The Mummy's Curse (8 page)

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After Cody deciphered two of the anagrams—
Isis
and
Horus
—she realized these were taken from her spelling words. The rest took a little more work, but soon the kids had a list of names they were to find in the museum. The first clue led them to a sculpture that looked like a hawk. First, the Code Busters noted the location on the map. Then, they checked the wall behind the object and found a sticky note written in hieroglyphs.

“An arm?” M.E. said. “What's that supposed to mean? The letter
e
?”

The kids used their hieroglyphic decoder cards to finish deciphering the word and wrote the translation on the back of their maps.

Cody shrugged. “We need more clues. Let's keep going.”

Winding through the labyrinthine corridors, the kids continued to hunt for the objects on the list. At each spot, they found another clue and jotted it down. Soon they had all ten clues.

They sat down on a bench in the lobby and reviewed the clues, using the hiero-alpha decoder card.

“Okay,” Quinn said, “first there's an arm, which is the letter
e
. Then there's a square turning inward,
the symbol for the letter
h
.…” He continued reading the rest of the list until they had a series of what seemed to be random letters. “So what does this all mean?”

“I'm stuck,” Luke said, shaking his head.

“I don't get it either,” M.E. added.

Cody took a deep breath. She hated giving up, especially when it came to code busting. After all, this was her passion.

Cody looked at the letters. “Maybe it's an anagram,” Luke said. Luke and his
grand-mère
loved to solve anagrams together.

Cody rearranged the letters. “
Youre foshe
?” she said aloud. “
Hoo see fury
?” She tried several more combinations. Finally, one word made sense: “Horus!”

“That's it!” Quinn said. They quickly completed the two other words.

Cody sat up, excited. “Talk about steganography. The answer has been right in front of us the whole time!”

Code Buster's Solution found on
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S
o, did we solve the puzzle?” M.E. asked.

“The Eye of Horus,” Quinn said. “That has to be it.”

“I guess so,” Cody said, looking over the answer, “but it seems like something's missing. It was almost too easy.”

“Well, there's only one way to find out,” Luke said. “We show it to Ms. Stad and see what she says.”

The kids found their teacher in the museum lobby, checking the papers of a few other students who had also completed the puzzle. Ms. Stad read over their
paper, but instead of a prize, they each received a small card with a question mark on the front. Cody took her card and flipped it over. On the other side was another drawing of an eye, but this one looked different from the one in the triangle. It was fancy, with black strokes around the lid, a long eyebrow, a curl coming out of the eye, and what seemed like a tear. It reminded her of the necklace Ms. Cassatt was wearing.

On the bottom of the picture were the words “How many Eyes of Horus can you find in the museum?”

Cody read aloud the note written underneath the drawing. “The Eye of Horus was often found carved or drawn on an amulet, and was used for protection, power, and health. If you look closely, you'll see the design is actually made up of seven different hieroglyphs used for mathematical measurement.”

“Interesting,” Quinn said, after Cody finished reading. “Well, let's go see if we can find all the Eyes.”

They returned to the first of the four rooms and began scouting for Eyes of Horus. It wasn't an easy task, since there seemed to be Eyes all over the place. After locating as many as they could find, the Code Busters marked them on their papers and headed for the next room. Finally, in the last room, Cody spotted another Eye of Horus artifact, but there was something odd about this one. It sat alone on a pedestal inside a clear case the size of an upended shoe box.

“This looks almost exactly like the necklace Ms. Cassatt has on,” Cody said. “And like the Eye of Horus Dr. Jordan was working on. Only the iris is green like Ms. Cassatt's necklace, not blue like the one in the lab.”

Cody tapped one side of the case that protected the valuable artifact. A small side door popped open.

Cody jerked her hand back and glanced around.

“Whoa!” Quinn said, staring at the case.

“What's wrong?” M.E. asked.

“The side of the case—it opened!” Cody said. She glanced around for security guards, but they were nowhere in sight.

“Uh-oh. You busted it,” Luke said, his eyes wide.

“I did not!” Cody protested. She tapped the door to close it, but instead it ricocheted and bounced back open again. “Somebody left it unlocked!”

“Seriously?” M.E. said, staring at the Eye.

“Dude!” Luke said. “Anybody could just walk in here and steal this thing!”

M.E. reached up as if in a trance and stuck her hand inside the case. She lifted the artifact before Cody could stop her. “It's so beautiful.”

“Put that back!” Cody whispered to M.E. She glanced around to see if anyone was watching, but the other students were busy hunting for other Eyes and didn't seem to notice them. “You're going to get us in trouble!”

To Cody's horror, M.E. flipped over the Eye of Horus and studied it up-close. “I just want to look for a moment. Look, there's something written on the bottom!”

M.E. raised her palm and showed the tiny carved drawings to the others.

“Hieroglyphs!” Cody whispered, suddenly excited to see the hidden inscription.

“What's it say?” Luke asked.

Cody pulled out her decoder card and quickly translated the symbols:

Code Buster's Key and Solution found on
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,
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.

“How weird,” Cody said. “What's it supposed to mean?”

Quinn spoke up. “ ‘An eye for an eye' means that when someone hurts another person, he or she gets a similar punishment—or something like that.”

“That's weird,” M.E. said. “I wonder why it says that.”

“Guys, watch out!” Luke whispered. “One of the security guards just came into the room. You better put that thing back! Fast! Or he'll think we're trying to steal it.”

The kids huddled around the display case to block
the view of anyone nearby. M.E. set the Eye back on its small stand, and Cody forced the slightly warped door closed.

Just then a voice came from behind them. “So, what are you students up to?”

Cody jumped. The Code Busters spun around to find Dr. Jordan staring down at them. He seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. Cody thought she saw an odd smile on his face, as if he knew what they'd been doing. Had the security guard said something to him? Or had it been her imagination, and her guilty conscience?

“We were … just looking at this Eye,” she said. “It's pretty cool.”

“Ah, yes. That's one of the artifacts I was working on this morning. It's beautiful, isn't it, now that it's all cleaned up and back on its pedestal?”

M.E. started to ask, “What does the writing on the bot—”

Cody cut her off. “—on the bottle … over there—” She pointed wildly across the room, hoping at least one of the displays contained an antique bottle,
since she'd seen several throughout the museum. They couldn't let Dr. Jordan know they'd opened the display case and touched the Eye. If anything happened to it, they'd be blamed.

Cody led Dr. Jordan over to another case where a few students lingered, found a bottle that happened to be covered in hieroglyphs, and pointed to it. Moments later, more students entered the room, distracting Dr. Jordan from the display case. The Code Busters quietly backed out of the room.

“That was close,” Cody whispered.

“Sorry,” M.E. said quietly. “I almost gave us away!”

“No problem,” Quinn said to M.E. He turned to Cody. “Good thinking, Cody, distracting him like that.”

“Should we tell someone that the door on the case is loose?” Luke asked. “I mean, anybody could steal that Eye of Horus with that door unlocked.”

Cody thought for a moment. “Good point. How about we tell Ms. Stad, and she can tell Ms. Cassatt, since she's in charge of the museum? Hopefully, Ms. Stad will leave us out of it.”

Luke and Quinn nodded, but M.E. was staring at her hand, frowning.

“M.E., what's wrong?” Cody asked.

She held up her hand. “Look!”

Cody examined her friend's fingers, then sniffed them. M.E.'s fingertips looked as if they'd been smudged with brown ink, and they smelled like chemicals.

“How did you get your hand so dirty?” Cody asked.

M.E. shrugged. “I don't know. All I did was pick up that artifact. I don't remember touching anything else.”