The Case That Time Forgot (11 page)

Xander read the text on the Web site. “What makes it worse,” he said, “is that people
used
to be able to get inside. That means that Amin could have gone in there and left something. It has to be something inside. If it was outside, people would have noticed it by now.”

They sat in discouraged silence for a moment, and then something occurred to Xena.
She turned to the keyboard and typed rapidly for a moment.

“What?” Xander asked.

Xena shook her head. “I'll tell you if I get an answer.” She turned back to finish her homework, and checked her e-mail every few minutes. After her fourth attempt, she said, “Aha!” and turned the screen so that Xander could read the message.

It was from Mr. Grayson, the curator at the Timekeepers Museum. “You two really are clock buffs, aren't you? As it happens, I have some research to do at Big Ben and can easily get you in. I'll move my appointment up to tomorrow and see you there after school.”

“Yes!” Xander pumped his fist in the air. But Xena looked disappointed. “What?” he asked.

“After school is nowhere
near
nine-thirty,” she pointed out.

Xander's face fell but then he perked up. “We can at least get a look around,” he said. “We might find a way to go back there at nine-thirty. It's better than nothing.”

 

The instant school was out on Friday afternoon, Xena and Xander met up in the corridor. People were slamming lockers all around them, but
Xena still lowered her voice. “Do you have your Tube map?”

Xander nodded and pulled it out with difficulty, as a soccer ball took up most of the room in his backpack. “Here's the nearest stop to Big Ben.” He put his finger next to a drawing of a tall steeple with a clock on it.

They squeezed through the crowd and raced to the Tube stop. The ride seemed to take forever, but finally they got to the stop right by the Palace of Westminster.

The huge, rectangular tower loomed over them as they hurried toward the palace. It was beautiful—four clocks with white faces under a pointy spire, at one end of the majestic palace. Pale clouds floated behind it, making it look as if the tower were gliding slowly across the sky.

“Wasn't Big Ben bombed during World War Two?” Xena asked Xander as they neared the stone building.

“Uh-huh. Two of the clockfaces were damaged.” Neither one said what they both were thinking:
What if whatever we're looking for was destroyed?

They saw Mr. Grayson waving to them from the base of the tower. They broke into a trot and arrived next to him.

“I'll sign in and then we can go up,” he said. “All right?”

“Great!” Xena and Xander chorused, and watched as he went to talk to a man in a uniform.

Xander saw two familiar figures approaching. He nudged Xena and pointed out Jake and Shane, who were walking together and talking to each other. “What are
they
doing here?” he asked.

“Coincidence?” Xena hazarded, but she knew that wasn't likely. London was a huge city, and it wasn't like these native Londoners were there to see the sights.

She felt uneasy and moved closer to Xander, who muttered, “Something's up.” She nodded in agreement.

“What are you doing here?” Xander asked as soon as they were within earshot. The boys looked up, surprise on both their faces. Was it his imagination, or was Shane's surprise fake?

“What are
we
doing here? What are
you
doing here?” Shane asked.

Xena said, “We're going up the bell tower!”

Xander groaned. Why did she have to tell them?

“Good for you!” Jake said. “How did you manage that?”

Xena explained without mentioning the amulet. But all the time she was talking, something was nagging at her—an odd sound. She couldn't figure out what it was, only that it had come from one of the boys. “Why don't you ask if you can come up with us?” she suggested.

Jake and Shane looked at each other and shrugged, and then Jake said, “Why not? Might be fun.”

As the boys walked off together down the paved path, Xander turned to her, furious. “Are you nuts?” he demanded. “Why did you invite—”

“Hush!”

“What?” Xander was surprised. His sister sounded excited.

“Listen!” she hissed.

He listened. Nothing but some birds, some of the ever-present tourists, a baby crying.

“Can't you hear it? That clicking sound!” Xena whispered. “There's something on the sole of Shane's shoe!”

