One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing

Formerly titled THE GREAT DINOSAUR ROBBERY

The authors wish to thank the American Museum of Natural History and New York’s 20th Police Precinct for their help and amusing advice while researching this book.

With the exception of a certain political leader, the characters in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any living person.

Copyright © 1970 by David Eliades and Robert Forrest Webb.

ISBN: 0-380-00363-5

First published in Great Britain under the title of THE GREAT DINOSAUR ROBBERY.

FROM: The pen of your enlightened Chairman, Mao Tse-tung.

TO: The Department of Geophysical Research, Peking Academy of Sciences.

Comrades:

Following the success of Republican China’s Great Leap Forward, I now present my programme for the conquest of the Capitalist West and their running dogs; diligently applied, it will enable us to triumph, WITHOUT resorting to open warfare--with its inherent risks to ourselves of nuclear retaliation. Code name for this operation is The Great Leap Downward, and it is based on the following principle: If, as the earth’s natural vibrations pass through our beloved country, our entire population of 750,000,000 were to jump to the ground from a height of about six feet, the resulting increase of tremors would be carried across the Pacific. Huge ground quakes and tidal waves would sweep over the whole of the United States’ West Coast, destroying everything. Island countries such as Britain, and the whole of Northern Europe, would be devastated. Neither would the Soviet revisionists be spared. The forces of nature would be blamed. And the world would be ours.

However, in order that we may achieve best results, it is imperative that The Great Leap Downward is made at the time when the earth’s vibrations are at their peak. I am assured they will reach their highest level of the century sometime this year. The duty of your Department is to notify me of the month, the day, the hour, and the very second when this maximum tremor is expected. Then, with the aid of our local party leaders and controllers, we will instruct my obedient followers, who will climb to the top of their jumping platforms and await my signal to leap.

CAUTION: If the Western countries learn of our scheme to use a geophysical weapon, they may be inspired to reverse the result by getting their own population to jump at the critical moment. Therefore, the keyword for our success is SECRECY.

Your beloved Chairman,

There’s an English Earl among the exhibits of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He is Quincey de Bapeau Charmaine-Bott, the 25th Earl of Hastings--the prized result of nine hundred years of selective breeding within Britain’s dwindling herd of aristocracy.

But, as a majestic rose is grafted on to the rootstock of the common briar in order to attain its full beauty, so the Earl’s ancestry goes back to a peasant farmer with the largest dungheap in the whole of Normandy. In fact, in the year A.D. 1065, the fumes rising from the rancid sewage just outside Rene Bott’s hovel were so thick that even flies were reluctant to settle.

Six weeks of continuous rain in the early spring had softened the stinking mound, so that it spread across the yard till it lay slopping, several inches deep, in front of Rene Bott’s doorway. It continually amazed him that only six sows and a boar had produced such an astonishing amount. He felt it was a pity that there was less of a market for pig-dung than for bacon.

Rene Bott, and his home, stank. He didn’t wear shoes, so his gnarled toes gathered the soggy manure and deposited much of it in his living quarters, where it carpeted the stamped earth.

The water he drew from the well, only ten metres from the pig midden, was suspiciously brown. He used it for drinking. It was too dirty to wash in--so he didn’t wash.

When William of Normandy decided to invade England and began gathering his army, villages throughout the countryside each nominated a man to serve.

Unanimously, the village of Petit Bapeau nominated Bott. They’d wondered for years how they could rid themselves of the odious fog that hung over their valley. To them, the war was a godsend.

Bott was marched, at the end of a ten-foot-long catchpole, to the duckpond. He was soaked for three hours, then scrubbed with birch besoms and lye, until his flesh shone a bright, polished pink. But the pig smell lingered on. Despite this, the people of Petit Bapeau considered him fit to serve their King.

After ten weeks of intensive training, in preparation for the invasion of England, Sergeant Paul L’Apout described Rene Bott as follows: Lazy, untidy, dirty, smelly, inefficient, mean, totally useless as a pikeman, lacking any form of courage or skill, and fit only as second-rate guard for the army’s livestock, providing that it was livestock that he, Sergeant Paul L’Apout, wasn’t expected to eat.

