The Case That Time Forgot

by Tracy Barrett

  “One week later,” he noted. “Okay, here it says that Sherlock found Amin. He’d been hiding with someone who lived in London but refused to say who. It also says—” His voice changed, and Xena could tell he was excited. “It says that when Sherlock searched Amin, he found a piece of paper on him.”

  “Was anything written on it?” Xena leaned forward.

  Xander’s face showed his disappointment. “It doesn’t say.” He shook his head and put down the clipping. “Must not have been anything important.”

  “That’s what I thought at first,” Karim said eagerly. “But then I thought about it. I think that it was important, and Mr. Holmes asked the reporters not to say what it said. It must have been something about where the amulet was hidden, and I bet Mr. Holmes didn’t want anyone to find it before he had a chance to look for it.”

  Xander ran his eye over another clipping. “Hmm.”

  “What does it say?” Xena tried not to sound impatient. Honestly, Xander could be so annoying.

  This time Xander read the short account aloud. “‘The other Egyptian guard, whose name has not been released, has revealed to this reporter that Mr. Amin Farag boasted that as the descendant of an ancient priesthood, he had privileged knowledge that hidden inside the basin of the clock was a rare and beautiful amulet of Thoth, the ancient Egyptian god of time and timekeeper of the gods, made of gold and precious gems.’” He took a breath. “Phew, they wrote long sentences back then!”

  “What else?” Xena asked.

  “‘Mr. Holmes has been apprised of this fact and has said that he had already deduced that the clock had been stolen in order to permit access to its interior, and perhaps to something concealed there. He expresses himself eager to pursue further this intriguing story.’ ”

  Xander looked at the folder. “Where’s the next clipping?”

  “There isn’t one,” Karim said.

  “So what happened next?” Xena asked. “Did Amin go to jail?”

  Karim shook his head. “My granddad says that the Egyptian government was embarrassed about the whole thing. The Carberry Museum bought the water clock fair and square, and then their own employee stole it and destroyed it. So they asked for Amin to be sent back to Egypt so that they could have a trial, and then Mr. Holmes stopped working on the case.”

  He sounded hurt, as though he had personally been abandoned by the great detective.

  Xena said quickly, “He didn’t want to. He had to. The queen made him stop. Sherlock didn’t forget about it, though. He kept the records in his cold-case notebook.”

  “I wonder why the Egyptian government let Amin come to England with the water clock,” Xander said.

  “They didn’t know about the priesthood thing, I bet,” Karim said. “Amin worked for the archaeologist who found the water clock, and he asked if he could be one of the guards who went with it to England so that he could visit his brother after they got the water clock delivered.”

  “Amin’s brother was your great-great-great-grandfather?” Xena asked.

  Karim nodded. “He was already living in London. That’s who Amin stayed with when he was hiding from the police. And that’s when Amin told my great-great-great grandfather about the amulet, and he told his son the whole story, and he told his son, and he told his son, and my granddad told me.”

  “What else did your grandfather tell you?” Xander wanted to know.

  “He said that Amin was angry with the Egyptian government for selling the water clock, so he confessed to taking it. He was even proud of his crime.”

  “Why was he so upset about the sale?” Xena asked. “Was the clock really rare?”

  “No,” Karim said. “Of course anything from ancient Egypt is valuable, but there are other water clocks around, and they didn’t think there was anything special about this one. Amin must have been angry because he couldn’t get to the amulet. If it was in a museum in England, he’d never be able to find it and take it back to Egypt with him, or whatever it was he wanted to do.”

  Xena took a deep breath. Now for the hard part. “Karim, do you really believe that the amulet can make time stand still?”

  Karim lifted his chin. “I do.” His voice was stubborn. “That’s what my grandfather told me, and he should know.”

  “So how’s it supposed to work?” Xander asked. “Do you have to say something in ancient Egyptian? Do you even know any ancient Egyptian?”

  Karim shook his head. “My granddad says that all you have to do is hold the amulet. You hold it in your hand, and you concentrate really hard, and time stops.”

