by Adam Chase
Albert's first impulse was to run. This was impossible. More than that, it was frightening. Statues, very definitely, could not climb on and off their pedestals at will. If they did, they either violated all the natural laws pertaining to statues and pedestals or at least to inert marble, or else they indicated a tragic shortcoming in the mind of Albert Sprayregan. Said shortcoming, he told himself, simultaneously deciding not to flee, of two possible forms. Either Albert Sprayregan had never known that statues could indeed leave their pedestal at will and often did so as a matter of course at night, or Albert Sprayregan had imagined all this and was nuts.
Albert probed a little unsteadily with his flashlight beam. It found and held Flame Lady waveringly. It had to be Flame Lady, of course. Most of Myron Clarepepper's creations were female and Albert could sooner see himself climbing all over a marble abstraction like Flame Lady than one of the others. There were several other abstractions but these had angles and sharp jutting points and other items on which Albert could have snagged his clothing as also had each of the non-abstract male statues, like Javeliner with his javelin and Gladiator with his sword. Flame Lady was the most likely candidate and Albert was still looking for buried electric motors after his first fright had gone.
He mounted Flame Lady's pedestal with some slight difficulty after shutting off the flashlight and clipping the instrument to his belt, thus plunging the room into darkness. He reached up along the smooth abstraction that was Flame Lady's body, searching with his fingers for a handhold. He could find none. He wondered if he could use his knees to shiny up Flame Lady, like he had climbed trees as a boy. He decided to try, since the likely place for an electric motor seemed to be what passed for Flame Lady's head.
He encircled Flame Lady with calves and forearms. Grunting, he started up.
"I really must insist," a voice said, "that you stop this at once."
Albert almost fell off. He righted himself on Flame Lady's pedestal and croaked, "Who said that?"
"Freeze!" came the same stage whisper.
But the other voice, the woman's voice, said, "If you must know, I said it."
The voice came from directly above Albert's head, from where Flame Lady's head — or what passed for her head — should have been in the darkness. He checked an impulse to use his flashlight again. Hearing Flame Lady was bad enough : he didn't want to see her talking, at least, not until he grew used to the idea and not until his heart stopped its loud thudding.
"I didn't know statues can talk," Albert said lamely after the silence had been as frightening as anything else. He would have cheerfully fled, except that fright had frozen him to the spot.
"I don't know about statues," Flame Lady said. "But we can talk. We Clarepeppers." She used the sculptor's name as if it was the family name of all the statues in the Gallery. "And I certainly won't remain quiet w T hen my most obvious rights of privacy are violated," Flame Lady sniffed. "I don't mind being admired — from a distance, I like to be admired. Worshipped, you know. All statues do. But coming up here and hugging me is something else entirely, Mr. Albert Sprayregan. You can be my devoted subject, but it ends right there."
For Albert, strangely and unexpectedly, disappointment conquered fear. In theory, he agreed with the prudish Flame Lady, but in practice, he did not. That is, he told himself, it was the function of an abstraction of feminine loveliness like Flame Lady to attract. If said attraction led to what seemed a logical outgrowth — although this had not been in Albert's mind at all — the attracting statue ought to be ready to suffer the consequences.
In short, a lovely female statue — abstraction or no — oughtn't to be a prude.
"Why don't you shut up?" the stage-whispering voice said. It came from behind Flame Lady and to the left, where Javeliner was located.
"Why did you have to open your fat mouth and talk?"
"I don't have a mouth," said Flame Lady.
"Your abstraction of a mouth. What the hell's the difference? Now he knows about us."
"Well," said another voice, a delightfully throaty voice from the direction of Helen II, "I wouldn't mind it if Albert Sprayregan or for that matter any other man of flesh and blood decided to violate my pedestal. I'm growing tired of old granite puss over there."
"Thanks a lot," Gladiator said sarcastically.
"What do you say, Albert?" Helen II asked. "Just a little bit, Albert?"
