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All month the newspapers had been full of it- the upcoming exhibition would gather together some of the most priceless and awe-inspiring works of art that had ever graced the West Coast. From up and down the nation art lovers and speculators gathered just for a glimpse of the collection that was being put into place, for never before and certainly never again would such an array of finery be presented in one gallery for the public to peruse. Pride of place went, naturally enough, to the Crystal Cantaloupe, the single largest and most perfect golden tiger diamond in existence. It was carved by the finest artisans of the last century into the perfection that even now sat on a plinth in the central hall of the Harley Museum and Gallery. The Harley was well known for being the largest, and not to say the most impregnable, locale for the storage and display of fine art. Furthermore, the staff of the Harley prided themselves on the fact that not once in the illustrious history of the gallery had any criminal endeavour been successfully perpetrated within those walls.
Gentleman John, jewel thief and art aficionado extraordinary, planned on changing all of that. He wanted the Crystal Cantaloupe, and he wanted it bad. Not merely for the fabulous wealth it would bring to him, not merely for ease and luxury befitting his tastes that he would find himself in having purloined it, not even just for the fame and notoriety that would be his. Gentleman John wanted the Cantaloupe simply because everyone said that such a theft simply could not be done. And that was unconscionable. That was inexcusable. That idea, in short, did not sit well with him.
John sat across from the Harley at a charming pavement café that served a more then passable cognac and crepe to round the afternoon as he read his newspaper and kept one eye on the gallery. He was every inch the gentleman about the town, attired in an immaculate suit of midnight blue, almost black, with a velvet shawl collar and wing-tip loafers. From his silver cuff-links to his artfully arranged cravat he was every inch the dapper dandy. He waited until the rush of the day was done with, and the gallery began to wind down toward the evening. He had purchased a set of blueprints from an impeccable source and committed them to memory, and he had been planning the final details of his approach right up until the moment that he decided to make a move. He pulled on his perfect white fawn gloves with the pearl buttons, seated his top hat at a jaunty angle and took up his cane. Gentleman John always made a point of paying his bills promptly and with interest- he deposited a few dollars in the side-dish at his table containing the bill without even looking at the final figure, easily leaving more then enough for his repast and a handsome tip. Gentleman John prided himself on the fact that everything about him was handsome.
He crossed the road, stepping neatly over the tram lines, and made his way up to the doors of the gallery. As he entered, heels clicking neatly on the polished marble tile floor, he took a pocketwatch from his waistcoat with a flourish, making a theatrical demonstration of checking the time when in fact he was taking the opportunity to stare around the hall over the rim of the time piece. He took note of guards wandering about, and nodded in satisfaction. He had made a rough estimation of the logical course that a guard would take patrolling the main areas, and thus how many guards he might expect to see in a given area at a given time, and he was gratified to be proven correct. Snapping his watch shut and replacing it in his waistcoat, a delightful affair of silk picked out with damask detailing in felt with wide obsidian toggle buttons.
The next part of his plan was a simple matter of timing. He slipped into one of the less travelled wings of the gallery and pretended to be interested in some ancient artefacts of unknown provenance until the public address speakers chimed softly and announced to members of the visiting public that the Harley Museum and Gallery was about to close, asking all visitors to make their way to the atrium. John slipped behind a pillar and quickly shuffled out of his jacket, reversing it to reveal an inner lining that was itself a different jacket when he put it back on, this time a chenille number in dark wine. He plucked from the breast pocket a small but rather dashing false moustache that he pressed into place over his lip, and seated a monocle in one eye.
This disguised, he buttoned his coat and made his way in a most flustered manner toward East wing, and made sure that a guard caught sight of him. He put on a show of skidding to a halt and moving rapidly in the opposite direction, guaranteeing that the man started after him at a rapid pace. Now the game was afoot. John ducked down under a table that was covered in a white cloth and let the guard jog past him, before emerging and trotting off in the other direction. He repeated the trick in the West wing, and then by marching across the upper gallery in a manner that was so obviously suspicious he immediately attracted a loud hail from a guard, who waved for two others to join him.
