Page 45 - Unlikely Stories 1

Ladreque’s Last Case

It was well past midnight when Ladreque’s brain, its circadian
rhythm a slow drag tapped on sand, flicked into full alertness:
somewhere in the maze of galleries echoed the squeak of wheels. The
detective had become familiar with the ordinary night sounds in the
museum’s halls and this was not among them. He casually moved
from his assigned post at Late Impressionists toward the Masterpieces
of the Golden Treasury exhibition. The telltale noise grew louder as he
approached the blind alley containing the Schlagenkirch Altar—and
then it stopped. Ladreque, in his thick crepe-soled watchman’s shoes,
crept silently to a vantage point behind a massive pieta. Aha! he
thought; I was right: I’ve caught them in the act!
To the untrained eye, the scene presented nothing more than a
lumpy bewigged female janitor pushing a bulky contraption clearly
identified as an industrial carpet shampooer. But Ladreque, knowing
the modus operandi of the gang, had taken the trouble to memorize
the silhouette of every type of maintenance apparatus legitimately
deployed in the Tahoe Museum of Art. The machine before him was
not quite right; it was too tall and it appeared to be hinged along one
edge of its left side. As Ladreque watched from his place of
concealment, the supposed cleaning lady made a quick surveillance of
the gallery, then opened the bogus shampooer. She reached inside
and extracted a wand with three slightly glowing tips, like a trident
fresh from the forge.
The cavity from which the wand had emerged was empty—but not
for long. As the woman waved the oddly-shaped rod in front of the
altar, a sort of electrical discharge occurred inside the contraption. It
was like the flash of arc-welding, but not as bright; Ladreque blinked,
instinctively protecting his retinas. When he opened his eyes again,
the janitress was taking what certainly resembled the Schlagenkirch
Altar out of the container—but the real masterpiece was still on its
pedestal! He couldn’t understand where the copy had come from, but
he knew what was coming next: the switch would be made, setting
off an alarm; the culprit, however, would already be somewhere else,
blending into the background, when the guards arrived.
Ladreque drew his Beretta and stepped out into the open.

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