Relic

“Hi, Margo,” Moriarty answered. “What’s up?”

“I’m in the Selous Hall,” she replied. “I just came from the exhibition.”

“My exhibition?” Moriarty said, surprised. “What were you doing there? Who let you in?”

[141] “I was looking for you,” she answered. “I wanted to give you the Cameroon copy. Were you in there?” She felt panic rising once again to the surface.

“No. The exhibition’s supposed to be sealed, in preparation for Friday night’s opening,” Moriarty said. “Why?”

Margo was breathing deeply. trying to control herself. Her hands were trembling, and the receiver knocked against her ear.

“What did you think of it?” Moriarty asked curiously.

A hysterical giggle escaped Margo. “Scary.”

“We brought in some experts to work out the lighting and the placement of the visuals. Dr. Cuthbert even hired the man who designed Fantasyworld’s Haunted Mausoleum. That’s considered the best in the world, you know.”

Margo finally trusted herself to speak again. “George, something was in that exhibition with me.” A security guard on the far side of the Hall had spotted her, and was walking in her direction.

“What do you mean, something?”

“Exactly that!” Suddenly, she was back in the exhibit, in the dark, beside that horrible figurine. She remembered the bitter taste of terror in her mouth.

“Hey, stop shouting!” Moriarty said. “Look, let’s go to The Bones and talk this over. We’re both supposed to be out of the Museum, anyway. I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t understand it.”

The Bones, as it was called by everyone in the Museum, was known to other local residents as the Blarney Stone Tavern. Its unimposing facade was nestled between two huge, ornate co-op buildings, directly across Seventy-second Street from the Museum’s southern entrance. Unlike typical Upper West Side fern bars, the Blarney Stone did not serve hare pâté or five flavors of mineral [142] water; but you could get homemade meatloaf and a pitcher of Harp for ten dollars.

Museum staffers called it The Bones because Boylan, the owner, had hammered and wired an amazing number of bones into every available flat surface. The walls were lined with countless femurs and tibias, arranged in neat ivory ranks like bamboo matting. Metatarsals, scapulas, and patellas traced bizarre mosaics across the ceiling. Craniums from strange mammals were lodged in every conceivable niche. Where he got the bones was a mystery, but some claimed he raided the Museum at night.

“People bring ‘em in,” is all Boylan would ever say, shrugging his shoulders. Naturally, the place was a favorite hangout among the Museum staff.

The Bones was doing brisk business, and Moriarty and Margo had to push their way back through the crowd to an empty booth. Looking around, Margo spotted several Museum staffers, including Bill Smithback. The writer was seated at the bar, talking animatedly to a slender blonde woman.

“Okay,” Moriarty said, raising his voice over the babble. “Now what were you saying over the phone? I’m not quite sure I caught it.”

Margo took a deep breath. “I went down to the exhibition to give you the copy. It was dark. Something was in there. Following me. Chasing me.”

“There’s that word again, something. Why do you say that?”

Margo shook her head impatiently. “Don’t ask me to explain. There were these sounds, like padded steps. They were so stealthy, so deliberate, I—” she shrugged, at a loss. “And there was this strange smell, too. It was horrible.”

“Look, Margo—” Moriarty began, then paused while the waitress took their drink orders. “That exhibition was designed to be creepy. You told me yourself that Frock and others consider it too sensational. I can [143] imagine what it must have been like: being locked in there, alone in the dark ...”

“In other words, I just imagined it.” Margo laughed mirthlessly. “You don’t know how much I’d like to believe that.”

The drinks arrived: a light beer for Margo, and a pint of Gui

Margo, calmer now, spoke hesitantly. “George, that Kothoga figurine in the exhibition ... ?”

“Mbwun? What about it?”

“Its front legs have three claws.”

Moriarty was enjoying the Gui

Margo took an exploratory sip from her beer.

“George. I want you to tell me, in as much detail as you can, what you know about the Mbwun curse.”

A shout came bellowing over the din of conversation. Looking up, Margo saw Smithback appear out of the smoky gloom, carrying an armful of notebooks, his hair backlit and sticking out from his head at a variety of angles. The woman he’d been talking to at the bar was nowhere to be seen.

“A meeting of the shut-outs,” he said. “This curfew is a real pain. God save me from policemen and PR directors.” Uninvited, he dropped his notebooks on the table and slid in next to Margo.

“I’ve heard that the police are going to start interviewing those working in the vicinity of the murders,” he said. “Guess that means you, Margo.”

“Mine’s set for next week,” Margo replied.

“I haven’t heard anything about it,” said Moriarty. He didn’t look pleased at Smithback’s appearance.

[144] “Well, you don’t have much to worry about, perched up in that garret of yours,” Smithback told Moriarty. “The Museum Beast probably can’t climb stairs, anyway.”

“You’re in a foul mood this evening,” Margo said to Smithback. “Did Rickman perform another amputation on your manuscript?”

Smithback was still talking to Moriarty. “Actually, you’re just the man I wanted to see. I’ve got a question for you.” The waitress came by again, and Smithback waved his hand. “Macallan, straight up.”

“Okay,” Smithback went on. “What I wanted to know is, what’s the story behind this Mbwun figurine?”

There was a stu

Smithback looked from Moriarty to Margo. “What’d I say?”

“We were just talking about Mbwun,” Margo said uncertainly.

“Yeah?” Smithback said. “Small world. Anyway, that old Austrian in the Bug Room, Von Oster, told me he heard Rickman kicking up a fuss about Mbwun being put on display. Something about sensitive issues. So I did a little digging.”

The scotch arrived and Smithback held the glass high in a silent toast, then tossed it off.

“I’ve obtained a little background so far,” he continued. “It seems there was this tribe along the Upper Xingú river in the Amazon, the Kothoga. They’d apparently been a bad lot—supernatural-dabbling, human sacrifice, the whole bit. Since the old boys hadn’t left many traces around, anthropologists assumed they died out centuries ago. All that remained was a bunch of myths, circulated by local tribes.”

“I know something of this,” Moriarty began. “Margo and I were just discussing it. Except not everybody felt—”

“I know, I know. Hold your water.

[145] Moriarty settled back, looking a

“Anyway, several years ago, there was this guy named Whittlesey at the Museum. He mounted an expedition to the Upper Xingú, purportedly to search for traces of the Kothoga—artifacts, ancient dwelling sites, whatever.” Smithback leaned forward conspiratorially. “But what Whittlesey didn’t tell anybody was that he wasn’t just going in search of this old tribe’s traces. He was going in search of the tribe itself. He’d got it into his noggin that the Kothoga still existed, and he was pretty certain he could locate them. He’d developed something he called ‘myth triangulation.’ ”