By the time John removed his disguise, pocketing the moustache and restoring his coat to its' former appearance, the word had spread through the museum of some vaguely glanced figure dressed in red. The old Chinese whisper effect had taken marvellously, and John actually overheard a couple of them discussing the enormous handlebar moustache the villain twirled, while another swore blind that the man was also carrying an antique blunderbuss of all things. John made his way to the front desk of the rapidly emptying atrium and rapped his cane on the solid mahogany surface irritably, letting out his most practised and impressive harrumph.
A female guard scurried out of a door to the rear of the atrium and scurried up to the desk. She was looking harassed and very much lacking in any patience for nonsense, flim-flam, argle-bargle and fol-de-rol of any kind. Perfect. John turned a stern gaze on the guard who, from her badge, was called V. Serket.
“No see here! This is an absolute scandal! Thievery is what it is, you hear?”
Serket looked him over, squinting one eye, “can I help you at all,” she paused and swallowed back a sneer, “sir?”
John nodded and rapped the desk again for good measure, “I very much hope you can! I have been accosted by the most frightful fellow, a shocking ruffian dressed in red with moustaches like an Irish buccaneer! The man up and stole my wallet straight from out of my hand, I demand something is done, you hear?”
That perked her up. Serket demanded to know immediately where this brigand had been seen, pulled a pistol from her belt and scampered off towards the West wing where John pointed. She practically barged through him, muttering a vague apology while John reassured her that it was entirely his own fault for standing in such a ridiculous spot clearly in her way.
John could already hear her calling to a couple of other guards to join her, she was gleefully exhorting them to get the bastard. Already, the entire guard staff were chasing around after an invisible man, which of course suited Gentleman John down to the ground. He pocketed the bunch of keys that he had smoothly lifted from Serket's belt when she bumped past him. With a merry whistle he made his way through the little door that Serket had darted out of.
Inside the office John was immediately reminded of a chaotic spiderweb, there were wires everywhere snaking across the floor and walls, along with flickering black-and-white monitors, a candlestick telephone and even a teletype. The walls were plastered with bits of paper, duty rosters, notes about important upcoming events, some of them were scrawled with long, ranting diatribes in blue pen. It seemed that from this vantage point Serket could observe her domain through a series of electric camera eyes dotted about the Museum, eight in total, each pointed at a different area. John pulled a notebook from his pocket and scribbled a few quick notes regarding the danger areas he would have to avoid. There was one monitor in particular that caught his interest- the one pointed directly at the Crystal Cantaloupe itself, which sat a-gleaming on its' plinth, just waiting for him. John stared for a moment, it was calling out to him. It wanted him as much as he wanted to possess it. He kissed his fingertips and touched them to the monitor.
“Soon, darling.”
Then he ducked under the desk, and went to work with a pair of snips and a determined expression.
High above the ground level of the Harley, the roof was topped with an enormous stained glass dome that looked down on the main hall. It glowed dully in the reflected light from below, even when the museum was empty of visitors. The roof was a complex jumble of shingles, pipeworks, drains and gargoyles in an apparently random assortment. The many crenellations and statures adorning the roof's edge made the museum seem less like a building then a mad confection of decorative features.
This proved to be fortunate, because the shoulder of a great stone goblin leering down at the street took a grappling hook with a firm clank, and a black velvet rope leading down from the firmly seated hook was pulled taut with the weight of a figure dressed from head to toe in a silky black catsuit, a uniform black except for the flash of pink from a scarf around its' neck. The shadowy figure darted across the rooftop and into the shadow of a chimney-stack, stowing away the rope and hook stealthily. The dome of the museum beckoned, and the figure danced across the rooftop toward it, vaulting over ea rail and cartwheeling across a section of pipework with ease. Lightfoot Lalonde, international cat-burglar, crouched down and wiped a little soot away from a glass panel of the dome with her elbow, peering inside. She had a small black knapsack, from which she produced a rather fabulous pair of brass opera glasses with which to see better. She tucked an errant strand of immaculately coiffed blonde hair behind one ear and stared down through the dome glass.
