The Archives were behind a heavy wooden door with a sturdy iron lock, the word ARCHIVES picked out on the front in gold. Bugs led Daffy down the steps, the final stop on the tour he’d given him, and pulled out a thick ring of keys. He pursed his lips as he separated the first one from the bunch. “No.” He pulled up the next. “Nope.” A third key came up. “Nuh-uh.”
Daffy knew this routine, too, and he knew his role was to impatiently push Bugs and then get shot, bitten, stabbed, or blown up in the split second before Bugs selected the correct key and worked it into the lock. However, nothing was chasing him today, and getting let in faster wouldn’t actually save anything, so he waited, vibrating with excitement and impatience.
“Ah-ha. Here we are.” Bugs held up a key and let the others fall off. Then, to Daffy’s surprise—and, admittedly, annoyance—he worked it off the large bunch he had, dropped it back into a pocket, and pulled out a smaller ring with two other keys on it, then added the key to it. He turned and handed it to Daffy. “Here you are. Dis key is for the door here. DIs key is for the back door of the Archives. Dis key is for the main front door, and dis key is for your office.”
“I have my own offithe?” Daffy asked, delighted.
“Oh, yes,” Bugs assured him. “I t’ink dis is going to be a great step up for you, Daff. Why, who knows how high you could go starting here?”
He opened the door to the Archives. Daffy would have expected it to creak open, expel a puff of cold, slightly stale air, and show a dark, spooky room—especially since they were literally in the basement. Instead, it swung open soundlessly, revealing a very basic but relatively…not modern, exactly, but certainly not the medieval stone labyrinth he was expecting…room, filled with desks, filing cabinets, and shelves. The shelves bristled with boxes, files, and papers that looked like they had been more or less just shoved in there. Bugs flicked on a light just inside the door and revealed that the bulbs overhead were fluorescent.
“Go get yourself comfortable before your assistants come down,” he told Daffy. “And if there’s anyt’ing you need, just call Rosie, okay? She’ll sort you out.”
He clapped Daffy on the shoulder and walked away.
Daffy walked into the Archives—his Archives—and looked around him. The place was a mess, honestly. Granny obviously hadn’t kept the place up, which was no wonder, what with her filming schedule and everything.
“Well,” he said aloud, rubbing his hands together. “Thoon have thith plathe shthipshthape.”
The desks were empty; either his assistants kept their desks clean or it was their first day too, and anything was possible. Daffy was maybe a little annoyed Bugs hadn’t let him pick his own crew, but if he was being honest, he was too excited to care. Anyway, the likelihood was that Bugs had sent down people who already worked for the Institute, so it wasn’t like he’d have known who to pick anyway.