Rene Bott became a muleteer. His job was to lead the animals, laden with spare bows and arrows, up from the beach-head at Pevensey Bay. Naturally, he was closely--but not too closely--supervised by Sergeant L’Apout.

It was the fourteenth day of October, 1066, a warm afternoon. The forward soldiery had been fighting since dawn, and the defending army was split into small groups, battling around temporary palisades. Bott’s skin was leaking sweat as he unloaded bundles of arrows from his mule team. He stacked them alongside the spare bows piled against an oak tree in a copse. He was taking a brief rest, before unpacking the last of his mules, when a squealing grunt startled him. A wild boar, panicked by the noise of the nearby battle, charged into the thicket. It stopped eight feet away from Bott. For a few seconds it hesitated, recognizing the smell of a herd of pigs, but mystified by the sight of a man. Bott’s tongue flicked around his lips. Greedily, he calculated the profit he would make from his hungry comrades, and grabbed the nearest bow. He slotted an arrow to the bowstring, and hauled back his powerful arm. He took a step to the left, to get in a broadside shot. It was characteristic of Rene Bott that he should trip over his ill-fastened cross-gartering at that critical moment. His misdirected arrow ricocheted with a clang off the French Sergeant L’Apout’s iron nosepiece, giving him thereafter permanently-raised eyebrows, whistled upwards through a flight of pigeons, and began its descent.

History records that the English knight, Sir Henry Beagleditch, ever concerned for his liege’s spotless public image, remarked, at that instant of battle:

“Your Majesty, beware ... A flock of pigeons flyeth overhead.”

King Harold looked up. Rene Bott’s arrow struck. Harold fell dead.

Two men changed their names that day. William of Normandy became William the Conqueror of England. Rene Bott was dug, barely alive, from the bog where he’d been thrown by the arrow-dented Sergeant L’Apout, and was elevated to the peerage by the grateful King William. He became the first Earl of Hastings. He altered his name to Rene de Bapeau Charmaine (after his favourite sow) -Bott, and was given a large parcel of English ground. He also secured a generous pension, and a position at the King’s right elbow--the latter on condition that he bathed publicly at Yuletide and on Midsummer’s Day.

The de Bapeau Charmaine-Botts became staunchly British, defenders of the Crown in war and peace. Every generation served the realm, and many heads of the family lost their lives in royal service. Several de Bapeau Charmaine-Botts died in the Crusades, others at Agincourt, Bannockburn, Crecy, Bosworth and in a dozen other battles.

When war became a middle-class occupation, the family turned to diplomacy. Sons were educated at Eton and Oxford, and fought for the British cause in embassies abroad. Daughters always married financiers.

The last of the male line of de Bapeau Charmaine- Botts is the Earl in the New York Natural History Museum. But unlike many of the exhibits, he is standing outside a glass case--looking in. He is twenty-eight years old, and is frequently named in
The Tailor and Cutter
as England’s best-dressed nobleman. In the
Illustrated London News
and the social columns, he is described as the country’s most eligible bachelor. And, in British Foreign Office memos, as the most reliable, trustworthy, discreet and fearless wearer of the Silver Greyhound, the insignia of the Queen’s Couriers.

The 25th Earl is leaning on his umbrella--tightly rolled, cavalry style--in the main hall of the museum. His narrow face is sun-tanned beneath his curly- brimmed bowler. He has just arrived from Hawaii.

He looks at the museum clock, then checks it against the gold pocket-watch chained to his waistcoat. He has six minutes and thirty-one seconds before he meets his contact.

