Thefts of Nick Velvet (11 page)

“Ravens and crows? Well, they’re both members of the same family, but ravens are larger, and they differ in many ways. Ravens have a wedge-shaped tail, while a crow’s tail is shorter and more gently rounded. They sound different, too, and ravens are more aggressive. Their nests are larger, and they lay more eggs. And of course there’s a great deal of superstition attached to ravens.”

Nick watched the birds circle in brief flight inside the cage. He didn’t realize at first that the keeper had moved out of earshot to attend to his chores. He asked, without looking around, “What sort of superstition?”

A girl’s voice answered him. “In Grimm’s fairy tales the seven ravens were seven enchanted brothers.”

He turned, startled, and faced a slim blonde girl with pale blue eyes, an upturned nose, and long slender legs. She was the best-looking thing he’d seen in London so far. “Were you speaking to me?”

“I just said—”

He grinned. “You know a great deal about ravens. And fairy tales.”

“You’re American, aren’t you?”

“Guilty. But you’re not British.”

“Irish, actually. My name is Pat McGowan.”

She paused, waiting, so he told her, “Mine’s Nick Velvet. I’m over here for a few days on business.”

“Do you like London?”

“The people one meets are certainly friendly enough.”

She blushed. “I have a confession to make, Mr. Velvet.”

“Let me guess. You followed me here.”

Her eyes widened. “How did you—?”

Nick smiled at her astonishment. “You mentioned seven ravens, and I don’t believe in coincidences. Who are you, really?”

“Just who I said I am. But you’re right. I did follow you here.”

He stared into her pale blue eyes. “Why would you do a thing like that?”

“You steal things, don’t you?”

“Not from pretty Irish girls, I don’t.”

“I represent people with money, Mr. Velvet. They’re willing to pay. We tried to contact you in America, but we learned you were already en route here.”

Nick was beginning to see it clearly. “Don’t tell me that you want me to steal the seven ravens before they’re presented to the Queen on Wednesday morning.”

“You amaze me! Now how did you know that?”

“I do have a certain reputation in such matters, and since you’d already referred to the ravens and said you tried to contact me in America, it seemed a likely guess.” It also explained why Harry Haskins had been so eager to hire Nick to prevent the theft of the ravens. It wasn’t that he wanted a non-Britisher who could be out of reach of the press. Rather, it was simply that Haskins had discovered Pat McGowan’s plan to hire Nick and had got to him first with a larger bid.

“Then you are agreeable?” the girl asked him.

“My price is high.”

“We know your price, and Mr. Stavanger is prepared to meet it.” The dedicated intensity of her face reminded him of a girl he’d known in his youth. She’d worn spangled tights and twirled a flaming baton at political rallies in lower Manhattan, and afterward she had discussed the world’s problems with Nick over pitchers of cold beer.

“Who is Mr. Stavanger?” he asked. “What group do you represent?”

“The group is anti-British and that’s all I care about. I fought the British in the streets of Belfast last summer and I’ll fight them here in London this summer!”

“All right. When do I meet Stavanger?”

“You don’t. There’s no need to. Our money is good, believe me.” She dipped into her purse and came up with a handful of crumpled ten-pound notes. “Here’s a hundred quid, just to prove we mean business. Steal those ravens by Wednesday morning and deliver them to me, and I’ll give you the rest of the money.”

He hesitated only a moment. Then he took the crumpled bills and slipped them into his pocket. He looked up at the ravens in their cage, then back at the girl. “Miss McGowan, you’ve got yourself a deal.”

There was a certain difficulty about being hired and paid by both sides, and Nick only began to realize it that night as he strolled through Piccadilly with the theater-bound crowds. Either he stole the ravens or he did not steal them, and whichever happened, one side would refuse to pay him. He’d not been able to resist Haskins’ offer, and likewise the money offered by the girl had tempted him. If only there was a way to collect payment from both sides …

In the morning he thought he had a plan, so he phoned Haskins at the number he’d been given. After the usual channeling through governmental secretaries he heard the Englishman’s voice on the other end. Nick talked quickly, outlining part of what he had in mind.

