They found nothing. At last, they gave up the hunt.

  TWO


  The entrance to the New York headquarters of the Tse Eih Aei, Red China’s espionage service, is by means of the middle telephone box in the block of three in front of the Plaza Hotel. Drop a coin into the instrument, dial 834927, press the concealed knob behind the cable outlet, and you are lowered into a damp and clammy room in an underground alley off one of the main sewers. The room stinks of joss sticks, opium and alligator chop-suey. It is made habitable only by the smell of perfumed bathwater and high-class sewage from the hotel.

  The room is badly lighted, and steam from the sewer condenses on everything, dribbling in rivulets down the mildewed walls. Boots, shoes and leather belts turn mouldy green in a few days. Spy cameras grow exotic fungi on their lenses. But this HQ has advantages; it’s reasonably central, near the subway and bus routes, and, most important of all, it costs nothing. Dollars are preciously guarded by the Chinese People’s Republic.

  The twelve-foot-square room is crammed and cramped. Six bunks, in tiers of three, line two opposing walls, like berths in an opium den. A third wall holds the radio transmitter and receiver, topped by a large, crayoned poster quoting Mao Tse-tung’s 1964 exhortation to the Congolese: “People of the World, unite and defeat the U.S. aggressors and all their running dogs ... Monsters of all kinds shall be destroyed.”

  The fourth wall is shortened by the passage leading into the sewer, and by the entrance to the small lift. A coin-operated spin-drier and an electric cooker stand close by. Two curling pictures of Mao Tse-tung stand on shelves on this wall, above the drier and the stove, and between pots and pans used for preparing the spies’ meals.

  The centre of the room is occupied by a warped plywood table, its edges frayed with cigarette bums, its centre stained by tea-cup rings. There are only six chairs, filched from the open-air theatre in Central Park. There’s no room for a seventh, so at full meetings, one of the agents has to sit in the background, on a bunk, or on the spin-drier.