Relic

= 15 =

The herbarium door was shut, as usual, despite the sign that read DO NOT CLOSE THIS DOOR. Margo knocked. Come on, Smith, I know you’re in there. She knocked again, louder, and heard a querulous voice: “All right, hold your horses! I’m coming!”

The door opened and Bailey Smith, the old Curatorial Assistant of the herbarium, sat back down at his desk with an enormous sigh of irritation and began shuffling through his mail.

Margo stepped forward resolutely. Bailey Smith seemed to consider his job a gross imposition. And when at last he got around to things, it was hard to shut him up. Normally Margo would have merely sent down a requisition slip and avoided the ordeal. But she needed to examine the Kiribitu plant specimens as soon as possible for her next dissertation chapter. Moriarty’s write-up was still unfinished, and she’d been hearing rumors of another horrible killing that might shut the Museum down for the rest of the day.

[89] Bailey Smith hummed, ignoring her. Though he was nearly eighty, Margo suspected he only feigned deafness to annoy people.

“Mr. Smith!” she called out. “I need these specimens, please.” She pushed a list over the counter top. “Right away, if possible.”

Smith grunted, rose from his chair, and slowly picked up the list, scanning it disapprovingly. “May take awhile to locate, you know. How about tomorrow morning?”

“Please, Mr. Smith. I’ve heard they might close down the Museum at any moment. I really need these specimens.”

Scenting the chance to gossip, the old man became friendlier. “Terrible business,” he said, shaking his head. “In my forty-two years here I’ve never seen anything like it. But I can’t say I’m surprised,” he added, with a significant nod.

Margo didn’t want to get Smith going. She said nothing.

“But not the first, from what I hear. And not the last, either.” He turned with the list, holding it in front of his nose. “What’s this? Muhlenbergia dunbarii? We don’t have any of that.”

Then Margo heard a voice behind her.

“Not the first?”

It was Gregory Kawakita, the young Assistant Curator who had accompanied her to the staff lounge the previous morning. Margo had read the Museum’s bio of Kawakita: born to wealthy parents, orphaned young, he had left his native Yokohama and grown up with relatives in England. After studying at Magdalene College, Oxford, he moved to M.I.T. for graduate work, then on to the Museum and an assistant curatorship. He was Frock’s most brilliant protégé, which made Margo occasionally resentful. To her, Kawakita didn’t seem the kind of scientist who’d wish to be allied with Frock. Kawakita had an instinctual sense for Museum politics, and Frock was controversial, an iconoclast. But despite [90] his self-absorption, Kawakita was undeniably brilliant, and he was working with Frock on a model of genetic mutation that no one but the two of them seemed to fully understand. With Frock’s guidance, Kawakita was developing the Extrapolator, a program that could compare and combine genetic codes of different species. When they ran their data through the Museum’s powerful computer, the system’s throughput was reduced to such a degree that people joked it was in “hand calculator mode.”

“Not the first what?” asked Smith, giving Kawakita an unwelcoming stare.

Margo flashed a warning glance at Kawakita, but he continued. “You said something about this murder not being the first.”

“Greg, did you have to?” Margo groaned sotto voce. “I’ll never get my plant specimens now.”

“I’m not surprised by any of this,” Smith continued. “Now, I’m not a superstitious man,” he said, leaning on the counter, “but this isn’t the first time some creature has prowled the halls of the Museum. At least that’s what people say. Not that I believe a word of it, mind you.”

“Creature?” asked Kawakita.

Margo gave Kawakita a light kick in the shins.

“I’m only repeating what everyone’s talking about, Dr. Kawakita. I don’t believe in starting false rumors.”

“Of course not,” said Kawakita, winking at Margo. Smith fixed Kawakita with a stern glare. “They say it’s been around a long time. Living down in the basement, eating rats and mice and cockroaches. Have you noticed there aren’t any rats or mice loose in the Museum? There should be, God knows they’re all over the rest of New York. But not here. Curious, don’t you think?”

“I hadn’t noticed,” said Kawakita. “I’ll make a special effort to check that out.”

“Then there was a researcher here who was breeding [91] cats for some experiment,” Smith continued. “Sloane I think his name was, Doctor Sloane, in the Animal Behavior Department. One day a dozen of his cats escaped. And you know what? They were never seen again. Vanished. Now that’s kind of funny. You’d expect one or two at least to show up.”

“Maybe they left because there weren’t any mice to eat,” said Kawakita.

Smith ignored him. “Some say it hatched from one of those crates of dinosaur eggs brought back from Siberia.”

“I see,” said Kawakita, trying to suppress a grin. “Dinosaurs loose in the Museum.”

Smith shrugged. “I only say what I hear. Others think it was something brought back from one of the graves they’ve robbed over the years. Some artifact with a curse. You know, like the King Tut curse. And if you ask me, those fellows deserve what they get. I don’t care what they call it, archaeology, anthropology, or hoodooology, it’s just plain old grave robbing to me. You don’t see them digging up their grandmother’s graves, but they sure don’t hesitate to dig up somebody else’s and take all the goodies. Am I right?”

“Absolutely,” said Kawakita. “But what was that you said about these murders not being the first?”

Smith looked at them conspiratorially. “Well, if you tell anybody I told you this I’ll deny it, but about five years back, something strange happened.” He paused for a minute, as if to gauge the effect his story was having. “There was this curator, Morrissey, or Montana, or something. He was involved with that disastrous Amazon expedition. You know the one I mean, where everyone was killed. Anyway, one day he simply vanished. Nobody ever heard from him again. So people started to whisper about it. Apparently, a guard was overheard saying that his body had been found in the basement, horribly mutilated.”

[92] “I see,” Kawakita said. “And you think the Museum Beast did it?”

“I don’t think anything,” Smith responded quickly. “I’m just telling you what I’ve heard, that’s all. I’ve heard a lot of things from a lot of people, I can tell you.”

“So has anyone seen this, ah, creature?” Kawakita asked, unsuccessfully stifling a smile.

“Why, yessir. Couple of people, in fact. You know old Carl Conover in the metal shop? Three years ago now he says he saw it, came in early to get some work done and saw it slouching around a corner in the basement. Saw it right there, plain as day.”

“Really?” said Kawakita. “What’d it look like?”

“Well—” Smith began, then stopped. Even he finally noticed Kawakita’s amusement. The old man’s expression changed. “I expect, Dr. Kawakita, that it looked a bit like Mr. Jim Beam,” he said.

Kawakita was puzzled. “Beam? I don’t believe I know him—”

Bailey Smith suddenly roared with laughter, and Margo couldn’t help grinning herself. “George,” she said, “I think he meant that Conover was drunk.”

“I see,” said Kawakita stiffly. “Of course.”

All his good humor had vanished. Doesn’t like having the joke turned on him, Margo thought. He can dish it out, but he can’t take it.

“Well, anyway,” said Kawakita briskly, “I need some specimens.”

“Now, wait just a minute!” Margo protested as Kawakita pushed his own list onto the counter. The old man eyed it and peered at the scientist.

“Week after next okay?” he asked.