by Adam Chase
"I read the reports."
"Harry Digger is desperate. If there's prankster, he's got to find the prankster or they'll have to close the exhibit. But do you think Mr. Hodd is desperate? Maybe he acts like he is. He's got to. But actually, Sandra, he's delighted. I'm loaning you to Harry Digger, Albert, he says. Digger can't spare a man for full time duty in the Clarepepper Gallery. Digger—"
"So he can spare you, is that it, Albert Sprayregan? Sprayregan, the expendable."
"Not at all," Albert said calmly. "Digger will think I'm there to help him, don't you see? To put an all day watch on the Clarepepper Gallery. But actually, although he didn't come right out and say it, Mr. Hodd wants me to — to gather material for publicity purposes. Don't you see, Sandra? If we can convince the public that something funny really is going on in the Clarepepper Gallery, if we can convince them of that, they'll come to see it in droves and the Board of Directors, whose appropriation next fiscal year will be cut almost to nil because of the Clarepepper fiasco, will have the publicity department and Albert Sprayregan to thank for their salvation."
Looking at her face, Albert could tell that Sandra was impressed. Naturally, though, Sandra would be the last one to admit it. She said, "Have it all figured out, don't you?"
"Well, yes. You must admit I have a good grasp of museum politics."
"Albert, isn't there anything that matters to you but the museum?"
"We," Albert said, standing up and depositing their dirty dishes on one of the pick-up-counters, "are employees of the Museum. We have a mission. We — "
"Oh, Albert, sometimes I—"
'There you are, Sandra," a brisk baritone voice called. A tall figure cut through the cafeteria line and stood in front of them suddenly, beaming. It was, Albert knew although he had never been introduced, Lawrence Chenault, an archaeologist on the museum staff recently back from a trip to the Near East. They were calling him a second Lawrence of Arabia, Albert recalled. He smiled secretly: the phrase had been of his own invention, had gone out to the newspapers and wire services in an article he had written. Chenault was an imposing young man, handsome, over six feet tall, with shoulders like a fullback and a walk like Poppa Lion. Sandra's smile as he took her hand was almost demure — an amazing thing for Sandra's smile.
"Hello, Larry," she said.
"How's the girl, Sandra?"
"Larry, I'd like you to meet Albert Sprayregan. Albert, this is Larry Chenault. You know," she said, giving Chenault a second demure smile, then making it coy at the end, "the second Lawrence of Arabia? You've undoubtedly heard of him."
"Well, I don't know about that," Chenault said with false modesty, flashing white teeth against a sun-bronzed face.
Chenault was still holding Sandra's hand. Sandra seemed quite pleased and unexpectedly, Albert could feel his weak stomach beginning to flutter. Jealousy, he wondered. Impossible. He never had felt that way over Sandra, so it couldn't possibly be jealousy. Probably it was the franks-and-beans.
"If you'll excuse us," he heard Sandra saying, "Mr. Chenault and I have a new press release to discuss. See you later, Albert."
He watched them walk away, still holding hands. Shrugging, he took the elevator to the fourth floor and Harry Digger's office. "You just watch," Digger told him. "Remember this: you ain't a Security Officer. Anything funny happens, you report it to me. Got it?"
"But you don't really expect anything funny to happen. Do you?"
"I give up trying to figure this one out," Digger admitted with some reluctance. He was a short stocky man, balding, with a squarish face and close-set eyes and a chin like a sledge hammer. "Well, good luck, Sprayregan. Hell of an exhibit, ain't it?"
"What? Oh, you mean the Clarepepper Gallery ?"
"Yeah. Where you'll be stuck the next few days."
"Oh, it isn't bad. It isn't bad at all. Confidentially, I've always been an admirer of Myron Clarepepper. You see, the way he has managed to combine the classic with the modern and abstract in a grouping of twenty pieces has always — "
"Well, that ain't my department. Just keep a weather eye, is all. Right?"
"Right," said Albert, and went downstairs to where the Clarepepper Gallery was sandwiched between Pseudo Michelangelo and Post Athenian Greek.
Where the Clarepepper statues, all of them sentient now, were waiting for him.
"That jerk," Javeliner said after Albert's first full day in the Clarepepper Gallery. His vocabulary and his thoughts had been gleaned from the minds of the few visitors the Clarepepper Gallery had had. The epithet "jerk" had come from the mind of the boy who had tried to carve his initials in Javeliner's calf.
"The way he gawks," Javeliner said. "It ain't natural."
"He doesn't gawk at you, buster," Helen II pointed out.
"Not at you either," Javeliner responded. "He likes his dames abstract. Don't he, Flame Lady?"
Flame Lady, a shaft of virgin white marble in a single pure, flowing line which somehow gave an abstract suggestion of feminine sensuality and bright pulsing flame burning brightly together, said, "He certainly does. He's cute, though."
"Cute!" Javeliner cried. "Well, I gave him a start today," said Flame Lady.
"I didn't see," Javeliner admitted. "Whatcha do?"
"I leaned over a little toward Albert."
"Albert? That's his name?" "Yes, Albert. Everyday I'm going to lean a little closer until Albert realizes something is wrong."
