Devil's Eye by Al Ruksenas Page B

Carruthers agreed. “And France lost, because the last French kings, particularly Louis the Sixteenth, raided the national treasury to buy and parade diamonds at the expense of his commoners and their well ‐ being. That’s why we have so much of the French Royal Collection in our displays. The revolutionaries appropriated the royal jewels and ended up selling them throughout Europe.”
     
    “ And now they’re here,” Laura mused.
     
    “ And now they’re here. Historical artifacts in ‘the nation’s attic’.”
     
    “ But diamonds are still the queen of jewels. A girl’s best friend.”
     
    “ Yes, they are. And the few diamond cartels want to keep it that way. Actually just one, but I won’t mention their name. They’re big contributors to the museum, you know.”
     
    “ Of course.”
     
    “ Of course. They have the world monopoly. Diamonds are so plentiful they could be just another stone. But the cartel strictly controls their flow into the market. They own most of the diamond mines.”
     
    “ So I heard,” Laura said. “Actually, I’m writing a book on how diamonds came to be so prized among royalty—and how they shaped cataclysmic events. Louis the Sixteenth went into such a frenzy of buying for royal display—to mask his inadequacies—that he finally triggered the French Revolution, like you were saying.”
     
    “ Will you autograph a copy for me?”
     
    “ I’ll be delighted. As soon as I finish. You know, publish or perish.”
     
    “ I know. But yours is a labor of love,” he added. “It’ll be good.”
     
    “ Thanks. You’re sweet. I could use the encouragement.”
     
    They had completed their stroll around the exhibit hall and found themselves in the atrium again, standing before a crowd of visitors filing into a smaller gallery centered in front of the u ‐ shaped Gem Hall.
     
    “ And that, as you know, is the Hope Diamond Exhibit. It’s probably the most famous diamond in the world. Not so much that it’s the largest blue diamond known, but its history. The Gallery is named after Harry Winston, the jeweler who donated the Hope to the Smithsonian in Nineteen fifty ‐ eight.”
     
    “ Yes, I know,” Laura said as she tried to gaze inside past the crowd of visitors. “Maybe you can show me after hours. It seems like such a rush of people.”
     
    “ It always is.”
     
    “ You have the key, don’t you? You can come anytime.”
     
    “ Well, yes, but it’s a little more complicated. There’s the security and alarms.
     
    And there’s also a little advertised fact about the Hope exhibit. It’s in that tall rectangular enclosure of glass. It’s three inches thick. The display is actually a specially designed safe. The diamond rests on an oval pedestal and the vault rotates every minute or so to give the viewers surrounding the display a good look. And you can see there are guards in the gallery.”
     
    “ Okay, I’m with you so far,” she said as she shifted the weight of her body, crossed her arms and leaned slightly to one side to get a better view past several people.
     
    “ Well,” Carruthers continued in a softer voice and tilting his head towards hers, “After hours the display is lowered into a chamber under the floor. It disappears.”
     
    “ Oh, I see.” She tried visualizing the procedure. “So it’s on a floor beneath us.”
     
    “ Yes.”
     
    “ And I presume that floor has windows.”
     
    “ Yes. But the chamber is isolated”’
     
    “ Can we go there?”
     
    “ Well…no,” he said.
     
    “ I mean the floor below us, not the chamber,” Laura persisted.
     
    “ Oh, sure, we can do that, but it’s just offices and work rooms. I know you couldn’t have heard any screaming there. The only people around at night are security guards and the night shift cleaning crew.”
     
    He led the way to a stairwell. They descended a floor and came upon two pedestals with a red velvet rope blocking their way. A plaque stating