  “And how do you make it go again?” Xena had a moment of wondering what it would be like if everything stopped except you, and then you couldn’t make time start moving again. Would you wander around frozen people forever, watching them stay the same as you got old and eventually died? Would you die? Could you even eat and drink if the water and food were stuck in time and you weren’t?

  “All you have to do is put the amulet down, and time starts up. He says they used it in the olden days during a ritual to the god of time, Thoth. But it works only once every fifty years.”

  It sounded crazy, but Karim seemed to believe it, and Karim was a sensible person. For the first time, Xena seriously considered the possibility of stopping time.

  “Wow.” Xander finally spoke. “Imagine if you’re in a football game. You could make time stop while you got in the right place to make a goal.”

  “Or if you had a big project due at school,” Xena said, intrigued despite her skepticism, “and it’s due in two weeks and you haven’t started it. You could get it all done in time!”

  Xander said to Karim, “We looked in Sherlock’s casebook, the one we got from the SPFD—”

  “The what?”

  “The Society for the Preservation of Famous Detectives,” Xena explained. “They’re a group of people who want to keep the memory of famous detectives from the past alive. They gave us the casebook, and they have a lab and know all sorts of experts. You know Andrew Watson at school?” Karim nodded. “Andrew belongs to the SPFD too. His great-great-great grandfather was Sherlock’s best friend, Dr. Watson. Anyway, the casebook has some notes in it, but they’re mostly about the water clock, not the amulet. Sherlock didn’t get much of a chance to investigate the amulet.”

  Karim glanced quickly to the hallway, where they could hear his parents talking to each other, and lowered his voice. “My dad told my granddad he thinks it’s silly that I believe all this. That hurt my granddad’s feelings, so he gave me something else that he said would prove it. I don’t know, though—I don’t understand it.”

  “What is it?” Xander breathed.

  The other boy stood and took his wallet from his back pocket. He pulled out yet another yellowing piece of paper. He spread it on the table. This time it wasn’t newsprint, but only a few handwritten words. The old-fashioned writing was so faint that it was hard to read, even more so because Xena and Xander were looking at it upside down.

  “What’s this?” Xena asked. The back of her neck prickled.

  Karim lowered his voice. “My granddad said that when his own grandfather was a little boy, a letter came from Egypt. There was a note in it that said, ‘Here begins the trail,’ and then this piece of paper.”

  “The trail? What trail?” Xena asked.

  “Oh, Xena, what does it matter?” Xander was dying to know what the paper said. “Let’s read it first and then we can figure out what ‘the trail’ means. What does it say, Karim?”

  Karim picked up the paper and read solemnly, “Who Bastet rules, she Bastet rules. The secret must be held to the sun.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Silence. Then, “O-kay,” Xander said slowly. “Who Bastet rules—”

  “She Bastet rules. The secret must be held to the sun,” Xena finished for him. “And this is some kind of trail?”

  “I don’t know what it means,” Karim confessed. “That’s why I had to ask you, don’t you see? This l
etter was sent after Mr. Holmes died, so he never saw it. But it’s got to be a clue about the amulet.”

  Xena and Xander looked at each other. There had to be more than this.

  Karim went on, “My great-great-grandfather hired a detective to trace the letter so that he could find Amin and ask him what it meant, but when he finally found the right village in Egypt, it turned out that Amin had died right after he sent it.”

  “So you’re not sure—” Xena began.

  “My granddad told me that Amin hid the amulet somewhere in London and left clues for his descendants to find,” Karim said. “He’s sure this note is one of those clues. My granddad wants the amulet to be found before he dies. He knows my father doesn’t believe in it, so when he saw you on the news after you found that missing painting and I told him I knew Xander, he asked me to see if you could help.”

  “You kids are being awfully quiet!” All three jumped as Karim’s father came into the room. “Why don’t you play a game or something? I’ll have to run Xena and Xander home before long.” His eye fell on the piece of paper. He picked it up. “What’s this?”

