Barnabas Tew and The Case Of The Missing Scarab Read online

  “May I ask a question before we begin with the flooding?” asked Barnabas hesitantly. “It’s just, well, there was a fellow in the village who had a crocodile head. Not that there’s anything odd about having an animal head,” he added quickly. “It’s just that this fellow seemed a good deal more, well, menacing than anyone else we’ve met. Is it quite safe to go out there with him?”

  “Oh,” said Khnum airily. “That is Sobek. Nothing to worry about. He was probably interested to see what you might get me to do. He does so love it whenever I flood the river.”

  “Goodness, but that’s a relief,” said Barnabas, glad that the crocodile man, at least, would be pleased with what they had accomplished today and therefore presumably would not feel the need to eat them.

  “And I have a question for you,” said the god. “How high, exactly, would you like for the waters to rise?”

  Despite the god’s downturned face, Wilfred thought he saw a glint of mischievous cunning in his eyes. He tried to shoot Barnabas a warning glance, but Barnabas was far too excited to pay him any heed.

  “As high as you can!” declared Barnabas. “They need water, and so the more the better, I say. Right, Wilfred?”

  “Uh, well, actually, perhaps we had best consider the repercussions…,” began Wilfred cautiously.

  “Nonsense!” cried Barnabas. He was quite overcome with excitement and therefore not thinking altogether clearly. “This good fellow has agreed to help, and we shall let him help as best he can!”

  “It’s just, well, maybe only a little bit of flooding might be better,” said Wilfred. “Perhaps a great lot of flooding might cause some other problems.”

  “Oh,” said Barnabas, deflating a little. “I suppose I hadn’t thought of that.” He turned to Khnum. “I think that perhaps we ought to start out with just a minor flood, after all.”

  Khnum, however, only laughed and waved a hoof dismissively. “Too late!” he cried, a slightly wicked smile playing on his snout. “You asked for the big one, and it has already started.” The god of floods bounced up off of his throne and pranced across the marble floor in delight. “Come see! Come see!” he called back to the detectives. Uneasy and far from happy now, Barnabas and Wilfred obeyed.

  The scene that greeted them as they emerged from the shelter of Khnum’s sanctuary was even worse than they could have expected. The waters of the river were rising rapidly and alarmingly. The force of the current was such that it threatened to swallow not only the bridge that led to Elephantine Isle but also the entire village on the other side as well.

  The villagers, seeing the danger, began to scream and run about in frantic circles, wanting to get away but not knowing where to go. Khnum pranced and danced joyfully beside Barnabas and Wilfred as they stood next to him, watching the tragedy unfold.

  “Look!” cried Wilfred, clutching Barnabas’ arm and pointing towards the center of the now-turbulent river. “It is the scary man from the village, the one with the crocodile head!”

  Barnabas looked to where Wilfred was pointing, and he saw not just the one man with a crocodile head but several more as well. It seemed that the man had been joined by his fellows. They cavorted and splashed in the water, thoroughly enjoying themselves. It would have been a relief to see that some people, at least, would benefit from the flood, if it hadn’t have been for the watchful look in their eyes and the way that they gnashed their teeth at the people running about on the shore. Indeed, Barnabas thought, the crocodile-folk looked quite predatory, and he feared for the villagers.

  “Ahoy, Sobek!” called Khnum happily. “Isn’t this delightful?” The crocodile man (the first one, the one who had given Barnabas and Wilfred a turn in the village) waved a clawed hand as his snout contorted into an altogether gruesome smile. Khnum then turned to Barnabas and Wilfred. “Well, how do you like your flood? Isn’t it wonderful?” he demanded.

  Wilfred managed to mumble a noncommittal reply. Barnabas merely stood there looking a bit sickly.

  Even as they watched, an unlucky person, too slow to get out of the way of the swirling waters, was plucked off the bank and into the crocodile-infested maelstrom. Immediately, one of the crocodiles separated from the group and swam off to intercept him.

  “Heavens!” exclaimed Wilfred.

  “Oh dear,” said Barnabas sadly.

  “Well,” said Wilfred. “Perhaps the crocodile is merely going to help the man.”

  “Hmmm,” said Barnabas doubtfully. “Perhaps, but I have a terrible feeling that he intends to eat him, at that.” Even as he spoke, several more people were washed away by the terrible current and several more crocodiles peeled off to follow them. “Oh! It is too horrible!” cried Barnabas, turning to Khnum. “Can’t you make it stop?”