Below, museum guards were darting about rapidly, it seemed as though something had got them agitated, which didn't help her cause any. However, like it or not, this was the night and there was no turning back. The Crystal Cantaloupe would be hers, she knew it. She had seen a hazy daguerreotype of the gem in the news-paper and had immediately fallen in love. She wanted the Cantaloupe like she had never wanted anything before. Not simply because it was a fabulous and beautiful item. Nor simply because it would bring together her living room furnishings marvellously and make simply the most exquisite talking point for dinner parties. She wanted it because the Crystal Cantaloupe had been declared utterly unstealable by the curator of the museum in a loathsomely smug article in the paper. That was a challenge to her, and it simply would not do. That was nothing less then rude.
She was able to lever up a section of the glass, fitting a slender steel catspaw under the lead lining and working the glass free smoothly. She reached one slender arm through, then wiggled her way in. The gap was tight, almost too tight when she had to pass her shapely hips through, and Lalonde made a mental note to see about being more firm in refusing the constant offers of pastries and confections that her best friend kept teasing her with on their regular Sunday lunches together. She wormed her way into the museum and instinctively curled into a ball, hugging close to the narrow stone sill that ringed the base of the dome. She was literally clinging by her fingernails above a lethal drop to the unforgiving marble floor far, far below. She glanced down as the last few of the museum patrons vacated for the evening. She noticed one fellow stride up to the main desk and rap on it with his cane. All she could see from above was the polished flat top of a top hat but she saw some kind of discussion with one guard, who darted away. No matter, she decided, ignoring the mounting chaos below that Gentleman John was instigating, it had no bearing on her own target. She looped a line through a sturdy brass loop through which was threaded a rope bearing the great chandelier that descended from the dome to hang above the atrium below. If the brass loop was tough enough to support the weight of that chandelier, she had no doubt it could manage her. She wound her line through it and buckled it with a quick-release carabiner, then glanced down again. The atrium was empty now, free of guards and patrons.
Leaping into space, Lalonde fell sickeningly fast past the chandelier and down toward instant demise below. The line caught in the descender gear strapped to her lower back and she was brought to a gentle, if rapid, halt inches before hitting the floor. She hung there on the end of the line, staring down into her own reflection in the polished marble. She gave herself a cheeky wing before inverting, planting her heels on the tile with a barely perceptible click, then gave her line a practised flick which triggered the carabiner to release. The line flopped down into her waiting arms from the dark above, and she hastily sped away into the shadows of a side corridor.
John ticked off items on his list and nodded in satisfaction. The alarms were silenced, and if his information was good then they would stay silenced. He made his way out of the security office and sauntered casually up the steps to the upper galleries as though he owned the place.
Lalonde opened up her compact and delicately powdered her nose, before holding the mirror out around the corner of the corridor and saw in the reflected image one of the guards approaching. She pouted and snapped the compact shut. By her reckoning she had perhaps half a minute before the man walked around the corner and she had hoped to avoid a confrontation so soon into the job. She glanced about and then pulled open the first few buttons of her catsuit to reveal a copious amount of cleavage with little more then some silky scarlet beneath to keep her decent. She held a hand to her forehead and sighed, swooning dramatically only just in time to be collide conveniently with a highly surprised museum guard who was immediately taken with quite a case of the vapours himself.
“O-oh gosh! I'm sorry! Ma'am, what are you- I mean, who-” the poor man stammered.
Lalonde moaned pitiably and fluttered her eyelashes, reaching up to cup his cheek in one hand, “oh my goodness, I am afraid I am quite lost, and it is more then a delicate flower like myself can bear to be all alone in the dark in such a frightening mausoleum! Save me, oh I beg of you,” she sniffled convincingly.
“Um, I'm afraid the museum is closed, and uh, I will have to escort you from here, and I will do so because I a guard must protect the public at all times!” His chest swelled with bravery.
“La sir, I am quite taken with your bravery! Oh what a silly woman I am to have got so turned around!”
“You're lucky I found you, it seems there is a thief in the building, um, perhaps!”
