Chapter 33 Section thirty-two

Smithback looked up from the letter: "Can't stay here, let's go to my office." His lair was deep in the crowded labyrinth of offices on the museum's ground floor.Leaving the dank, empty basement corridors outside the secure holding area, Margo's spirits lifted from the hive-like corridors full of noise and people hurrying to and fro.They walked past a large green bin filled with expired museum magazines.Outside Smithburk's office door was a large bulletin board with messages ranging from irate letters from subscribers to jokes from journal editors. Once, in search of a long overdue copy of "Science", Margot visited the messy den of Smithback.The scene in front of me is exactly the same as I remember: the desk is cluttered with photocopied articles, half-written letters, take-out menus from Chinese restaurants, and many books and magazines that the library will no doubt want to get back.

"Please sit down," Smithback said, sweeping away the two-foot-high stack of documents on the chair, closing the door, going around to the desk, sitting in an ancient bentwood rocking chair, and crumpled the paper under his feet. "Fine," he whispered, "are you sure the log isn't in the vault?" "As I said, I only had time to look at the box that Whitsey packed himself. But the journal shouldn't have been in any other box." Smithback read the letter again, and asked, "Who's that Montagu who received it?" "I don't know." Margo replied.

"Where's Jorgensen?" "Nor have I heard of it." Smithback took out the museum phone book from the shelf. "Can't find Montagu," he muttered as he turned the pages. "Aha! There's Jorgensen. From the Botany Department. Says he's retired. But how come there's an office?" "It's not uncommon in this place," Margot replied, "independent rich man with few other hobbies to pass the time. Where's his office?" "Area 41 on the fourth floor." Smithback closed the phone book and threw it on the table. "It's not far from the herbarium." He stood up, "Let's go."

"Wait a minute, Smithback. It's almost four o'clock. I've got to call Flock and report--" "We'll see later," Smithback said, walking toward the door. "Come on, little lotus. My reporter's nose has been smelling strongly this afternoon." Jorgensen's small, high-ceilinged office is a windowless laboratory.Margot originally thought that a botanist's laboratory must have herbarium specimens, but there are none here.The only thing in the room was a large workbench, a chair, and a coat rack.The workbench pulls open a drawer to reveal an assortment of old tools.Jorgensen is sprawled on a workbench, fiddling with a small motor.

"Dr. Jorgensen?" asked Smithback. The old man turned and stared at Smithback.His head was barely hairy, and his eyes, the color of bleached denim, were piercing beneath bushy white eyebrows.He was bony and stooped, but Margo estimated he was at least six foot four. "Who?" he replied in a calm voice. Before Margot had a chance to stop, Smithback handed the letter to Jorgensen.The old man read it, and then was visibly taken aback.He pulled back the bruised chair and sat down carefully, but kept his eyes on the letter paper for a moment. After reading the letter, he asked, "Where did you get it?"

Margot and Smithback looked at each other. "Guaranteed to be an original," Smithback said. Jorgensen stared at the two, and returned the letter to Smithback: "I don't know anything about it." Crate brought back from an expedition in the Amazon by Tese nearly a decade ago." Jorgensen stared at them for a few seconds, then leaned over and continued fiddling with the motor. Smithback and Margot watched for a while, and finally Margot said, "I'm sorry to interrupt your work. Maybe we came at the wrong time." "What job?" Jorgensen asked with his back to them.

"It's your job," Margo replied. Jorgensen suddenly burst out laughing. "This?" He turned to face them again. "It's not work. It's just a broken vacuum cleaner. I've had to do the housework myself since my wife died. The goddamn thing broke down two days ago. Bring it here It's because my tools are in museums. I don't have much work to do now." "Sir, that letter—" Margo still didn't give up. Jorgensen moved in the shabby chair, leaned back, and looked at the ceiling: "I didn't know there was this letter. The double arrow water mark is Whitsey's family crest, yes, the word is Hui Tese's handwriting. Brings back so many memories."

