He took the white envelope in his hand and tipped it out on a sheet of paper lying on the specimen table. A pile of blue grit poured out. He pointed to it.
“The Queen of Narnia.”
He took out another envelope, tipped it over into a purple pile. “The Heart of Eternity.”
One after another he emptied the little envelopes. “The Indigo Ghost. Ultima Thule. The Fourth of July. The Zanzibar Green.”
It was like a steady drumbeat, one pounding blow after another. Collopy stared in horror at the tiny piles of glittering sand.
“This is a sick joke,” he finally said. “Those can’t be the museum’s diamonds.”
“The exact hues of many of these famous diamonds are quantifiable,” Sherman replied. “I have hard data on them. I tested the fragments. They’re diamonds with exactly the right hue. There can be no mistake. There’s nothing else they could be.”
“But surely not all of them,” said Collopy. “He can’t have destroyed them all.”
“That package contained 2.42 pounds of diamond grit. That’s equivalent to about 5,500 carats. Adding in the amount that spilled, the original shipment would have contained roughly 6,000 carats. I added up the carat weights of the diamonds that were stolen…” His voice trailed off.
“Well?” Collopy asked at last, no longer able to contain himself.
“The total weight was 6,042 carats,” Sherman said in a whisper.
A long silence filled the laboratory, the only sound the faint hum of the fluorescent lights. At last Collopy raised his head and looked Sherman in the eye.
“Dr. Sherman,” he began, but his voice cracked and he was forced to start over. “Dr. Sherman. This information must not leave this room.”
Sherman, already pale, went white as a ghost. But after a moment, he nodded silently.
4
William Smithback Jr. entered the dark and fragrant confines of the pub known as the Bones and scanned the noisy crowd. It was five o’clock and the place was packed with museum staff, all lubricating themselves after the long and dusty hours spent laboring in the granite pile across the street. Why in the world they all wanted to hang out in a place whose every square inch of wall space was covered with bones, after escaping just such an environment at work, was a mystery to him. These days he himself came to the Bones for one reason only: the forty-year-old single malt that the bartender kept hidden under the bar. At thirty-six dollars a shot, it wasn’t exactly a bargain, but it sure beat having your insides corroded by three dollars’ worth of Cutty Sark.
He spied the copper-colored hair of his new bride, Nora Kelly, at their usual table in the back. He waved, sauntered over, and struck a dramatic pose.
“ ‘But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?’ ” he intoned. Then he kissed the back of her hand briefly, kissed her lips rather more attentively, and took a seat across the table. “How are things?”
“The museum continues to be an exciting place to work.”
“You mean that bioterror scare this morning?”
She nodded. “Someone delivered a package for the Mineralogy Department, leaking some kind of powder. They thought it was anthrax or something.”
“I heard about that. In fact, brother Bryce filed a story on that today.” Bryce Harriman was Smithback’s colleague and archrival at the Times, but Smithback had secured himself a little breathing room with some recent—and very dramatic—scoops.
The hangdog waiter came by and stood by the table, silently waiting to take their drink orders.
“I’ll take two fingers of the Glen Grant,” Smithback said. “The good stuff.”
“A glass of white wine, please.”
The waiter shuffled off.
“So it caused a stir?” Smithback asked.
Nora giggled. “You should have seen Greenlaw, the guy who found it. He was so sure he was dying they had to carry him out on a stretcher, protective suit and all.”
“Greenlaw? I don’t know him.”
“He’s the new V.P. for administration. Just hired from Con Ed.”
“So what’d it turn out to be? The anthrax, I mean.”
“Grinding powder.”
Smithback chuckled as he accepted his drink. “Grinding powder. Oh, God, that’s perfect.” He swirled the amber liquid around in the balloon glass and took a sip. “How’d it happen?”
“It seems the package was damaged in transit, and the stuff was dribbling out. A messenger dropped it off with Curly, and Greenlaw just happened by.”
“Curly? The old guy with the pipe?”
“That’s the one.”
“He’s still at the museum?”