Page 44 - Unlikely Stories 1

Ladreque’s Last Case

and this time it led him to the Schlagenkirch Altar, on loan to Tahoe
and insured for seven million pounds sterling. He walked past the
heavily-gilded miniature monument to Late Gothic genius, giving it
merely a sidelong glance. All the security devices spun off from the
last American jungle war were in place around the imputed target:
motion detectors, photoelectric cells, infrared sensors. Ladreque did
not expect those measures to be defeated when the attempt was
made; rather, their warning would be ignored, since what they were
guarding would not have been removed. Or so the others would
think—all those soi-disant experts with supercilious airs who had
dismissed Ladreque’s report and its conclusions.
His investigation had begun innocently enough, almost
eighteen months earlier, when he had been called to the scene of one
of these “accidental” alarm trippings. With British Museum personnel
at his side, he had examined the pedestal supporting Maledicta’s
Cherub in Flight, the Late Baroque sculptor’s unassailable masterpiece
in mahogany. The image of airborne angelic avoirdupois was present
on its pedestal, every feathery ringlet intact and in place—down to
the millimeter and milligram. It was slightly off-center and turned
from the position in which it had been carefully spot lit by the
curators. But that was clearly the result of a collision between the
stand and a utility cart carelessly pushed by a preparator working after
hours. The bells had rung, guards had come running; but the
miscreant had already fled the scene, observed only at the moment of
the doors closing on the service elevator used as a getaway
conveyance. Upon questioning, none of the museum personnel
would admit to culpability, nor would any of them put the finger on
any of the others. Ladreque made little of the incident at the time, but
it came back to his mind about a year later.
At that time, he was reviewing the literature on dating
techniques for an article he was writing for Popular Antiquities. The
number of elements whose isotopic decay could be used to establish
the approximate century and decade of the origin of the materials
constituting a manufactured object was increasing, and Ladreque
took it upon himself to keep up to speed on such developments.

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