yes. bit of a shock. but as cuthbert so tactfully put it, the museum needs new blood. and since i've been here since the mesozoic era --
now margo, don't overreact. cuthbert has to cut costs somehow. my leaving makes perfect sense. this isn't exactly early retirement. i've overstayed the party a bit.
that, apparently, is the problem. i'm yesterday's news. who needs a curator of plant biology in a museum with one exhibit on plants? monsters and dinosaurs, cannibals and shamans are the new currency of the realm.
please. don't humiliate me further.
no, margo. this is one problem you can't solve. you have to stay out of it. the fact is, i want to retire.
yes it is. i'm tired and i'm no longer needed --
with all due respect, dear, that's bull. you dance rings around me with your new technology. you've left me in the dust.
healing plant use among the ki tribe of bechuanaland has been cancelled to make room for tibetan erotic art.
come on. i'll walk you back to the elevator.
you must.
this isn't a death sentence. greg has promised to teach me fly fishing. i'll garden. i'll write.
everyone needs a change of scenery. i've been rolling down these halls for forty-odd years. that's quite enough.
i'll see you at lunch.
for heaven's sake, greg, someone's been killed. look, it's cuthbert. let's hear what really happened.
cuthbert's counting on the exhibition's success. the museum is in debt. contributions and public funding have dried up. admissions no longer cover overhead. the last big infusion of cash we had was the king tut exhibit. cuthbert was hired to get us out of the red. if the superstition exhibit isn't lucrative, he'll have to start auctioning off some of these gems.
ian. are you okay?
come, ian. we all know you're superstitious. but you're among scientists here. we deal in facts. that statue had nothing to do with what happened to beauregard.
happy to be useful. it's rare enough these days. according to security, beauregard put the whittlesley crates in storage area 1012.
they fill seven floors. we have the largest collection of mammals and dinosaurs in the world. just to give you an idea, there are more than three million insects specimens. not to mention amphibians, reptiles, birds, anthropological artifacts, meteorites, minerals and gems. only about five percent of the museum collection is actually on display.
i'm one of the few who know every inch it, now that john is gone.
yes. john made quite a study of the whole museum. he had a copy of my original plans.
did you ever wonder where we get all our skeletons? this is the laboratory where animal carcasses are reduced to bones. what's cooking today, don?
dermestid beetles. the second method of preparing a skeleton, used in natural history museums world wide. bugs are clean and highly efficient. they'll polish that fox off in no time.
thanks don. we're in a hurry. some other time.
this should be it. can you read the number?
something tried to get into this room!
this means there must be an animal loose in the museum!
may i see that?
it's from john. those two arrows were his insignia. it's addressed to louis moriarty, a patron who financed his expeditions.
"dear louis, tomorrow we go to the south end of the tepui where we'll be in the greatest danger, so i'm sending carlos back with the crates. you always believed in me, louis, even in the darkest days. so it gives me great pleasure to tell you your faith has been rewarded. we've made an incredible find. i enclose a representation of mbwun. note the exaggerated claws, the reptilian attributes, the hints of bipedalia. it's beyond belief, but this statue is accurate. i know because i've seen the beast."
did you hear that? my god. he says that mbwun is real!
this on top of the scratches.  isn't it proof!
yes.
not really. just the sub-basement.
i don't know. it was walled over. no one's been down there in years.
i know they're here somewhere. it's a good thing we caught the movers in time. they're nineteen century blueprints from when the museum was built. i remember the sub-basement was below the regular basement, linked to the city sewer. i only know about it because it flooded all the way up to the museum during the hurricane of '49. i lost so many precious books.
eureka. who says it doesn't pay to be a pack rat? now please be careful with these. when you're done, i'd like them back.
i can't help thinking there's something that pendergast overlooked. if the scratches were made by whatever killed beauregard, it wants something that's in here.
let me see the plant press.
i'm not sure. as you know, the kothoga lived outside civilization on the tepui for thousands of years. species flourished in isolation when man and pollution rendered them extinct. this could be one of the last remaining samples of an unknown plant.
you're right.
they're curiously fleshy.
i wouldn't put that in your mouth until we do a chemical analysis, greg.
margo, these aren't seed pods.
they're eggs.
like the claw.
come on, margo. we're on the verge of something huge. let's consider the possibility, just the three of us, alone in this room. what if john was right. i mean, what if? and he sent back an egg of his monster in the crates. when it got to the museum, it hatched.
"genus: unknown. family: unknown. order: unknown. phylum: unknown. cripes, margo, what did you give me? is this an animal or one funky shrub?" i see you've been programming the computer vocabulary again.
that's not so unusual. many plants carry viruses. like the burls on maple trees.
a hormone secreted by the human thalamus gland.
beauregard's head.
quadrupedal! the other name for mbwun. "he who walks on all fours."
so the claw came from a huge creature with a preternatural sense of smell and poor eyesight that hunts at night.
margo, what you've just described is a killing machine.
it's like ringing the dinner bell.
some kind of power failure. maybe it's the storm. do you have a flashlight?
greg's been gone over a half hour. we'd better get out of here. get the crate.
don't stop now.
it's one of the fire doors. good lord, margo. we're trapped!
look!
we think it may have something to do with the eggs we found in the crate.
we can't. we've managed to get inside the one place that's safe. i think we should sit tight and wait for reinforcements. if we go outside, we're risking more lives. you have to accept it, margo, there's nothing we can do. the building must be swarming with police by now. it won't take long for them to get through the doors.
i'm coming with you.
margo, this is too dangerous. you always think you can solve everything. this time you don't have enough information. the animal might behave in unexpected ways. leave her here with me. don't put her in danger.
what's that?
come back and get me.
remember, it has poor eyesight. it hunts with its sense of smell. so for god's sake, margo, don't get those fibers on your clothes!
look who's here, margo.
they were sent to the center for disease control in atlanta.
the virus itself might have positive applications. they'll keep the plants in secure lock up while the studies are made. greg isn't joining us?