He swings the umbrella behind his back, paces over to the Theodore Roosevelt showcases, and stands there for a moment. He appears to be examining the president-explorer’s buckskin clothing, but in reality he’s keeping a lookout behind him in the plate glass of the display. Not that he’s nervous--the de Bapeau Charmaine-Botts are noted for the iciness of their sang-froid while facing danger, and the 25th Earl, Queen’s Courier, has faced it many times. He’s watchful because he carries microfilm of Chairman Mao’s plans for the Great Leap Downward, and he’s been told that Mao ordered the Tse Eih Aei, the sinister Chinese spy network, to use any means to stop the secret from being blown. He is cautious also because he knows the way these Chinese agents work. The six Britons who successfully ferried the information out of Peking all subsequently died hideous, vengeful deaths. That’s why the 25th Earl now carries a cyanide phial wedged in his cheek. What he doesn’t know, however, is that the man he is waiting for in the museum is also dead--murdered and buried ten minutes ago in four small boxes in the Canine Garden of Rest, and bewailed by four theatrically tearful groups of Oriental mourners. The 25th Earl casually flipped the middle button of his Savile Row Suit and looked at his pocket-watch again. Five more minutes. He tapped his heels together and strolled, past the information desk, towards the other entrance on West 77th Street.

The giant-sized Haida-Indian canoe creaked as he passed. The Earl’s eyes hardened. He gripped his umbrella a little tighter. A shadow moved. The Earl ducked, and a bone-tipped war lance hissed through the air and stuck, quivering, in the body of a stuffed bear. He hung his umbrella on the shaft and turned to face the boat. The dugout crew of painted braves came to life, climbed over the side of the boat, and slowly, in a grim and silent half-circle, moved towards him.

There was the chatter of a party of rescuing schoolchildren. The Earl’s attackers hesitated as the footsteps approached. Then they scrambled back into the boat to resume their previous poses as slave paddlers. The children, schoolteachers and guides appeared. The 25th Earl retrieved his umbrella, nodded to a schoolmistress, who eyed the impaled bear suspiciously. He sprinted up the stairs, keeping close to the wall. He made for the auditorium. From the darkness came a hiccupping sound, and a bullet picked at his sleeve. “Dammit,” he thought, “they’re closing in.” He ducked into a side hall, glanced around quickly, and pulled a neat Georgian silver snuff-box from his waistcoat pocket. He flicked it open and shook a miniscule red and white striped cylinder into his hand. He studied the monster exhibit and vaulted on to the plinth. He reached up and dropped the cylinder into the mouth of the largest of the beasts.

He stepped off, smoothed down his jacket, adjusted his shirtcuff length and checked his tie knot. He smiled. Now it was safe. He’d collect later, and rearrange the hand-over.

Quincey de Bapeau Charmaine-Bott smiled again. Not long, now, and he’d be back in Hawaii, with the sun and the sophisticated young American heiress he’d left by the swimming pool of the Surfrider. Skirting the long hall which had hidden the gunman, and avoiding exhibits which could conceal further attackers, the 25th Earl reached the exit facing Central Park West.

A drably-clothed Oriental tourist moved towards him. Sunlight slanted off the tall walls of the building by the Theodore Roosevelt equestrian statue. The 25th Earl paused to accustom his eyes to the brilliant glare. Then he straightened his regimental tie and began a brisk walk down the steps. Half way, he looked back towards the entrance.

He trod on something soft, stumbled slightly and grabbed a well-rounded body for support.

“M-M-Madam . . . most f-f-frightfully . . “ he began. A stout children’s nurse, grey-haired and considerably affronted by having her bosom strangled, let go the handle of her push-chair and hit him across the side of his face with her handbag.

“How dare you, you sex maniac!” roared her Scots-accented voice.

“G-G-Good God, N-N-Nanny Hettie,” gasped the 25th Earl.

The nanny looked. Her eyes squinted. “My, my . . . Maister Quincey!” she said. Her voice hardened, slightly. “And who taught you to be a rapist blackguard?” She stooped and rubbed her ankle. “Kicking your nanny . . .” She stood, tried her weight on the foot, then smiled at him. “Wheesht, and look at you --a Laird, perspiring in public!”