On impulse, Albert reached for his flashlight, unclipping it from his belt and snapping it on in one motion, and bringing it up to point at Helen II. He staggered back. He almost had to clutch Flame Lady for support, but remembered her injunction in time and managed to regain his balance without her help.
Helen II was leaning toward him from her pedestal, her arms extended invitingly, her marble lips parted, warm flesh tones almost seeming to color her stark white nudity. "Well, Albert?" she coo'd, unabashed in the flashlight's beam. "Aren't you going to come up on my pedestal?"
Albert stammered something which hardly passed as an answer. Helen II pouted and said, "If you don't come up here, I think I'll come down there after you."
"Up here, you mean!" cried Flame Lady. "But I dare you to violate my pedestal. I just dare you!"
"But I thought you didn't want Albert."
"Only as a worshipper. But I won't surrender my acolyte to the fleshpots of — of — "
"Fleshpots, me?" laughed Helen II. "A statue, just like yourself."
"Now girls," said Javeliner.
"Don't you now girls us," Helen II told him. "You statues of men had your chance. Look at you, all of you. Look at Gladiator."
"What's wrong with me?" Gladiator demanded, and Albert gave him the benefit of the flashlight's beam, like the spotlight director of a show. Gladiator actually seemed to expand his already immense chest.
"I'll tell you what's the matter," Helen II said promptly. "You don't know the meaning of love. Of real love. You just play at it because you think you're supposed to. But you're too interested in — "
"In being a Gladiator ?" Gladiator demanded. "But that's ridiculous. I've never been in a gladiatorial contest in my life. They just made me look like a gladiator, that's all."
" — in posing," Helen II said coldly. "You didn't let me finish. All of you. All of you strut around like marble peacocks, that's what. Why don't you look at Albert Sprayregan, at a real man, a man of flesh and blood?"
Albert, so engrossed in the drama enfolding, almost found himself turning the flashlight on his own face. But that wouldn't do. It wouldn't do at all. For if he allowed Helen II to have her way. . . .
"Listen," he said, "how is it that you statues — well, how is it you came to life? Statues don't ordinarily. Do they?"
No one answered. No one seemed interested. Finally, Helen II said, "I told you if you didn't come here I'd go after you, lover boy."
Lover boy. The words so aptly did not describe him that Albert had to smile. Apparently capable of seeing in the darkness, Flame Lady huffed, "So you like that, do you? All right Albert Sprayregan, I'll look for another devotee." The pedestal quaked. Flame Lady leaned over, tilting herself and her pedestal at a precarious angle. Albert was deposited on the hard tile floor with an ungentle bump.
He still held the flashlight, its beam circling until it found Helen II. The beautiful statue was in the process of climbing down from its pedestal.
"I won't let you do it," Gladiator said jealously. "I won't let you throw yourself at him like that."
Helen IFs response was laughter and the words, "Try and stop me."
There was a ponderous crunching kind of sound as Gladiator, hurt and indignant, came too quickly from his pedestal. He groaned and another statue voice demanded: "S'matter? Break something, kiddo?"
"I think I cracked my pedestal," sobbed Gladiator as he alighted on the floor.
"Keep away from me," Helen II cried.
"Yeah, kiddo," said Javeliner, "keep away from her. We had enough trouble for one night. I'm warning you, keep your hard h
ands off of her."
"Is that a threat?" demanded Gladiator, brandishing the short sword in his right hand and the small round shield of marble in his left
"You can call it anything you want," replied Javeliner, and came down heavily from his pedestal, javelin ready.
"Now, boys!" cried Flame Lady. "Why can't you keep this argument on the abstract level?"
Helen II tittered. "Let them fight. That's what I say. Right, Albert, boy? Just let them fight. While we— "
"Keep away from me," Albert heard himself saying. But he did not say it with much conviction. After all, Helen II was a statue. True, she wasn't an abstract statue like Flame Lady, but she wasn't flesh and blood, either. Made of marble, she was at least half way towards being an abstraction. She was, in short, exactly what Albert needed at the moment, although he did not know that. She wasn't all abstraction; she wasn't all concrete. She might, in one short moment, allow Albert to bridge the chasm which separated him from at least mild sensuality.
