Part 12 (1/2)
Oona considered this. ”All right. Thank you, Adler.” She adjusted the hat on her head, feeling strangely giddy. ”It was my mother's.”
Oona placed her mother's hat on the seat beside her and stared out the carriage window, her hand resting on the hatbox with her uncle safely inside. She felt lost. Everything she had learned from Adler served only to complicate matters in her head, and she hoped that a visit to the museum would prove helpful in clearing some of the confusion.
She watched the fortresslike structure roll into view. The carriage clattered heavily over several potholes as Samuligan pulled to the side of the road in front of the museum.
Oona threw the compartment door open before Samuligan had a chance to open it. She thrust the hatbox into his hands and said: ”Keep an eye on that.”
”Why are we here?” Deacon asked.
”I wish to ask the security guard some questions,” she replied. ”Perhaps we will discover something the inspector did not.”
But the first thing Oona discovered was that the giant sculpture in the shape of a top hat was standing right in her way. The sculpture was nearly seven feet tall and perhaps five feet in diameter.
”What is this, anyway?” Oona asked.
”Petrified colossus clothing,” Samuligan said. ”Giant clothing so old that it has turned to stone.”
Oona knew from her history lessons with Deacon that colossi-men and women who were reported to have been over seventy feet tall, and who had lived thousands of years before even the Great Faerie War-had at one time used the ancient Faerie road to travel back and forth between worlds.
”You mean to tell me that those ancient giants wore top hats?” Oona said, disbelieving.
Samuligan grinned. ”They were quite ahead of their time ... fas.h.i.+onably speaking.”
”Well, it's not a very good place for an installation. It takes up half the sidewalk.” Oona shook her head as she ventured around the giant hat and made her way up the stone steps to the front door. Regardless of being nearly five inches thick and at least eight feet wide, the wood door opened easily at her touch, swinging inward on its big iron hinges, and Oona stepped through the threshold into the museum.
The entryway consisted of a vast circular room, with high-beamed ceilings that vaulted upward in weblike patterns. A ring of ma.s.sive monolithic stones stood in the center of the room, and Oona knew from her many visits to the museum with her uncle that this mysterious stone circle was one half of a set, the other half of which stood in the countryside somewhere in England. Though Oona had not seen the sister version of the enormous structure, she did know that it was called Stonehenge by those residing in the World of Man, and that it had not been kept nearly as nice as the one standing in the entryway to the Museum of Magical History. Both rings of stones had been gifts from faeries to magicians thousands of years ago when humans and fairies had traveled back and forth between the worlds in harmony. What their purposes were had long been forgotten.
But it was not the mysterious magical circle that Oona had entered the museum to find. A uniformed guard was posted just inside the front door, a thickset man with arms like mountains and no neck at all. Oona turned to him now and saw that he was staring at her, as if surprised to see someone walk through the museum doors.
”May I help you, miss?” he asked.
”I hope you can,” Oona said. ”I was wondering if you were on duty here at the front entrance yesterday.”
The guard's caterpillar-like eyebrows rose ever so slightly. ”I was.”
Oona nodded. ”Very good. I was also wondering if you remember seeing a certain man enter the museum. He would have been tall, about your height, with greasy black hair and a bullhorn mustache. Also, he would have been blind, his eyes white like snow.”
”Oh, you mean the actor, Hector Grimsbee,” said the guard.
Oona's heart gave a heavy thump. ”Yes, yes. He was indeed an actor with the Dark Street Theater. That's him. You saw Mr. Grimsbee enter the museum yesterday?”
The museum guard frowned. ”No.”
”No?” said Oona.
”No. Otherwise he would have signed his name in this register book here.” The guard pointed to the thick book sitting on a wooden pedestal beside him. ”I'd have made sure of it. By the way, if you wouldn't mind, you'll need to sign in as well.”
He handed her a pen, and she signed her name at the top of a blank page. Curious, she flipped the page back one day, and saw that the inspector had been correct: the only two names on the registry for the previous day were Adler and Isadora Iree.
Oona handed the pen back to the guard. ”You know who Hector Grimsbee is? You would recognize him on sight?”
”Oh, to be sure,” said the guard. ”I would have remembered seeing him come in here. My wife and I are really big fans of the theater, you know. He was in a lot of plays up until about a year ago. Why do you ask? Do you know him?”
”We are acquainted,” Oona said, unable to keep the disappointment from her voice.
