The Mummy Snatcher of Memphis (4 page)

Again that awful noise. A groan. This time, there was no doubt it was coming from inside the box.

Chapter Three

The packing case shivered. One side of the wood bulged slightly, as if something on the inside had fallen against it.

Rachel screamed.

“Hush!” I snapped.

Waldo murmured something to Rachel to calm her. But I noticed he did not move closer to the box to help me. There's boys for you, all very well with empty talk. Real courage is another matter.

I put out my hand to touch the case and again a tremor ran through it. There was something living inside.

“The m … m … mummy's awake,” Rachel stuttered.

“Small animal most like. A rat or some other rodent,” I said, to calm her down.

I noticed something strange. Like the other cases this one was corded with stout green twine. But somehow the twine had been frayed and broken.

There was only one way to find out. I ripped off the remnants of the twine and pulled the string off the box. The others crowded round to help me. Then, my hand trembling a little, I opened the lid. It wasn't at all difficult. The lid was loose, hardly difficult to pry off at all, despite its size and weight.

It was dark inside the box. A glimpse of golden paint, shining off the sarcophagus, the wood coffin that housed the ancient skeleton. The famous mummy! Then I noticed something dark and crouching. The whites of two eyes were visible, peering through the gloom.

“There's something in here,” I said. “A trapped creature.”

Praying that whatever it was wouldn't bite me, I put my hand in the box. Instantly the thing sprang up, brushing my arm as it flailed out of the case. I had a confused impression of tattered garments and brown skin and then it was gone. Out of the box, scampering past me.

“Quick. Catch him!” Waldo shouted to Isaac.

Now I saw it was a skinny young boy, covered only in a ragged nightshirt. Waldo lunged at him, but the boy was too quick. He slipped past and was nearly at the door which led into the Natural History Museum. Isaac put his foot out, tripping the boy. He fell face downward on to the floor and lay there, quite still.

“Don't hurt him,” I commanded Isaac, running over.

I knelt down next to him. While the others crowded around, I attempted to roll him over. The boy was covered in dust and filth from the packing case. Staring at me with tormented eyes, he looked like a wild creature, a desert fox perhaps. But I noticed that his nose and lips were finely modeled, his eyes large and lustrous and his eyelashes feathery. He was almost pretty—more like a girl than a lad.

“What is your name?” I inquired gently.

Numbly he looked at us, four heads hovering over him as he lay prone, cutting off his air and light.

“Don't be afraid. We're your friends.”

Waldo put his hand down and before I could stop him had given the boy a good pinch.

“Stop playing games,” he said roughly. “What are you up to? Trying to steal the mummy's treasures?”

“Enough,” I snapped at Waldo, warding off more pinches. “Can't you see how terrified he is?”

The boy was trembling, his dark eyes looking frantically around for escape. I laid a careful hand on his arm. I don't know what I said, mere soothing sounds really, but they seemed to calm him. Rachel, with her soft heart, had put her arm round his shoulder to lift him up. It was her actions, more than anything else, which comforted the creature. No one who looked into Rachel's
warm face could suspect her of anything but kindness.

“Let's see if he has a knife,” suggested Waldo.

“He might want to stab us,” said Isaac.

Waldo began scrabbling around the boy looking for weapons. More foolishness! Of course there was nothing.

“Tell us your name,” I said.

Those large brown eyes only flickered around the room, like an animal. I was beginning to think the boy was a mute.

“It's impossible!” I said. “He can't understand a thing.”

Rachel gave me a quick look, as if to chide me for my impatience. She looked into the boy's eyes, forcing him to look back at her and calm down. She pointed at me: “Kit,” she said, very slowly and clearly. Then she did the same with all the others finally finishing off with herself: “Me, Rachel.”

Finally an expression on that blank face. A small smile broke through his glumness, showing dazzling white teeth: “Me, Ahmed.”

“Friends,” Rachel said.

“Friends,” the boy repeated.

“Ask him why he was hiding in King Isesi's case,” Waldo butted in.

“He might be a thief,” said Isaac.

“More like a spy. A rotten Frenchie spy,” Waldo said.

“Not a very good one,” I pointed out sarcastically. “Any
longer in that packing case, I expect he would have dropped dead.”