  “Stop? Stop!? Why should we stop? Oh, no, we are just getting started!” Khnum exclaimed, twirling around like an ungainly ballerina. Wilfred and Barnabas exchanged looks. This god was obviously quite mad, and now it seemed there was nothing for them to do but to watch the grim spectacle unfold.

  Wilfred pulled Barnabas a few steps away. “What can we do?” he hissed frantically.

  “I’ve no idea,” said Barnabas, wincing as yet another person was swept away by the flood. “I really do wish that someone would have warned us that Khnum was so tricksy,” he added petulantly.

  “Indeed!” said Wilfred. “Actually, I wonder if Set didn’t expect for this to happen all along. Why else would he send us here and not tell us what to expect?”

  “Aha! I think you must be right,” said Barnabas. “I knew that he was not to be trusted. Being the god of chaos, and all.”

  “Quite,” said Wilfred. He gestured at the terrible scene before them: raging waters tumbling over their banks; people being caught up in the flood, screaming frantically as they tried to keep their heads above water; grinning crocodiles cutting swiftly through the current towards the hapless swimmers. All in all it was a most awful sight. “And if this isn’t chaos, I don’t know what is,” concluded Wilfred.

  “Most definitely,” agreed Barnabas, shifting his feet back and forth. His shoes had begun to make a small, squishy sound, and he kicked at the ground absentmindedly.

  Wilfred looked down to see what was making the sound. “Oh no,” he said.

  “Horrible,” agreed Barnabas, still watching the destruction of the village. “And to think of how friendly those people were to us,” he mused melodramatically, forgetting the way that the villagers’ attitude towards them had shifted towards petulance and then turned back once again to amiability. He dashed at a single tear that trailed slowly down his cheek. “It is so sad that they would come to this.”

  “Yes, that, of course,” said Wilfred. “But we seem to be experiencing another difficulty.”

  “Meaning?” asked Barnabas, displeased at the interruption to his melancholic reflections.

  “Meaning that the water has risen quite above our ankles,” replied Wilfred.

  “What? Oh!” cried Barnabas, as he realized that the squishy sound was due to the rising river making a mud puddle at his feet. He backed away in an attempt to find high ground, but the island was quite small and quite flat, so that there was no place that was much safer than any other.

  “What shall we do?” cried out Wilfred.

  “I’ve no idea!” exclaimed Barnabas. The water rose even higher and now swirled about their knees. Barnabas began to run in circles, flailing his arms above his head as though reaching for an unseen life preserver above him. “Help!” he yelled, to no one in particular. “Oh, do help!”

  Wilfred too began to panic and run about whilst Khnum danced and twirled and chortled with glee. “Help, help!” cried the two detectives. “Swim! Oh swim!” laughed Khnum. And, within moments, that is exactly what Barnabas and Wilfred were doing as the river picked them up and carried them away.

  Barnabas quickly found a floating log (or, in truth, the log found him; as it was bounced about by the swirling current, it whacked him on the head and nea
rly knocked him unconscious, which would have been the end of him. Luckily, however, he was not knocked out cold and was able to grab onto the log instead). Wilfred managed to grab onto a large wooden door that had presumably been torn away from a house in the village, and he was able to float quite easily upon it.

  Barnabas spied Wilfred and called out to him. “Wilfred! Are you quite alright?”

  “Perfectly fine,” said Wilfred, gasping and coughing out a mouthful of dirty river water. “And you?”

  “Quite well,” said Barnabas, rubbing at the sore spot on his head. It was rapidly beginning to swell and throbbed most annoyingly. He glared resentfully at the log that had thwacked him so rudely upon his noggin. “Although,” he continued as a thought rose in his mind, “I do think we should try to get out of this river. Since there are crocodiles and heaven knows what else in here, besides.”

  “Yes, yes, most certainly,” agreed Wilfred. They kicked their feet, struggling to push their makeshift floatation devices against the current so that they might come closer to the river bank, but the flow of the water was too strong and neither was able to make any progress whatsoever. At last they gave up trying entirely, and they submitted resignedly to whatever fate the river would bring them.

  As they were carried downriver, Barnabas saw the woman who had offered them the fruit. She had a piece of the spiny produce in her hand and was battering a crocodile about the head with it. “Good luck to you!” called Barnabas politely by way of encouragement. The woman scowled back at him. “Keep it up!” said Barnabas, deciding that her frown was clearly due to the crocodile and had nothing to do with Barnabas himself. “You’ve almost got him, I say!” And with that, he was swept around a corner and saw nothing more of what happened between the woman and the crocodile.

