The Hippo at the End of the Hall Page 5

  With his next shipment there came a wife, though she was alive, to be sure. Her name was Patience, and she was patient by nature as well as by name, which was lucky for us, because she became our beekeeper.

  It was lucky for the captain too, because, in time, the house filled with Garner-Gee children, and when those children grew, they all began collecting too. In a few decades, the house was full to bursting.

  Patience bore the chaos without complaint until the summer of 1866, when a giraffe arrived. It wasn’t the only giraffe — in fact, it was the eighth — and it was very large. Unfortunately, on the way indoors, it became wedged — stuck half in and half out of the parlor window — just when Great-Aunt Myrtle arrived for tea. Aunt Myrtle was a sensitive fool. She fainted clean away. They had to use a saw to remove the giraffe, so the tea party was not a success, and this time Patience lost her temper. She never had before, not in all those years, but that day she shouted, “This is the last straw!” She seemed as angry as a black hornet as she fumed, “Not one more article is coming into this house! Not until some of it leaves.”

  And the family could see that she meant it. Even the captain, who could be fierce enough when he chose, merely remarked, “You’re right, my dear. It’s time we shared our collection with the public. I’ve always planned to build my own museum.”

  And that was the beginning of the Gee Museum — his greatest project.

  As the fourth bee took up the story, the others hovered in a line, thrumming their wings so that Ben was conscious of a humming on several notes. It was rather like a fanfare from tiny breathy bagpipes, and it made this section of the story seem the most significant.

  It didn’t happen overnight. Creating the Gee Museum took an age. The captain couldn’t do it alone. There were years of construction and cabinet making, years spent classifying and labeling, while the captain — like a great spider in a monumental web — tempted his three sons to help him. First came Hector as his chief assistant, then Humphrey joined them as a curator. Eventually Montgomery and Patience became entangled too. After all, the family had lived with the collection their whole lives, so they knew better than most how to hang a whale skeleton, or classify a grasshopper, or arrange small mammals in sound scientific order.

  Even we bees were recruited. For in the heart of the insect room, the captain built our crystal hive. It was a peace offering to Patience, because she loved us, and once she moved our queen inside, naturally our colony followed.

  The first year was a difficult time for us bees, as we had no dances to instruct us about our new neighborhood, so honey was sparse that winter. But we survived. And the following summer the hive prospered. Then we built a wax city that was finer than anything the captain could ever construct.

  And while we built, the insect room grew around the crystal hive, and the museum grew around the insect room. Then the collections began to arrive by the cartload. Eventually, in 1877, the crates had all gone. The Gee Museum was ready to be opened to the public.

  The bees changed shift again: the others backed away and were silent as a fifth bee landed on the hippo’s head. Ben noticed this one moved more slowly; its yellow stripes were faded, and its wings were frayed at the edges. It began its dance with a question.

  Why do humans collect things? Once they own them, they only seek more. Do they think that by parading their possessions, they can slow the slip and slide of time? If so, they are fools, for all things perish and disperse. We bees have no need of collections. As we age and our wings disintegrate, we are satisfied to have contributed to our tribe — which will survive us.

  Yet as Captain Garner-Gee grew older, he did not grow wiser, like a bee. Instead of thinking of his children and his grandchildren and his grandchildren’s children, he could only mumble about what he had not done in his own life. He spoke of the watercow again, convincing himself that the museum only had a future if the watercow stood in the central court. We were saddened, but not surprised, when he headed back to Africa in search of it.

  He was gone three winters. He sent no news. The family feared he had perished. When he did return, he was gravely ill, bitten by a tsetse fly and suffering from a sleeping sickness. He survived long enough to supervise the very few specimens he brought back from that last expedition, but as far as we know, there was no beast that went by the name of a watercow.

  All the same, just before he died, the captain insisted that he had captured the creature and acquired the diamond for the museum. But by then he was delirious. Nevertheless, after his death, the three brothers searched high and searched low, but no diamond was ever found. In the end no one believed it existed — except for Patience, who always maintained it was secretly hidden somewhere so that its power would safeguard the prosperity and long life of the Gee Museum.

  At that moment, they were all startled by a hollow voice that issued from the gramophone horn. It was a snide and rather lazy voice. It said, “I hate to mention the obvious, but if the diamond is here safeguarding the museum, why are we in so much trouble?”

  “Hello, Leon,” said the hippo. “I wondered when you would show yourself.”

  A patch of gray inside the speaker horn flushed green and stretched until it became apparent that it was a chameleon.

  He slunk onto the podium, fixing one bulging eye on Ben. The other black-dot pupil swiveled independently as it tracked the bees.

  “I have listened very patiently,” the chameleon said with some contempt, “and it seems we have the right boy, since he can hear us well enough. But why are you wasting time? He doesn’t need a history lesson. Tell him what he ought to do and let’s get on with it.”

  “You can’t rush bees,” squawked Flummery.

  “Can’t you?”

  Leon’s tongue shot out like a rocket and recoiled with a bee captured on one end. The bee had no chance, for a chameleon has an incredible tongue, twice the length of its body, with a bulbous ball of muscle at the end like a suction cup, which can move at ballistic speed — faster than a fighter jet.