Xander thought for a moment. How could he find out what he needed to know? Then a grin broke across his face and he pulled the soccer ball out of his backpack. He stood on the wide sidewalk, kicking it in the air, trying to keep it from touching the ground.

When the older boys came back with the news that they'd gotten permission to go up the tower with them, Xander was still kicking it around. At first the two older boys didn't pay any attention to him—they stood talking with Xena—but as Xander purposely kept flubbing an easy move, Jake finally took pity on him. He said, “Let's go over there and I'll show you how to do it.” He pointed to a small park across the street where a statue of the famous British prime minister Winston Churchill seemed to glower at passersby. Xander picked up the soccer ball and followed him, trailed by a bored-looking Shane and a curious Xena.

“Here, kick it to me,” Jake said, and Xander complied. They passed the ball back and forth a few times, and then Xander copied what the older boy had shown him. Shane joined them, and they kicked the ball to one another.

“Bet you can't steal it from me!” Xander said when the ball came in his direction. He took off, dribbling it past Shane, who couldn't resist the taunt. Xander shot a meaningful look at Xena, who moved closer just as Xander pretended to lose his footing. He stuck a foot in between Shane's ankles and tripped him up.

As Shane went sprawling, Xena ran up.
“Here, let me help you.” She gave Shane a hand. “Xander, you're such a klutz!” She beamed triumphantly at Xander. So she'd seen something!

“I couldn't help it,” Xander whined. “It's slippery. Did I hurt you, Shane?”

“
You
hurt
me
? Hardly.” Shane brushed mud off his knees. “I'm used to spills.”

Xander was dying to ask Xena what she'd seen, but at that moment he saw Mr. Grayson standing at the base of the clock tower, gesturing at them. They all grabbed their backpacks and ran to the tower.

“Now keep close to me,” Mr. Grayson warned as one of the guards unlocked a door. “I've told them that you're serious students of timepieces and won't behave like silly kids.”

He led them up the winding stairs, Xena at his heels. Xander wanted to catch up with her and find out what she'd seen, but Jake and Shane were in between them, and the stairway was too narrow for him to pass. He wondered how Xena was feeling in there. Was the narrow space making her uncomfortable? Or was it okay, seeing as there were small windows every once in a while that allowed a glimpse of the world outside?

The walls were stone, and although they looked slimy, they were dry. They were cold and rough, though, and the stairs were worn where countless feet had stepped on them. The banister was black metal and felt even colder than the walls.

They climbed and climbed, turning always to the right as they made their way up the seemingly endless spiral staircase. Mr. Grayson had to stop a few times and catch his breath, and each time, Xander tried to slip past the older boys. “Here, who are you shoving?” Jake asked.

“I just wanted to walk with Xena,” Xander protested.

“Grow up,” Shane said. “Big sis is walking with us.”

Xena wished she could drop back and join Xander, but even if she did, she couldn't say anything to him without the others hearing. It was such a narrow place, and the cold stone walls echoed the smallest sound. People had scratched their names into the soot-darkened walls, which somehow made it even creepier. The windows that let in a little pale light were few and far between, and the higher they went, the tighter Xena's chest felt.

Finally they arrived at a landing that was a bit wider than the others, where the stairs
changed direction. They paused and Xena took a deep breath, fighting the panicky feeling.

Xander managed to squeeze past Shane and Jake. He passed Xena too, as though his one goal were to get to the head of the line, and as he did so, he leaned in so close that his curls tickled her face and she was able to whisper directly into his ear, “Tack in shoe!”

So that was what made the clicking sound, and more important, it explained the circle in the shoeprint. It took all of Xander's willpower not to confront Shane then and there, but he knew that this still wasn't proof of anything. The prints he'd seen had disappeared, and he had no evidence that they'd ever existed. And even if people believed him that Shane had been in the janitor's closet and in the shower room at school, that didn't mean he had taken anything or even that he had put the scorpion in Xander's backpack. Probably a handwriting expert could prove Shane had left the threatening note and maybe someone could even trace the phone call Xena had received, but all that would take time.

