One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing

by David Forrest

  There was a creaking sound. Nothing happened.

  “Try again.”

  There was a grunt from Susanne. She stepped onto the hip-bone, wedged her shoulders against the ironwork and pushed with both arms.

  Emily’s pulley system had been calculated to support the weight of the dinosaur pelvis. The mathematics hadn’t included the added poundage of Susanne. There was a sound of clothes tearing and a squeal from Susanne. The ropes groaned. There was a dull thump as the young nanny rode the pelvis, like a bucking bronco, to the ground. She examined herself. Apart from her gloves, she was naked. She looked around for her clothes. There was no sign of them, or of the other nannies.

  “Oh, gosh!” she gasped. “Where’th everybody?”

  There was a muffled yelp above her. She looked up. A bunch of legs and arms, sticking out from a web of rope, was tied to the side of the brontosaurus framework. Susanne’s cotton overalls, now shredded, dangled overhead on one of the bolts.

  “Get us down, idiot,” came Melissa’s strangled voice. “You launched us. Come and get us down. Quickly!” Susanne struggled up the framework and began loosening the ropes round the nannies. Hettie’s head and shoulders appeared. She looked at Susanne, her face purple dark in the lanternlight, her eyebrows raised. “Good grief, lassie. How dare you? How dare you?”

  “Thorry, Nanny Hettie,” stammered Susanne.

  “Get dressed, this minute,” ordered Hettie, tearing at the ropes across her chest “Get down at once and make yourself decent.

  “That lassie,” groaned Hettie to Emily. “If she’s gi’en her head, she’ll grow up to be a courtesan.”

  Susanne dropped to the ground. She reached up and unhooked her clothes. They were unwearable. She wrapped herself in one of the jute sacks, and then began untying the nannies again.

  “Dinnae EVER do that again,” stormed Hettie, as she finally lowered herself down the framework to the plinth. She rubbed the bruises on her chest where the ropes had caught her. “Dinnae ever parade yourself naked in company again. Absolutely disgusting behaviour. Nakedness is for the privacy of the bathroom--and nowhere else.”

  “Yeth, Nanny Hettie,” said Susanne, meekly.

  The five nannies gathered round the big pelvis. Emily prodded it. It was undamaged. She tried to move it, but it scarcely rocked. “It’s the biggest problem we’ve got,” she said, peering at it closely through her pince-nez. “But I know how to get it out.”

  “You’re optimistic,” said Una.

  “Organized,” smiled the old nanny, wriggling her nose. “Gather yourselves for the great effort, ladies. The big offensive. Flex your muscles for the final assault. Shoulders to the wheel and noses to the grindstone. The relief of Mafeking.”

  “Emily, please keep to the point,” Hettie interjected. “Er ... yes,” continued Emily, her face flushing. “We take the bones, one at a time, along the corridor to the window overlooking the planetarium. Then we lower them on to the planetarium roof. We carry them across the roof to the parapet, and lower them again, to the ground. I think that’s right, isn’t it, Hettie?”

  “Of course,” said Hettie. “Mafeking indeed!”

  “But we’ll be seen.”

  “Nonsense, Melissa,” said Emily. “I’ve parked the lorry in the grounds of the planetarium. No one will look up at the museum windows. In any case, there’s a big tree in front of the planetarium and we’ll be shielded while we lower the bones on the last stage.” She stooped and tugged at a bone. “Heave ho,” she said, gaily. Her knees buckled. “Well, nearly heave ho. Give me a lift, Una, and hold up the canvas.” She staggered down the hall, balancing the bone, like a milkmaid’s yoke, across her shoulders. The other nannies, similarly laden, pushed their way out of the tent, and grunted along behind her.

  “I feel like a thafari porter,” gasped Susanne, as she swung her first bone down to join the others by the window. “My dreth tickles.” She watched as Emily ran her finger expertly round the casement.

  “See,” said the old nanny, triumphantly. “No burglar alarms.” She undid the catch and pushed the window open. “It’s too high to be reached from the ground. It’s nearly impossible to break into, and they didn’t think anyone would want to break out.”

