Harriman.”
“Just a routine follow-up, Dr. Sherman. Mind?”
Silence.
“The package was addressed to you?”
“To the department,” came the terse reply.
“No return address?”
“No.”
“And it was full of grit?”
“That’s right.”
“What kind?”
A hesitation. “Corundum grit.”
“How much is corundum grit worth?”
“I don’t know offhand. Not much.”
“I see. That’s all, thanks.”
He hung up to find Nora looking at him.
“It’s rude to use your cell phone in a pub,” she said.
“Hey, I’m a reporter. It’s my job to be rude.”
“Satisfied?”
“No.”
“A package of grit came to the museum. It was leaking, it freaked someone out. End of story.”
“I don’t know.” Smithback took another long sip of the Glen Grant. “That guy sounded awfully nervous just now.”
“Dr. Sherman? He’s high-strung.”
“He sounded more than high-strung. He sounded frightened.”
He opened his cell phone again, and Nora groaned. “If you start making calls, I’m heading home.”
“Come on, Nora. One more call, then we’ll head over to the Rattlesnake Cafe for dinner. I gotta make this call now. It’s already after five and I want to catch people before they leave.”
Quickly, he dialed information, got a number, punched it in. “Department of Health and Mental Services?”
After being bounced around a bit, he finally got the lab he wanted.
“Sentinel lab,” came a voice.
“To whom am I speaking?”
“Richard. And to whom am I speaking?”
“Hi, Richard, this is Bill Smithback of the Times. You in charge?”
“I am now. The boss just went home.”
“Lucky for you. Can I ask a few questions?”
“You said you’re a reporter?”
“That’s right.”
“I suppose so.”
“This is the lab that handled that package from the museum this morning?”
“Sure is.”
“What was in it?”
Smithback heard a snort. “Diamond grit.”
“Not corundum?”
“No. Diamond.”
“Did you examine the grit yourself?”
“Yup.”
“What’d it look like?”
“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?”
