The Case That Time Forgot (2 page)

The bell rang. “Meet me after school!” Karim called before he hurried down the hall to his next class.

Xena and Xander watched him go in stunned silence. Finally Xena said, “Well! What do you think that's all about?”

“I don't know, but—we have another case!”

K
arim didn't have to tell Xander where to meet him. They both had after-school soccer practice—by now Xander was used to the way it was called “football” in England—and since they'd be practicing together, Xander was sure they'd have lots of chances to talk.

But it didn't turn out that way. It was a chilly, gray day, and the coach made them run laps to warm up. Karim was one of the fastest runners on the team, and every time he slowed down to keep pace with Xander, the coach shrilled on his whistle and yelled at him.

The two boys finally managed to meet in the locker room after practice.

“So what's up?” Xander asked as he changed out of his gym clothes. “What did you mean about a case that Sherlock Holmes worked on?”

“Shh!” Karim looked around. “Not so loud! You don't know who might be listening.”

Xander looked around too. “Who?”

“I don't know. But I don't want anyone to know about this. It's—it's something that other people might be interested in. Let's wait until everyone's gone.”

Lockers banged, boys talked and laughed, and after what seemed like a long time, they were alone.

Or almost. The janitor, Mr. Franklin, was mopping the floor, muttering about the dirt that the boys had tracked in. “Like there's anything we can do about that,” Xander grumbled. “Cleats collect an awful lot of mud.” Finally Mr. Franklin and his mop and bucket moved out into the hall.

“Okay,” Xander said, “but you have to be quick. They're going to lock up the school any time now.”

Karim launched right into his story. “Did you ever hear of the Carberry Museum?” Xander shook his head. “It's a really small place. Some guy named Josiah S. Carberry in the eighteen hundreds had this collection of stuff, mostly fossils and bones but some art too, ancient Greek and Mesopotamian and some Egyptian things.”

“Sounds cool.”

“It is. Anyway, after he died his house got turned into a museum. Mr. Carberry left a lot of
money, and in his will he said that the trustees, the people who run the museum, should use it to buy things that they thought he'd like.”

“What are you boys still doing here?”

Xander and Karim jumped and turned around. Mr. Singh, the assistant principal, had poked his head around the open door. “Football practice,” they chorused.

“This late? Well, hurry up. I have some work to do in the office, but I want to leave soon.”

“Yes, sir,” Karim said, and the door closed.

“So about a hundred years ago,” Karim went on, “the trustees bought an Egyptian water clock. Do you know what that is?”

It had been a while since Xander had studied ancient civilization back at home, but like many people, he was fascinated with ancient Egypt. He also had the help of his photographic memory and had read most of the encyclopedia. An image popped into his head.

“It's like a big jar, right?” Karim nodded. Xander continued, “And there's a hole at the bottom and lines marked on the inside, and the Egyptians filled it with water, and as it dripped out, they could tell what time it was by the level the water reached.”

“Right. There are different kinds, but that's
like the one the trustees bought. It was carved from solid rock and weighed over a ton.”

Xander whistled.

“I know. It was huge. So anyway, the Egyptian government sent it here with some other things, and it arrived at a warehouse to get unpacked and cleaned, and then they were going to take it to the Carberry Museum.”

“They
were
going to take it to the museum? It never got there?”

“It vanished. Overnight. Everything else the Egyptians sent was still there, but some things got messed up. A mummy had been moved, and a part of it was broken—like someone maybe was looking for something under it—but the mummy was still there. Even a gold necklace wasn't missing. Just the water clock.”

“So they called in Sherlock Holmes?” Of course they would ask for help from the most famous detective of the day, and that was his ancestor! Now that he thought of it, Xander remembered seeing a drawing of something that looked like a large flowerpot in the notebook of unsolved cases that he and Xena had been given by the SPFD. That must be the water clock!

Karim sat up straighter and looked sharply to his right. “What's that?”