Lalonde frowned, surely no one could have noticed her already? Well that just meant fun time had to finish early, she supposed. She reached into the accommodating cleft of her cleavage to withdraw a Ladies Handkerchief such as someone prone to swooning might keep there, and before the guard could say what he was almost certain he was getting up the courage to say about it, she clapped the cloth to his face and gave him a lungful of her preferred formulation of ether. The guard slumped and tried to push her away feebly. She dragged the man across the floor with a little difficulty and into the maintenance cupboard beside the recent ceramic ware exhibit and used his own handcuffs to bind him securely by the wrists to a radiator pipe. As a final touch she appropriated a tie to use as a gag. She paused to listed to his breathing and decided he'd be fine, if a little nauseous and worse for wear, in twenty minutes or so. She took a set of the guard's keys and closed the door, jamming it shut with a wooden chair, before sprinting off down the corridor.
Meanwhile, John sprinted across the upper gallery to the far end of the museum, pulling off and inverting his coat as he went. He barely had his monocle and moustaches in place before he skidded around a corner and saw a group of guards coming his way. He danced on the spot as the shouted and ran from him.
“You'll never take me alive coppers! Never, see?”
Three guards pounded across the floorboards and across the balcony walkway that stretched across the back of the atrium upper level, shouting for help frantically. Unfortunately none of them noticed the pair of hands clinging to two of the baluster posts holding up the rail that lined the walkway. When they were safely away John pulled himself up and over the rail with a grunt, adjusting his top hat with a sniff. He sauntered away in the opposite direction, twirling his cane. By his estimation, practically the entire complement of guards were by now circling around and around the East wing, where he had contrived to send them, while he was free to get what he came for.
The Crystal Cantaloupe was of course given pride of place in the museum. It was positioned at the back, beyond the main hall in the Antiquities wing. John was careful to avoid those places where he knew a camera-eye was mounted and so he had to take something of a circuitous route. It was a shame that he couldn't simply go through the hall of impressionist oils, that would have taken him straight there, but he refused to let a minor inconvenience trouble him.
Lightfoot Lalonde took in the hall of impressionist oils with a professional eye and glanced upwards. According to her information which, she was certain, came from an unimpeachable source the room was a hotbed of security measures and she would have to get through it to get to the Cantaloupe by the most direct route. Lalonde was never one to let a minor inconvenience trouble her and so she swarmed her way up a pillar and onto the ornate lintel surmounting the door. The ceiling was an impressive affair of plaster mouldings and bosses, not to mention the large picture-rail that went around the room a foot down from the ceiling. To a professional cat-burglar it was a garden of delights, an embarrassment of riches as far as handholds and footings were concerned. She clambered across and flipped upside down, supporting most of her weight by a couple of toes on the picture rail, and began working her way across the room.
Suddenly a guard came racing out of the hall ahead and across the room. Lalonde suppressed a squeak and tried to look as still and inconspicuous as possible. The guard met another who came pell-mell out of a side adjunct and they met in the middle of the hall practically under where Lalonde was hanging on for dear life. She felt her arm begin to cramp up and shiver as they had an impromptu council of war below her.
“The Cantaloupe is safe,” bellowed Serket, “report!”
“Oh man, it's just crazy out there,” drawled the other guard, “there's people yelling and running around all over.”
“I suppose you've leapt into action as usual,” sneered Serket sarcastically.
“Well you know,” the other guard paused to lick the paper of the roll-up cigarette he was preparing skilfully, “I'm keeping my eye out and stuff.”
“Bullshit! I want to see some action, mister!”
“Hey, that's no fair, I am totally all over this shit. You know it's true, I'm like a cat.”
“How.”
“How what?”
“In what way are you like a cat? What are the precise traits you share with a feline night predator exactly?”
“Uh, well you know,”
“Yes? Go on?”
“I have hells of sick balance, yo. You cannot knock me over. Go ahead an' try.”
Serket slapped the cigarette away from his lip in exasperation and took her colleague by the arm, yanking him away and berating him all the while.
Above them, Lalonde let out a soft gasp and shifted position at last. Much longer and she would have seized up completely and fallen. With a pained grunt she made her way forwards across the hall with difficulty.