  “We hadn’t even thought of alarms,” admitted Hettie. “But how do we get the bones down there? It must be all of fifteen feet to the roof. They’ll break if we drop them.”

  “The ladder, of course. We’ll get it,” said Una. She disappeared along the corridor with Melissa, and returned with the ladder. They lowered the end on to the window ledge and slid it out until its feet rested on the planetarium roof.

  ”You climb down, please,” Emily told Susanne. “We’ll lower the bones on the rope. Stack them near the parapet, where they can’t be seen from the road.” Susanne nodded.

  Sam Ling nudged Lui Ho out of his doze. “Wake up. They’re here,” he whispered urgently. Lui Ho sprang to his feet, dragged his copy of the Quotations from Mao Tse-tung from his pocket, and waved it.

  “Every Communist must grasp the truth,” he shrieked. “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun ...” A hand over his mouth cut him off before he could begin again.

  “I am prepared to accept your political motivation, Comrade Leader,” Sam Ling’s patient tones whispered in his ear, “but your actions are likely to compromise our plans most severely. It is hardly wise to shout our glorious slogans for insurrection in the middle of New York City.”

  “Why did you wake--er, disturb me?”

  “The nanny-ladies,” said Sam Ling. “They are beginning to bring out the fake dragon bones on to the planetarium roof. I feel, as you may have suggested earlier, we should now collect Nicky Po and Chou-Tan and go to the intersections around the museum, and direct traffic away from the building.”

  “Quite so,” agreed Lui Ho. “To work!” He made a practice traffic signal.

  “Excellent, Comrade Leader,” said Sam Ling, resignedly. “But, for halting American automobiles, try doing it like this ... Yes, our salute. But with the hand unclenched.”

  The mound of bones under the dinosaur tent diminished as the pile on the roof grew. The rooftop looked like an early Christian catacomb. The heap near the parapet spread back toward the green copper dome of the planetarium.

  “All right down there, Susanne?” Emily asked, softly.

  “Yeth.”

  “We’ll go back and hide for half an hour while the guards do their rounds. You stay here. Keep out of sight in the comer.” Emily pointed toward the nearest sheltered wall. “Don’t move around. Stay hidden. See you soon.” She ducked her head inside, and the window closed.

  Fifteen minutes later the nannies resumed their work. There were now only fourteen bones left. The leg bones, the head and the pelvis.

  “Gosh, stewph.” Una strained to move one of the heavy leg bones.

  “Hang on, lassie.” Hettie went to her aid. “If we put it on sacking, we can drag it along the floor--like a toboggan.”

  They rolled the bones on the jute bags and pulled them to the window. Then, using the ladder as a slide, and holding the weight of the bones on the ropes, they lowered them to the planetarium roof. Soon, only the pelvis remained in the dinosaur hall. The nannies stood round it. “Right, give it all you’ve got, on the word,” said Emily, when they’d rested. “Okay, girls, now. H-E-A-V-E.” They levered the giant fossil on to the sacking.

  “It’ll never go through the window,” puffed Una, her hair sticking to her forehead.

  “But we cannae leave it,” panted Hettie. “It might be the bit with the message in.”

  Emily settled herself on the pelvis, and smiled at her friends. “I think I’ve already worked out the solution to this little problem,” she said. “But we’re going to have to trust to luck a bit. What we’ve got to do now is to get this thing to the service lift.”

  Melissa stared at her in alarm. “I hope you’re not going to suggest moving the elevator. We’ll wake up the whole mu
seum.”

  “Quaite,” agreed Una.

  “No,” replied Emily, calmly, “But what I do suggest is letting the museum people do it for us.” She studied the puzzled looks of her companions. “All WE’VE got to do is to crate the pelvis and stow it in the lift. I’m betting we’ll be able to collect it in the morning from the shipping department.”

  “Never,” declared Una’s disbelieving voice.

  “For certain,” said Emily. “I’ll guarantee it. Come on. The guards won’t be back here for some time yet. We’ve got to do this now. It’ll be too late otherwise. Melissa, go and collect Susanne. We need everyone’s help.”

  She laced a rope around the great bone. Then, sled-fashion, they dragged the giant pelvis, on its carpet of sacking, along to the service lift. It took a long time, and they rested every few feet.