  Karim explained. His father frowned at the paper, then sighed and put it down. “It’s nice of you two to want to help. Karim is very close to his grandfather, and I know he believes this whole tale.” He held up his hand as Karim started to say something. Karim sat back and crossed his arms over his chest, looking out the window instead of at his father, who continued, “My father is a wonderful storyteller. I think the tale of the magic amulet is something he made up to amuse his children and grandchildren. Anyway, even if it is true and if Amin left hints about the amulet’s location, they’ve been lost. My father said that when my great-great-granduncle was arrested, Mr. Holmes found some clues on him, but nobody knows what happened to them.”

  Xander started to say something but bit his tongue. Xena looked at him sharply.

  “Why would he tell Mr. Holmes there was a hidden amulet if there wasn’t?” Karim broke in.

  “Our ancestor must have been taunting Holmes with that tale about the amulet. Now, Karim, why don’t you three stop talking about this and do something fun before I have to take your guests home?”

  Xena and Xander were itching to consult the casebook. When Karim’s father came back half an hour later and told them it was time to leave, they thanked Mrs. Farag, said good-bye to Dalia (who hugged Xander tightly around the neck), and followed Mr. Farag out to his car. Karim came along for the ride. It wasn’t very late, but the days were so short that it was pitch-dark outside.

  Karim’s father let them out in front of their apartment building.

  “Would you like to come in?” Xena asked.

  “Thanks, but we have to get back.” Mr. Farag and Karim sat in the car and watched as they climbed the steps to their building.

  Was it just because it was dark and the streets were nearly empty that they felt uneasy? Xena was careful to pull the door shut tight behind them and to hear the lock click. Once they were safely inside the lift, she asked Xander, “What were you going to say back there?”

  “When?”

  “Remember—when Mr. Farag said that about the paper found on Amin?”

  “Oh, right,” Xander said. “The missing clue! I think we have it!”

  They ran into the living room, only to stop short at the sight of their parents and another couple sitting there while two small children played on the rug. The adults looked up.

  “What’s the hurry?” their father asked. “Xena and Xander, you remember Mr. and Mrs. Sanderson from downstairs, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I babysat for them once, remember?” Xena said as they stepped forward to shake hands.

  “Of course!” their mother said. “And guess what—we’re all going out to dinner.”

  “What, now?” Xena asked, and the adults laughed, which made her flush.

  “Yes, now! You’re usually starving!” her mother said.

  They ate at a Chinese restaurant, and then the much younger Sylvia and Brian were so full of energy that they all went for a walk in the dark, damp evening.

  “Don’t they have a bedtime?” Xander whispered to Xena as the two children ran ahead.

  “Spoiled rotten,” Xena whispered back. “They stay up as late as they want.”

  By the time they got home, it was much too late to do any detecting. They tried to stay up later than their parents, but they were both so exhausted that they fell fast asleep.

  The next morning, Xena woke before Xander. She ate a quick breakfast and was soon perched in front of the family’s one computer in the sitting room, where she did a search for “Bastet.”

  “Also known as Bast, this Egyptian goddess is usually represented as a slender woman with the head of a cat,” Xena read. “Protectress of Lower (northern) Egypt, Bastet was a fierce war goddess and originally goddess of the sun (later the moon as Egypt became influenced by Greece and its female moon deity).”

  “Who Bastet rules . . . ,” she said out loud.

  “What?” her mother asked.

  “Nothing,” Xena mumbled. Did this mean they had to go to Lower Egypt? Or the moon? Where else would Bastet rule? She remembered the other strange word in the casebook— “Tahuti”—and looked that up too. It was another name for Thoth, who turned out to be the god of magic, writing, and justice, as well as time. Thoth was sometimes represented as an ibis—a waterbird with a long beak—and sometimes as a baboon.

  Xander finally appeared. While he went to get breakfast, Xena grabbed the casebook out of his room and spread it open on the table.

