"I'm—I'm done," wheezed Owens. "Go on, Mr. Newbury. Save yourself."
"Nonsense!" I said. I scooped up Owens and carried him like a child. Luckily he did not weight much over a hundred.
In my imagination, I could almost feel the breath of our pursuers. Any minute, I expected a hammer to come down-on my skull.
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, a little dot of gray appeared ahead. I recognized it as a bend in the tunnel, near the exit. The short leg between the door and this bend was lit by the sunlight outside.
The gray spot grew larger and took rectangular shape. Then we were around the bend and through the door, blinking in the sunshine. I put Owens down and collapsed on the bricks. Owens shut the door, locked it, and stood over me.
"It's all right," he said. "They are allergic to sunlight and hate to expose themselves to it. You saved my life."
When I got my breath back and my racing heart slowed down, I asked: "What happened?"
"Forrest came in on a union organization meeting. He got into an argument with the would-be leader, and he has— had—a violent temper. He was foolish enough to strike the— the organizer. My workers, also, are rather short-tempered, and the next I knew, they were all over him with hammers and other implements. When I saw his brains spattered, I jolly well ran for it."
"What now? Whom do you notify?"
"I shall take care of that, never fear. Your business is finished here, Mr. Newbury. Obviously, my great dream will have to await a more propitious occasion. Let me drive you back to the motel."
Although usually loquacious, Owens was silent on the return trip. While I was curious about his plans, he answered my questions evasively until I stopped asking.
That evening, I reported to Drexel. Next day, I heard nothing from the Oecus. Their telephone did not answer. I finally made an airplane reservation and called a taxi. On a whim, I told the driver to detour to the Oecus on the way to the airport.
The house had overnight become a deserted ruin. Of Colin Owens and his followers there was no sign. The place looked as if a gang of vandals had gone through it with crowbars and hammers.
Every window was broken. Furniture was thrown about and smashed. Wall fittings had been ripped out and floor boards pried up. Some of the plaster had been battered from the walls. Rugs had been ripped or fouled. Such a wreck was the building that it was dangerous even to walk about it, for fear of falling through the floor or having something collapse on one.
I went out back and looked into the pit. The iron door had been broken open and torn from its hinges. It lay on the bricks, crumpled like a piece of tinfoil.
I remembered Owens's saying that his workers avoided sunlight, but that would not have stopped them from coming out at night to raid the Oecus. Whether they had caught any members of the Anthropophili, I could not tell. I saw no bloodstains in the ruin, but there was nobody about to answer questions. Could the cult members have inflicted this destruction themselves, before abandoning their headquarters?
I even wondered if the whole thing had been a hallucination or a dream. But there had been nothing imaginary about the application for his loan, with supporting documents, which Owens had sent in, or about my visit to Atlanta. The only way to straighten things out would have been to invade the tunnel again, but I was neither brave nor determined enough to embark upon such an adventure. Besides, I had a 'plane to catch.
I suppose I ought to have reported to the State Police. But I could not imagine explaining to a trooper that I had been chased through a tunnel under Stone Mountain by a mob of infuriated gnomes.
Besides, there was the bank's reputation to consider. Nobody wants to leave his money with an institution run by hallucines. Although my inaction has nipped my conscience since, it is one of the things one must learn to live with, along with the memory of the other follies and blunders of a normally active life.
When I reported back to Esau Drexel, he said: "Well, Willy, you know I'm no goddam pink liberal. But I've got to admit that labor unions are here to stay. Even the elves, gnomes, and other hobgoblins have 'em!"
Tiki
The giant spider crab of the North Pacific, the largest living crustacean, is said to be a sluggish, harmless creature.
I first heard of Esau Drexel's giant crabs at a party at the Museum of Natural Science. As a faithful member, I had taken Denise to a meeting. We stand around among elephants, dinosaurs, and Eskimo artifacts and booze up. When the noise rises to where you have to scream to be heard, the lights are blinked to summon the members to dinner. Afterwards, we listen to somebody like the late Dr. Louis Leakey or the late Sir Julian Huxley, or perhaps see a movie on the life of the Bakhtiari tribesman or of the common flea. As one whose boyhood ambition was to be a naturalist-explorer, I get a great kick out of these events.
Before the movie began, Dr. Esther Farsace, the Curator of Invertebrates, announced a donation to finance a hall in the new wing. This would be the Drexel Hall of Crustaceans Everybody clapped. Looking, with his dark, three-piece suit and white mustache, every bit the prosperous, conservative old banker, Esau Drexel rose and bowed.
Everybody thinks of bankers as rich. I am not, but Esau Drexel was. When not presiding over the Harrison Trust Company and a junior banker named W. Wilson Newbury, he was off in his yacht, recording the songs of the finback whale or counting the elephant seals of Antarctica. He had fitted out this ship as a marine laboratory. The Japanese Emperor had been his guest on board, because of their common interest in marine biology.
After the lecture, we congratulated Drexel on his gift. Denise said: "Whatever gave you the idea, Esau?"
"When I was up in Bering Sea last summer," he said, "the dredge brought up one of those giant spider crabs. It struck me that this poor old museum had no proper place to put it. We have some fine collections of Arthropoda, but far too many to display in one hall. So, being a director of the Museum but never having given it anything much, I thought it was time I did, while I was still around to see how the money was spent.
"Tell you what," he continued, "when the new wing is further along, I'll give you and your kids a guided tour of it!"
Denise wrinkled her nose. "Willy will bring the children. Me, I like the animals with fur and feathers better than those like great bugs."
"Just a mammalian prejudice," said Drexel. "Where will you find a more gorgeous creature than Odontodacfylus scyllarus?"
"Zuf!" she said. "I still prefer my crabs in a can, ready to eat."
Drexel turned to me. "Willy, are you playing golf Saturday? You don't mind a little snow on the greens, do you?" For all that he was twenty years older than I, he had the constitution of a polar bear.
During the next summer, Drexel was off on his ship, collecting rare isopods and other sea creatures with lots of jointed legs. When he got back, I saw him (outside of working hours, that is) at the first fall members' meeting. We were drinking our cocktails in the Hall of Oceanic Anthropology, and Denise was reading the caption on a big statue of dark, mahoganylike wood.
"Tiki of Atea," she read. "Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands. Que veut dire 'Tiki of Atea,' darling?"
"A tiki is a Polynesian statue or idol," I said. "Indubitablement, Atea is the god the statue is of." Since Denise is French, we run a bilingual menage.
This statue was one of the oldest exhibits in the Museum. It had been there since the nineteenth century. When Christian missionaries in the South Seas were exhorting their converts to burn up all the relics of 'idolatry,' some enterprising scientist had salvaged this eidolon.