"What kind of memory?" Smithback asked impatiently. Jorgensen stared at him, frowning in exasperation. "Anyway, it has nothing to do with you," he said stingingly, "at least I don't know why it has something to do with you." Margot gave Smithback a look and told him to shut up. "Dr. Jorgensen," she said, "I am a graduate student of Dr. Flock. My companion is a reporter. Dr. Flock believes that the Whitsey expedition and the crates he brought back have something to do with the museum murders." "Curse?" Jorgensen raised his eyebrows playfully.

"No, not a curse," Margo replied. "I'm glad you're not talking nonsense in that direction. There's no such thing as a curse, unless the curse in your heart is greed plus human stupidity plus scientist's jealousy. It doesn't take Mbawan to explain it..." He stopped suddenly, and then Ask suspiciously, "Why are you interested?" "Explain what?" interposed Smithback. Jorgensen looked at him in disgust: "Young man, if you speak again, I will ask you to leave." Smithback narrowed his eyes, but said nothing.Margo thought about explaining Flock's theory, the claw marks, and the damaged crate in detail, and finally decided it would be better not to mention it. "We were interested because we thought there was a connection that others had missed. Neither the police nor the museum thought of it. You were mentioned in the letter and I hope you can tell us more about that expedition."

Jorgensen held out a bony hand. "Can I see it again?" Smithback reluctantly handed it to him. Jorgensen glanced hungrily over the paper, as if drawing memories from it, and he murmured, "For a while, I was very reluctant to bring this up. Maybe fear would be more appropriate, because certain small groups would Find a chance to fire me." He shrugged, "But at my age, I have nothing to fear—except loneliness." Holding the letter in his hand, he nodded slowly to Margot. "If it wasn't for Maxwell, I should be in the expedition." "Maxwell? Who's that?" asked Smithback.

