The Mummy Snatcher of Memphis (17 page)

“Interesting about his collection of sayings,” I remarked. “But I don't see how it gets us any further.”

“It doesn't,” Waldo said decisively. “All we really know
is that the Baker Brothers have the mummy of Ptah Hotep, which contains a malachite heart scarab. They really, really want it for some secret reason. Tried to buy it from your aunt, and when that failed they had it stolen. Let's stick to facts. The rest is sheer guesswork.”

“I'm with Waldo,” I said. “The Bakers have the mummy and the scarab. What we need is a plan. A clever way to get into their house and find them!”

“I could try one of my inventions,” Isaac suggested, but his words were soon drowned by a chorus of groans.

“Unless we can find that mummy,” I continued, “we're sunk. We won't be able to save the scarab and, more importantly, your father's life.” I turned to Ahmed.

My words hung in the air. I looked at my friends in turn and I must say my spirits did not lift. Certainly, Waldo was brave, a good fighter to have by one's side. Isaac was clever, in a somewhat scatterbrained way, and very inventive. And Rachel. Poor old Rachel, good-hearted for sure, but otherwise not much use. As for Ahmed, he was a foreigner, how could he be expected to take on the wicked Baker Brothers? So, as usual, it was down to me to think of a plan.

I paced up and down in the library, my thoughts traveling faster than a steam train. Should we start a fire at the Bakers' house and try and sneak in under cover of the chaos? Disguise ourselves as butcher's boys and seek
entrance to the Brothers' kitchen? Could I try to obtain a job, as a scullery maid for instance, at the house?

No, all these ideas were unlikely to bear fruit. Then I thought of something that made me clap my hands in glee. So simple it was sure to work.

“We're not going to sneak into the Bakers' mansion like a lot of thieves in the night,” I said.

“Certainly not,” Rachel agreed.

“We'll walk right in.” I announced. “We'll walk in through the front door as honored guests!”

“How?” the others chorused. “That won't work … they'll throw us straight out!” Even Rachel, who is all for doing things the proper way, looked unconvinced.

“Patience.” I grinned. “You lot of unbelievers will just have to wait and see what Kit cooks up!”

101 Eaton Square was an imposing cream-colored mansion set behind tall iron railings. It had seven floors that towered into the sky and was adorned with a pattern of foliage and leaves around the windows that looked Roman. The large, curved windows were protected by iron bars, a gleaming brass knocker was set against the black front door.

My aunt marched up the steps to the door, Isaac and Ahmed and I trailing after her. That's right. I took the
simplest way of penetrating the Baker Brothers mansion. My aunt had boasted of her friendship with the Brothers, so I'd suggested to her that she seek their help in finding her mummy. Who knows, I'd told her, the millionaire businessmen might even fund her next expedition.

Aunt Hilda, preoccupied with finding supporters in her battle against the French, had taken the bait straight away. It seems the reclusive Brothers were known for their patriotism, so my aunt was hopeful that they might come to her aid. It was a simple matter to attach ourselves to her coat-tails. But she had laid down one condition: she wouldn't take more than two or three of us. Despite his bitter protests, Waldo, who was still complaining of his shoulder injury, was left at home with Rachel.

That would teach him not to make such a fuss about a simple cut!

A butler in black coat and tails appeared in answer to my aunt's knock. Bowing, he ushered us in and soon we were divested of our coats and waiting in a gloomy room, which had a view of a long corridor, with a number of doors leading off it. Opposite us was a brass plaque which read
LIBRARY
. I would have loved to sneak off in there, see what secrets the Bakers were hiding, but with my aunt around I had to watch my step.

Important people like to keep you waiting. We had been sitting in the dusty and sunless parlor for at least half an hour, while my aunt moaned and groaned and paced around restlessly. Finally the door to the library opened and a little man slipped out. I caught a glimpse of the Baker Brothers, sitting behind the largest desk I've ever seen. They were wearing identical suits, in a creamy fabric, their light hair parted in the same way. With their long, miserable faces they looked like a pair of bled horses.

Or ghosts. There was something sinister about the way they appeared suddenly out of the gloom. They seemed insubstantial. After all, like ghosts there wasn't a single picture of the Baker Brothers in existence. They never appeared in public but drifted behind the scenes, pulling strings. They weren't seen at the usual haunts of millionaires, they had no box at the opera, did not frequent Mayfair balls or soirées at Buckingham Palace. Some people even went so far as to claim they didn't exist.

“Miss Hilda Salter?” the little man said, approaching my aunt. Then his eye fell on Ahmed, Isaac and I. “Goodness! What is this?”

“Don't worry, they're house-trained,” Aunt Hilda said gaily.

“An absolute gaggle of little creatures.” He peered at us, horrified. “What are they?”

“Who are they, you mean. My niece Kit and her chums, amateur archaeologists.”

“No. They absolutely cannot come in. The Brothers cannot bear children. They positively loathe the messy, loud, brainless little goblins.”

“Fine,” my aunt said, standing up. “Children, you will wait for me here.”

The little man glared at us as he ushered my aunt into the Brothers' presence: “No snooping!”

“Let's snoop,” Isaac said as the door banged shut after them. “Where do you think these thugs keep their secrets?”

The corridor stretched endlessly. The walls were lined with portraits, an exceedingly ugly collection of ancestors, if that is what they were. There was a bewildering number of doors.

