The Man in the Civil Suit
I have a bone to pick with the Museum of Natural History. Yes, the very museum in which the peerless Professor Pythagoras Peabody so recently met his sad, if rather spectacular, demise. I understand they are still working on restoring the mastodon. But my grievance does not pertain to prehistoric pachyderms.
If the administrators of said museum are quoted accurately in the newspapers, they have behaved in a rather unseemly manner in regard to the late Peabody. How speedily they pointed out that he was on the premises in violation of a restraining order! How hastily they added that he had similar orders placed upon him by a number of institutions, including the art museum, the zoo, and Ye Olde Medieval Restaurant amp; Go-Cart Track! When asked if he was the man named in the civil suit they filed three days ago, how rapidly the administrators proclaimed that Professor Peabody was no professor at all!
Oh, how quickly they forget! They behave as if the Case of the Carillean Carbuncle never occurred. A balanced account of recent events must be given, and as one who knew the man in the civil suit better than any other-save, perhaps, his sister Persephone-I have taken on the burden of seeing justice done where Pythagoras Peabody is concerned.
Although Pythag, as his closest friends-well, as I called him, because frankly, few others could tolerate his particular style of genius at close range-although Pythag never taught at a university or other institution, it is widely known that the affectionate name “Professor Peabody” was bestowed upon him by a grateful police force at the close of the Case of the Carillean Carbuncle, or as Pythag liked to call it, 300. (Some of you may need assistance understanding why-I certainly did. Pythag explained that first letters of Case, Carillean, and Carbuncle are C’s. Three C’s, taken together, form a Roman numeral. I’m certain I need not hint you on from there, but I will say this was typical of his cleverness!)
Need I remind the museum administrators of the details of 300? This most unusual garnet was on display in their own Gems and Mineralogy Department when it was stolen by a heartless villain. True, the museum guards were in pursuit long before the ten-year-old boy left the grounds, and after several hours of chasing him through the halls, exhibits, and displays-including a dinosaur diorama, the planetarium, and the newly opened “Arctic and Antarctica: Poles Apart” exhibit-while conducting what amounted to an elaborate game of hide-and-seek, they caught their thief.
Unfortunately, the Carillean Carbuncle was no longer on his person, and he refused to give any clue as to its location. This was, apparently, a way of continuing the jollification he had enjoyed with these fellows. Not amused, the museum called the police. The boy called in his own reinforcements, and his parents, in the time-honored tradition of raisers of rogues, defended their son unequivocally and threatened all sorts of nastiness if he were not released immediately. The boy went home, and the Carillean Carbuncle remained missing.
Enter Peabody. Actually, he had already entered. It was Pythag’s habit to be the first guest to walk through the museum doors in the morning, and the last to leave at closing. He made himself at home in the Natural History Museum, just as he once had in the art museum, and in the zoo. (The trouble at Ye Olde Medieval Restaurant amp; Go-Cart Track occurred before we were acquainted, but Pythag once hinted that it had something to do with giving the waiters’ lances to the young drivers and encouraging them to “joust.”)
I have said I will give a fair accounting, and I will. Pythag was a man who knew no boundaries. His was a genius, he often reminded me, that could not be confined to the paths that others were pleased to follow. I know some stiff-rumped bureaucrats will not agree, but if he were here to defend himself, Pythag would undoubtedly say, “If you don’t want a gentleman born with an enviable amount of curiosity to climb into an elephants’ compound, for goodness sakes, rely on more than a waist-high fence and a silly excuse for a moat to keep him out.”
Likewise, he would tell you that if your art museum docent becomes rattled when a gentleman with a carrying voice follows along with a second group of unsuspecting art lovers, telling them a thing or two the docent failed to mention to his own group, well then, the docent stands in need of better training. Pythag enjoyed himself immensely on these “tour” occasions, tapping on glass cases and reading aloud from wall plaques to begin his speeches.
He soon varied from the information in these written guides, however. He often told visitors that when X-rayed, the canvases beneath the museum’s most famous oil paintings were shown to be covered with little blue numbers, a number one being a red, two a blue, and so forth. This, he claimed, was how the museum’s restoration department could make a perfect match when repairing a damaged work of art. He also claimed to be such an expert as to be able to see the numbers with his naked eye, which, he said, “Has quite spoiled most of these for me.”
The art museum director, Pythag declared, would soon be under arrest for the murder of Elvis-the director’s supposed motive for the killing being to increase the value of his secret, private collection of velvet portraits of The King. (I understand the We Tip Hotline, tiring of Pythag’s relentless pursuit of this idea, blocked calls from the Peabody home number.)
I’ll wager a tour with Pythag was much more interesting, if less enlightening, than one taken with the regular docents. The art museum, however, was unwilling to offer this alternative. It seemed a little harsh to tell him that he, and not the director, risked arrest if he returned. As Persephone argued when she came to fetch him home, how could anyone in his right mind fault a person for being creative in an art museum?
Please don’t bother to mention Pythag’s exile from the Museum of Transportation. Pythag would tell you that a velvet rope may be seen by a man with panache (and if he could have withstood one more p in his moniker, panache would have been Pythag’s middle name) as less a barrier than an invitation to step over it and into the past. He went into the past by way of an eighteenth-century carriage, as it happened, and ever seeking the most realistic experience possible, Pythag had to bounce in it a bit. “I promise you,” Pythag told the irate curator, “the King of Spain bounced when he rode in the dratted thing.”
Perhaps you have already seen from these examples that Pythag was the perfect man to consult on the matter of the missing carbuncle. Who was more qualified to determine what a clever boy, let loose in a museum, might do? Indeed, I readily admit that for all his genius, Pythag’s enthusiasm sometimes led him into rather childish behavior. I concede that he was subject to bouts of stubbornness over silly things, bouts that made him not much more than a child himself at times.
On the very afternoon the carbuncle was stolen, for example, he insisted on staring into the penguins’ eyes in the Antarctic exhibit, convinced that each penguin retained on his retina a memory of its last moments. If he could catch the reflection of this last recollection, he decided, he could experience the thing itself-it would be, he said, “Bird’s eye deja vu.” This was one of those times when, were I not courting Persephone, I would have been tempted to leave the exhibit without him. Nothing I said would convince him that memory resides in the brain rather than the eye. He utterly rejected my claim that these were not the penguins’ actual eyes, but glass reproductions, and rebuked me loudly and in horrified accents for suggesting such a thing.
But as Persephone was most appreciative of my willingness to watch over her brother and accompany him to public venues, I did my best to overlook his occasionally irritating behaviors. Persephone, brilliant and far less given to acting on impulse than her brother, told me that restraining orders were a small price for Pythag’s genius, but she’d just as soon not be asked to pay any larger prices for it.