“Under coarse examination, like a sack of brown sand.”
Smithback thought for a moment. “How’d you figure out it was diamond grit?”
“By the index of refraction of the particles.”
“I see. And it couldn’t be confused with corundum?”
“No way.”
“You also examined it under a microscope, I assume?”
“Yup.”
“What’d it look like?”
“It was beautiful, like a bunch of little colored crystals.”
Smithback felt a sudden tingling at the nape of his neck. “Colored? What do you mean?”
“Bits and fragments of every color of the rainbow. I had no idea diamond grit was so pretty.”
“That didn’t strike you as odd?”
“A lot of things that are ugly to the human eye look beautiful under the microscope. Like bread mold, for instance—or sand, for that matter.”
“But you said the grit looked brown.”
“Only when blended together.”
“I see. What’d you do with the package?”
“We sent it back to the museum and chalked it up as a false alarm.”
“Thanks.”
Smithback slowly shut the phone. Impossible. It couldn’t be.
He looked up to find Nora staring at him, annoyance clear on her face. He reached over and took her hand. “I’m really sorry, but I’ve got another call to make.”
She crossed her arms. “And I thought we were going to have a nice evening together.”
“One more call. Please. I’ll let you listen in. Believe me, this is going to be good.”
Nora’s cheeks grew pink. Smithback knew that look: his wife was getting steamed.
Quickly, he dialed the museum again, put the phone on speaker. “Dr. Sherman?”
“Yes?”
“This is Smithback from the Times again.”
“Mr. Smithback,” came the shrill reply, “I’ve already told you everything I know. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a train to catch.”
“I know that what arrived at the museum this morning was not corundum grit.”
Silence.
“I know what it really was.”
More silence.
“The museum’s diamond collection.”
In the silence, Nora looked at him sharply.
“Dr. Sherman, I’m coming over to the museum to talk to you. If Dr. Collopy is still around, he would be wise to be there—or, at least, to make himself available by phone. I don’t know what you told my colleague Harriman, but you’re not going to fob the same stuff off onto me. It’s bad enough that the museum allowed its diamond collection—the most valuable in the world—to be stolen. I’m certain the museum trustees wouldn’t want a cover-up scandal to follow hard on the heels of the revelation that the same diamond collection had just been reduced to industrial-strength grinding powder. Are we clear on that, Dr. Sherman?”
It was a very weak and shaky voice that finally issued from the cell phone. “It wasn’t a cover-up, I assure you. It was, ah, just a delay in the announcement.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes. Don’t go anywhere.”
Smithback immediately made another call, to his editor at the Times. “Fenton? You know that piece on the anthrax scare at the museum that Bryce Harriman filed? Better kill that. I’ve got the real story, and it’s a bombshell. Hold the front page for me.”
He shut the phone and looked up. Nora was no longer mad. She was white.
“Diogenes Pendergast,” she whispered. “He destroyed the diamonds?”
Smithback nodded.
“But why?”
“That’s a very good question, Nora. But now, darling, with my infinite apologies, and an IOU for dinner at the Rattlesnake Café, I have to go. I’ve got a couple of interviews to conduct and a story to file before midnight if I’m going to make the national edition. I’m really, really sorry. Don’t wait up for me.”
He rose and gave her a kiss.
“You’re amazing,” she said in an awed voice.
Smithback hesitated, feeling an unaccustomed sensation. It took him a moment to realize he was blushing.
5
Dr. Frederick Watson Collopy stood behind the great nineteenth-century leather-topped desk of his corner office in the museum’s southeast tower. The huge desk was bare, save for a copy of the morning’s New York Times. The newspaper had not been opened. It did not need to be: already, Collopy could see everything he needed to see, on the front page, above the fold, in the largest type the staid Times dared use.
The cat was out of the bag, and it could not be put back in.
Collopy believed that he occupied the greatest position in American science: director of the New York Museum of Natural History. His mind drifted from the subject of the article to the names of his distinguished forebears: Ogilvy, Scott, Throckmorton. His goal, his one ambition, was to add his name to that august registry—and not fall into ignominy like his two immediate predecessors: the late and not-much-lamented Winston Wright or the inept Olivia Merriam.