“Which one do you think we should try?” Isaac continued.

“That one,” I said, pointing to the door next to the library, which bore a plaque marked
STUDY
. “Something tells me it's the study.”

The room was richly decorated, the walls lined with paintings, including one famous Italian painting which I had seen somewhere before. A lady with a mysterious smile, in front of a hazy vista of hills. Had I read somewhere that this particular painting had been stolen?

There were no bookshelves, but inserted in the wall was a massive safe built by Mr. Chubb, who boasted his locks were unpickable. Isaac, of course, was instantly drawn to the safe.

The desk was absolutely clean, except for one manuscript. Annoyingly, the drawers were locked.

“There's nothing here,” I said, frustrated, bending down to the carpet to search for some forgotten slip of paper which might give us the clue we needed. Where, oh, where were the Brothers keeping the mummy? “These men are so clean and tidy it can't be true.”

Isaac, who had given up on the safe, picked up the manuscript on the desk and gave a low whistle. “What do you make of this?” he asked, passing it to me. It was a copy of my father's latest book,
The World's Oldest Words: from the Book of the Dead to the Rig Veda
. It hadn't even been published. My father had spent three years working on the book and was terribly proud of it, but no one except a handful of learned men could be expected to read it. How had the Baker Brothers got hold of it?

“It doesn't make sense,” Isaac said. “Why would they want this?”

“Who knows?” I replied, my attention diverted by a small door, opposite the Chubb safe. I approached the door and turned the handle, to my delight it opened into a room the size of a cubby-hole. It was in total darkness.

I tiptoed over to the window, almost stumbling over something on the floor and opened the shutters, letting sunlight flood in.

Isaac and Ahmed had joined me. What we saw lying on the parquet floor made us gasp. A pile of bandages thrown in a disorderly heap. Next to them, a shrunken, gnarled old thing. It reminded me of the roots of an ancient, blackened tree. No, that wasn't quite right. There was something leathery about the mummy, something shiny and almost translucent. Like a strip of skin peeled off your thumb.

I identified the sharp, citrus scent in the air as natron, the salt used by the embalmers all those millennia ago to preserve the corpse. Kneeling down by it, I took a closer look. You could still see the shape of Ptah Hotep's cheek, the blackened and decayed teeth. Even a few wisps of reddish hair adhering to the four-thousand-year-old skull. The mummy's empty eye sockets seemed to peer out at me from across the ages.

A hush fell over us as we gazed at the mummy. The ancient sage, Ptah Hotep looked back at us, over the chasm of the ages. A miracle of miracles.

All was not well with the mummy. Of course there was the ancient damage to the corpse. The slit in his side, where the embalmers had removed the internal organs. But that was a neat cut and it had been sewn up.

What angered me was the evidence of more recent violence to his person. One side of Ptah Hotep's rib cage had been brutally bashed in. His neck was broken. It was cruel. Sheer vandalism. Ahmed, by my side, made a furious noise in his throat. His eyes had a wild glitter.

“How could they do this to him?” he hissed. “They are savages. No respect.”

“Shush,” I quieted Ahmed. “We must be calm.”

“They don't care about the mummy,” Isaac said softly. “It is not what they are after.”

“They don't care about anything,” Ahmed spat.

I was searching in the pile of bandages, but already I knew the truth. The scarab was not there.

“The Baker Brothers found the scarab. That's all they want.” Ahmed said. “They have no idea of what is good or holy or true. No respect for anything. All they know is what they desire. These men, they want the scarab. They find it so they have no care for this gentle man's soul. They, how do you say, they smash Ptah Hotep.” It was one of the longest speeches I'd heard him utter. The blood had drained from his face but he spoke calmly.

“The scarab has gone, Ahmed.” I said, rising from the heap of bandages. “Look, we won't have much time. Isaac, can you get into the safe? I bet the scarab's in there.”

We went into the next room and stared at the safe. It
was an impressive object, a glittering combination of black enamel and bronze. The lock looked impregnable.

“Can you get into that, Isaac?” I repeated.

“I'll give it a go,” Isaac replied, but he sounded doubtful.

Suddenly there was a noise of scraping from the room next door. “Quick,” I hissed. We scampered out of the room, down the corridor and into the waiting room. We just had time to return to our seats before the secretary opened the door and ushered my aunt out. He cast a suspicious look at my flushed face:

“Where's the other one?” the secretary said.

“Pardon.”

“The thin one. The one with dirty hair and glasses.”

With a stab of horror I realized that Isaac had not made it back to our seats. The foolish boy had vanished. Really he was more of a liability than anything. I had to think fast.

“I'm afraid my friend has had to rush home,” I lied, hoping my “innocent” face was convincing. “He suffers from a serious vomiting illness and didn't want to be sick on the rugs.”

“What's this illness called?” the secretary asked, still frowning.

I was straining to come up with a name for his fictitious disease, when to my surprise Aunt Hilda joined in with the deception. “You mean Isaac's bilharzia?” she said.

“He caught it in China, poor boy. His vomit is green when he really gets going and they say it's terribly catching.”

Involuntarily, the secretary shuddered and drew back from us. There was a definite haste in the way he led us down to the lobby and out of the door. I had the feeling he was glad to be rid of us. Out in Eaton Square my aunt strode ahead of us, I had to run to keep up.