Museum Mishaps (Heiress)

The world famous Miskatonic University’s Historical Society opened a new museum in Boston, so of course they needed to have a party the night before the grand opening. Between the professors, the celebrities, and the heiresses, it was a who’s who of east coast high society. That made it an easy party for Clayton to crash. The crowd was far too full of themselves to give a damn what anyone else was doing, and that’s the way he liked it.

Most of them hadn’t even given the newly unveiled main attraction of the museum: The Pharaoh’s Star. An egg-sized, black star sapphire; it was by far one of the most expensive gems in the world. It was found during the 1930 excavation of a desert tomb in Egypt. According to legend, the gem contained the soul of a wicked would-be pharaoh trapped there for eternity by the gods as punishment for turning against them in favor of some darker, forgotten deity from beyond the stars. Which would be king and which deity was anyone's guess, as any actual mention of their names were curiously removed from the tomb by vandals some centuries earlier.

Clayton had seen enough strangeness in his time to be more than a little superstitious about such things, but even he found the tale of the gem hard to swallow. It, like everything else in the Egypt exhibit, was on loan from some zillionaire family Clayton had hardly even heard of. Most of it was standard museum fare, but the Star was quite unique. It switched hands between wealthy collectors so often that it was hard to keep track of. Apparently, no one who owned it could stand to hold on to the thing very long. So he figured they might not even mind the gem coming home with him.

It was getting late, but the guests didn’t seem to mind. For some reason no one ever wanted to be the first to leave those parties. This bugged Clayton quite a bit, because in order to keep up appearances, he was actually on the clock as a caterer. His slicked wig and fake goatee gave a certain authenticity to the uniform he wore. He most definitely looked the part of the working 20-something that was just trying to get by. He wondered how anyone could stand living in such a way. The constant demand for champagne and finger sandwiches was surprisingly difficult to keep up with while trying to scope out the building’s security. The barked orders from a boss that was too dumb to know who was working under him certainly did not aid things.

Luckily, Clayton felt he had enough of his devices in place to accomplish his task later and turned to leave. He turned a bit too quickly, though, and felt his body make contact with another before his head could turn to see who they even were. The glasses of champagne his tray was carrying hit the floor with a loud, ringing clash. He swallowed hard when noticed that all eyes were on him.