While the rest of us were arguing Rachel had disappeared. She returned with a glass of water which she offered to Ahmed. He took it eagerly and downed it in three huge gulps.

“Food,” Rachel said. “He needs food.”

A plan was beginning to form in my mind. I would smuggle Ahmed into our home. We would feed him, find him some decent clothes. Then, with Rachel's patient help we would try to find out his story. He looked no older than us, twelve or thirteen at the most. How did this poor creature come to be in Oxford, shivering even in a warm autumn? How did he wash up, hungry, ragged, frightened and alone, thousands of miles from his desert home?

I had already assumed, you see, that he was Egyptian. Those ebony eyes, the lack of English, the fact he was in the mummy case. That was our first clue. We had an Egyptian stowaway on our hands.

“We will find him some bread and cheese,” I said. “We will take him home and feed him.”

Just then we heard Aunt Hilda's stentorian voice approaching down the corridor. “Your arrangements are adequate, Theo,” she was saying. “Adequate at best.”

“Thank you, my dear.”

“Less of the thank-yous. Could Do Better, that's what you need to tell yourself. Anyway, I suggest you call it the Hilda Salter Bequest. The very least you can do. A magnificent collection of Egyptology, even if I say so myself.”

“It's very fine indeed,” my father bleated.

Aunt Hilda had such a vibrant personality, she could force the strongest man into submission. Sadly Father was not the strongest man. For as long as he could recall, Papa had been terrified of his elder sister.

But the effect on Ahmed of Aunt Hilda's voice was extraordinary. He stood up, quivering. Then he bolted, crashing painfully into a large case. Without a murmur he got up and set off again.

“Quick, catch him!” Waldo ran after Ahmed.

By luck Ahmed had blundered into the dark corner of the room which led to my father's office. We caught him there and opening the door ushered him into Papa's sanctum, a crowded room, packed with cases, pottery, parchments and fragments of ancient bones. There were plenty of nooks and crannies in here where a skinny boy could remain undetected.

“It's all right,” I said. “You'll be safe here. You can hide.”

That was one word Ahmed understood. He looked at me with huge, scared eyes. “Hide,” he repeated. “Hide.”

Chapter Four

Ahmed crouched in the corner, in the dark space between the edge of my father's desk and a bookshelf. More porters had entered the room next door, judging by all the banging and scraping coming through the wall. My aunt was busy being in charge, my father hard at work following orders.

The Egyptian boy was over his fit of terror. Still, there was something about his frozen stance that was unnerving. Surely such fear was out of all proportion? Aunt Hilda can be something of a dragon, granted. But she is not a mean-spirited person. Under her bristly exterior, I am convinced, lies a decent heart. The boy reacted to her voice as if she was the devil himself.

After some time, the banging outside ceased. Aunt Hilda and father had obviously found some new distraction. We heard their footsteps move away. Ahmed flopped and lay in a heap, quite still. We looked at each other and I shrugged. I didn't know what to do with
him. It was Rachel who went over and knelt down.

“Ahmed,” she whispered.

“Rachel.”

“Everything will be all right, Ahmed.” The words were mere sounds to Ahmed. It was the soothing tone that comforted him. “Nothing bad will happen to you. Please, you must trust us.”

“Bad.”

“No Ahmed. We are good! No harm will come to you.”

Ahmed uncurled a little. His eyes flickered to Rachel and then over all of us in turn.

Some calculation was going on in that tousled head. I could see it clearly in Ahmed's eyes. His skinny hands delved into the rags on his body and came out clasping a packet sealed in mustard-colored wax paper. The packet was roughly three inches square with a hole at the top. A red cord was threaded through the hole. Ahmed, we now saw, wore the packet dangling from a cord around his neck.

“Rachel,” he said. He took a piece of parchment out of the packet and handed it to my friend.

Rachel took the roll of parchment and turned it over in her hands, almost stroking the rough surface. The wax paper was dusty and dirty, as you would expect, since it had traveled with Ahmed across half the world.
Inscribed around it in green ink were three symbols. I knew what they were: hieroglyphics! The mysterious language of the ancient Egyptians.