"Kiss me, Albert," she said.
Albert retreated slowly, backing against Flame Lady's pedestal. Flame Lady, now aloof and above it all, ignored them.
"Over my dead body!" cried Gladiator.
But Javeliner stood in his path. "Get back to your pedestal," he commanded.
The two statues met resoundingly, stood breast to breast, their weapons held but forgotten. Then Javeliner got his thick calf behind Gladiator's leg and shoved and Gladiator went down with a thud which all but shook the museum.
"Unfair, unfair!" another statue cried. It was Ay-rab, the one fully clothed statue in the Gallery. Ay-rab, in fact, had been a problem for the museum director. Ay-rab was a joke in marble. They did not want Ay-rab in the Exhibit, but the executors of Myron Clarepepper's will had insisted, within their legal rights, that Ay-rab must be included in the Gallery if there was to be any exhibit of the late Myron Clarepepper's work at all. Ay-rab was an Arab in flowing burnoose, an Arab with protruding teeth and a nose like a hawk's beak and no chin at all and round little close-set eyes and an idiotic smile. Ay-rab was also Gladiator's friend and admirer, and when he saw the big statue tumble over backwards he charged off his own pedestal and jumped on Javeliner from behind. "You can't do that," he told Javeliner, "to Gladiator." Meanwhile, Helen II got Albeit in her embrace. Albert no longer fought it. The wild, fantastic events of the night, he finally decided, not without some unexpected enthusiasm, ought to be capped by at least one tentative embrace with the amorous statue. Helen II hardly felt like a statue. She felt more like flesh and blood. She started kissing him but wound up being kissed by him. She clung to him, and sighed. Albert forgot about Javeliner, Gladiator and Ay-rab. Albert went on kissing her. Abstractions had nothing on this, he thought. Absolutely nothing. And once, daringly, he shut his eyes and found himself imagining that Helen II was not Helen II, but Sandra Lewis. The thought stirred him delightfully and he went right on kissing Helen II until a second loud thud jolted the floor of the Gallery. Sighing, Helen II let Albert go. Albert drew away from her and used his flashlight. He was thinking, I'm a changed man now, I can sense it. I needed what Helen II could give me. I needed that kind of — well, courage. Courage to face the concrete, not the abstract. To realize that the abstract should never. . . .
The thought was sundered by Ay-rab.
Ay-rab was crying, "I'm broke! I'm broke, broke, broke!"
Ay-rab was not referring to any pecuniary state of affairs. Ay-rab who, like Gladiator, had been thrown by Javeliner, was on the floor of the Gallery. But Gladiator, shakily, had climbed to his marble feet.
Ay-rab would not. Ay-rab, indeed, was broke.
In six pieces. It was the head piece which had cried. The head piece had come to rest against the Ay-rab statue's pedestal, but now of course Ay-rab no longer occupied it. The chest piece was nearby. The torso and one of the legs were being studied morosely by Gladiator. The other leg and both arms rested against Helen II's similarly unoccupied pedestal.
"Faulty construction," Albert muttered. He was still, first and foremost, a museum man. "If Gladiator didn't break when Javeliner threw him like that, then Ay-rab shouldn't have broken either."
"It hurts," said Ay-rab's head. "It hurts, it hurts, it hurts."
Stanely Hungerford, night watchman of the Metropolitan Museum, was in the process of taking his third drink from the hip flask which shared his lonely rounds with him, when Ay-rab had his humpty-dumptylike fall.