And time was something they didn't have. He didn't even have the time to feel angry at the danger the other boy had put him in.

“Can you look at the clockworks from in here?” Xander asked Mr. Grayson.

“Yes, that's how they repair them. They even have to go in and clean things once in a while.”

“Brilliant!” said Jake. “Just wait until I tell everyone that I got to go inside the works at Big Ben!”

“No, it's much too dangerous,” the man said sternly. “I'm not even allowed in there without an official. I'm just here to look at the documents a caretaker wrote during the First World War. You four will have to stay quiet while I do that, and then we'll all go down together.”

“Did the caretakers write that too?” Xander pointed at the graffiti that was all around them.

“Some,” Mr. Grayson said. “But until recently visitors could come in here whenever they wanted, and I'm afraid that people can't resist leaving their mark. Some of the marks have historical interest. See, up there is the signature of the actress Laura Sears, and below it . . .”

He went on, showing them the names of people they'd never heard of, but Xena and Xander weren't paying attention.

Incised into the stone was something familiar—the outline of a hand with an eye drawn in the palm.

X
ena and Xander tried desperately not to stare at the familiar symbol. If Shane hadn't noticed the carving, they didn't want to draw his attention to it. Xander glanced at it out of the corner of his eye. It had obviously been there for a long time. Dust and soot had gathered in the lines, making the symbol nearly invisible except when the light came in at a slant, as it was now doing. The late afternoon light made the shadows deeper and the contrast with the wall around them sharper.

Mr. Grayson paused to catch his breath. Xena cast about for something to ask him that would make the boys pay attention to her and not look around. What could you ask about a clock?

“Um, I guess the clocks are so old that they aren't very accurate.”

Sure enough, the man perked right up.
“Some of these old timepieces were astonishingly accurate. Much more so than many watches your parents and I used to wear! But it
is
big,” he conceded, “and sometimes something would get into the mechanism or a piece would wear out from heavy use. In the old days, they would put a penny on the minute hand to slow it down if it was going too fast, but of course now we have better ways of regulating it. Did you know that there is a prison cell in the tower?”

“For thieves?” Xena couldn't resist glancing at Shane.

“No, actually for misbehaving MPs!” Mr. Grayson said with a chuckle. “The cell hasn't been used in quite a while. The chimes are famous.”

Shane's attention seemed to be all on their guide at this point, so Xander risked another glance at the hand, knowing that what he saw would be instantly imprinted on his brain. Above the hand, almost hidden by the soot deposited by early-twentieth-century London, was the carving of a crude clockface. It had no numerals, but its hands were clearly pointing to 9:30! So the clue about 9:30 had nothing to do with the time they should visit the tower. It
meant that they should look for a clockface indicating that time.

And in the instant before he looked away again, Xander saw something that made his heart skip a beat. The hour hand wasn't a simple line. It was an arrow.

The carving was far out of Xander's reach, but he knew that his sister, with her rock-climbing skills, would have no trouble reaching the arrow. But how to tell Xena about it without alerting Shane?

Mr. Grayson turned to head up the stairs again. Xander was desperate. He brushed against Shane, pretended to stumble, and yelled, “Ow! Cut that out!”

Xena whipped around to face him. She could tell that Xander was faking. But why? His eyes were telegraphing something to her, but she didn't understand.

“What's the problem?” Mr. Grayson came down a few steps.

“They shoved me,” Xander whined. “They tried to push me down the stairs!”

“Did not!” Jake was indignant.

“Did too!”

“You're a liar,” Shane said hotly. “
You
pushed
me
!”

“You're a clumsy oaf,” Xander said, and sniffled.

Xena put an arm around him, bending down to his level. “Did they hurt you?”

He leaned against her as though he couldn't put any weight on his right foot, and managed to breathe into her ear, “Clock above hand—hour hand—is an
arrow
,” before Mr. Grayson reached him.