But Haskins was immediately critical. “You want to substitute
crows
for the Gola ravens? I’m certain the Ambassador from Gola would never agree to that.”

“Could I talk to him?”

Haskins hesitated, pondering the request, and finally agreed. “All right. His name is Anson Gibellion. You can find him at their Embassy on South Audley Street. I’ll ring him up and say you’re coming.”

Though it was only a few blocks from the impressive American Embassy building in Grosvenor Square, the Embassy of the tiny nation of Gola was drab and crowded—a narrow, bleak-fronted building that Nick almost passed unnoticed. A desk had been set up just inside the door, and a moon-faced little man behind it inspected Nick uncertainly before he announced his arrival on the intercom. After a wait of five minutes Nick was directed to the office of the Ambassador.

Anson Gibellion was a large man whose face reflected a European heritage. He greeted Nick with a nod and a handshake. “Haskins told me you’d come by, Mr. Velvet. He explained your position in this matter.”

Nick nodded. “Then you know it’s about the ravens. I’ve been employed to prevent their theft before the formal presentation, and my suggestion was that they be protected by substituting crows, and then bringing in the ravens later.”

Anson Gibellion seemed truly shocked. “But the birds
must
be ravens! Otherwise the gift has no meaning! You see, the seven ravens represent the seven stages of our nation’s history—our early independence, our colonial days under Spain, France, England, Belgium, and Portugal, and finally our present independence. The raven is a sacred bird in Gola, worshipped by our people and appearing on our national flag. A story is told of the first raven that came in the night to lay an egg in the home of our aged leader. He used the egg to restore the blackness to his silvery hair, and then went forth like a raven to do battle with Gola’s foes.” He smiled apologetically. “Of course that was long ago. The ancient Greeks also believed that a raven’s egg would restore the blackness of the hair.”

Nick nodded. “The sleek blackness of a raven’s feathers.”

“The lustrous blackness,” Gibellion corrected Nick. “The ebony bird, as your writer Edgar Allan Poe called him. Follow me, please, Mr. Velvet.”

He led the way down a short hall to a little room at the end. There, occupying the entire surface of a table, was a large gilded cage made of fine wire. It housed seven great flapping birds, black as night, yet with a radiance that paradoxically seemed to contain all the colors of the rainbow.

“You tell me
these
birds can be replaced with mere crows, Mr. Velvet? Impossible!”

Nick stared at the ravens, taking in their rare beauty. They seemed even larger—and more alive—than those he’d seen at the London zoo. “All right,” he agreed at last. “It was just an idea. But tell me why you and Haskins suspect an attempt to steal the birds.”

“Frankly, the British government is more concerned than we are. That man Haskins has been haunting me ever since the ravens arrived in London. The theft of the ravens would accomplish very little.”

“It would embarrass your government, wouldn’t it?”

“Only temporarily.” He smiled slightly. “It could cost me my position here, of course, but our President would have new birds brought in within a day’s time.”

As if to accentuate the remark, one of the ravens gave a high-pitched cry and flapped its wings. Nick eyed the bird reflectively, then excused himself and left.

By Tuesday afternoon he’d decided to try it the other way around. If Anson Gibellion would not allow him to substitute crows for ravens, perhaps he could still convince Pat McGowan and the mysterious Mr. Stavanger that such a substitution had taken place. He took a cab to Harrods department store and reached the pet shop on an upper floor just before closing time. He talked for a few moments with a pretty clerk in a green smock, and then left with a list of other London pet shops that kept evening hours.

After dinner he placed a call to Harry Haskins. The government man wasn’t at his office, but the operator put Nick through to his home. When Haskins finally came on the phone Nick asked, “What do you know about a man named Stavanger?”

Haskins sighed into the phone. “To tell you the truth, Velvet, he’s the reason I hired you. Stavanger is a revolutionary, and something of a mystery man. He may be trying to foment a revolt in Gola. In any event, we received a tip that his group would try to hire you to steal the ravens. That’s when I decided to get to you first.”

“I see,” Nick said. He’d suspected as much.

“Will you be at the Palace for the ceremony tomorrow morning?”

“Ill be there,” Nick promised.

“Good, good! I’ll meet you at the visitors’ gate.”

