“Freckles came through?” Thomas asked.
“Indeed he did, my boy. Indeed he did. Max? Lend a hand?”
Max saw immediately what Mr. Dumfrey meant, and came forward with one of her sharpest knives, a small blade that had originally been used for quartering tomatoes.
Max kneeled and neatly slit open each of the three boxes. “Ah!” Mr. Dumfrey gently scooped up the first of the wax heads from the petals of newspaper that enfolded it. He seemed momentarily overcome. For nearly three whole seconds he did not say a single word. His lower lip trembled.
“It’s exquisite,” he said at last. “It’s extraordinary! Behold—Mr. Manfred B. Richstone!”
He spun the head around. Betty gasped. Caroline and Quinn squeaked. Pippa went pale.
It was Mr. Richstone, all right, but nothing like the images that had so far appeared in the papers, in which he had mostly looked confused. This Mr. Richstone was the picture of ferocity. His teeth were bared, his lips drawn back over his gums, like those of an infuriated animal. And he looked real. His eyes glittered. His skin was pitted with old acne scars. Max half expected him to start roaring with rage, or snapping away at Mr. Dumfrey’s fingers.
“It’s . . . it’s hideous,” Pippa said finally.
Mr. Dumfrey beamed. “Isn’t it?” He replaced Mr. Richstone’s head and moved onto the next box. “Aha! Here we have Mr. Edmund Snyder—the no-good, fortune-seeking scoundrel who’d been sniffing around Mrs. Richstone. He looks the part of a leech, doesn’t he?”
Everyone murmured their agreement. The second head was, if possible, even less attractive than the first. Mr. Synder’s head was fitted with oily black hair, a neatly trimmed mustache, pronounced teeth, and small eyes that gave him the look of an overeager beaver. His skin was sallow and his cheekbones sharp as blades.
“Last but not least . . .” Mr. Dumfrey lifted the third head from its box. “Ah, yes,” he said softly. “The tragic Rachel Richstone.”
Max could now believe that old Freckles had, in fact, crafted statues for the king and queen of Bulgaria and received a medal of honor from the Austrian police. He had made Rachel Richstone as beautiful as he had made her husband and the evil Mr. Snyder ugly. Soft waves of brown hair framed her face. Her skin was as pale as milk. Her blue eyes were wide with terror, and her mouth was open in a scream. For a moment, Max imagined she could hear the faint echo of Rachel Richstone shouting for help.
“Now then,” Mr. Dumfrey said, replacing the head and straightening up. “Where has Lash run off to? We’ll need to take down the dummies in the Egyptian mummy exhibit right away. With some spiffing up, they’ll do quite nicely for bodies. Miss Fitch, follow me, please.”
Mr. Dumfrey bustled away, giving rapid-fire orders. As soon as Max, Pippa, and Thomas were left alone in the lobby, Thomas crossed quickly to the box that contained Rachel Richstone’s head.
“What are you doing?” Pippa whispered as he kneeled to remove the head. “Dumfrey will slaughter you if you break that thing.”
He ignored her. “Look at this,” he said, and swiveled the head around so Max was once again confronted by Rachel’s pitiful stare.
“Put it back, Thomas.” Pippa shivered. “That head gives me the creeps.”
“They all do,” Max said. “They’re so . . .” Alive, she almost said.
“Real,” Pippa finished.
Thomas shook his head. “You don’t see it, do you?” They stared at him blankly. “It’s wrong. Eckleberger made a mistake. Her teeth are all messed up.”
Max squinted. Now she saw a large gap between the head’s two front teeth. Thomas was right. In all the newspaper photographs of Rachel Richstone, she had a perfect smile.
“So what?” she said. “It was probably a rush job.”
“No.” Thomas frowned. “Freckles doesn’t make mistakes.”
“Let it go, Thomas,” Pippa said. “What does it matter?”
Thomas hesitated. “I guess it doesn’t,” he said at last. Max was glad when he’d returned Rachel’s head to its box, and Max could no longer see those big blue eyes, and the silent plea written in them.