  Naturally the other bees arose in a fury.

  “Where’s your respect?” Flummery hooted.

  Leon turned his back. Languidly he plucked the bee from his tongue and dangled the struggling insect above his bucket-like mouth, murmuring, “Shall I swallow you? Shall I bite you in half and nibble your wings? I might if your fuzzy-buzzy pals don’t end their silly story.”

  “Let it go,” demanded the hippo. “Ben has a right to hear this.”

  “Ben has a right to leave before those ghastly people find him here,” said Leon. “That man is a greedy bully, which is bad, but the woman has the eyes of a fanatic. I fear she is an addict.”

  “What d’you mean?” asked Ben.

  The hippo was looking concerned. “Leon may be right,” he said with a sigh. “She has that look. Collecting is generally a harmless human habit. Occasionally, though, the collector is consumed by a vile compulsion, a dark desire that eats into their soul until they will stop at nothing in order to possess more. When that happens, they can never be satisfied.”

  Ben gulped. “Is Miss Snow that kind of person?”

  “Perhaps,” said the hippo. “She has an obsessive glint in her eyes that we have seen before. It’s the sign of a desperate desire for something, and if she thinks you are in her way, maybe it would be wiser if she didn’t see you.”

  “So let’s get on with it,” said Leon. “Show the boy the silver bottle, have him open it up, then let him go before they catch him.”

  Ben stood up, ready to leave. “What silver bottle?”

  “Don’t go near that bottle,” twittered the owl.

  “I haven’t even seen a bottle.”

  “This bee seems quite upset!” remarked Leon, swinging the bee by one wing.

  The owl dived at him. “You’re a disgrace,” he screeched.

  But the chameleon simply dodged, scuttling to the floor.

  “Oh, let the bee go,” said the hippo. “We must finish the story
. There may be some urgency.”

  “Some urgency?” the chameleon mimicked. Yet he freed the bee, which indignantly fled, and then, with an angry buzzing, the whole group flew off to join the bees in the gallery.

  Flummery blinked slowly enough for Ben to see the tiny layered feathers on his eyelids. “Well, that was foolish,” he said. “We may need their help.”

  The chameleon sighed theatrically. “Oh, puh-leaze. Do get on with it, if you really think the boy needs to hear this tedious family saga.”

  “Maybe you could speed it up a bit,” said Ben anxiously.

  Flummery shifted his wings and scowled, but he took up the story again.

  “The bees were explaining what happened after the captain died. It was all right at first, you know — the fortunes of the museum ran smoothly for a while. But then came the arguments. Hector wanted the museum to continue purely as a natural-history collection, but his brothers wanted to diversify — they’d had enough of hunting. Humphrey began by bringing in a collection of valuable clocks and the scientific instruments. Hector didn’t mind those so much. But then Montgomery added all manner of unsavory curiosities. For a start, he expanded that ridiculous bottle collection.”

  “Hush,” said the hippo, opening one eye. “Flummery, do not take sides, or you will be behaving as badly as the brothers did. Ben, I do remember this: Hector had no respect for Montgomery’s ideas, and one night the two of them had a terrible fight. The museum was damaged and Montgomery left forever. He went about as far as he could go.”

  “Where did he go?” asked Ben.

  The owl explained, “There’s a set of remote islands in the Pacific Ocean, which I believe are now known as Micronesia, though they used to have another name. That is where he went.”

  “Very far away,” said the hippo, nodding. “The family lost contact with him.”

  “And I wish he’d taken that spooky silver bottle with him,” said Flummery. “It gives me the quiveryflibbets every time I’m near it.”

  “But he didn’t take it,” said the hippo. “It’s still here in the bottle room. He took none of the collection, as far as we know. Yet when he left, he somehow took the heart of the place with him — or at least I always felt it was so. As did Patience.”

  “She never got over the loss of her youngest son,” agreed Flummery. “She died soon afterward, leaving the museum in the hands of Hector and Humphrey, and her granddaughter, of course, Hector’s only child —”

  “The girl in the picture?” Ben asked.

  “The girl in the picture.” The hippo nodded. “She ensured that Montgomery’s curious collections stayed in the museum, and once she grew up, she became the greatest curator the museum ever had. But neither she nor Humphrey ever married, so there were no more Garner-Gee children to inherit the museum.”

  “But what happened to Montgomery?”

  “You’re a sharp boy,” said Flummery. “But remember, there was a war. It turned the world upside down and nothing was heard of Montgomery for a generation. Nevertheless, Constance discovered that he had married and had a family overseas. There was a grandson — an explorer and sea captain. And like all the Gees, he was full of clever ideas. One day, not so long ago, he sailed right back here.”

  The owl paused then and gazed at Ben. The others were silent too, but all three watched him intently.

  Ben felt very uncomfortable. “If the museum will belong to Montgomery’s grandson, why isn’t he here saving it now?” he blurted out.

  “He can’t,” said Flummery softly.

  “He’s dead,” said Leon.