”Oh,” said the guard excitedly. His face went slightly red. ”Do you think you could get me an autograph? Not for me, mind you, but for my wife. She would be so pleased.”
”Sorry,” Oona said, ”but I don't think ...” She trailed off as a short man no taller than Oona herself came striding through the circle of stones toward the front door. His beard was well trimmed, and his nose was quite pointy. His most recognizable feature, however, was an enormous overbite, which gave him a rather horsey appearance, and Oona recognized him from being at some of her uncle's social gatherings. He was Mr. Glump, the museum curator.
”Mr. Glump,” Oona called. ”May I ask you a few questions?”
Mr. Glump stopped abruptly, looking distastefully from Oona to Deacon on her shoulder, then back to Oona again. ”There are no pets allowed in the museum.”
Deacon puffed up his feathers, as if getting ready to explain the difference between a pet bird and a living reference library, but Oona spoke first.
”I'm sorry, Mr. Glump,” Oona said. ”I will remember that the next time I visit. You might remember me, I'm-”
”Miss Crate. Yes, I know,” said the curator. ”I remember you from one of those Pendulum House parties. I read the paper this morning, and I'm very sorry to hear about what happened to your uncle, but if you have come here to blame me, I can a.s.sure you that the reason the daggers were stolen was not my fault.”
”Yes, I know,” Oona said. ”Inspector White mentioned that you were out of the office.”
Mr. Glump nodded. ”I received a note via flame yesterday that an anonymous guest at the Nightshade Hotel had come across a mysterious black box with all sorts of magical symbols carved into it. They wanted to meet me at the hotel at one o'clock to discuss a possible donation of the artifact to the museum. Well, as everyone knows, Oswald's wand-the one that some say he stole from Faerie, and which then in turn was stolen from him-was supposedly kept in just such a box. I was immensely interested, so I sent a reply, agreeing to meet the anonymous person in the hotel lobby at one o'clock, as they had suggested. The Nightshade is on the north end of the street, so I left my office around twelve fifteen, locking the door behind me, as I always do. But the whole thing turned out to be some rude joke. The person with the box never showed, and when I returned, around four o'clock, I found my office door hanging wide open, and the daggers where gone.”
Oona tilted her head thoughtfully to one side. ”That's over three and a half hours, from the time you left. If the person never showed, then why did it take you so long to return to the museum? Surely, even the slowest of carriages wouldn't have taken several hours to make the trip.”
Mr. Glump looked slightly uncomfortable. ”I ... um. Well, I waited in the hotel lobby for nearly a half hour after the agreed-upon time, and then two gentlemen from the hotel security approached me. I thought they were going to ask me to leave, but instead, after I explained why I was there, the two of them seemed to feel so sorry for me that they gave me several brandies on the house, and a handful of betting chips to pa.s.s the time while I waited. It seems that the time got away from me. Lost a bit of my own money when the free chips ran out. But anyway, that's neither here nor there. The fact remains that I was not here in the museum when the daggers were stolen.”
Oona scratched at the back of her neck, considering this new information. It sounded suspiciously to her as if someone had lured the curator out of his office on purpose.
”Are you the only one with a key to your office?” Oona asked.
Mr. Glump nodded. ”Yes, but of course even the most sophisticated locks can be picked ... and that is why we have security guards.”
”And you're sure you locked the door to your office when you left?” Oona asked.
The curator's nostrils flared, and he looked all at once peeved at being questioned by a twelve-year-old girl. ”I always lock the door! Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a headache, and I'm going home early.” He raised one mocking eyebrow at her before adding in a rather sarcastic tone: ”That is, if you are done with your questions, Miss Crate.”
”Oh yes,” Oona said. ”Quite finished.”
The curator pressed his hand to his head and headed out the front door. Oona was about to make her own exit when the guard called after her.
”You sure you couldn't get Grimsbee's autograph for me? I mean, for my wife, that is.”
Oona paused for a moment, long enough to look back at the guard, but her head was too full of thoughts to answer his ridiculous request. She pulled the door open and walked through, letting it fall shut behind her.
”No need to be rude!” the guard called after her. ”All you had to do was say no!”
Oona ignored the guard's shouts as they fell silent behind the thick wooden door and walked to the edge of the first step.
”Grimsbee didn't go in, Deacon,” she said, sounding baffled. ”I don't understand. First off, if Grimsbee truly was alone when we saw him, and not arguing with some invisible person, then how did he injure his head? Certainly not shaving his forehead. And why did he disappear?”