  “I’ve got blisters,” said Una. “These gloves haven’t helped much.”

  “Maybe. But dinnae take them off--any of you. Fingerprints, remember,” warned Hettie.

  They slid open the steel doors of the lift and hauled the pelvis inside.

  “We’re on the home straight, now,” gasped Emily. “All we’ve got to do is to wrap this thing in sacking and parcel it up, so it looks like an official consignment.”

  “Thank the Lord we don’t have an imagination like yours,” chuckled Hettie.

  They packaged the pelvis. For the next half-hour, the five nannies stitched, cut, folded and padded. They pulled, twisted and sewed. Cross-legged beside the parcelled bone, Susanne, in her sacking shift, licked twine ends and threaded sailmaker’s needles. Like a frontier wife in an Indian raid, she loaded and reloaded.

  “It’s a beautiful bit of work,” commented Una, when all the loose ends had been tacked into place.

  “Maybe a bit too good,” said Hettie. “It doesnae look like men’s work to me. Melissa, for a start, herringboned one of the edges.”

  “They’ll never notice.” Emily gave the bundle a pat. “They’ll just curse someone for giving them a little extra work. Anyway, I’m counting on the audacity of the idea to pay off.”

  She felt in the hip pocket of her dungarees and pulled out the luggage labels she had taken the previous day from the shipping department. With a ballpoint she wrote on them, then tied them on to the sacking.

  “So that’s what they were for!” exclaimed Hettie. “But they say, ‘Smithsonian Institute--hold for collection’.”

  “Yes--because the Smithsonian Institute calls here regularly for stuff. If it was for anyone else, the shipping people might query it.”

  “Supposing the Smithsonian Institute calls here before we do?”

  Emily shrugged. “That’s a chance we have to take. It’s really the only chance in the whole business. But there just isn’t any other way.”

  They left the packaged bone in the centre of the lift.

  “It’s got to be as obvious as possible,” Emily told them.

  The nannies returned to the window, clambered out and scampered down the ladder to the planetarium roof. They squatted against the parapet and rested.

  “I could do with a cigarette,” said Melissa.

  “Have one of mine--they’re the thlim, wife-beater’s kind.” Susanne held out a pack. They were immediately confiscated by Hettie. “Oh, hell!”

  “Young ladies dinnae smoke in public places. Nor do they use such expressions.”

  “The museum’s closed,” protested Susanne.

  “But we’re here. And we’re public.”

  Emily uncoiled the rope used to lower the bones to the roof and knotted a loop at the end. She poked her head over the low wall and watched the street for several minutes, then she dropped the noose over Susanne’s shoulders and pushed it beneath her arms, checking the knot again. “We’re going to lower you to the ground.”

  “Thank heaventh. I thought you were going to hang me.”

  “Good grief, child. Just hold on tightly until you get down, take off the rope and we’ll pull it up again. Then the others can lower me.”

  With a gasp, Susanne swung out of sight. The nannies, straining on the roof, heard her feet scrabbling against the side of the building. Slowly, they paid out the rope until it slackened. Emily looked over the parapet.

  “All right?”

  “Yeth.” The voice seemed very far away.

  Seconds later, a puffed Emily joined her in the shadows behind the tree.

  “Anyone around?” she whispered.

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll get the lorry.”

  Emily trotted over to the blue Chevvy. It sounded like a tank in the darkness. She backed it against the wall, stopped the motor and climbed out.

  “Send down the bones,” she called upwards.

  “Bring out your dead,” said Susanne.

  “Shhhhh.”

  They loaded the brontosaurus into the truck, then covered it with sacking and most of their camping gear from the dinosaur tent. By the time they had finished stacking it neatly, the tires looked squashed, the springs sagged, but Emily was confident there was enough room for the pelvis. She clambered back into the truck and drove it the few yards to the parking bay.

  “It’ll be safe there till the morning,” she said, when she returned. “Hey, you up there.” She called softly to the three nannies on the planetarium roof. “Haul us back.”

  From the planetarium roof they climbed into the museum and pulled the ladder in behind them. Then they locked the window.

  “We’ll just make it before the guard returns,” whispered Una.

