today. You will have the place to yourself.
You must just wander around and please yourself. I shall not leave until
five this evening, so you have all afternoon.
If I can help you in any way my office is at the end of the passage.
Please don't hesitate.'
From the first moment that Royan walked into the display of African
mammals she was enthralled. The primate room housed a complete
collection of every single species of ape and monkey from that
continent: from the great ilver-backed male gorilla to the delicate
colobus in his long flowing mantle of black and white fur, they were all
represented.
Although some of the exhibits were over a hundred years old, they were
beautifully preserved and presented, set in painted dioramas of their
natural habitat. It was obvious that the museum must employ a staff of
skilled artists and taxidermists. She could guess what this must have
cost. Wryly she decided that the five million'dollars from the sale of
the plundered treasure had been well spent.
She went through to the antelope room and stared around her in wonder at
the magnificent beasts preserved here. She stopped before a diorama of a
family group of the giant sable antelope of the now extinct Angolan
variety, Hippotragus niger variant. While she admired the jet black and
snowy-chested bull with his long, back-swept horns, she mourned his
death at the hand of one of the Quenton, Harper family. Then she checked
herself. Without the strange dedication and passion of the
hunter-collector who had killed him, future generations might never have
been able to look upon this regal presence.
She passed on into the next hall which was given over to displays of the
African elephant, and paused in the centre of the room before a pair of
ivory tusks so large that she could not believe they had ever been
carried by a living animal. They seemed more like the marble columns of
some Hellenic temple to Diana, the goddess of the chase.
She stooped to read the printed catalogue card:
Tusks of the African Elephant, Loxodonta africana.
Shot in the Lado Enclave in 1899 by Sir Jonathan Quenton-Harper. Left
tusk 289 lb. Right tusk 301 lb. Length of larger tusk 11' 4'. Girth 32'.
The largest pair of tusks ever taken by a European hunter.
They stood twice as high as she was tall, and they were half as thick
again as her waist. As she passed on into the Egyptian room
she-marvelled at the size and strength of the creature that had carried
them.
She came up short as her eyes fell upon the figure in the centre of the
room. It was a fifteen-foot-high figure of Rarnesses 11, depicted as the
god Osiris in polished red granite. The god-emperor strode out on
muscular legs, wearing only sandals on his feet and a short kilt. In his
left hand he carried the remains of a warlbow, with both the upper and
lower limbs of the weapon broken off. This was the only damage that the
statue had suffered in all those thousands of years. The rest of it was
perfect - the plinth even bore the marks of the mason's chisel. In his
right fist Pharaoh carried a seal embossed with his royal cartouche.