“What?”

“Didn't you hear something?”

Xander strained his ears. “Nope. Nothing. Don't be paranoid. Everybody's gone except Mr. Singh.”

“And Mr. Franklin.”

“Nah. He finished here. Hurry up—before Mr. Singh comes back.”

Karim walked over to the right-hand side of the locker room, glanced toward the showers, then returned. “Nothing there. Okay.” But he still seemed nervous.

“Come
on
.” Xander was dying of curiosity. “What else? Why do you care about a stolen water clock? How do you even know about it?”

Karim swallowed. He appeared strangely reluctant to go on. “There were guards watching over the clock.” His voice dropped even lower. “And one of them—one of the guards was my great-great-great-granduncle. And—and he confessed that he stole it.”

No wonder Karim was embarrassed to talk about the theft. Xander felt sorry for him, but he was more curious than ever. If Karim's ancestor had confessed to the crime, the case was solved. So why was the theft of the clock mentioned in the notebook of Holmes's
unsolved
cases? What
kind of help did Karim want? And why did he come to Xena and Xander right now? Why not months ago, when everyone first found out that they were related to the great detective who had lived a hundred years earlier?

Before Xander could ask, a few musical notes sounded from Karim's backpack. He pulled out his cell phone. “Hi, Mom. Practice ran late.” He glanced anxiously at Xander. “I'm still in the locker room. No, I'm fine. Okay, five minutes. Bye.” He snapped the phone shut. “I have to be quick. The water clock wasn't the only thing stolen.”

“But I thought you said—”

Karim held up his hand. “Please, Xander, let me finish. I went to see my grandparents over the weekend. My granddad is ill.” He gulped. “He—he was worried he was going to die, even though my dad says he'll be fine. My granddad said he had something to tell me that should be handed down from father to son. He told my father, but my father didn't believe him, so he had to tell me.”

Xander felt a prickle of excitement. “What was it?”

“He told me about the water clock. He said it had a secret compartment, and inside it was a magic amulet that no one's ever found.”

Xander's mind was whirring. “An amulet—you mean like a charm?” Karim nodded. “And it's
magic
?”

“That's what my granddad said.” Karim lowered his voice even further and said, “Every fifty years, the amulet can make time stand still. And on Saturday”—he was practically whispering by now—“the fifty years will be up. The amulet's magic will work!”

F
or a moment Xander could only blink.

“The fifty years are up Saturday? You mean
tomorrow
?” he finally managed.

“No, a week from tomorrow. That's the day—” Karim suddenly stopped and stared to his right again, but he didn't need to say anything, because this time Xander heard the soft sound too. He leaped to his feet and dashed to the shower room, Karim right behind him. Nobody. They froze and listened with all their might. The building was old and creaky, and it was hard to tell what they heard or even what direction the noise was coming from. Were those footsteps? Maybe it was just their imagination . . . sure enough, the noises ceased.

Something on the floor caught Xander's eye. He squatted. The room was still humid, and the floor was slow to dry. It looked like—footprints. Something about them was strange. But what?

The moisture was starting to evaporate, and the faint outlines of the prints grew even dimmer. But just before the last trace disappeared, Xander realized what it was that he'd seen.

The footprint of one shoe—the right—had left an odd mark. It was a perfectly round shape, at the ball of the foot. What kind of shoe would leave a circle like that, and why wasn't it on both shoes?

Karim's phone rang again. He glanced at it. “I've got to go. Are you going to stay and investigate?”

Xander was eager to find out who had been listening to them, but he didn't like the idea of being alone in the locker room in the almost-deserted building. It was even creepier if he
wasn't
alone—if someone was lurking. What if the person who had left the strange footprint was the person who was stealing things from all the students? Xander didn't think he wanted to tangle with a thief on his own.

He didn't have to decide, though, because they heard the locker room door bang open and Mr. Singh call, “Are you chaps still here?”