  The hippo’s eyes were full of compassion. “Constance met him only once — just before he died.”

  “He was drowned,” said Leon, and both his golden-sequin eyes focused hard on Ben. “Lost at sea.”

  “Like Dad,” mumbled Ben.

  “Exactly,” said Leon, watching Ben with interest. “Exactly.”

  Drowned, thought Ben. Like my dad.

  Without warning, he felt frightened of a revelation that he half guessed he was about to hear. He felt light-headed; sweat beaded along his spine, and something like a thin whine — too treble, too sharp — tingled in his ears and fizzled the edges of his vision. He wanted to be home with Mom. He sucked on his scarf — and because he didn’t want to think of anything else, he wondered vaguely if its sweetish flavor was from something he had spilled on it or the taste of the wool or his own spit from the last time he had sucked on it.

  “Too much for the boy,” the hippo murmured. “I told you he was too young to take on all this. We should have waited.”

  “I’m not too young,” said Ben, though his voice cracked.

  “We couldn’t wait,” said the owl. “We had to act immediately.”

  As if to confirm the urgency, the bees were suddenly among them again, and it seemed to Ben there was an anxious whine in their buzzing. Glancing upstairs, he saw that the office door remained closed, but the sengi was leaping down the steps so quickly that her motion seemed double-speed. Long before she reached them, she began to squeak: “Constance has agreed to read their wicked papers. She’s lost faith in the museum — I could see it in her eyes — she’s never bothered to look at any papers before. She’s been tricked! Or maybe she wants to be tricked. There’s no hope for us now. The boy came too late.”

  “Calm yourself,” said the hippo to the shrew as she scampered in an agitated circle. “There’s no such thing as too late. There’s always time in the future.”

  “Oh, do zip it,” snapped the chameleon. “Time for some action maybe. Get the boy to open the silver bottle before he goes home. I’ll do the rest.”

  The lines on the hippo’s face deepened. “That would be a very bad idea.”

  “The diamond . . .” began Flummery.

  But now the sengi quivered with impatience. “Diamond!” she exclaimed breathlessly. “It’s too late for that and you know it. We’ve searched every nook and cranny, but there’s never been any sign of it, never-never-never-never-never-never!”

  The chameleon examined his long fingers. “I do agree, dear lady, but try telling these clods . . .”

  Ben was still feeling queasy. “I have to go,” he said as the animals squabbled. “They’ll be coming out soon.”

  “Of course you should go,” said the chameleon, sidling toward him. “But how about a little favor first? All you have to do is open a teeny-tiny bottle.”

  “Don’t!” screeched the owl.

  “Rash,” agreed the hippo. “Ben, don’t touch it.”

  Leon looked sulky. “It won’t take a minute. Do be a sport; I’d do it myself — I can undo locks — but I can’t quite get my fingers . . .”

  “What’s in the bottle?” Ben asked.

  The sengi bared her needlelike teeth at all of them. “Haven’t you even told him that yet?”

  “Hold your horseflies — we don’t know if there is a witch in the bottle,” squawked the owl.

  “A witch!” Ben exclaimed.

  “Rumored to be.”

  “According to the label.”

  “We don’t know for sure, because it came to the museum already sealed. It may be empty.”

  “And it may not be,” squeaked the sengi. “My fur stands on end whenever I go near it.”

  “Well . . . exactly,” said Flummery. “And what if opening the bottle makes matters worse? What then, eh? And it very well could make things worse — if there’s a witch inside it. I mean, it depends on the mood of this possible witch, doesn’t it? Bless my feathers, a witch like that would probably be accustomed to casting wild magic. That’s chaotic. No telling what might happen if you let that loose in here.”

  “Yet if there is a witch inside the bottle, she’s a part of this museum,” fretted the sengi. “She might help us save it.”

  “She might be very grateful if we released her,” the chameleon said slyly. “Wishes have followed in similar cases. Genies, for instance, are said to be generous.”

&nbs
p; “That was a genie in a lamp,” said the sengi. “Might not be the same with witches in bottles. What if she comes out in a festering temper?”

  “My point exactly,” said Flummery, and the bees buzzed in an agitated clot around his head as if they agreed.

  Leon swiveled one eye at the sengi. “Whose side are you on?”

  “The side of sense,” the hippo cut in curtly. “There are some objects that are best left alone, and that bottle is one of them. Let’s take no more risks. We’ve found the boy. Once Constance meets him, everything will change. With Ben by her side, she’ll feel strong enough to send those people away, and —”

  “No!” cried Ben. “I’m not going to be by her side. My mom will want me home. In fact —”

  He stopped. He had spoken too loudly. Now they heard a chair scraping the floor in the office, and the hasty tap of high-heeled shoes. Only the hippo remained on his plinth. The other animals scattered before the office door flew open.

  Tara Snow flew to the balustrade. “There!” she shrieked, leaning over the edge. “It’s that boy.”

  “Now, don’t you worry, Miss Garner-Gee,” growled Julian Pike, coming up behind her — he was moving alarmingly fast for such a large man. “I’ll escort this trespasser off the premises.”