Bailey Smith

Bailey Smith is an employee of the New York Museum of Natural History. He is the curatorial assistant of the museum's herbarium, helping researchers obtain plant specimens.

Smith is nearly 80 years old and had worked for the museum for 42 years as of the events of Relic. He is cranky towards people who come to him with requests. He appears to be partially deaf; however Margo Green suspects that only feigns deafness to annoy people.

As a long-time employee, Smith is knowlegeable about the museum's many rumors and legends, including the ones about the "museum beast". He speculates that the beast may be a dinosaur that hatched from fossilized eggs brought from Siberia, and that it roams the basement of the museum. Smith claims to know people who have seen the beast, though he admits that some of his sources are less than reliable ("I expect [the beast] looked a bit like Mr. Jim Beam").

As evidence for his theory, Smith relates several interesting anecodates. He points out that the museum never has any problems with rats or mice, presumably because the beast eats them. He tells Margo about a doctor named Sloane who lost several cats from an experiment, and not one was ever seen again. Finally he tells the story of a curator who vanished while working in the basement, although he can't quite remember the man's name ("Morrissey, or Montana, or something.")