The Mystery of the Venus Island Fetish Read Online Free PDF Page A

lost. But you need to get a grip, man.’ Griffon smiled.
‘I’ve put together the best collection of curators in the colonies in this institution,
and it’s vital that we all pull together. We cannot have dissent, or disloyalty.
Not now. Go to your office and take up your work. I’m afraid that we’ve had to move
you into a rather smaller one. But I think it will do for the time being.’
    Dryandra Stritchley ushered Archie out the door.

    ‘Phew,’ said Archie. He slumped against the doorjamb. The worst was over. He composed
himself and walked back into the great hall. It was just after nine and the first
visitors of the day were trickling in. As he approached the stuffed orangutans he
slowed to eavesdrop on a pair of elderly women who stood looking at the creatures.
    ‘Ain’t he the spitting image of my Clarrie?’ one quipped.
    ‘Yairs,’ the other replied. ‘I can see the ’semblance—’specially round ’is eyes.
But Clarrie’s teeth are dirtier. And there’s less of ’em.’
    Archie left the cackling women, and walked towards the unmarked wooden door that
led to the curatorial offices. Amid the clutter of the exhibition it was easy to
overlook. He inserted his antique key in the lock, and as it turned he heard that
satisfying ‘thunk’ which heralded his admission into the bowels of the institution.
    The walls of the narrow corridor were crowded with books and journals. Archie was
on his own turf now, and his heart began to soar. How long had he waited for this
day? In a few moments he would see his Beatrice. Surely she had accepted his proposal
of marriage.

Chapter 3

    If circumstances had ever conspired to keep a girl from knowledge of the world,
they had done so in the case of Miss Beatrice Goodenough. The second child of a straight-laced
father who sired only daughters, she grew up in an isolated if rather grand homestead
on the western plains of New South Wales. It was the kind of place where masters
and servants never mixed, where father came to dinner in a high starched collar,
and where even the ebony legs of the piano were decorously hidden behind voluminous
rolls of cloth.
    Her childhood memories consisted of time passing slowly: she and her younger sisters
dressing dolls; the parlour with its heavy drapes and ticking grandfather clock,
its chimes marking what seemed an unvarying eternity. Just once, something extraordinary
happened. She had gone to the kitchen, a realm forbidden to her, when a knock sounded
at the back door. Cookie, as the children called her—a rotund woman in her fifties—rose
and opened it.
    And there stood a near-naked Aborigine, a nulla-nulla in his hand.
    ‘Mi laikim tukka, missus. Cuttim plenty piaiwood.’
    Cookie slammed the door shut. She noticed Beatrice and shooed her away. But not before
that momentary glimpse of the wider world had both terrified and thrilled the young
girl.
    Beatrice was schooled by her mother until she was twelve, and then packed off to
stay with an aunt and uncle at Mosman on Sydney’s north shore. She would be ‘finished’
at the Methodist Ladies College. Her custodians, she was dismayed to discover, were
even more Victorian in their attitudes than her parents. Beatrice felt that the only
reason they accepted her was the generous stipend paid them by her father. With few
diversions, she devoted herself single-mindedly to her schoolwork. Unsurprisingly,
she matriculated with the highest encomia.
    Despite her obvious intelligence, her teachers worried about young Miss Goodenough.
Miss Sodworthy, the Latin mistress, summed matters up when, on the eve of Beatrice’s
matriculation, she warned the girl that her combination of naiveté and rather rapturous
temperament would get her into trouble.
    ‘You’re an intelligent and diligent student, Beatrice, but you’re hopelessly romantic—and
flighty to boot. To avoid, er, let us say, distractions, I suggest a job in a quiet
environment. A museum, for example. There are always lots of