Javeliner guffawed. "It'll knock him silly, kiddo."
"I really don't want to frighten him," the abstraction named Flame Lady said. "But one needs recreation, you see—"
"Don't have to tell me that," said Javeliner. "Just look around you, kid."
Flame Lady did so, although she had not been vouchsafed eyes. Still, she could somehow see — thanks to Igzs' magic. She blushed a delicate pink marble color. It was, naturally, not an organic blush. But the Clarepepper statues could blush when they wanted to blush. Blushing, according to what she had gleaned from the mind of their first visitor, Miss Ostigan, was quite appropriate at this moment, Flame Lady told herself.
For Helen II and Gladiator had come down from their pedestals and were cavorting brazenly around the Gallery. Then, even while she watched, Helen II giggled and Gladiator led her off into a dark corner of the night-closed Gallery.
''What's the matter, you a prude?" Javeliner asked Flame Lady.
"I'm an abstraction," Flame Lady said.
"You're evading the issue."
''Well, then — yes, so I am a prude. Why shouldn't I be a prude? Do you expect me to be ashamed of being a prude?"
"Hey, take it easy. I didn't mean nothing, Flame Lady." Javeliner seemed genuinely alarmed.
"Well, look at you. Arms and legs and everything. It's all right for you to talk about being a prude or not being a prude. But we abstractions — "
Just then Helen II came running back into view, with Gladiator in hot pursuit. Helen II was giggling as she ran and Gladiator closed the gap between them.
Flame Lady at that moment would have given anything to be an abstraction no longer. For, had she eyes she could have closed them. But seeing only in a general sense as she did, with every atom of her being, she found it impossible to shut out the shameful view of Gladiator and Helen II. And so the night passed, and, when dawn's pink glow came slowly to the gallery, even Gladiator and Helen II — or perhaps, most of all Gladiator and Helen II-were resting from the evening's activities.
Flame Lady thought dreamily: He's coming again today. He's coming. He — he adores me. I think he adores me. Like any statue or idol that ever had been, anywhere, Flame Lady loved being worshipped. Being an abstraction, however, she was not very sure of herself.
Secretly, Albert Sprayregan liked his new assignment. There was the reason he had given Sandra, but that was far from the whole story. For he also liked Flame Lady, and to himself he made no bones about it. Albert Sprayregan had always been inclined to place the fair sex on a pedestal of his own creation. Thi
s was not for any reason that the disciples of Freud might study and nod their sage heads over. No, Albert Sprayregan would hardly satisfy a Freudian. Instead, Albert was inclined to place the fair sex on a pedestal for a reason that had been missed entirely by the Freudians, probably because it was too obvious.
Albert was unsure of himself with women.
Afraid of women.
Placing them on a pedestal, they were not only untouchable and inviolate — he was untouchable and inviolate. Probably, his unconscious mind regretted this: he had a perfectly normal unconscious mind. But heredity had not given Albert the most robust of frames and environment had not endowed him with the necessary compensatory outlook. Albert was the wallflower type.
The slim white flowing supple smoothness of Flame Lady, her very graceful simplicity was, for Albert, the epitome of the fair sex on a pedestal. Oh, he could recognize the more obvious virtues of, say, a Helen II. Myron Clarepepper, the late and not particularly modest creator of the Clarepepper Exhibit, had proclaimed that Helen II was Helen with the numeral after her name only for chronological reasons. Actually, he had declared, from the point of view of pulchritude, Helen of Troy had nothing on Helen II. This certainly was debatable, but the fact remained that Helen II was an attractive hunk of marble. She was a high-breasted young lady with long limbs, supple thighs and a provocative smile on her pretty face that would have shocked the Mona Lisa.
It also shocked Albert. In his own words, it frightened him ever so slightly. Because Helen II, statue or no, was too real.
Flame Lady was different. Albert could stand at the base of Flame Lady's statue for hours, gazing up at her in rapt joy. Flame Lady was an abstraction — a harmless abstraction. In a way, it was nice to know that right now, this very minute, some unknown model wasn't getting up — brushing her teeth, perhaps, and gargling — a model who had posed for Flame Lady. Because, clearly, no one had posed for Flame Lady. Flame Lady was an abstraction.
So Albert paced slowly back and forth before her pedestal, every now and then looking up at her joyously. He was perfectly at ease. Not for a moment had he thought there actually were strange goings on in the Clarepepper Gallery. The strange goings on, such as they were, had been in the minds of the five individuals for whom they had transpired, Albert told himself. It was a logical assumption.
It also was, of course, perfectly incorrect.
Albert got the fright of his life on the morning of the fourth day. He had made his usual early morning rounds of the Clarepepper Gallery and found everything as it should be. He had taken up his stand at the base of Flame Lady's pedestal, from which point of vantage, looking straight ahead between Javeliner and Helen II, with a corner of the eye view of Gladiator, he could see the hallway outside the Gallery. Settled comfortably like that, leaning against Flame Lady's pedestal somewhat indolently, he glanced up at the abstraction.
He yelped.
Flame Lady was glancing down at him.