  They returned the ladder to the scaffolding. Then they all stood back and examined the exterior of the dinosaur tent in the early dawn gloom. It resembled a distant mountain range.

  “There you are,” said Emily, in a hushed voice. “It’s almost the same as when we started.”

  The others nodded, wearily.

  Back inside, it seemed quite light in the glare of the lantern. They looked at each other. Their faces were streaked and grubby, their hands, in their gloves, felt gritty and rough.

  “It’s done!” announced Una. “And everything went to plan. Let’s have a celebration cup of tea.”

  “No. I’ve got something better suited to the occasion,” said Emily. She reached over and pulled a suitcase towards her. She dug inside. “Here’s how confident I was we’d succeed.” She held up a bottle that glinted green in the light. “Champagne.”

  The cork popped and a splutter of foam sprayed a vague winebow in the beam of the lantern. Emily wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve.

  “Pass up the cups.” She measured the champagne into the plastic containers. “Here’s to Her Majesty the Queen, Great Britain, world peace--and us,” she toasted. The others murmured tired agreement.

  “I still don’t see why we all have to stay here. Why can’t we go now?” asked Melissa, thinking about Randy in his warm bed.

  “We dinnae all have to stay here,” said Hettie. “But at least three of us should, to clear up. And so we might as well all stay. Och, it’s only for a couple of hours.”

  Sam Ling stood in the centre of his intersection, directing traffic away from the museum building. So far, no one had queried his reasons, but if he were asked, he had rehearsed what he would say in his Peking University English: “To pursue your present course could incorporate you among the vehicular conglomeration of high density ahead.”

  In his less busy moments, Sam Ling tried to find fault with his plan for hijacking the dinosaur from the nanny-ladies. He couldn’t. The plan seemed perfect. The bugging devices in the nanny-ladies’ rooms, and attached to their telephones, had given him--despite their guarded conversations--everything he needed to know, except the location of the proposed hiding place for the bones. This didn’t worry him. His team had only to follow them. And the nanny-ladies weren’t going to make any fast getaway in their old truck. Sam Ling smirked.

  At the intersection at the other end of the museum, Lui Ho groaned. He urgently wanted
to urinate. He looked for a suitable place. The entrance to a basement apartment looked inviting. He’d only managed to get halfway to the steps when a taxi appeared. He ran back to the centre of the road and turned the vehicle down the side street. He made for the basement again. This time, he’d just reached the sidewalk when a stream of traffic headed by an articulated truck came into sight. With one hand in his pocket, clutching himself in an effort to subdue the increasing ache, he walked, with difficulty, back to the centre of the road junction.

  “Heh, Frank,” chuckled the truck driver to his mate, as they obeyed Lui Ho’s weird signal. “You see that cop, signaling us with one hand. He had his legs crossed. Bet he’s got a tight bladder.”

  Frank laughed.

  The truck driver made a quick circuit of the block until he reached the tail of the traffic he’d led into the intersection. Lui Ho still stood there, in the same position, looking like a ballet dancer frozen in the middle of a two-footed pirouette.

  The lorry driver chuckled again. He obeyed Lui Ho’s signal for the second time. Then, as he passed him, he jerked the air-brakes into a hissing roar. His mate pressed down on the motorway klaxon. The shrieking blast screamed into Lui Ho’s unsuspecting ear.

  Inside the truck cab, the driver and his mate laughed.

  Lui Ho stood, unmoving, with Oriental stoicism, until the truck was out of sight. Then he grimly raised one damp leg, and shook it.

  The museum opened. Emily leaned over and nudged Hettie. “Pssst. Wake the others. We’ll have to start cleaning up now. Tell them to work quietly. The painters are back.” Emily scrambled out of her sleeping bag, crept across the plinth and carefully lifted Tarzan’s duffel bag nest off the empty dinosaur frame. She peeped inside, careful not to disturb the dozing bird. She knew how Tarzan liked to welcome each new dawn. She pulled an elastic band from her pocket. “Sorry, dear,” she whispered, clipping it gently over Tarzan’s beak. He looked at her, affronted and cross-eyed. “Not for long,” she reassured him. He blinked, balefully.