Gentleman John sauntered across the Mongolian crafts exhibit, past the Pre-Columbian mezzanine and around the bulk of a perfectly preserved mastodon skeleton- and there at last it was. The Antiquities wing spread out before him. In the distance he could see the the glittering plinth housing the Crystal Cantaloupe and his pulse quickened. The wing itself was made up of three rooms, two minor halls containing various exhibits and a third, larger, central room in the middle of which was his target. The intervening room between himself and his goal was inky-black and unlit but the main room of the Antiquities wing blazed with light at all time- that was the part being watched by a camera that he had to be careful in.
John danced giddily through the darkened room, spinning and tapping his way across the floor in the sheer exultant joy of it, his coat and white scarves flaring out behind him, the white tip of his cane describing wide circles in the air. He paused in the doorway to the main room, where the Cantaloupe lay. He took a deep breath and tapped his foot three times, loudly. No one came, there was no sound in response. He twirled his cane and knocked it on the doorpost, rap-tap-tap, and still there was nothing. He grinned widely, drunk with desire and the pleasure of being in the vicinity of such a treasure. Putting a gloved hand to his lips theatrically he called out.
“Hidee hidee hi-de-hi-i-i-i-!” And cupped his hand to his ear, listening.
John stepped jauntily across the threshold, rapping his cane on the floor and balancing his hands atop it, bending over to call out.
“Oh, oh, oh-oh-ohhhh!”
John slid a foot across and shuffled crabwise across, hugging against the wall in an exaggerated gait towards where the camera-eye watched the room. As he went he sang.
Folks here's a story 'bout Minnie the Moocher,
she was a low-down hootchie coocher!
She was the roughest, toughest frail,
But Minnie had a heart as big as a whale.
The camera-eye swivelled in its mount on an automatic gimbal, left then right, while John crept beneath. John stared upward, tracking the wires leaving the camera across the wall and grinned.
She messed around with a bloke named Smokey,
She loved him though he was cokey.
He took her down to Chinatown
He showed her how to kick the gong around.
John reached up with his pair of snips and delicately severed a single wire, which parted with brief electric spark. Then, rubbing his hands and gyrating his way across the floor, he approached the plinth itself.
She had a dream that the king of Sweden,
He gave her things that she was needin,'
He built her a house of gold and steel,
A diamond car with pla-ti-num wheels.
John span, spats flashing in the light, and tapped his cane left then right, swinging it over his head in an arc, tossing it up and catching it in his other hand with another spin. He ducked and jived, tapped and glided acrosswise till he faced the plinth itself. A transparent glass dome covered the Cantaloupe, and it was wired for sound. The slightest motion would set off more bells then he cared to ring. John pulled open his coat and pulled a long roll of leather out of an inner pocket, that unrolled as it fell to reveal a series of glittering tools held in place with elastic.
He gave her his townhouse and his racing horses,
ev'ry meal was a dozen courses!
She had a million dollars worth of nickels and dimes,
she sat and counted them a mill-i-on times.
John ducked down and he had a concealed inspection panel pulled away from the plinth in moments. Deft hands flashed inside the contrivance as he began disarming one system after another, delicately snipping away wires and flipping contacts. Finally he stood up and lifted the glass dome easily, setting it to one side delicately behind him- no sense in being messy. He turned to face the glittering glory of the Crystal Cantaloupe with the proud beam of a happy daddy.
That was the moment that Lightfoot Lalonde chose to descend from the gables of the high ceiling on her line, clapping her hands around the Cantaloupe. She grinned into the shocked face of John and blew him a kiss,
“Hi-de-hi, darling!”
To his credit Gentleman John didn't go for the Cantaloupe himself as every reflex in his body urged him, he lashed out with his cane, depressing a button in the handle to deploy a small but wicked blade from the tip, which he used to sever the line holding the cat-burglar up. Lalonde dropped with a squeak, thrusting out a hand to vault off the plinth and land in a crouch. She straightened up and turned to face him, holding the Cantaloupe under one arm.
“Now don't let's be beastly about this!”
“Madam, you hand over that fancy or I guarantee this evening is going to head south in a handcart very quickly!”
Lalonde stuck out her tongue and made to turn, “finders keepers you know!”
