The Case That Time Forgot (5 page)

“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 with 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?

Xena didn't even bother with the
ANSWERS

column for this one. Instead she said, “I'm going to do some research about needles and eyes. Why don't you see if Mom has anything that we can use in our investigation?”

She returned to the computer while Xander rooted around in the box of gadgets their mother kept after she evaluated them. You never knew what might come in handy. Who would have thought that a metal detector would help them find a painting that had been missing for a century, or that a tape recorder would lead them to a savage beast in the countryside? Plus,
there was usually something cool in the box.

First Xander found some night-vision goggles. Fun but hardly useful, as their parents wouldn't let them go out after dark by themselves. Headphones that you could use to eavesdrop on someone a long way away—were those even legal for someone who wasn't a policeman? Xander wasn't sure so he put them back. A hologram projector. He puzzled over the instruction manual until he discovered that it was a way to make a three-dimensional image appear and seem to be actually present with you. Way cool but not very helpful. He set it aside to try out some Halloween.

Their mother came out of her study. She was used to her kids rummaging through her gadget box and even encouraged them to do so, since she liked to be able to test how sturdy the devices were.

“What's this?” Xander held up something that looked like a wristwatch.

She took it from him. “Oh, this is a voice-activated GPS system. It can tell you where you are and give you directions, but the screen is too small to be useful. There's not much point to a map if you can't read it.”

Xander strapped it on, and after it booted up,
he tested it. The screen was indeed small, but he had no trouble reading it. “You should have used your reading glasses!” he teased his mother.

“You just wait!” she said with a laugh. “Someday you'll need help reading fine print and threading a needle!”

From the computer, Xena asked, “What's a needle without an eye, anyway?”

“A knitting needle?” their mother guessed. Xena and Xander thought a minute and then shook their heads.

“A needle without an eye is just a pin,” Xander said. “But what's so special about a pin?”

Just then the phone rang next to Xena. “Hello?” Nothing. “Hello?” she repeated, a bit louder.

She was about to hang up when a voice said huskily, “You'd better stop looking for it now, or you'll be sorry.” Before she could say anything, the line went dead.

X
ena stared at the phone in disbelief.

“Who was it?” Mrs. Holmes asked.

Xena shook her head. “I don't know.” She repeated the caller's words to her mother.

“Where did the call come from?” Xander asked. Xena glanced down at the caller ID. The word
BLOCKED
stared back at her.

“Did you recognize the voice?” their mother asked.

Xena shook her head. “It sounded like the caller was trying to disguise it.” Something about the voice was familiar, though. Where had she heard it before? She concentrated but could not remember. This was frustrating; she had a good memory for sounds.

“Let me have the phone,” her mother said.

Xander pulled Xena aside as their mother made a call. “Did it sound like a kid or a grownup?” he asked.

“Hard to tell. A kid, I guess.” Their mom had been so distracted she hadn't even asked that question, or, for that matter, what the caller meant by “you'd better stop looking for it.”

“All right. Thanks. Can you let me know if you find out anything?” their mother said into the phone. She hung up and said to them, “The phone company is going to contact the police, but they're not optimistic about tracing the call. It didn't last long enough. I wouldn't worry about it, though. It sounds like the kind of prank call kids make.” But Xena and Xander both noticed that she looked more worried than she sounded.

Xena and Xander went into Xena's room. “So someone knows about the amulet!” Xander said. “It must be the same person who was hiding in the locker room.”

“And he—or she—must want us to stop the investigation. There's only one reason for that.”

“Our spy wants to find it before we do,” Xander said in a grim voice.

Xena nodded. “And we can't let that happen. Let's see what we can find out about water clocks. Maybe we'll get a clue there.” She got on the computer again and typed “Egyptian water clock” into a search engine. Lots of sites came
up, but one caught her interest. “Xander, check this out.”

He came over and looked at the screen. “The Timekeepers Museum—and it's right here in London! Maybe someone there knows something that could help.”

“Not today, though. It's Sunday, remember?”

Xander flung himself down on the couch. “How could I forget? Less than a week left! We can't just sit here all day!”

“We can go to the Timekeepers Museum tomorrow after school. Let's plan our trip there so that we don't waste any time.” Xena clicked back to the museum's home page and read the address off the screen.

“I bet I'll find the Tube stop before you!” Xander pulled his trusty map out of his pocket, the one that their mother had given him shortly after their arrival in London and that showed some of the most famous tourist attractions in the city. He used it so much that it was frayed and the creases were split.

“Beat you!” Xena said. “I'm sending them an e-mail asking if we can find out about water clocks there.”

But Xander wasn't listening. Something not far from their destination had caught his eye. It
was the drawing of an Egyptian sphinx, and it was right on the edge of the Thames River. “Xena! Look at this!”

She finished writing the e-mail and clicked
SEND
. She got up and stretched. “What?”

He pointed. She looked at the sphinx and then at him. “So what?”

“Don't you remember? The clue about the monument on the river!”

“I don't know.” She was doubtful, as usual. “It's not really a monument.”

“Oh, come
on
, Xena. You're just saying that because I found it and you didn't! It's big, it's Egyptian, and it's right on the river. And anyway, it's really near that Timekeepers place. We can go there afterward.”

 

The sun was shining weakly the next afternoon as they stood outside the Timekeepers Museum in Guildhall, a part of London that Xena and Xander didn't know very well. They pushed the door open and saw a long, dimly lit room full of tall glass cases that held a collection of clocks made of polished wood and brass.

They stopped at the front desk to pick up a guide to the collection. “We're not getting many people today, I'm afraid,” the man at the desk
told them. “Not everybody is as interested in these things as you are. You have the place almost to yourselves!”

The cases held beautiful clocks and watches of all kinds. In one case marked
CURIOSITIES
, big pocket watches dangled from heavy gold chains. Cuckoo clocks with intricate carvings stood next to delicate watches and an alarm clock with two large, almost flat bells on top. “They look like the ones in cartoons,” Xander said. “You know, the ones that jump around when they ring.”

Xena admired a clock whose cover was made of glass so you could see the movement inside. It was precise and orderly, just as she liked.

The man who had let them in came up to where Xander stood looking at a case that held a special exhibit of ancient timepieces. “Not much good at night!” The man gestured at the sundial that stood in the center.

“So is that why they invented these?” Xander leaned closer to peer at the water clocks, hourglasses, and candles that had lines marked on them telling what time it was when the flame burned down to that point.

The man nodded as Xena joined them. “Yes, you could use them even when the sun was down or on a cloudy day. Some of them were
quite precise, but others gave only a rough idea of the time. Are you the children who were interested in Egyptian timekeeping?”

“That's us,” Xena said. “So you got my e-mail?”

“Yes, I read it when I arrived at work this morning. I'm Mr. Grayson. I found some material for you in the library. Come with me.”

In his bright and cheery office was a pile of books with colorful sticky notes poking out in several places. Mr. Grayson opened the books, one after the other, to show them photographs and line drawings of water clocks. “The drip holes were drilled to very exact specifications,” he told them. “But imagine what would happen if a bug or even some dust fell into it and plugged it up!”

Mr. Grayson opened another book. This one was old, and the pages with photographs on them were covered with thin sheets of tissue paper that had become imprinted with a ghostly copy of the image on the other page. One photograph of a huge bowl shaped like a flowerpot and made of pale-colored stone, was captioned “The Thoth Clock.”

Xander instantly recognized it from the broken pieces of the water clock from the casebook! “What's this?” he asked.