The Curse of the Blue Figurine (5 page)

Johnny was on pins and needles. He watched as the professor examined the thing, puffed on his cigarette, said "hmmm" several times, and pulled the floor lamp closer to his desk. Now the professor tilted the figurine up so he could look at its base. Johnny noticed—for the first time—that there was a small, faded brown-paper label on the base. The professor adjusted his glasses and peered closer. Then he let out a loud whoop of laughter. He set the figurine down, threw back his head, and roared.

"Hah! That's a good one!" exclaimed the professor, pounding his hand on the desk.

Johnny was startled and utterly bewildered. "What... what is?"

The professor giggled some more. Then he picked up the figurine and held it so Johnny could see the label. "Here, have a look! This is funny, it really is! See—right there. There it is!"

Johnny looked. There was printing on the faded brown label, old-fashioned Victorian ornamental printing. It said:

SOUVENIR OF

CAIRO, ILLINOIS

Johnny felt crushed. He felt cheated and humiliated and angry. He had been so sure, so absolutely sure, that he had found a genuine bona fide Egyptian magic amulet. And now, to find out that the thing was a souvenir! A crummy, cheap, stupid souvenir! Johnny had souvenirs in his room. One was a small birchbark canoe that he had gotten when he visited Glen Ellis Falls in New Hampshire with his parents. And there was the old crusty bronze hand bell with a handle shaped like Father Junipero Serra, a priest who explored California in the eighteenth century. Johnny's uncle had gotten that in California, and he had given it to Johnny. And now... Johnny gazed forlornly at the professor. "Are you 
sure it's a souvenir?" he said weakly. "I mean, couldn't the label be a fake or something?"

The professor had stopped laughing. He saw now that Johnny was very disappointed, and he felt sympathetic. "I'm sorry, John," he said, shaking his head sadly. "But I'm afraid this is a real genuine souvenir and nothing more. I'm not an Egyptologist—my field is the Middle Ages. But this is just the kind of thing that a town like Cairo, Illinois, would peddle as a souvenir. They pronounce it
Kay-ro
,
by the way. It's a town way down in the southern part of Illinois, and it happens to have the same name as the capital of modern-day Egypt. So somebody probably thought it was clever to make a souvenir that looked like an Egyptian ushabti."

"A what?" Johnny had never heard this strange word before.

The professor was astonished. He knew that Johnny read a lot, and so—unreasonably—he thought that Johnny ought to know all sorts of obscure things. "You don't—well, I never! All righty then—this is what a ushabti is." The professor paused and laid the figurine down on the desk. He stubbed out his cigarette, shoved his chair away from the desk, folded his hands in his lap, and stared dreamily up at the ceiling. "First," he said, "you ought to know that the ancient Egyptians thought the next world—the place you go when you die—would be a lot like this world. And so in the next world people would have work to do. Plowing and sowing, carrying water up from the river, making bricks out of clay—
stuff like that. Well, to the Egyptians it didn't seem right that the pharaoh would have to do work in the next world. It would be... well, it would sort of be like making the President of the United States polish his own car. So the Egyptians made these little dolls called
ushabti,
and they were supposed to do the work
for
the pharaoh in the next world. Sometimes they put whole armies of these ushabtis in the tombs with the pharaohs. They come in all shapes and sizes: sometimes they look like dolls, and sometimes they're just miniature mummies, like this one here. The guy who designed this souvenir must have seen a ushabti in a museum, and he must have copied it. But this is a souvenir and nothing else. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm afraid that's the case."

As Johnny listened to what the professor was saying he found that he was struggling to find some way of proving that the figurine was really magic after all. Johnny was a stubborn kid about the things he believed. He did not give up easily. "But, Professor," he said plaintively, "what about Father Baart and the wood-carver and all that stuff? People always said that the wood-carver gave Father Baart something magic, didn't they? And there's that piece of paper there, with Father Baart's handwriting on it, isn't there? What about that?"

