Dumfrey squeaked in surprise and spun around. “What on earth are you doing down here? Get upstairs, get upstairs, all of you. It ruins the effect to see an actor before the performance, don’t you know that? Thomas, tell Potts to open up all the exhibits. Is Miss Fitch awake? Dear me, dear me. What a crowd! What a glorious crowd! You’d think it was Thanksgiving and we were giving away free turkeys!” Dumfrey’s round face was shiny and his eyes sparkled with pleasure. “Sam, make sure Monsieur Cabillaud is awake and dressed. We’ll need him to man the ticket booth. And make sure he brings the extra strongbox. It looks like we’re going to need it!”
“What do you think’s going on?” Sam asked Thomas, after they’d left the lobby and the noise had receded somewhat. He had a bad feeling. All of those people—they’d tramp through the museum, leaving rubbish behind them: apple cores and ticket stubs and bits of tobacco. They’d point and gape at him and ask to see his muscles. He preferred the museum quiet, as it always had been in the past.
Thomas obviously felt differently. He was grinning. “I don’t know,” he said. “But whatever it is, I hope it lasts.”
Sam’s prediction was correct: the crowd did overrun the museum like a great surge of filthy water, leaving behind a tide of litter. Potts was absolutely miserable and made no attempt to conceal it, as he swept up an endless collection of candy wrappers and soda cups from around the refreshment stand, cigarette butts and balled-up tissues from the wooden floorboards, and even, mysteriously, a man’s toupee.
But mostly newspapers.
In fact, the crowd left behind identical copies of the same newspaper—the early-morning edition of the Daily Screamer, the newspaper that had drawn them all to Dumfrey’s museum in the first place, that had transfixed them with its headline:
THE CURSE OF THE SHRUNKEN HEAD: WOMAN PLUMMETS TO DEATH!
by Bill Evans
That was how the children received news of the old woman’s death, not five hours after she had been sitting, fanning herself happily, nostrils quivering, in the front row at the nightly performance.
“Here’s the latest,” Thomas said, pushing a newspaper across the kitchen table to Pippa. “Want to read it?”
“Not really,” she said. It was midnight, three days after the shrunken head had been delivered to the museum and two days after the old woman had fainted in the auditorium and subsequently taken a high dive off her balcony. Each day, sometimes several times a day, a new headline appeared in a larger and larger font on the cover of the Daily Screamer, all of them penned by the same Bill Evans whose pocket contents Pippa had correctly read.
MUSEUM OF HORRORS, they screamed, and ANCIENT AMAZONIAN CHIEF ENACTS REVENGE FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE.
“Go on,” Thomas said. “I’m the one who had to go fishing for the newspaper in Dumfrey’s office. I thought Cornelius would pluck my eyes out.”
Pippa sighed and cleared her throat. “‘New York contains many secret places and many deadly secrets,’” Pippa read, “‘but none perhaps so deadly as those concealed within the halls of Dumfrey’s Dime Museum. . . .’”
“Good opening,” said Thomas.
“Skip to the part where the old lady bites it,” Max said. Pippa shot her a withering glance and continued reading.
“‘The shrunken head of Ticuna-Piranha, a fabled Amazon chieftain, now sits among the exhibits at one of New York’s most undervalued museums. A hideous specimen, it is said that merely a single glance into the depths of Ticuna-Piranha’s eyes will curse the witness to a terrible fate—misfortune, illness, even premature death. This was proven true on Sunday morning, when Alice Weathersby, age eighty-two, plummeted to her death from her twelfth-floor balcony only hours after the head was unveiled. . . .’
“‘WHO WILL BE NEXT?’”
Pippa folded the newspaper, sighed, and picked up a crumb muffin. “It’s all a little mordant, don’t you think?” she said, taking a large bite.
“What’s mordant mean?” Max said without turning around. She was frying some eggs on the stove. Now she expertly flipped them.
“I think she means morbid.”
Pippa turned. Sam had just appeared in the doorway. His hair was, as always, a dark curtain in front of his face. He came in and took a seat at the table.
“What’s morbid mean?” Max asked, sliding her eggs onto a plate.
Pippa ignored her. “Someone died. And we’re all celebrating.”
“We’re not celebrating,” Thomas said. “We aren’t the ones rushing the doors every day, are we? We just live here.” He leaned over to pluck a bit of muffin from Pippa’s plate. “Did you know the probability of dying by a fall from an apartment balcony is one in four hundred and fifty thousand?”