Jorgensen shot him a sideways glance. "I've punched bigger reporters than you," he yelled. "I said, be quiet. I'm talking to this lady." He turned to Margot and continued: "Maxwell was one of the leaders. Maxwell and Whitsey. The first mistake that expedition made was to allow Maxwell to squeeze in, leaving a team with two leaders. They quarreled as soon as they met, and neither could completely control the team. Maxwell's victory was my loss, and he thought the team was limited and a botanist had to be removed-that is, me. However,Whitsey beat me Not to be happy, because Maxwell is likely to sabotage his personal plans." "What's his plan?" Margot asked. "Looking for the Kosoga Tribe. Rumor has it that this unknown tribe lived on a mesa above the rainforest. Although the area has not been scientifically surveyed, the consensus among scholars is that the tribe is extinct, leaving only remnants. Whitser disagrees. .He wants to be the discoverer of the Kosoga tribe. The only problem is that the local government won't allow him to explore that mesa, saying it's a reserve for scientists from the country, Yankee please go home." Jorgensen snorted and shook his head. "Well, actually what they really want to retain is the right to ravage that land. As long as the rumors get into Whitsey's ears, the local government will undoubtedly hear about it. If there are Indians there, the government doesn't want them to block it." The pace of logging and mining. All in all, the expedition can only enter from the north. The road is very difficult, but it is far away from the restricted area. Also, the government prohibits them from climbing that mesa." "Do the Kosoga Tribes still exist?" Margot asked. Jorgensen slowly shook his head and said: "No one will ever know. The government found something good on the top of the mesa. I don't know if it is gold, platinum or placer deposits. Satellites can detect many things these days. All in all, in 1988 In the spring, that mesa burned to the ground." "Burn?" Margot asked. "Clearing trees with napalm," Jorgensen replied. "It was expensive and unusual. The fire apparently got out of control, spread, and burned for months without restraint. The government then built a road there, It runs completely from south to north. They brought in hydraulic mining equipment made in Japan and washed out a few large areas of that mountain. Squeezed dry gold platinum or other minerals with cyanide, and then let the highly toxic The waste was pouring into the river. There was nothing left, so the museum did not organize a second team to find the whereabouts of the expedition." He cleared his throat. "It's terrible." Margo sighed. Jorgensen stares up at the ceiling with his disconcerting cerulean eyes: "Yeah, it's scary. Of course, you don't get that sort of thing at the Global Indigenous Culture Show." Smithback raised one hand and pulled out a miniature tape recorder with the other: "Excuse me, can I—?" "No, no tape recording. No reference to my saying these words. No quoting of me. Nothing. As you should know, I also received a memo this morning. I have Having been unable to talk about it, I am going to speak, but only once. So please be quiet and listen to me." The room was silent. "Where did it go?" continued Jorgensen. "Oh, yes. So Whitsey didn't get permission to go on stage, and Maxwell, being a bureaucrat through and through, was determined to make Whitsey play by the rules." Running errands. Huh, deep in the jungle, at least two hundred miles from any government agency... what's the rule?" He giggled. "I suspect that no one is particularly aware of what happened. I have heard Montague piece it together from several of Maxwell's telegrams, but I am afraid the source cannot be said to be unbiased." "Montagu?" interposed Smithback. "All in all," said Jorgensen, dismissing Smithback, "Maxwell seems to have stumbled upon some unimaginable flora. Ninety-nine per cent of the flora at the foot of the mesa were undiscovered species. Primitive ferns and monocots, morphological throwbacks to the Mesozoic. Maxwell, though a physical anthropologist, was also fascinated by exotic plants. Collecting rare samples, they filled plate after plate Crates, and that's how Maxwell found those pods." "How important are they?" "They come from a living fossil, which is not the same as the coelacanth that was discovered in the 1930s. Scientists believe that the phylum to which this species belonged was extinct as early as the Carboniferous. The entire phylum became extinct." "Do pods look like animal eggs?" Margot asked. "I can't say, but Montague took a look and said they were so hard they needed to be buried deep in the acidic soil of the rainforest to germinate. I think they're still in the crate." "Dr. Flock thinks they are animal eggs." "Studying Flock's palaeontology. He's brilliant, but he's not very cool. All in all, Maxwell and Whitsey broke up. Not surprising. Maxwell didn't care much about botany, but he's a sight to behold when he sees rare species. Recognized, just wanted to go back to the museum with the pods. He was very disturbed to learn that Whitsey was planning to climb up the mesa to find the Kosoga tribe. He was afraid that the crate would be held in the harbor and never get his treasure back The pods. The two parted ways and Whitsey continued deeper into the jungle, onto the mesas, and disappeared. "Maxwell returned to the sea with the rest of the expedition and sent a series of telegrams back to the museum, giving Whitsey's little report and saying only good things about himself. Then he and others were killed in an air crash. Fortunately He arranged for the crates to be shipped separately by sea—or bad luck. It took a year for the museum to go through the red tape of getting the crates back to New York. No one seemed to be in much of a hurry.” He rolled his eyes in disgust. "You mentioned a man named Montagu?" Margo asked in a low