Even Thomas had to admit that once the heads had been fitted to wax dummies, dressed in clothing expertly tailored by Miss Fitch, and arranged neatly behind glass in furniture reconstructed by Lash to resemble the furniture in the Richstones’ bedroom, the result was impressive. Every time Pippa passed through the Hall of Wax and under the shadow of Mr. Richstone’s raised arm, she let out a yelp and spun around, half expecting him to bring a fist down on her head. And several times in the early morning, still groggy from sleep, Sam mistook the model of Mr. Snyder, who was dressed in a fur-trimmed cloak similar to one that Goldini used in his act, for the magician and greeted him with a wave and smile as he passed.
But the expected crowds didn’t come, even after Dumfrey took out radio and newspaper advertisements trumpeting “An Exact Reproduction of America’s Grisliest Crime!” and forced the children to spend an afternoon sweating in the summer heat and distributing pamphlets printed with images of Mrs. Richstone’s terrified face.
Only a handful of people were interested: a nun who sprinkled holy water on the floor of the exhibit; an old man with large buckteeth who came two days in a row and was afterward discovered to have pocketed two packs of peanut brittle from the refreshment stand; and Mr. Richstone’s legal counsel, who tried unsuccessfully to get Mr. Dumfrey to take down the exhibit on the grounds that it might influence the public against him, an unnecessary concern, since there was no public to influence.
“I can’t understand it,” Mr. Dumfrey said. The wispy strands of his hair—or what remained of it—usually combed straight across his head, had begun to radiate upward, as they did when he was upset.
It was Thursday, nearly a week after the Crime of the Century! exhibit had been added, and another sweltering day with not a single client. Even Miss Fitch could hardly insist under the circumstances that the show go on, and instead, seeming irritated by the children’s mere presence, suggested they go out and take some air.
“Go on!” she said, shooing them toward the door. “You’re breathing too loudly! I can hardly think!”
“Should we ask Howie to come with us?” Max asked hopefully.
“No,” Sam said at once.
Miss Fitch sniffed. “Howard is staying here,” she said. “I am making adjustments to his costume.” And she slammed the door behind them so hard that Pippa jumped.
It was hardly better outside than in, although at least there was a breeze, and Sam was visibly more cheerful since he knew Howie would not be joining them. Thomas had won some pocket change playing Snaps with Danny, a notorious gambler, and suggested they go to the zoo in Central Park. It was always cooler there under the shade of the trees, and Pippa liked the smell of the animals, earthy and sweet, although she sometimes felt sorry for them, too. She knew that this was what some people, like Andrea von Stikk, thought about the performers of Dumfrey’s Dime Museum: that they, too, were like caged animals, forced to perform while visitors gawked.
Pippa’s ideas wandered again to the idea of her real parents, and to the home she’d been forced to leave behind. She imagined what her parents might look like, imagined that her mother might have a pointy chin, like Pippa’s, and her father might have Pippa’s sleek and glossy black hair. Maybe they even lived here, in the city. Maybe Pippa had even passed them in the street—maybe they would even find each other again someday. . . .
“Radio Pippa. Helllooooo. Come in, Pippa.”
Pippa blinked. She realized they’d already reached the entrance to the zoo. Thomas and Sam had passed inside the gates already. She had been standing there, staring off into space, like a windup toy that had run out of juice. Max, ever impatient, glowered at her.
“Did you forget how to use your legs or something?” Max said, giving her a nudge. “Come on.”
Pippa forced her thoughts away from her parents, whoever and wherever they might be, and followed
Max into the zoo. They weren’t the only New Yorkers to take refuge in the coolness of the winding, shaded walkways. Children darted past, carrying balloons and shouting, while mothers hurried to catch up. Men with shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow and hats cocked back offered their arm to giggling dates, and ice vendors called out their different flavors. The animals, in their pens and cages, stared out at the procession with such looks of open curiosity that it seemed to Pippa as if the humans were the spectacle, and the animals the observers.
“Let’s go see the snakes,” Thomas said. He’d picked up a brochure and was squinting over the map. “See? We’re close to the Reptile House.”
“I want to see the gorillas,” Sam said.
Pippa suppressed a smile. It was no wonder Thomas wanted to see the snakes. The way he shimmied and slithered and bent and contorted, he often seemed very much like a snake himself. And although Sam was skinny for his age, all knobby elbows and shoulder blades, he must often feel like a gorilla stuck in a room full of porcelain—Pippa had never met someone more prone to breaking things than Sam was.