Or at least leaning down. Precariously. Way over, almost at ninety degrees. She straightened quickly, fluidly, when she became aware of his glance — but she was too late. If anything, that was even worse. Now Albert had not merely seen her out of position, he had seen her return rapidly to it — via locomotion.
Albert's second reaction — following the yelp of astonishment — was subjective. Well, that's it, Albert old boy, he told himself. You're off your trolley, your rocker, or whatever people get off of. Naturally, you imagined all this. Perhaps it was a subconscious wish, coming to the surface.
Albert's third reaction was defensive and objective. I am not nuts, he told himself. I saw the statue move, apparently of its own accord. Since statues do not move of their own accord, this must be some trick of the eccentric sculptor, Myron Clarepepper. Albert, who was not very mechanical, supposed that Clarepepper, had he wanted, could have placed an electric motor of some sort inside the marble of Flame Lady's body. As a practical joke? Yes, Albert decided, the eccentric Clarepepper could have done something like that.
The publicity aspects of the situation came to Albert at once. Not statues, but robots, if Clarepepper had so mechanized all his creations. Of course, Albert would have to be sure. To suggest such a thing only to find it was the figment of an overworked imagination would invite scorn, ridicule. So Albert would have to see for himself.
That meant waiting patiently all day and admitting himself to the museum at night, waiting again until he was certain that the watchman was not on the third floor . . .
At closing time, after a day which had seemed interminable, Albert met Sandra Lewis at the main exit. "Oh, hi," Sandra said. "I was looking for you, Albert. Larry is showing some films of his latest trip to Saudi Arabia tonight. Want to come?"
"No," Albert said quickly. "Not tonight. Thank you, no." He hastened to walk on.
Sandra caught up with him on the broad staircase. "I thought you'd like to take me," she said petulantly. "Of course, if you have other interests — "
"It isn't that," Albert said.
"Then what is it?"
"I — I'm busy. Museum work."
"That's even worse. That's all you ever think about, the museum. Well, let me tell you something, Albert Sprayregan. I'm going there tonight. To Larry Chenault's place. To his apartment. His bachelor apartment. And you want to know something? Larry's going to ask me to stay on for — for a drink or something, after the other guests leave. You know what I'll tell him? I'll tell him all right. That's what I'll tell him, Albert Sprayregan."
Ordinarily, this statement would have bothered Albert considerably although he would have been at a loss as to why. But now, his mind so occupied with thoughts of Flame Lady and the motor which might be hidden inside her beautiful marble lines, he hardly heard Sandra's words. Absently he muttered, "Ummm, yes. That will be very nice, I'm sure."
Sandra, who had fallen into step with him, stopped dead in her tracks and watched him go on. The exasperated look on her face faded quickly, however, as Lawrence Chenault came up behind her. She allowed him to take her arm, but her eyes followed Albert's form as it disappeared in the rush-hour crowds outside.
It was very dark on the third floor of the museum.
Albert had a flashlight, but did not dare use it. At least not yet, not until he was sure that the watchman was elsewhere and had no intention of returning, at least for a while, to the third floor. With his shoes in his hand, Albert advanced across the tile floor. He knew every inch of the museum corridors by heart. He was abreast of Post-Athenian now. Fifteen more strides — there! Now he stood directly outside the Clarepepper Gallery.
The watchman?
Albert heard footsteps above his head.
The watchman was on the fourth floor, making his rounds. Albert wondered how long he remained on each floor. He could time it, except that he did not know how long the man had been up there already. Well, it really didn't matter. He hardly needed more than a few minutes to find out if Flame Lady had a motor inside her or not.
The more he thought of it, the more foolish it seemed. Perhaps, he told himself, it had been his imagination. Well, he would soon find out. He
Abruptly, he was aware of steps on the marble staircase beyond Pseudo-Michelangelo. He flattened himself against one wall of the wide entranceway to the Clarepepper Gallery and waited. The watchman came on slowly. He was whistling tunelessly between his teeth. His feet shuffled.
Albert could see him quite distinctly against the faint hallway light as he came on into the Clarepepper Gallery. After he had passed, Albert looked at the luminous dial of his wristwatch. He timed the watchman's stay with the Clarepepper statuary. It was ten minutes. Ten minutes for each gallery on the floor, five galleries on the third floor, five more on the second, ten on the first, plus time to get from gallery to gallery and floor to floor — why, it would be some three hours or better before the watchman returned this way, not even counting another trip to the top floor.
Albert had all the time in the world.
Wh
en the watchman had drifted on down to Post Athenian, Albert, shoes in one hand and flashlight in the other, marched resolutely into the Clarepepper Gallery.
"Freeze!" a voice said in a loud stage whisper.
It startled Albert. It startled him so much that he snapped on the beam of his flashlight and played it quickly around the Gallery. He blinked. The bright yellow beam of light momentarily was dazzling. In the split second it took his eyes to adjust, he thought he saw motion.
Not just motion from Flame Lady's pedestal.
From all the pedestals.
As if all twenty Clarepepper statues, the thirteen classic and the seven abstract, had made a mad dash to return to their pedestals from the floor before Albert could see them.