The voice droned on as people consulted their pamphlets at the appropriate points. Thomas sized up the passage leading to the burial chamber, his fertile mind racing ahead. There was an unprotected terra-cotta vase—the black felt-tip would do for that. And what about a sticker for the center of the glass case top, where it would be flanked by four sacred scarabs? Thomas stood at the back of the group, close to the raised images on a wall of reproduction figures, fashioned in resin, forming the entrance to the burial chamber. He worked swiftly with the black felt-tip as the attendant’s drone washed over the attentive party. “Ra, giver of life, the Sun God; Horus the hawk-headed figure; Set the cat, a popular creature in Egyptian religion and mythology—all of these had their parts to play in the temples of Karnak. However, to my mind the most potent of the Egyptian deities is Anubis, the jackal-headed man. …”
The Phantom Snake had already struck!
The signature had been swiftly scrawled along the back of a snake featured on the resin wall. Thomas looked up to see Mr. Bausin looking directly at him, and stared insolently back. The attendant could not possibly have seen him writing, shielded as he was by the backs of an elderly couple. The party moved on.
Thomas felt slightly mystified; Bausin had looked right at him. That one look had said it alclass="underline" he knew Thomas was the Phantom Snake. Yet it was not uneasiness that possessed Thomas, it was defiance, a feeling that his skills as a secret graffiti artist had been noted, but not acknowledged. This was altogether different from some boutique lady who had nearly got lucky in the mall. This was a real contest of wit and cunning.
Thomas decided to keep his opponent on tenterhooks. He stayed with the group, noting opportunities, though not doing anything as of yet. He felt increasingly irritated that the attendant sensed this and had begun ignoring him.
The Phantom Snake was not to be disregarded!
Casually Thomas detached himself from the group and strolled back into the main museum. He was determined that his enemy would long remember a dull Tuesday in January when his sanctum had been invaded by an expert. Thomas sprayed part of the rib bone of a dinosaur black, leaving his signature in red marker upon the air-drying enamel where it could not be missed. Taking the stairs two at a time, he bounded to the upper floor. He signed again, this time on the ecru satin seat of a hansom cab. The front of a glass case of butterflies caught his creative imagination, and he took his time with this one, carefully signing so that it looked like small moths in alternate red and blue luggage marker with touches of the black and green felt pens here and there. Pretty! He stood back critically and cast an eye over his handiwork.
Down below in the Egyptian Exhibition Mr. Bausin was completing his tour of the artifacts, speeding up his narrative now that he realized the boy had left the group. Bausin was certain that Thomas had not left the museum; his inner senses told him so. Keeping remarkably calm, the attendant paid strict attention to his duties and his public. He completed the commentary and walked with the party to the main door. Refusing a tip from a young couple, he saluted lightly as they left the building, repeating his usual remarks automatically with a friendly smile, “Thank you, call again. Thank you, goodbye!”
When the last one had gone, the smile was replaced by a look as cold and grim as a damp mortuary slab. Mr. Bausin closed the high double doors. They shut with an echoing boom in the stillness of the museum. He turned the key in the lock and slid the well-oiled steel bolts into place, Striding purposefully toward the stairway, his heels clicked ominously against the polished granite floor.
Thomas P. Kanne had been enjoying himself upstairs. He was putting the finishing touches to a masterpiece in black, blue and red upon a Moorish shield of Toledo steel when he heard the dull boom of the main doors shutting. He cut across the passage and through another room to the window, just in time to see the visitors disperse and walk off into the darkening early evening. Thomas felt a delicious charge of danger and imminent peril course along his spine. His sneakers made virtually no sound as he hurried to the second-floor stairwell, listening to the click of advancing heels. Poking his head around the corner of the stairs, he watched the attendant mounting the bottom steps. Impudently he scribbled broadly over the floor of the stairwell.
PHANTOM SNAKE RULES FOREVER!
Darting into a roomful of exhibits, he lay flat beneath a Chippendale chaise longue, making himself small on the polished wooden floorboards as he peered at the doorway.
Mr. Bausin entered the room slowly. He looked carefully around, noticing each signature, each desecration of his sacred museum and its precious specimens. Standing in the doorway he called out in a singsong voice, as if addressing a naughty child, “Come on out, I know you’re in here.”
Thomas lay still, knowing the attendant had not seen him. He was looking at the back of Bausin’s shoes—the attendant had not turned around yet, so how could he have spotted him; it was all a bluff. Mr. Bausin strode further into the room, first going to the left, then to the right. Finally he walked across to the window and stood looking out, just as Thomas had done. Outside the gloomy twilight seeped into January darkness.
Thomas rolled from under the chaise longue like a cat. Silently he rose to his feet. Creeping stealthily from the room, he glanced over his shoulder to see the attendant caretaker, still standing with his back to him, facing the window. Thomas made a waving snake motion with one arm at his adversary’s back before going downstairs.
Mr. Bausin smiled with his lips, his eyes remained as citrines as he watched the reflection of the boy in the darkened windowpane. Walking unhurriedly to the entrance, he switched off the lights and locked the door from the bunch of keys he carried on his belt.
Thomas had gone back downstairs. Bounding silently along, he ran to the entrance doors and tried the handles just to make sure they were locked. The back of his knees quivered as he heard his pursuer descending the stairs with heel-clicking precision. Thomas dodged behind one of the fluted inner entrance columns—it was too slim to provide total concealment, but it was the only immediate cover. Now Bausin was nearly downstairs. Thomas held his breath, hoping that he would not be seen. Panic was about to rise gurgling in his throat when the footsteps stopped. He breathed a sigh, half of relief, half of disgust with himself for being so frightened. Squinting around the column he watched Bausin remount the stairs and enter a side room on the mezzanine floor.
The saturnine caretaker inspected the room, which contained prehistoric fossils arranged in wall cases. The central piece of the display was a replica pterodactyl, suspended from the ceiling on thin wires. Satisfied that there was no secret hiding place within the open square of the displays, Bausin left, taking care to lock the door behind him. Leaving thus another place the Phantom Snake could not wriggle into.
Thomas had taken advantage of his pursuer’s detour. Deserting the scant safety of the inner columns he glanced swiftly left and right, trying hard to outwit his opponent. Keeping to the left of the main hallway he hurried past the Wonders of Steam room. Behind him he could hear the attendant descending the final stairs. Thomas dropped quickly behind a life-size bronze statue of Queen Victoria, knowing that if Bausin looked left from the foot of the stairs he would immediately see anyone out in the hall. Thomas could have cheered aloud when he heard the footsteps of the hunter go off down the right part of the hallway instead of the left. What chance did an attendant have against him, the Phantom Snake, who could slip out of any trap? He would find an open window, a fire escape, an unlocked exit and escape. He relaxed a little, looking up to find himself staring into Queen Victoria’s left nostril; she was definitely not amused! Neither was Thomas P. Kanne a moment later when, with a click of the main switch, the lights went out, plunging the whole of Middlechester Museum into eerie darkness.