The professor turned to Johnny. There was a sheepish, sad look on his face. "I'm afraid, my boy," he said, "that I started all this business by telling you that ghost story. I'm terribly sorry—I deserve to be punched! The trouble 
with me is, I love to tell stories, and I like to make them seem as realistic as possible. Now, it is true that several people have claimed that they saw Father Baart's ghost in the church. And for all I know they may really think that they
did
see him. Personally I don't believe in ghosts, except when I'm telling ghost stories. As for this scroll here"—he tapped the paper with his finger—"it
is
Father Baart's handwriting—that much I can tell you. I used to be the official historian of St. Michael's Church, and so I know about things like that. But what does this prove? Not much. The whole business with the book, the figurine, and the warning note may have been Baart's idea of a joke. Or he may have been serious. He may have thought this silly statue was really enchanted. Who knows?"

Johnny hung his head. "Is it all a fake, then? The whole darned story? Did you make it all up?"

The professor shook his head vigorously. "Oh, goodness, no! Most of the details in the story I told were true. Mr. Herman and Mrs. Mumaw really did get killed, and Father Baart really did disappear. But the two deaths were just a coincidence, and I don't think there was anything supernatural about Baart's disappearance. Baart was insane, and he probably had some insane reason for wanting to disappear. As for the note that was found on his desk, he probably wrote it himself. It's easy enough to disguise your handwriting if you want to do that sort of thing."

The professor paused and flicked the ash off his cigarette. He gave Johnny a hangdog, guilty look. "I'm sorry to pull the rug out from under you this way, John," he said in a low voice. "Next time I'll think twice before I tell a ghost story. But
please
don't think that this blue doojigger is magic—it isn't!"

Johnny sighed. He wanted to be mad at the professor, but he just couldn't manage it. In spite of his lousy temper, in spite of his love of making up things, the professor was really a nice guy. Johnny could tell that, and he felt that he could forgive the old man for having told a few white lies.

At this point the professor glanced at his watch. He said that he had papers to grade and that he was going to have to chase Johnny out of the house.

"However," the professor added, grinning slyly, "I would like to issue an invitation: This evening, after dinner, how would you like to come over for a game of chess and a piece of chocolate cake? I play a superlative game of chess, and the cakes I make are also excellent. How about it? Are you interested?"

Johnny nodded and grinned. He loved to play chess, but right now he didn't have a partner. Grampa's game was checkers, and sometimes Johnny got very bored with it. And he was nuts about chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. So it was decided: Johnny would come back after dinner and have dessert. But before he went, he had one more question.

"What should I do about this stuff?" he said, pointing to the book and the two objects that lay inside it. "Do you think I should try and take it all back?"

The professor thought a bit. He drummed his fingers on the desk top, and he puffed at his black and gold cigarette. "I definitely think," he said at last, "that you should
not
take these things back. In the first place, if Father Higgins or Mr. Famagusta caught you in the basement of the church, there'd be hell to pay. And in the second place, it occurs to me that the blue figurine may be valuable. People collect things, you know. They collect salt shakers and medicine bottles and old flatirons and buttonhooks. The figurine is only a souvenir, but it's an
old
souvenir—sixty years old, or more. I think you should write to
Hobbies
magazine and find out if your doohickey is worth something. In the meantime, however, if I were you, I'd keep the thing hidden. If your Gramma sees it, she'll ask where it came from, and then where would you be? Just take it back and put it in your closet. First, though, you'd better make sure the coast is clear. Come on. I'll go down with you and check."

Johnny took the book in his arms and followed the professor downstairs. At the front door they stopped, and the professor peered cautiously out.

"Good!" he said, nodding. "They're not back yet. You'd better get while the getting is good. Bon voyage! And don't forget about our chocolate cake date tonight!"

"I won't," said Johnny, grinning. "G'bye!"

While the professor held the door for him Johnny raced across the street. Into the house he went, and up the stairs to his room. Once again he put the old black book in the bottom of his closet. Again he piled stuff on top of it. Then he closed the closet door and went across the hall to wash his hands, which were dirty from handling the book.

