The Mystery of the Venus Island Fetish by Tim Flannery, Dido Butterworth

Ye ken that Kidson went stark raving mad with it in the Feejees?
Became paranoid in the end: swore the Methodists were out to get him.’
    At first, Archie had been revolted by the brew. It looked and tasted like old sock
water. But it wasn’t possible to live in the Venus Isles without drinking huge quantities
of the stuff. At every hut he’d visited he was required to swill down a half-coconut
shell of it, and when the men told stories at night, the yangona bowl never ceased
doing the rounds. Eventually Archie had become quite fond of it. And he had noticed
that the world seemed different after a yangona party.
    Giles Mordant sparked up. ‘The Venus Isles have made you quite a man, haven’t they,
Archie? Though not a complete man, I suppose. Just a bit off, eh, old nakker?’
    Mordant’s smarmy superiority irritated Archie—it was as if the assistant taxidermist
had something over him. After all, Archie hoped soon to be a curator, and Mordant
was a mere technician. Moreover, he had no idea what Mordant was talking about, and
evidently neither had anybody else. The conversation reverted to Archie’s island
adventures.
    Dithers asked whether Archie had anywhere to stay. ‘Doss down with me, old chap,
if you like. I’ve still got the room in Stanley Street, and I’m hoping to go to Africa
to study big cats before too long. Got a grant application in with the National Geographic
Society, and could be away some time. If I get the funding you’re welcome to look
after the place while I’m gone.’
    By the time they’d eaten lunch and were onto their second round of shouts, Archie
was asking about the museum.
    ‘You should know that Polkinghorne’s vanished,’ said Dithers with some emphasis.
    Vanished? Cecil Polkinghorne was Archie’s supervisor. It was to him that the painfully
shy teenager had applied for a museum cadetship. He was a queer old coot, sure enough,
but Archie had grown rather fond of him. Polkinghorne had started out as a museum
guard, and there his career might have ended if he hadn’t developed a fascination
with the Egyptian room. Enthralled with antiquities, he took a course in classical
archaeology, following which he applied for a curator’s job.
    The museum had its own reason for wanting to move Polkinghorne on. He was without
doubt a diligent guard. But a purple growth had sprouted on the tip of his tongue
and swiftly swelled to the size of a cherry. Not only had it given him prodigious
buck teeth, but it left him incapable of speaking without spraying his listeners
with saliva. When Vere Griffon arrived he’d experienced the problem firsthand. The
guard, who was somewhat in awe of the new director, had drawn himself up at his approach,
saluted, and sprayed out, ‘Cecil Polkinghorne, sir. At your service!’
    Complaints from the sprinkled and befuddled had been accumulating, and it was with
some relief that the director had, upon Polkinghorne’s graduation, assigned him to
a role away from the public—as curator of archaeology.
    ‘What do you mean, vanished?’ asked Archie.
    ‘Just what I said. Around three years ago. He left work one evening and never came
back. The most popular theory is that he fell off a ferry and drowned. But no one
saw anything, and no body was found.’
    ‘There’s summat rum about it, Archie. I fear the worst.’ Eric Sopwith shook his head,
his eyes more watery than ever.
    ‘Utter rubbish, Sopwith,’ exclaimed Mordant contemptuously. ‘Bumstocks saw him getting
onto the ferry that night, and he didn’t disembark at Balmain. No doubt about it.
Polkinghorne drowned and his body was eaten by sharks. The harbour’s full of them
now that the abattoir at Homebush dumps blood and offal into the water by the ton.’
    For a moment silence reigned. ‘I best be off,’ said Roger Holdfast. He and Gerald
rose from the table as one. ‘The skeleton of the giant sloth needs articulation,
and work for the new exhibition is falling behind.’ Dithers announced he