Nobody's Perfect

Porculey wouldn't have stopped anyway. He was climbing an upended mohair sofa, scrambling over pillows and library tables and candelabra up toward the ceiling, with half a dozen hands clutching at his ankles. They were dragging him back, dragging him down, and Porculey was shrieking a babble of absurd explanation, when all at once a voice from behind them all said:

"Ullo ullo ullo, what's this, then?"

They looked back, all of them draped on the stored goods like a quartet of mountain climbers who've just heard a rumble, and coming through the doorway was a tall-helmeted young police constable in uniform, pushing his bicycle.

Chapter 15

The fact was, the driver of that Jensen Interceptor III was locally a Very Important Person. Sir Francis Monvich, his name was, he was fifty-six and very rich, and when his eighty-three-year-old father died he would become the 14th Viscount Glengorn, which in that neighborhood was pretty good. When Sir Francis Monvich's Jensen was hit both front and rear, and when the hooligan who hit it in front promptly ran away into the surrounding countryside, the local constabulary could be expected to take a very serious view of the situation. They would consider their position. They would proceed at once to find some individuals who would assist the police in their enquiries.

"That way," Sir Francis informed the first pair of constables to arrive on the scene, and pointed dramatically toward the winding track leading uphill next to the barn. These constables were on bicycles, which were more a hindrance than a help on the path they were now required to take, though they did get the odd terrifying downhill plunge between the uphill plods. They had reached Castle Macdough, and were studying the empty Vauxhall and Mini, when another pair of constables arrived, these in a white police car. All four spread out, shining their flashlights this way and that, the first two keeping their bicycles with them to prevent their being stolen by concealed miscreants, and thus it was that Porculey, having been forced to hide in another doorway while Zane walked back to the main room from locking up Dortmunder and Kelp, stepped out of his hiding place to see a police officer with a bicycle coming this way, flashing his light from side to side. In panic, Porculey ran on tippy-toe back to the room with the others, and realized just one second too late what a mistake he'd made.

The constable – PC Quillin by name – failed to see Porculey run ahead of him down the corridor, but he did hear the yelling that followed, and he certainly heard the shot. So did the other three constables searching the vicinity, and so did two more constables, just arriving in another police car.

PC Quillin entered the room. Zane thought briefly of shooting him, shooting everybody else, taking the painting, and starting all over again in a new location with an entirely different crowd.

Three more constables entered the room. Zane decided not to shoot anybody. In fact, he tucked his pistol away in among the hassocks and halberds.

Macdough and Chauncey started telling different lies to the constables.

More constables entered the room.

Porculey started telling every truth he could think of.

Zane didn't speak at all, but smiled amiably (as he thought) at all the constables.

PC Quillin, having noticed that the long tubular package seemed to be of general interest to these babbling crooks, took it from Porculey's willing hands and opened it.

Chauncey tried to bribe a constable.

The constable – PC Baligil – gave him a rough unfriendly glower. "American, are you?"

"Canadian," said Chauncey.

"We'll sort this out at the station," PC Baligil decided. "And which of you has the firearm?"

Firearm? Firearm? After the general denials, PC Quillin made a quick search and within thirty seconds found the thing hanging from a halberd. "Careful about fingerprints," PC Baligil told him.

Macdough turned an embittered eye on Chauncey. "I blame you for this entire thing," he said.

"And I blame you," Chauncey responded. "You cheap opportunist crook."

"Blame each other at the station," PC Baligil suggested, "where we can take it all down. Come along."

They were reluctant, but they went along, complaining at one another and trying out new lies on the constables, who paid very little attention. "We might as well see are there any more," PC Baligil said to a young constable called PC Tarvy. "We'll just have a look at these other rooms along here."

So PC Tarvy took one side of the corridor and PC Baligil the other, flashing their lights around one debris-packed interior after another. "It's nothin but lumber rooms," PC Tarvy said.

"Oh, they'll have a deal to tell us, that lot," PC Baligil answered. "All stolen goods, this, I shouldn't be surprised." And he turned to see PC Tarvy removing the bar from a locked room. "Now, then," he said. "Who'd be in a room locked on the outside?"

"I just thought I'd look." And PC Tarvy pulled open the door and shone his light on nothing but more of the same: furniture, old trunks, a cluttered pile of armor on the floor. (In truth, there was no reason these days to keep that door barred; but where else would you keep the bar?)

"Come along, Tarvy," said PC Baligil, and PC Tarvy turned away, leaving that door not only unbarred but open (which is how bars get lost), as he and PC Baligil went up to join the other constables and their prisoners.

Dawn comes early in the highlands in the summer. It had been well after midnight when the Mini had turned off the A 9 and the Vauxhall had ricocheted off that Jensen, and now it was after two in the morning, and the first faint lines of color outlined the mountains to the east as the constables distributed themselves and their bicycles and their prisoners into the four cars and went away.

For several minutes, there was only silence in the moonlit ruin of Castle Macdough. The orange line defining the eastern mountains grew a bit broader, lightening toward a pinkish yellow. Then a kind of clanking sound was heard from deep within the bowels of the castle, and heavily, thud by thud, a suit of armor came up the steps. It stopped when it reached the courtyard, looking left and right, creaking and squeaking with every movement. Then it called, in Dortmunder's voice, "They're gone."

And up came a second suit of armor, slow and clanking like the first. (These two complete sets had been lying on the floor, sprinkled over with stray additional bits and pieces of armor, when PC Tarvy had shone his light into the room.) The second suit of armor, speaking in Kelp's voice, said, "That was a close one."

"It was more than close," the first suit said. "There goes Chauncey with the ten grand he promised us, and the jewels and stuff still in his house, and us with no money for airplane tickets."

"I was thinking about that," the second suit said. "While we were lying on the floor down there. And I think I got a terrific idea."

"Oh?"

"Listen to this. We fake a skyjacking, but what we really do–" And at that point the eager voice faltered to a stop, because the first suit had turned its blank metal face and was gazing fixedly at the second suit. "Dortmunder?" said the second suit. "Something wrong?"

Instead of answering, the first suit raised a mailed fist and swung it in a great half circle, but the second suit jumped (clank!) backward out of the way, so that the first, following the momentum around, nearly but not quite fell down the steps. Balance regained, it advanced on the second suit, which backed away, saying "Dortmunder? Don't be like this. You'll regret it when you're calm."

The first suit kept moving forward, swinging the right arm again and this time striking a spark from a slight knick against the second suit's nose.