  Xander wolfed down his breakfast and came back as Xena was leafing through the book. He sat next to her and said through his last mouthful of toast, “Those strange things about Tahuti and the drawing of the hand must be things that Amin said to Sherlock. They’ve got to be clues.”

  “Or maybe Amin just made them up and was messing with Sherlock.” Xena was still skeptical. “Or maybe Karim’s father is right and it’s all just a story.”

  Xander wiped the jam off his fingers and took the book from Xena. “Here, let me show you,” he said as he flipped to the end. He pulled out the envelope that Xena had tucked into the binding when they were looking at the casebook earlier. “Aha! Before you moved it, this was stuck right in the pages where he wrote about the missing amulet, remember? And look.” He pointed at the faint letters on the flap. “A. F.—Amin Farag! I saw those initials, but I didn’t pay any attention. It’s got to be the paper that Sherlock found on Amin.”

  Xena stared at him. “How can you be so sure?”

  “We looked at everything in the casebook when we first got it, remember?”

  “Sort of, but—”

  “But we didn’t pay much attention to the note in the envelope, because it didn’t make sense to us then.”

  Xander drew the thin slip of paper out of the envelope and unfolded it. It appeared ready to crumble at any moment. “The handwriting is familiar,” he said. “It was written by the same person who wrote that thing about Bastet.”

  “What does it say?” Xena tried to read over his shoulder. Xander read aloud:

  “I am a needle but cannot sew.

  I have no eye and cannot see.

  I face my sister across the sea,

  and toward my sister you must go.”

  Below that was written 500 yards from monument on riverbank in the same handwriting, followed by Egyptian hieroglyphs.

  It still didn’t make much sense, Xena thought. A needle that can’t sew, an eye that can’t see?

  “The London Eye?” she guessed, thinking of the huge Ferris wheel on the bank of the Thames River.

  Xander shook his head. “That wasn’t built until 1999, way after Amin died. Besides,” he pointed out, “we need a needle without an eye, not an eye without a needle. What about a Cyclops? It’s missing an eye.”

  Xena gave him a withering look. “They could see, plus, they’re Greek mythology. And what do they have to do wit
h needles?”

  “Okay, okay. Something about that eye in the casebook, the one that looked like it was tattooed on a hand?”

  They gave it some thought, but this didn’t seem to get them anywhere. This case was discouraging. They kept finding clues, but they had no idea what they meant.

  “Time for a list.” Xena drew a piece of paper toward her and uncapped a pen. “We have to get organized about this.” She made two columns and headed one QUESTIONS and the other ANSWERS. Under QUESTIONS she wrote:

  1. Can the amulet really make time stand still?

  “I don’t think we can prove that until we find it.” Xander was careful not to say “unless.” He didn’t want to jinx this investigation—it was hard enough already! Xena put a question mark in the ANSWERS column.

  2. What happened to the amulet after it was stolen?

  “If Amin found the amulet when he smashed the clock, he must have hidden it away for safekeeping,” Xena said. “He must have planned to come back for it later, or surely it would have surfaced by now. Even if that stuff about making time stand still isn’t true, it’s supposed to have jewels on it and a museum would love to have it. It must still be in its hiding place.” Another question mark.

  3. What do the hieroglyphs on the page with the riddle mean?

  Xander said, “That’s one we can get to work on, finally! Let’s send it to Andrew. Someone at the SPFD must know an expert who can translate the hieroglyphs for us.”

  “Good idea.” Xena turned back to the computer, typed a quick note explaining the situation, and e-mailed it to Andrew. “Next,” she said, returning to her list.

  4. Who Bastet rules?

  “What was that whole thing, again?” Xena asked.

  “ ‘Who Bastet rules, she Bastet rules. The secret must be held to the sun,’” Xander recited.

  Xena wrote the words on a scrap of paper and tucked it into the casebook. Xander rolled his eyes at her. “Hey, I don’t have your photographic memory!” she said, and put another question mark in the ANSWERS column, then continued writing.

  5. Needle without an eye?