The Light of the Day - Eric Ambler [78]
“Quite clear, except about why we’re doing all this.”
“Oh, I thought you’d have guessed that.” He grinned. “We’re just going to have ourselves a piece of the old Sultans’ loot. Just a little piece, that’s all—about a million dollars’ worth.”
I looked at Miss Lipp.
“I was being cagey, Arthur,” she said. “There is some obsidian and garnet there, and green tourmaline, too. But a lot of that stuff’s the real thing. There are six pigeon’s blood rubies in that throne room that must be over twenty carats apiece. Do you know what just one ruby like that is worth, Arthur? And the emeralds on those Koran caskets! My God!”
Harper laughed. “All right, honey, I think Arthur has the picture. Now”—he turned again to the plan—“there are civilian watchmen on duty, but not very many of them, and the night shift comes on at eight. You give them an hour to settle down. At nine you move. You go up the stairs to the roof and turn left. There are three little domes—cupolas, they call them—on the roof there, and you walk along to the right of them. After that the roof is more or less flat until you get to the gate arch. You go around that over the roof of the Audience Chamber and on until you see the chimneys of the kitchens on your right. Then you turn left again, cross the roof of the place where they have the miniatures and tapestries. At the end of it there’s a three-foot drop onto the roof of the Treasury Museum. That’s where you have to be careful. The Treasury roof is thirty-five feet wide, but it’s vaulted. There is a flat area around the cupola though, so you climb down there. All quite safe. The cupola is ten feet in diameter and that’ll be your anchor for the tackle. Mr. Miller’ll tie the knots for you. When he’s got the sling hooked up, he’ll sit in it. Then all you have to do is lower him over the side until he’s level with a steel shutter eighteen feet below. He’ll do the rest.”
“Mr. Miller will?”
He looked at me with amusement. “You think he’s too old for that sort of thing? Arthur, when Mr. Miller gets busy he makes a fly look like a man in diving boots.”
“You said there was a steel shutter?”
“You could open it with a toothpick. The wall’s four feet thick and solid stone. I guess it’d stand up to a six-inch shell. But the shutters over the window apertures are just quarter-inch plate with ordinary draw bolts on them. They don’t even fit properly. And no alarm system.”
“But if this jewelry is so valuable …”
“Have you ever looked through one of those window apertures, Arthur? There’s a sheer drop of three hundred feet below. It’s quite impossible to get up or down there. That’s why we’re going in from above. The trick is getting out again. What their security setup relies on is the fact that the whole area is walled like a fortress. There are gates, of course, and the gates have troops guarding them at night; but gates can be opened if you know how. That’ll all be taken care of. You’ll walk out of there just aseasily as you walked in.” His eyes found mine and held them. “You see, Arthur, we’re professionals.”
I forced myself to look away. I looked at Miss Lipp; but her eyes had the same intent look as his. “I’m sorry,” I said; “I’m not a professional.”
“You don’t have to be,” she said.