That must have been a job, for the statue is seven feet tall and massive. It is just as ugly as those stone images on Easter Island, of which it reminded one, although better-proportioned. It was a highly stylized piece of folk art, squat and blocky, with a snarling, thick-lipped mouth and round bug eyes. I daresay it had seen plenty of human sacrifices in its day.
Esau Drexel barged up with martini in hand and wife in tow. "Willy!" he roared. "Remember my saying Fd give you a guided tour of my new hall? Well, how about next week end?"
"I never see him by daylight any more," said Mrs. Drexel to Denise. "He spends all his week ends here, supervising. I wonder the Museum people haven't gone on strike, to get him out of their hair."
I said I should be delighted to bring such of my children as I could catch. I can take my crustaceans or leave them, but an invitation from the big boss is a command performance.
Our girls begged off. Stephen said he would go if he could bring his friend Hank. I hesitated at this.
Stephen was a sweet, docile twelve-year-old, who never needed to be punished. He was also a natural follower, and his leader was his friend Henry Schnell. Hank was a young hellion; but a parent should think carefully before trying to pry a boy loose from his best friend. So I said that Hank might come.
Knowing Hank's tendency to dash wildly off towards anything that caught his interest, I warned the boys to stay close to me. We met Esau Drexel at the information desk and started towards the new wing. Then we stopped to talk to David Goldman. Professor Goldman was full of the argument, whether therapsid reptiles evolved into birds by developing feathers to fly with, or developed feathers first to keep warm and then adapted them to flying. Goldman was excited by what he said was new evidence on the question.
While we were listening, the boys disappeared. I guessed that Hank, typically, had dashed on ahead, through the Oceanic Hall towards the new wing, and Stephen had followed. I did not worry about the boys. But, knowing Henry Schnell, I did worry about the Museum.
When we got to the Hall of Oceanic Anthropology, the first thing that caught my eye was the Tiki of Atea. On the statue, someone had painted, with one of those thick, felt-tipped pens that kids use to make grafitti on subway cars, a big, crude mustache.
While I stammered humble apologies for my young savages, Drexel said: "Never mind, Willy. I'm sure it'll wash off, even if it's the indelible kind. The statue's varnished. Some idiot put a coat of varnish on at the time of the First World War, and we've never taken it off. Now it's a good thing."
Then I heard another sentence. It said clearly: "You shall rue your insolence, mortal!"
I jumped and stared at Drexel. My boss was looking at the statue, with his hands in his pockets and his mouth closed. Anyway, I could hardly imagine Esau Drexel's telling anyone he should rue his insolence. That was not his style. In one of his more pompous moods, he might have said: "My good man, you'll be sorry for this!"
While I was staring, the same voice added: "You and your seed, both!"
Drexel had not opened his mouth, nor had he given any sign of hearing the voice. Nobody else was nearby. I must, I thought, be getting auditory hallucinations. Naturally, I did not want to say anything to Drexel to cause him to suspect that such was the case. I wondered whether I should consult a neurologist or a psychiatrist. I knew a couple of nice, gentle shrinks ...
"Well," growled Drexel, "let's catch your little bums before they do something else."
On we went. At the end of the Oceanic Hall is a small, square hall housing, on this floor, a mineral exhibition. It has no logical place there; but then, museum halls seldom do. As fast as one director begins to get things in what he thinks is a logical order, another director takes his place and starts moving them around again.
It is like one of those puzzles in which you move little wooden blocks in a box, this way and that to bring them into some desired array. In a museum, nobody lives long enough to complete one solution of the problem. The minerals had been left over from some previous arrangement.
The mineral hall opens on the new wing. This is not really a wing but a fourth side to a hollow square. On the far end of the new wing was another side of the square, housing some of the Museum's working and storage spaces. Visitors seldom realize that more space is devoted to these purposes than to exhibition halls. Any mature museum has far more specimens than it can show at any one time. Besides the fourth side of the square, a huge maze of cellars also contains storage and preparation rooms.
In Mineral Hall, we caught up with the boys. They tried to look casual and innocent but could not help smirking and snickering.
They vigorously denied putting a mustache on Atea. When I searched them, I did not find any felt-tipped pen or similar instrument. I supposed that they had ditched it. While I might be morally certain that they had done this vandalism, I could not prove it. One of them must have stood on the other's back or shoulders to reach the statue's bug-eyed face.
"Come on," said Drexel, opening the locked door with a key. Beyond lay the second story of the new wing, the incomplete Crustacean Hall.
There were the usual wall cases and central cases, most of them with their cover glasses still off. The central cases formed a continuous row down the middle of the hall.
Crustaceans of all sizes and shapes were mounted, but only half the spaces in the cases had been filled. There was a lobster that must have weighed thirty pounds alive. There was a Pacific coconut crab almost as big as that lobster. There were gaudily-colored stomatopods and other scuttly creatures.
There were signs of work in progress: a stepladder standing in the fairway, pails, a fire extinguisher, stacks of panes of glass, tools, a box of fasteners to hold the glass of the cases in place. Muttering something about "slobs," Drexel began moving these things into the corners to give the hall a tidier look. I helped him.
Drexel pointed to a blank wall space. "A giant spider crab would go well there, I think."
The boys were getting restless. Few of them can maintain interest for very long in static exhibits. Drexel was spouting his enthusiasm. I gently suggested:
"How about the hall in which these things are being prepared, Esau? I think they'd like that."
"Sure thing!" said Drexel.
He unlocked another door, at the far end of the Crustacean Hall, and led us into one of the preparation halls, which smelled of formaldehyde. There were workbenches, on which the preparators had been painstakingly cleaning the meat out of crabs, shrimps, and other denizens of the deep before wiring them up for mounting. There were racks with dried specimens, and jars and tanks with others floating in preservative. None of the scientists or technicians was at work that day.
The biggest object was a huge metal tank, nearly full of liquid. In it lay what-looked at first like a disorganized tangle of the limbs of some fictional super-spider—Tolkien's Shelob, for instance.
"We just got these in," said Drexel. "I didn't catch these beauties. The Lemuria got 'em off the Aleutians."
"What are they?" asked Stephen. "They look horrible."
"They," said Drexel, "are the so-called Japanese spider crab, Macrocheira kampferi. I don't see what call the Japs have to claim them when they're found all over the Pacific north of latitude forty. And they're not horrible. They're beautiful—at least, to another spider crab."
"How many are there? They're all tangled up so I can't tell."