That evening at dinner, just as Gramma was about to serve dessert, Johnny announced that he had been invited over to the professor's house for cake and a chess game. He announced this shyly and hesitantly, because he didn't know what Gramma's reaction would be. Grampa was a pretty easygoing sort—he usually let Johnny do what he wanted to do. But Gramma was more strict, and she didn't like the professor much. Furthermore she was proud of her desserts—Johnny didn't want to hurt her feelings or make her angry.

But all Gramma said was "Humph! I guess it's all right." And she added, in a disparaging tone, "I didn't know he baked cakes." Gramma had lived across the street from Professor Childermass for twenty years, but there were a lot of things she didn't know about him.

Johnny excused himself and went across the street. He had a great time that evening. The professor was a crafty and merciless chess player. He was every bit as good as Johnny was, and maybe even a bit better. As for the cake... well, Johnny had theories about chocolate cake. He felt that the cake part of the cake was just an 
interruption between the layers of frosting. As it turned out, the professor's opinions about cake were similar to Johnny's. The cakes he served had three or four thin layers, and the rest was a huge amount of good, dark, thick fudgy frosting. And he served second helpings too.

Around ten o'clock that night Johnny said good-bye to the professor and started across the street toward his house. He paused on the curb for a minute or two to look around. It was a beautiful cold winter night. Icicles hung from all the houses, and they glimmered gray in the moonlight. Snowdrifts lay everywhere. In the street were ridges of ice, knotted and iron-hard. Johnny blew out his cloudy breath and felt contented. He had made a new friend, he was stuffed with chocolate cake, and he had won one of the three chess games they had played. Once more he looked around, and then he stepped forward into the street. As he stepped he happened to glance to his left, and he stopped dead.

There was somebody standing across the street, watching him.

Johnny stared. Who was it? He couldn't tell. All he could see was a short, stocky figure standing in front of Mrs. Kovacs's house.

"Hi!" called Johnny, waving.

No answer. The figure did not move.

Oh, well,
thought Johnny,
it's probably Mr. Swart-out.
Mr. Swartout was a creepy little man who lived at the end of the street. He never said anything to anybody —wouldn't give you the time if you asked him for it.

Shrugging, Johnny walked straight on across the street and into his house. Later, upstairs, when he was in his pajamas and getting ready to climb into bed, Johnny looked out the window. His bedroom was at the front of the house. From it you could get a good view of the whole length of Fillmore Street. He looked toward the place where the figure had been standing, but there was no one there. For some reason Johnny felt relieved. Then he peeked at the moon, which was silvering the shingles of the professor's house. Johnny yawned and climbed into bed, and very soon he was asleep.

In the weeks that followed, Johnny and the professor became friends. It was an odd kind of friendship, the old man and the twelve-year-old boy. But the friendship worked. Johnny was a shy kid. He did not feel at home with very many people. But he felt comfortable talking with the professor. At chess they were pretty evenly matched: Johnny won about half the games they played. As for the professor's famous temper... well, he didn't use it around Johnny. He crabbed now and then, but he crabbed in a humorous and kidding way, so that Johnny always knew he was not being serious. Gramma —as you might guess—did not know what to make of the friendship that had developed between these two. She herself did not care much for the professor's com
pany, but she didn't have anything serious against him, so she just sighed and shook her head and said many times that it takes all kinds to make a world.

The blue figurine stayed in its box in Johnny's closet. One afternoon when he was on his way home from school, Johnny took a detour and stopped in at the library. He went to the reading room and picked up a copy of
Hobbies
magazine. As the professor had said, it was a magazine for antique collectors. It was full of information about mechanical banks and oil lamps and bisque figurines and Toby jugs and Simon Willard clocks. And on one page there was a question and answer column. Johnny sat down and copied the address of the magazine into a notebook he was carrying. Later, when he was back at home, he went up to his room and got out his Royal portable typewriter. He set it up on his bed, and kneeling in front of it, he pecked out a note: