The Barnum Museum: Stories

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The board. The board shows the ground plan of an English mansion. The nine rooms are displayed along the sides of the board and are connected by a floor consisting of a series of identical yellow squares the size of postage stamps. In the middle of the board, on a stairway marked with a white X, rests a black envelope. Each room bears its name in the center, in black capital letters: the STUDY, the HALL, the LOUNGE, the DINING ROOM, the KITCHEN, the BALLROOM, the CONSERVATORY, the BILLIARD ROOM, and the LIBRARY. Each room contains furniture, drawn in black outline and pictured from above, as if we are viewing the room from the center of its ceiling. One corner of the board is partly concealed by the edge of a saucer, on which lies a smoking cigarette.

The table. The board lies not quite in the center of a green folding table, which shines with a dull gleam in the glow of two lights: the overhead porch light, encased in four squares of frosted glass, and the small red-shaded lamp attached to one of the porch walls. Additional light comes through the four small panes of the kitchen-door window, part of which is covered by translucent yellow curtains. If we view the table from directly above, as if our vantage point were that of the moth beating its wings against the glass of the overhead light, we see that the green border of the table is crowded with objects: a coffee-stained saucer on which lies a smoking cigarette; four pads of Detective Notes; a green quarter-full bottle of wine, bearing on its label a purple sketch of a grape arbor with three purple birds flying overhead; two yellow hexagonal pencils, one round black pencil (supported by a hand), and one round shiny-green pencil; an opaque glass bowl, white on the inside and orange on the outside, containing a few…

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