own minds.”
“What are you, Mickey Zondi?”
“I’m a superstitious kaffir,” said Zondi, breaking into a wide grin. “And you, boss, are wiser than the elephant.”
“ Ach, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, hey? But I can tell you one thing: I don’t suffer the same way from the blind spots of my people. Not in my work anyway.”
That, too, was meant as a joke, something flippant to lighten the disappointment now weighing down hard on both of them. But somehow it seemed to misfire.
Zondi said, “The charge against this prisoner, Lieutenant? Demanding with menaces?”
“Ja, what you like.”
It was a great pity the new day had to begin like that, almost as an omen.
8
The museum opened to the public at ten. Strydom arrived at nine and went in through the side entrance. He had not only the overnights to see to at the mortuary, but also both police patients and corporal punishments to attend. In other words, this was his only hour free until evening.
“Oh, there you are,” said Bose. “Had the idea of getting everything ready for you before your arrival.”
“Sorry, man, but I checked with the magistrate and that didn’t take as long as I thought. He says we can go ahead and do what we like. How is he?”
“It’s a beauty,” Bose declared without pride, as he continued to remove sections of the mold.
The plaster had taken every detail of the scales and Strydom clasped his hands in delight. Bose had coiled the creature in a most realistic manner, and even a layman could see how well this was going to reproduce.
“Might manage a lick of paint,” Bose murmured. “We haven’t a new case going in for some months yet.”
Strydom had already been captivated by the clockless back rooms of the museum, and very nearly asked if they ever employed skilled pensioners on bird stuffing or the like. Then wonder returned his thoughts to the immediate.
“Lovely and shiny,” he said.
“Vaseline; prevents it sticking to the p.o.p. The fact the colors fade so rapidly is one of the main reasons we’ve gone over onto casts. Now, Python regius, consent has been given, so it’s time for your little operation.”
Strydom, who could have kicked himself for not going through the proper channels in the first place, and so saving himself much anxiety, said idly, “King python, is it?”
“Royal. Must have been imported from up north and have cost a pretty penny, too. Although, with proper care, their life span makes it a goodish investment. Very gentle nature; an excellent pet.”
“No, thanks!”
“Any animal,” Bose reminded him pointedly, with a mischievous smile, “is apt to behave in a strongly defensive manner if it believes itself to be threatened. Usually, our friend the royal makes himself into an almost perfect ball, with his head tucked away on the inside-you can literally roll him about with your foot. Quite a trick.”
“Wonder if it was in her act.”
“Shouldn’t think so; once they’re tame, they stop doing it. Excuse me a moment.”
The dead reptile was now lying stretched out on its back along the zinc-topped table. Strydom put down his bag and went over to examine the two horny claws just in front of its vent.
“Vestigial hind limbs,” Bose explained, unrolling a canvas holder lined with dissecting instruments. “The family Boidae have a quite recognizable pelvic girdle, which I’ll show you. Males use the claws to stroke the female during courtship- while they seem to have no use for them at all.”
“Hell, I never thought of them as lovers.” Strydom chuckled. In fact, as he realized then, he had lived all his life surrounded by snakes without giving them any thought at all-except, momentarily, while dispatching them with his golf club.
“Nor had I,” said Bose, selecting a large scalpel.
But Strydom’s curiosity had been aroused. “So how come they lost them? I thought legs were a step up the scale, if you get my meaning!”
“Ah, not much good for burrowing. It’s believed that snakes evolved about one and a quarter million years ago from some lizards that took to burrowing, lost the use of their legs, and returned limbless to the surface. There are several other indications of this as well.”
Bose was plainly flattered by an attentive pupil, so Strydom decided this would be a good moment to put a question that might have seemed impertinent before.
“I’ve been wondering, man, why you keep shoving the blame on the girl when how can we be sure that the python didn’t attack her in the first place?”
“Aha, the Tarzan fallacy! Come up this end and take a look at the teeth. Notice how big they are and how they point backward-and now contrast them with the two fangs of this viper here.”
Strydom did that.
“Neither, you have noted, are designed for chewing. Snakes do not chew their food, but swallow it whole. The nearest thing to mastication is found in the eggeater, known hereabouts as Dasypeltis scaber, which has a special downward-pointing projection from its spine that breaks the shell of an engorged meal, allowing it to spit out the bits. But come now-why does the royal have them, do you think?”
There was obviously a catch to this, so Strydom’s reply was grudgingly given. “To bite with?”
“Good.”
“But I’d already thought of that. She must have just been quicker.”
“Quicker than this chap? Contrary to Lord Greystoke’s simian beliefs, constrictors begin like any other snake by striking, not by wrapping themselves around you. The teeth are for holding on, for getting to grips with their prey. Having secured a hold, then they coil themselves around and try, if they can, to keep their tails anchored to a fixed object in order-”
“I know,” said Strydom, “but how hard exactly is the squeeze?”
“Sufficient to cause suffocation by immobilizing the respiratory apparatus. Strangulation may, or may not, come into it, too, but they are certainly not given to crushing anything to a bloody pulp. As pulp fiction would have it!”
Strydom only half heard this afterthought and neglected to smile; he was already anticipating questions from the floor of the conference hall.
“The degree of pressure always interests us,” he said. “There have been cases when in orgasm the human male has inadvertently caused the death of the female with his hands. Can you be more specific?”
“Certainly. If you had a small boa in a figure eight around your wrists, it would seem virtually impossible to disengage yourself and your hands would rapidly swell. And I’m speaking in terms of an averagely powerful man. Living handcuffs.”
“Or a living ligature,” remarked Strydom solemnly, as Bose slit open the python from chin to tail and peeled back the outer layers of muscle.
“Not as putrid as we thought,” the scientist said.
Strydom looked again. Conditioned by years of doing much the same thing to Homo sapiens, he had expected to see the same glossy array of paired organs exposed before him in their God-ordained order.
“You’ve only dealt with frogs, I take it,” Bose said, noticing the lift of the thick bushy eyebrows. “This shape is ideal for digestive purposes, being, to all intents, one long length of gut, but it does make a rather tight fit otherwise.”
“Only one of each?”
“As you say, sometimes only the one. Sometimes they are arranged one behind the other, sometimes the right is much larger and better developed than the left, and, of course, gross elongation comes into it as well. Observe how this lung extends for more than half the length of the body. But let me poke about a bit and see if it was your boy or the young lady in her extremis who did the damage.”