John hooked his cane under her arm and flipped the Cantaloupe out of her grasp, diving and rolling to capture it, “well, loose lips sink ships!”
Lalonde leaped, twisting sideways to gain purchase on the plinth and propel herself up and over John to kick the back of his knee. He yelped and dropped, and she plucked the Cantaloupe from him. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, dear!”
John span and grabbed fro her ankles, tipping her onto her shapely rump and scrabbling for the Cantaloupe. Lalonde looked down and found herself face to face with the gentleman thief, staring into piercing blue eyes framed neatly by the cleavage he was accidentally nestling in. She felt a vague sense of regret she had wasted her ether.
“Um,” said John, “I had a dog and his name was Bingo!”
They both had their hands on it, and neither of them was releasing their grip for a moment, it was all they could manage to squirm together, and they would have remained there long enough for John to feel decidedly ungentlemanly when they were interrupted by the loud crack of a pistol.
They looked around at once to see the guard, Serket, standing triumphantly in the doorway and covering them with her pistol.
“Well look at this,” she sneered, “you might have got away with it, if you hadn't decided to act like kids!”
Gentleman John was the first to break the awkward silence. He coughed and pulled himself to his feet, offering a hand to Lalonde who accepted demurely and passed him his top-hat which was looking a little bit crumpled. John thanked her with a neat little bow and she smiled sweetly at him.
“All right you pair of June-bugs, your asses are officially mine!” Serket cackled triumphantly, “this is it, I'm definitely getting bumped up to Chief Assistant to the Assistant Captain after this! I ought to thank you two really, this must be my lucky day.”
John turned to Lalonde and nodded formally, “allow me to introduce myself. Gentleman John, foremost thief of the age.”
Lalonde smiled and offered a dainty hand for John to kiss, which he did, “Lightfoot Lalonde, and likewise.”
“Am I interrupting something special?” Asked Serket sarcastically, “or would you rather just go ahead and get a room?”
“Listen m'dear,” offered John, “what say we put our differences to one side while we see to finding a way out of this pickle?”
“My my, you really are a gentleman,” Lalonde trilled, “I'd be delighted. Would you mind...?”
“By all means, dear lady.”
John swivelled and raised his hands, smiling amiably. Serket wasn't falling for that one and levelled her pistol at his chest.
“I don't suppose we could talk about this?”
“Keep reaching for the sky, slick, you're going away for a long time.”
“I know, I was thinking,” John raised his voice slightly, “Brazil?”
Behind him Lalonde smiled, “I always wanted to see Argentina,”
“Argentina it is,”
“Oh please,” Serket made a face, “this is about to make me actual vomit, forget it!”
John twitched a smirk and nodded, accidentally dropping his top-hat to the floor. Something inside in made a twanging sound as the flat top of the hat smacked into the ground and suddenly a gout of thick opaque smoke streamed out of the hat. Serket screeched and fired but John was already moving and she hit nothing.
“The window, if you please my dear!”
“Over here!”
“I am so going to shoot you all up!”
There was a creak of a window being forced open, and that at last set off the alarms with a clatter of bells. By the time the smoke billowed free of the room it was too late for anyone who came running to see the two figures descending the exterior of the building on a line.
The daylight that warmed the pastel walls of the Hotel D'Aquila in Beunos Aires roused up two figures from the well-earned slumber. John opened his eyes to see Roxy already wide awake and looking back at him. She smiled and he leaned over to kiss her.
“Sleep well, darling?”
“Like a stone, dear.”
“Like a gem-stone, even?”
John glanced down to the Crystal Cantaloupe nestled securely between their bodies, they each had a hand cradled protectively around it. Lalonde chuckled.
“You're a complete cad, you know. Not to trust a lady.”
“I'd be delighted to. Why not let go of the Cantaloupe and we can have a nice breakfast?”
Lalonde leaned over to kiss the tip of his nose, “not even for a second.”
John just sighed dramatically, grinning at the cat-burglar.
“You know,” he said, “if we don't work something out, we'll never end up leaving this bed.”
“So why not let go of it?”
“I can think of worse things then staying right here,”
“For shame,” she smirked, “and to think you call yourself a gentleman!”