“What about you, Max?” she asked. “What do you want to see?”
“Penguins,” Max said without hesitation. Pippa, Thomas, and Sam all turned to her in surprise. “What?” she said, a little defensively. “I like how they’re all suited up. Plus, it’ll be colder over there with all that ice.”
They visited the Reptile House first, which was dim and musty-smelling and only slightly cooler than outside. Thomas pointed out the python and the anaconda, the smaller, green-skinned snakes camouflaged within their habitats, the coral-colored adders. Pippa was glad when they moved on. She didn’t hate snakes, exactly, but she didn’t like them, either. There was something in the dull flatness of their eyes that bothered her, something that reminded her of Rattigan. . . .
They headed to the gorilla enclosure next. As Pippa walked, she let her mind travel, let it rove through the crowd, bumping up against the minds and thoughts of the other visitors. Trying to read anything in a crowd this size was nearly impossible. There was too much interference. It was like running your fingers over a hundred woolen coats and trying to pick out one by feel. She got nothing but shapes and angles, patchy sensations, as if she were listening to a badly tuned radio.
But it was practice. Months ago, she had managed a single, true vision—an actual image, a memory, lifted from someone else’s mind—but since then she’d gotten no closer than brief gobs of feeling, impressions that glommed on to her briefly like wads of chewing gum stuck to a shoe.
The gorilla habitat was in fact a large sunken enclosure, a vast bowl of terrain pitted with rocks and stumpy trees. A dozen gorillas sunned themselves lazily or scampered between the rocks, grunting. Pippa, Thomas, Sam, and Max crowded against the railing, which protected viewers from a steep fall down into the pit.
“I bet that one’s the leader.” Thomas pointed to one of the largest gorillas, his fur spiky and silver gray, with long arms as thick as tree trunks, lumbering slowly in their direction. His face, strangely human, seemed to be set in a permanent scowl. “See? He’s the biggest. Even Sam would have a hard time arm wrestling that one.”
“Count me out,” Sam said. “That one looks a little like Howie, doesn’t it?” He pointed at a smaller gorilla, all black, picking nits out of the fur of his companion.
“Very funny,” Max said. “Hey, look at this. It’s your old friend Eckleberger.” She pointed to a small brass plaque dedicated to a former zookeeper, and engraved with the copper relief of his silhouette. It was one of Freckles’s pieces. His signature was clearly stamped at the bottom. “He’s like an old wheel—turns up everywhere, don’t he?”
“Doesn’t he,” Pippa corrected her. “And Freckles, for your information, is one of the most well-respected artists in the—”
She didn’t finish. She was hit, suddenly, with a staggering wave of anger, a punch of resentment so black and strong she had to tighten her grip on the railing to keep from toppling forward. Dimly, she heard Max saying her name, and was aware that both Thomas and Sam were staring curiously at her. But she couldn’t speak. She was in the grip of another person’s feeling—of another person’s hatred. It was as if instead of brushing up against another person’s mind, another person’s mind had reached into hers and started squeezing.
It was over as quickly as it had come. She came up out of the depths of the darkness, gasping a little, and whirled around instinctively to search the crowd. What did she expect to see? A man baring his teeth, glaring at her? A woman with her hands balled into fists?
She saw none of these things, and no one she recognized, either. A bum in dingy clothing was edging closer to a boy’s ice cream cone, muttering darkly. Fathers sweating in the summer heat mopped their faces with handkerchiefs. There were sticky-fingered children and giggling packs of teenage girls and harried-looking mothers with hats sliding from disheveled hair. But still that dark anger was there, pulsing inside of her, the force of someone’s hatred . . .
Someone screamed. Suddenly, the crowd surged forward and Pippa whipped around, forced by the movement right up to the railing, just in time to see a small boy, maybe six or seven, fall straight down into the gorilla enclosure.
“Help!” A woman who must have been the boy’s mother was screeching, scrabbling over the railing as if she, too, were thinking of nosediving after him. A man barely managed to restrain her. “Somebody please help! My boy! My baby boy!”
The boy was crying but Pippa couldn’t hear him over the noise of the crowd.