Nick hung up and took out the list of pet shops.

The morning was warm but misty, with a reminder of nighttime fog still lingering near the river. Nick reached the visitors’ gate at Buckingham Palace a full hour before the ceremonies were scheduled to begin, but already the long black limousines were beginning to arrive with the dignitaries of the day.

Haskins was waiting for him, and they walked quickly past the uniformed guards and across the courtyard to the arched entranceway of the Palace itself.

“You’re sure nothing will go wrong?” he asked Nick.

“The ravens are perfectly safe. You don’t have a worry.”

“These official ceremonies always make me nervous. Perhaps the job is giving me an ulcer.”

They passed through an outer sitting room and presently found themselves in a large high-ceilinged waiting room full of Victorian furniture and elaborately hung tapestries. Looking at the room, Nick remarked, “The royal family has probably lived here for centuries.”

“Not really,” Haskins told him. “Only since 1837. Before that it was the home of the Duke of Buckingham. There are more than six hundred rooms in—”

He was interrupted by the arrival of Anson Gibellion, accompanied by two men carrying the covered raven cage. “Good morning, gentlemen,” the Ambassador said, extending his hand to each of them in turn. “The President of Gola will arrive in fifteen minutes for the presentation. All is in order.” He turned to smooth over the thin satin drape that hung over the cage.

“It seems as if you’ve earned your money, Velvet,” Haskins was saying. He’d barely finished the words when there was a shattering of glass from the far side of the room. They turned, startled, toward the tall window that overlooked the Palace courtyard.

A large truck had backed into it, breaking the glass, and even as the guards came running, the high-ceilinged waiting room was suddenly filled with a confusion of darting blackness. The truck had released scores—perhaps hundreds—of flying, chirping, swooping birds into the room.

Nick stepped back and simply stared. There were blackbirds and crows and ravens and martins and grackles, and in that moment of supreme confusion they had only one thing in common. They were all black, all of varying intensities of night. Within minutes the waiting room was swarming with guards and detectives and servants, all trying to recapture the birds or at least drive them outside. It was a fantastic, mind-bending sight, like something out of Kafka, and Nick could only stand in one corner and let the vision of it almost hypnotize him.

Finally, when the room had been cleared of all but the most persistent birds, Anson Gibellion remembered the ravens in their covered cage. He lifted one edge of the satin drape and peered inside, then shouted. “Velvet! Haskins! Come here! My ravens are gone!”

Nick looked past him into the large square cage. It was indeed empty.

During the next hour Nick found himself being questioned by a variety of Scotland Yard and government investigators, and there were moments when he imagined himself wasting away in a British prison for the rest of his days. The driver of the truck that had broken the window and released the birds was arrested as he tried to escape from the Palace courtyard on foot, but he proved to be a dim-witted foreigner who could barely speak English. He told of being hired and instructed the previous night by a bearded stranger, and furnished with a Gola Embassy pass to get him through the gate.

As the Scotland Yard people took him away for further questioning, Nick heard one detective on the phone, ordering checks of London pet shops for recent purchasers of black birds. Nick began to realize that the case was being treated with all the importance of a multiple murder. Only a few inexpensive birds had been stolen, but they’d been stolen from Buckingham Palace.

Presently Harry Haskins reappeared, looking grim from his own bout of having been questioned. He sat down next to Nick and said, “Well, I’ve got you off the hook, Velvet, but it took some doing. It seems Scotland Yard has a complete dossier on you, dating from the time you stole a toy mouse from a film studio in Paris. They were convinced this was your job, too, until I explained that you’d actually been hired to protect the birds.”

“I wasn’t too successful at that,” Nick admitted.

Anson Gibellion joined them then, his round face a weary web of wrinkles. “I am undone,” he told them sadly. “The President of my country is outraged that such a thing could happen under my very eyes. I am being recalled to Gola in disgrace.”

“I still can’t understand how it was accomplished,” Haskins said. “Were the ravens simply released to fly away with the others?”

Nick nodded. “Seven extra black birds weren’t even noticed in that mob scene.”

“But someone had to open the cage,” Haskins insisted. “Of course.”

“But who?”