The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl by Theodora Goss

Author:Theodora Goss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery / Saga Press
Published: 2019-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER X

At the British Museum

What should she do? Alice had no idea. Should she somehow try to help Mary? Or Mr. Holmes? But there was no way she could help them, not at the moment.

Mary, Diana, and Justine were sitting together, guarded by Colonel Moran. At least his henchmen had left—she imagined they were patrolling the museum, making certain no one interfered with the ceremony that was about to begin—a ritual to summon the Great God Pan, or what Helen had described as the energic powers of the Earth. So far it did not look like much of a ceremony. No one was wearing special robes, no one was chanting an ancient litany in spectral tones. Compared to the books Alice liked to read at night, by candlelight before she went to sleep, the scene before her was not particularly impressive.

MRS. POOLE: You’ll ruin your eyes doing that, my girl.

They were in one of the large exhibition halls of the museum. It was filled with what she presumed were Egyptian artifacts, including a great many pots, most of them broken in one place or another. She would have liked to fix them with a bit of glue. She recognized some of them from the vision of Queen Tera’s tomb that Helen Raymond had conjured up. Just to make clear where they had all come from, there was a large sign by the door:

THE TRELAWNY EXHIBIT

VISIT THE TOMB OF QUEEN TERA

SPONSORED BY THE BRITISH ARCHAEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

AND THE EGYPT EXPLORATION FUND

Underneath was some information on the Ptolemaic Dynasty and the Temple of Isis at Philae. Alice had glanced at it briefly as they entered. She would have liked to read more, but there was no time now. She had only been to the British Museum once before, with Mrs. Poole, and wished she could wander around, looking at all the exhibition rooms—she had seen some very large statues of winged, bull-headed men that looked interesting. If she got out of this situation alive, she would most certainly have to come back. There was so much to see and learn! She did not want to be an ignorant kitchen maid all her life. I hope I live through this, she thought, looking at Margaret Trelawny dubiously. Thirteen seemed awfully young to die.

“Welcome, welcome,” Margaret said when they all entered, although she had looked with astonishment at the addition to their party of Mary, Diana, and Justine. She was wearing her black gown with the low neckline that showed off the scarab necklace to perfection. There had been a brief whispered conversation between her and Helen. Then she had nodded and gone back to bustling around the raised wooden platform at the center of the room, on which rested the stone sarcophagus of Queen Tera. It must have been difficult to get that large stone box all the way from Egypt to London! The lid was lying on the platform so you could see the painted carvings on it, and also look inside the sarcophagus to see the mummy of Queen Tera lying in her coffin.

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