Hungerford and the bourbon were on the second floor of the museum, and directly below the Clarepepper Gallery in the Florentine School. Hungerford winced. The bourbon certainly carried a stiff jolt. But, he suddenly realized, the loud thud over his head could hardly be ascribed to the bourbon. After all, the bourbon wouldn't bring plaster raining down from the ceiling, would it? Reluctantly (in his seventeen years as night watchman at the Metropolitan Museum, Stanley Hungerford had only once had to defend the valuable art treasures against a prowler, and this in the form of a stray cat which had entered through the cafeteria ventilating shaft), Stanley Hungerford got to his feet, capped the flask of bourbon, returned it to a rear pocket of his trousers, and loosened the Police Special automatic in the holster strapped around his waist. The entire uniformed security force of the museum, including night watchman Hungerford, was so armed, but until now Hungerford had always taken the weapon as one of Harry Digger's little jokes.
He was almost stone sober when he reached the foot of the wide marble staircase. He was even a little afraid. He would have been very much afraid, except that the noise had come from the Clarepepper Gallery. What thief in his right mind, Hungerford thought, would want to steal any of those Clarepepper statues?
Then maybe, the still not entirely sober Hungerford decided grimly, he'd be dealing with a maniac. He reached the top of the stairs and drifted like a heavy-paunched shadow past the dark entrance to Pseudo-Michelangelo. When he reached the next dark unbarred doorway, the entrance to Clarepepper, he held a flashlight in one hand and the Police Special in the other.
Should he try stealth? he wondered. Not in his present condition, not when he had just got beyond the stage where walking a straight line might prove difficult; Boldness. He must try boldness.
Stanley Hungerford snapped on the flashlight, its beam flashing ahead of him into the Clarepepper Gallery.
"All right, you in there!" he cried.
The beam of the flashlight caught Helen II's pedestal. The pedestal was empty. It then caught in turn, the deserted pedestals of Gladiator, Javeliner and Ay-rab. There wasn't a sound except for Hungerford's loud burp, a nervous reaction. Someone, Hungerford told himself grimly, was collecting Clarepepper statues.
"I've got a gun on you!' Hungerford shouted into the darkness, regretting that he had not fled down to the first floor and phoned for the municipal police. "Come on out of there with your hands up or I'm — " his voice trailed off somewhat in the hope that this would not prove necessary — "coming in there after you."
The silence was the kind you could drown in. Stanley Hungerford sighed, wished he had been a day guard, and walked into the Clarepepper Gallery, swinging the flashlight back and forth slowly, trying to lift the curtain of darkness in the room. All at once, though, he remembered the light switch. Of course, Stanley old boy, he told himself, the light switch. They won't hide from you with a dozen king-sized fluorescents glaring down on them. He retreated to the wall and felt along it with his hand. Something prodded his paunch. Instinctively, he clutched out for it, dropping his Police Special, which he was not very accustomed to carrying. The gun clattered on the tile floor as Stanley Hungerford's fingers closed on something long and cold and tapering and hard. Like a spear — or a javelin. Stanley Hungerford moaned. His other hand found the light, clawed at it, snapped it on. Moments later, the fluorescents flickered, then brightened into a steady glow.
Two feet in front of him, incredibly, was the face of a statue. The statue belonged on one of the empty pedestals, but was now standing on the f
loor in front of Stanley Hungerford, ready, apparently, to impale him on a javelin of granite. The watchman could feel the sharp point digging for his gut. The statue's face, naturally, showed nothing, nothing.
"Don't kill me," Stanley Hungerford moaned.
The statue said nothing. Now the javelin began to hurt. In a daze, Stanley Hungerford became aware of other statues nearby. Then a voice, a human voice, cried, "Don't kill him, you fool!"
Stanley Hungerford fainted.
"Don't kill him, you fool!" cried Albert, sprinting across the marble floor in his stocking feet.
"Kill?" demanded Javeliner, still on the point of impaling Stanley Hungerford, who had slumped forward and down against the javelin. "What does kill mean?"
That stopped Albert for a moment. He came up and grabbed Javeliner's marble arm, yanking. The javelin came away from the watchman's paunch. The unconscious man fell to the floor and rolled over.