The two boys sped back into the locker room and grabbed their backpacks off the bench. “Just leaving, sir,” they chorused, and then, “Bye! See you Monday!”

They ran outside to where one lone car was waiting, exhaust billowing out in a cloud behind it, Karim's mother at the wheel. Xena stood waiting a little farther on, her hands in her pockets as she stamped her feet to stay warm.

Karim paused before opening the car door. “You can't tell anyone what I told you!” he said urgently.

“I have to tell my sister.”

“All right, but that's all. No one else! Promise?”

Xander promised. Karim raised a hand next to his face in the sign for “call me” as he opened the door and climbed in. Xander could hear Karim's mother scolding before the door closed. He trotted over to where Xena stood on the paved walk.

“So what's up?” she asked, and then added, “Tell me on our way to the Tube station. It's freezing!”

It didn't take Xander long to fill her in. He kept glancing around to see if anyone was listening, but the school grounds were empty now. When Xander reached the part about the magic amulet having the power to make time stand still, Xena said, “Uh, wait a minute.
Magic?
Are you kidding?”

“That's what Karim said.”

“And you believe him?”

Xander didn't know what to believe. “Well, even if it's not magic, it's still a missing amulet from ancient Egypt!”

They hurried down the steps to the station. They were later than usual, and the Tube station was crowded with adults going home from work, parents with their small children, and a group of what looked like high school students.

Xena cupped her hands over her ears to warm them. She and Xander had been proud to wrap up two mysteries that Sherlock Holmes had had to leave unsolved. This one didn't seem too promising, though. A magic amulet sounded weird. “Let's talk when we get home,” she told her brother. “Maybe we can find something about it in the casebook.”

They rode in silence, each thinking about Karim's strange story. It was growing dark and cold when they emerged from the Tube stop, but fortunately it was right near their apartment—or flat, as they'd started calling it, like their English friends. They ran up the steps and into the lift.

“We're home!” Xena called out as they let themselves in.

“About time!” Their mother came out from her study, holding an odd-looking gadget in one hand and some wires in the other. Xena and Xander didn't give the machine a second glance. They were used to their mother's job of testing products for an electronics company. “Practice ran late,” Xander said. “Sorry.”

“I know. Xena called me. I'd rather come pick you up if it goes this late again, okay?”

“Okay.” Xander followed his sister into her bedroom, where she was already sitting on the bed, holding a large leather-bound book with the words
SH Cases: Unresolved
stamped into its worn cover. Xena opened the old journal and carefully began turning the pages covered with Sherlock's writing.

“Aha!” Xena spotted the words “water clock” in Sherlock's familiar scrawl, but the bottom half of the page was covered by an envelope tucked in between the pages. She pulled out the envelope and showed it to Xander. “What's this?”

“I don't know!” He was impatient and sounded it. “Did you find the page with the notes about the case?”

Xena tucked the envelope into the back of the book and nodded. “Here it is.” She moved over, and Xander sat next to her. They examined
their ancestor's notes and sketches about the theft of the water clock.

“Questioned guard named Amin for two hours. Confessed to—nay, bragged about—the crime. Motive?

“Other Egyptian guard claims amulet hidden in water clock. Mentions Tahuti.

“Trustees say that amulet would be very valuable. They don't believe in it, but guard seems credible.

“Egyptian magic? Poppycock!

“Case dropped by order of HIM, as being potentially damaging to relations with Egypt. Drat!”

“So there
was
an amulet!” Xander said.

“I never said there wasn't. I just don't know if I believe in this magic stuff.”

“I don't know if I do either, but even an amulet that
wasn't
magic would be cool.”

“See? ‘Poppycock!' Sherlock didn't believe in the magic part either!” Xena said. She pointed at a drawing of a hand with an eye on its palm. “Is that a tattoo?”

“Could be. Or maybe just a doodle.”

“So someone named Amin confessed to stealing the water clock.” As usual, Xena had to muster the facts.