“Someone’s gotta get him out of there.”
“He’ll be squeezed like a banana.”
“Get a ladder! We need a ladder!”
“Look at that big son of a gun—he’s on the move. Watch out, kid! Behind you!”
It was true: even as the boy stood there, frozen in panic, the big silver-backed gorilla was loping toward him. His fur was stiff on his back, bristling with anger. His huge nostrils flared in and out. His teeth were bared and he knuckled the dirt with each powerful stride. He was probably six hundred pounds.
“We need to help,” Pippa said breathlessly, but even as she said it she saw another figure drop into the enclosure, landing easily on his feet.
Thomas.
“What’s he playing at?” A red-faced man next to Pippa with an explosion of veins in his forehead was shouting. “He’ll get himself killed!”
“He’s right,” Max said. She was white-faced. “What’s Thomas thinking?”
Pippa couldn’t speak and only shook her head. Now the gorilla, doubly enraged, let out a bellowing roar that she felt all the way in the soles of her feet.
Thomas managed to coax the little boy onto his back. Pippa saw him test the concrete wall, searching for the smallest crevices and cracks he could use to climb. He must have found one, because slowly, painstakingly, he began to climb, his face tight with concentration.
But it was too late. The gorilla was coming straight for them. Fifteen feet away, then ten, then only five. . .
“I guess that’s my cue,” Sam said with a sigh. He vaulted over the railing just as the gorilla reached out to swat Thomas off the wall, as if he were no more than a fly. There was another scream, and it took Pippa a moment to realize she was the one screaming.
Sam landed directly on top of the gorilla and went down in a jumble of arms and flying fur. For a good half minute she couldn’t tell who was who or which was which and whether Sam had the advantage or the gorilla did. All this time the crowd had tripled in size and everyone—parents and children and even zoo employees—was shouting. Pippa could hear nothing but the drumbeat of her own panic. She could see nothing but the flash of a knee or an elbow, dark patches of fur, Sam’s face occasionally twisted in pain, and the gorilla howling his frustration to the sky.
Meanwhile, Thomas continued to climb, using hand- and footholds no wider than a spaghetti noodle, until at last he reached the railing and was hauled to safety by a half dozen
spectators. Thomas thudded to his knees as the little boy’s mother fought through the crowd to snatch him up.
“Oh, Eddie,” she sobbed into the little boy’s hair. “Oh, Eddie. You’re all right. It’s all right now.”
Pippa kneeled to take Thomas by the shoulder. He was breathing hard.
“Sam,” he panted out. “Is Sam all right?”
“I don’t know.” Pippa felt as though her lungs were full of dust. “I can’t tell.”
But at precisely that moment a cheer went up from the crowd. Pippa helped Thomas to his feet. An exultant Max was jumping up and down, pumping a fist in the air.
“Take that, monkey-brain!” she shouted. “How does that feel, you sorry excuse for a primate?!”
A pale-faced Sam, straggly and exhausted-looking, had managed to restrain the gorilla’s arms behind his back using his leather belt. The silver-backed gorilla now seemed about as dangerous as a ten-day-old kitten. He rocked back and forth on his heels, working his mouth into what looked very much like a frown when at last a ladder was lowered into the enclosure so that Sam could make his escape. The rest of the monkeys hopped and hooted and waved cheerfully at Sam as he began to climb.
Pippa began to giggle. “Looks like the monkeys have a brand-new leader,” she said.
“Hey, Sam,” Max said as he clambered clumsily over the railing and nearly dropped at their feet. “Have you ever thought of a gorilla for a pet?”
They returned to the museum soon afterward. Sam was eager to escape the crush of people asking for his autograph. Thomas wouldn’t have minded scrawling off an autograph or two, but knew better than to suggest they stay until the newspapers showed up—not after their adventures earlier that spring with The Daily Screamer and its so-called ace reporter.
They found the front doors locked, which was unusual for midday, and had to go around Forty-Fourth Street to enter through the sunken courtyard and the kitchen door. The museum’s lower levels were empty. It was so quiet, Thomas could make out the individual squeaks of mice behind the walls. And when they entered the attic, he saw why: every single resident of the museum, including Mr. Dumfrey, was gathered there.
The Screaming Statue Page 5
