The Adventure of the Travertine Nose - Part VII

The Storeroom

The further down you go, the more you can relate to his Howard Carter and what he must have smelt and felt when he was breaking into King Tut’s tomb. Yourself and the person who made the giant tread marks in the dust before you seem to be the only two people who have used this stairway perhaps since the ancient Egyptians. You let your little felt clogs fall atop the fresh treads. As you wind your way down, one hand gripping the rickety railing, the light gets stronger. When you arrive at the foot of the stairs, a beam of swinging light hits you flat in the face and pins you to the wall.
“Who’s there?” you ask, your voice sounding overly emotional and unstable.
The light leaves you and begins to lick at the corners of a distant wall.
“It’s me, of course.”
“Of course,” you sigh. You are so thankful to hear Basil’s voice again—and to breathe again—you can hear your heartbeat in your eardrums.
“Who did you think I was?” he asks, “Ramses? Or a middle-aged Tut?”
“Of course not,” you bluff, running in the direction of the light and gluing yourself to him like a mosquito on flypaper. “It’s just that I was calling you for ages.”
“Sorry, I couldn’t find Bertie, but I remembered there were back stairs and managed to find them. You shouldn’t have followed me down; these steps aren’t safe.”
I could see the shaft of light running up and down over my body as if he were assuring himself that I was undamaged. Once your eyes have un-dilated, you begin to take in the stacks of masterpieces piled up in rows, and the cobwebbed statues grouped en masse, like a frozen army. You make a grotesque gargling noise when you think you spot a Van Gogh. In the dark, you’re sure you see a whole field of mustard-colored sunflowers beneath skies that resemble indigo tornados. You wrestle Basil for the flashlight and wrench at his wrist, a little too aggressively as you force his hand to illuminate the canvas.
“That’s a copy!” he scoffs, “And those little nails are hurting me.”
“Sorry, you frown, realizes the brushwork was all wrong.
He shines the light on your face for quite a long time, and you think you can hear him chuckling to himself. Suddenly, the light makes a complete revolution around the room, which is vaster and more crammed with art than you had imagined. The beam stops on a scaffolding, canopied in webs and veiling a row of alabaster gods. The light moves from face to face as busy spiders hurry up nostrils and into ass cracks to stay hidden. Basil makes a clucking noise as though he’s expressing his disappointment at the sight of so many noses.
“Look here, Darby!” Basil yelps. “You see this oddity?” He’s shining his light on a sickly-looking bird with the head of a crow and the body of a plover. On first glance the webbed feet look like they might belong to any waterfowl, but on second glance, you’re sure they’re wax.
“What is it?” you ask.
“It’s the Bare-Fronted Hoodwink,” he laughs.
“It’s all stitched together with fake feet!” you object hotly.
“Right you are,” he says nodding. “This museum is known for its hoaxes. Every once in a while they put up a prank exhibit, like this one. They displayed the Hookwink on April Fool’s Day, 1975.”
“That’s pretty funny,” you laugh too, craning in to look at the taxidermist’s Frankenstein.
“Where’s the blinking Roman emperors?” Basil asks, aloud. “Rackrent keeps bragging about the length of her nose. That’d be the place to look.” He moves the light from statue to statue, commenting on the length and width of each nose. Suddenly, the situation strikes you as completely absurd. You cease your giggling when you realize that Basil is battle-ramming a wooden door with his head. Its wood wormed planks finally splinter.
“Was that really necessary?” your mother asks, using your body as a host. Instead of answering, Basil succeeds in annihilating a tiny rusted hook, the final security measure on the door. You’re in too much of a dither to speak. The room is crammed with cream-colored statues that might be travertine. At a glance, you can see an array of deformations; plenty of missing fingers, heads, noses, ears, toes, genitals…Eurkea! You can hear jackpot bells ringing just as surely as if you were standing in the middle of a casino instead of a hallowed art graveyard.
“Where’s your paints?” he pants, suddenly reverent.
“They’re your paints,” you argue, realizing you left them upstairs with the Olympians. “I cracked up the mug by accident.”
“Well, grab another mug from the gift shop. And hurry!” Easy for him to sound so excited when he’s telling you to rob the gift shop. His passion, radiating through the dark room with the energy of the sun, makes you feel too embarrassed to refuse. How can you say you’re too scared to go back upstairs?
“Be right back,” you say instead.

No decision to be made here... not until the next installment!