voice. "Montague?" Jorgensen looked past Margot. "He's a doctoral student at the museum. Anthropology. Whitsey's protégé. Needless to say, after Maxwell's telegram, the museum may not be possible." Dote on him again. Those of us who once made friends with Whitsey are no longer trusted." "What happened to Montagu?" Jorgensen hesitated for a moment, and finally replied: "I don't know. He disappeared suddenly one day and never showed up again." "Where are the crates?" Margo asked. "Montagu was dying to see those crates, especially Whitsey's one. But, as I said, no one would help him, and he was kicked out of the research project—actually , the project simply ceased to exist. The whole expedition was a disaster, and the higher-ups just wanted to forget about it as soon as possible. When the crates finally arrived, they were laid aside and ignored. Most of the files and provenance records are in Burnt in the plane crash. There is said to be a Whitsey journal, but I've never seen it. Anyway, Montagu begged and begged, and finally he was given the preliminary task. The next thing he got up and left .” "Leave? What do you mean?" asked Smithback. Jorgensen looked at him, as if judging whether to answer the question, "He walked out of the museum and was never seen again. He reportedly left his apartment and all his clothes. His family launched a search, but found nothing .However, his personality is very strange, and most people think he went to Nepal or Thailand to find himself." "But there are rumors," Smithback said, stating facts, not questions. Jorgensen smiled: "Of course there are rumors! This thing will never be missing. Some say he embezzled public funds, some say he eloped with the wife of a gang boss, and some say he has been killed and his body thrown into the East River. But he He's just a nobody in the museum, and most people don't remember him for a few weeks." "Anyone say it was eaten by a museum monster?" asked Smithback. Jorgensen's smile faded. "Not really, but it did resurface the rumors of the curse. People were saying that everyone who touched the crates was now dead. Some of the guards and restaurant staff—that kind of You know that too—Whitsey looted a temple, and there was a terrible curse on some artifact in the crate, and said the curse followed the artifact all the way back to the museum." "Don't you want to study those plants that Maxwell sent back?" asked Smithback. "Aren't you a botanist?" "Young man, you don't know anything about science. There is no such thing as a general botanist. I am not interested in paleobotany of angiosperms, which is completely outside my field. I specialize in the co-evolution of plants and viruses , or rather, specialized in it," he said sarcastically. "But Whitsey wants you to take a look at the plants he's sending back as filler," Smithback said, refusing to let him go. "I don't understand why at all," said Jorgensen. "It's the first time I've heard of it. I've never seen the letter." He returned it to Margo reluctantly, "if it wasn't for the handwriting and the water Vin, I'd rather say it's fake." After a moment of silence, Margot said, "You haven't said what you think about Montagu's disappearance." Jorgensen massaged the bridge of his nose and looked down at the ground: "It scares me." "why?" He pondered for a long time, and finally replied: "I'm not sure either. Montagu had to ask me to borrow money once when money was tight. He was very responsible and took a lot of effort to repay the debt. From the perspective of personality, he is not the kind Someone who just goes missing. The last time I saw him, he was going to go and count the contents of the crates. He was very excited about it.” He raised his eyes and looked at Margot. Superstition. I'm a scientist. Like I said, I don't believe in curses or anything like that..." His voice trailed off. "But—" urged Smithback. The old man gave Smithback a look. "Okay," he said sullenly, leaning back in his chair and looking at the ceiling. "I said John Whitsey was a friend of mine," he said. "Before Whitsey set off, he collected all the legends of the Kosoga tribe he could. Most of them came from the lower lowland tribes, the Yanomamo People or something. I still remember the story he told me the day before departure. According to a Yanomamo insider's description, the Kosoga had made a deal with an evil spirit named Tirashkai. Qi Rashkai is similar to our Mephistopheles, but more extreme: all evil and death in the world comes from this evil spirit, which haunts around the top of that mesa - so the story goes anyway. All in all, according to their agreement, the children of Tirashkai would become servants of the Kosoga, at the cost of killing and eating all their children, and the tribe members would swear to worship and worship Tirashkai forever and only. The Sorgars had completed their terrible task, and Tirashkai sent his children to find them. But the beast ravaged the tribe, killing and eating people. The Korsogars complained to Tirashkai, and Tirashkai laughed : What do you expect? I am evil. In the end, the Horde controlled the beast with something like magic or elixir. Understand, you can't kill that thing. That's how the Kosoggans controlled Tirashkai's Let it work for them, boy. But there is always the danger of backlash when using it. The story goes that the Kosoga are always looking for a way to get rid of it." Jorgensen looked down at the disassembled motor: "This is the story Whitsey told me. The crash, the news of Whitsey's death, the disappearance of Montague... Well, I can't help but want to hear the news. Think, maybe the Kosogans finally got rid of Tirashkai's children." The old botanist picked up a part of the motor, held it in his hand, and showed a dazed expression: "Whitsey said that Tirashke's child was named Mbawang. Quadruped." He threw it with a clatter. Detach that part and grin.

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