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assistant in charge of feeding the chimps and gorillas (we had several more of the latter in those days) and cleaning their cages. He has a knack, apparently, for teaching the animals various tricks, and through some highly publicized stunts (he taught an old female chimp how to knit — but notpurl), he has parlayed an essentially janitorial job into something approaching academic respectability, whatever that means these days. He is now, believe it or not, the Ruddy and Phyllis Stein Keeper of Great Apes in the Museum of Man. I would have thought my own position as Recording Secretary warranted endowment before one that involves little more than animal training. But then, I have not sought publicity the way Damon Drex has; nor have I stooped to the kind of genteel beggary needed to shake money out of the sort of people who launder their reputations at places like the MOM. But I am being catty. Our benefactors include many wonderful and disinterested people.
    Still, as I stood there listening to him and watching his eyes, I could not rid myself of the notion that Damon Drex might be the culprit. The man certainly looks the part, and I’m sure Cranston Fessing made inquiries about the finances of the pavilion. But isn’t that the insidious thing about a murder like Fessing’s? After a while you start to suspect everyone — Corny Chard, Thad Pilty, Damon Drex, the poor apes themselves. I know a few people probably even think
I
did it. Just yesterday, Marge Littlefield, whom I have known forever, gave me a long, searching glance and then shook her head as though to say,
Not him
. I mean really.
    Well, enough of this. I certainly am not going out of my way to provide Mr. Drex with a forum for his chimp show, however cunning the stunts. And, to judge from the interviews Malachy Morin and I conducted this morning with candidates for press assistant, it seems I will be in that position for some time. What pathetic ignorance permeates the world today! One young man, the lobes of his ears arrayed with rings, his hair dyed orange, allowed how he really “grooved” on the idea of working for a “museum of anarchy.” When I corrected his misunderstanding, he nodded knowingly and said, “Yeah, man, I hear what you’resaying.” So Mr. Drex is going to have to put up with me for a while longer. More important, I’m afraid, is that I will not have the time to devote to working on the history of the museum. Strange, isn’t it, to feel that if I wait much longer it will be too late to write such a history.
    Well, enough of this. But Drex’s laugh … it’s the stuff of nightmares.
    Speaking of which, I found an anonymous message from someone in the Genetics Lab waiting for me in my e-mail when I returned from lunch today. I am punching it up, as they say, right into this journal:
    TO : [email protected]
FROM : [email protected]
    Dear Mr. Detour: [
Sic!
Someone in UNINET, the university-wide e-mail system, gave me that designation, a slipup I have been trying without much success to get remedied.]
    I’m sending you this message because I saw you on television after they found Professor [
sic
] Fessing and you seem like a nice person. I’m sending this message tracer-proof not because I don’t trust you but if it got out that I told you I could lose my job and my pension and everything. There’s stuff going here that’s very hush-hush. One of the technicians told me that they’ve put hidden cameras in sensitive areas that are on 24 hours a day. And Dr. Kaplan who is usually a very nice man got mad at me when I accidentally closed the safe where they keep the protocol notebooks because the safe locks automatically when it closes and they need two people to get it open. I know Dr. Kaplan was one of the senior researchers that didn’t want to contribute to the sperm bank Professor Gottling set up in the specimen lab. I heard Dr. Kaplan complaining about it to Professor Gottling but when Professor Gottling asks you