The Mummy Snatcher of Memphis (32 page)

I sat down on the bed and studied the room, the conviction growing in me that Gaston Champlon hadn't, as
my aunt believed, disappeared of his own free will. Something had happened to him. I was guessing it was something sinister, because he was just as excited as Aunt Hilda about their new venture. If their Himalayan expedition was a success, both Aunt Hilda and Champlon stood to make a fortune, not to mention write their names in the history books. There was no way Champlon would have just left Aunt Hilda in the lurch. However, this room was so perfect, so spotlessly clean and tidy it wasn't going to give me any clues.

Or was it?

I shivered in the chill breeze that was blowing through the window. How could I have not it noticed before? On a freezing winter's day the window had been violently thrust upward—and when I came closer it was clear that a pane of glass, now half hidden by another glass pane, had been smashed. Blending in with the rich reds and browns of the Turkey rug below the window, my eyes were arrested by a series of small muddy marks. I bent down and examined them. They could have been bare footprints, but if so they were made by the smallest of children—no more than a five-year-old. The marks were curiously splayed out, with occasional indentations that must have been made by toe nails. Remarkably long toe nails.

The marks could, I conjectured, have been made by a
young thief, who had smashed the window to gain entrance to Champlon's bedroom. But what a nimble thief! How was it possible to have climbed three stories up a sheer stone wall?

I leaned out of the window. Down below I could make out the cultivated greenery of the college gardens, the glint of boats on the canal and the untamed spaces of Port Meadow beyond. What I had assumed was a sheer stone wall, was, in fact, old and crumbling: plenty of places where an enterprising urchin might grab on to jutting stones. But what made it even more likely that someone had climbed up these walls was the rampant Virginia creeper. The gnarled roots of the flourishing shrub that covered Worcester College's walls were thick enough to support the weight of a child, I was sure of it.

I was glad Rachel was not here. Not to mention my father and all the other people in my life, lining up to tell me how reckless I was. Biting my lip, I eased myself over the windowsill. Moving with extreme caution I found a foothold in the creeper. Then a handhold and then, everso carefully, down I went. You might think I had taken a foolish risk. Believe me I knew what I was doing. I had always enjoyed climbing trees, but I was acutely aware that this time I was not scrumping for apples. If I lost my hold and fell, or the creeper broke, I would be dashed to pieces on the flagstones eighty feet below.

Halfway down the creeper, I became convinced that someone else had made this perilous descent, and very recently too. Fronds of the Virginia creeper were displaced and broken and many of her leaves flattened. Some twenty foot above the ground I saw something white poking out of the creeper's foliage, just past my hand. Straining, I reached out for it and retrieved the thing—a slip of cloth. It was a handkerchief, a dainty piece of the finest white linen. Embroidered in the corner was a monogram of fine curling letters:

G. C. Gaston Champlon

I couldn't help crying out in triumph, causing a student in white cricket flannels who was strolling over the lawn with his nose in a book, to look up in surprise. Luckily whatever he was reading was more interesting than a girl climbing the creeper, for he gave me but a glance. So, I thought, Gaston must have climbed down this creeper. Or, at the very least, someone who had stolen his handkerchief.

The slip of fabric clutched tightly in my hands, I fell down to the ground. The passage of human beings must have left some marks. Nothing, of course, in the flowerbeds under the walls except clods of earth and some withered, wintry stumps of plants. But on the
frost-dusted lawn two sets of footprints were visible. The urchin's strange twig-like tracks and following them, at a run by the look of the smudged marks, a set of adult prints. The feet were hurrying away from the college toward the edge of the garden and the canal.

In hot pursuit, I set out after them.