  Luckily, no crocodile threatened Barnabas or Wilfred, and as the flood waters calmed farther downstream, the two were at last deposited on a sandy bank. They were sodden and bruised and quite exhausted but otherwise unharmed.

  They lay there for a few moments catching their breath and being thankful that they had somehow survived their ordeal. At last they struggled to their feet so that they might get themselves entirely out of the river and begin to dry off. No sooner had they risen, however, than they were accosted by four tiny ruffians.

  Barnabas took in the little figures (one with a tiger’s head, the next with a lion’s head, then the fellow with the hyena’s head, and finally, of course, the nasty little canary) and cursed. “Oh, dear God!” he gasped as the canary and the hyena grabbed his arm roughly. “Will the indignities never end?”

  Wilfred was similarly apprehended by the lion and the tiger, and together the two men were dragged across the sandy strand to a chariot that waited nearby. Roughly, they were thrown into the chariot. Their kidnappers jumped in beside them, and they were off.

  “Ow!” yelped Barnabas as the canary took advantage of the close quarters and a bump in the road to thrust his pointy beak into Barnabas’ shoulder. “You did that on purpose!”

  The canary opened his eyes wide in an expression of innocence, but Barnabas saw the slight taunting smirk that twitched at the fellow’s beak. “Why you monster!” he cried, kicking at the canary’s legs.

  The smirk fell from the canary’s face, as did the expression of wide-eyed innocence, as he responded to Barnabas’ attack with a vigorous kick of his own. Barnabas kicked back, and soon the two were in an outright scuffle in the close confines of the chariot. Feet and claws struck out and hands and wings flapped and slapped so that none in the chariot were safe from the altercation.

  “Take that!” yelled Barnabas, landing a blow.

  “Oof,” yelped Wilfred, who had been the unintended recipient of the blow.

  “Cheep!” squeaked the canary, gleefully trying to peck at Barnabas’ eyes.

  “STOP THIS NONSENSE!” bellowed Anubis. Everyone had been so engrossed in the fight that no one noticed they had arrived at their destination (which was Anubis’ throne room), and that the chariot had come to a complete stop in front of it, and that Anubis himself had been standing there for some time, watching in disbelief as his very own minion and the detective he had hired slapped at each other like children in a schoolyard fight.

  Chapter Ten

  At the sound of Anubis’ voice, everyone froze and turned wide, startled eyes in the direction of the angry god. Anubis would have laughed at the absurdity of the spectacle (and, later, when his temper had cooled and the detectives and minions were well on their way, he probably would have a good laugh, together with his assistant, about this sight) if he didn’t have quite so much to be angry about just now.

  Barnabas was the first to recover his wits. He untangled his hand from where it had got caught up in the canary’s wing and straightened his coat. “Well, hullo!” he said, his voice tinged with indignation. “Honestly! Those little ruffians of yours have the most abominable manners!” He was so outraged that he had forgotten that he was, in fact, quite intimidated by Anubis (and, indeed, it is only prudent to speak respectfully to the god of the dead, particularly when that god had already had one killed once, besides).

  “Bah!” exclaimed Anubis, clearly furious. “You dare to speak to me of manners? Was it good manners for you to flood the entire Nile?” Barnabas and Wilfred looked down and shuffled their feet sheepishly. “Do you think the people in the village that you destroyed will talk about what good manners you had?” continued Anubis, warming up to his subject. “Will they speak of how very pleasant you were as you marched off to ask Khnum to raise the waters higher than they’ve been in a thousand years? A thousand!”

  “I say!” said Barnabas, who was quite through with being abused both physically and verbally. He was still highly annoyed at the rough treatment he had received at the hands (wings?) of the canary. Besides, his guilt over what had happened at the village made him feel defensive. “The flood was not entirely our fault! Khnum tricked us! He is really quite mad. An awful fellow, really. Do you know he danced whilst the village was swept away? Danced and laughed, too!”

  “Of course he would!” yelled Anubis, taken quite a bit aback by this display of sass from the meek and self-effacing detective. “He’s the god of floods! Meaning, that he really, really enjoys floods. It’s in his name, you see,” he pointed out condescendingly.

  “Oh, well, yes, but,” grumbled Barnabas, “we only went there because Set told us to.”

  “And you listened to Set? The god of chaos?” asked Anubis, his voice a drawl of exaggerated patience as he tried very hard not to lose his temper entirely.

  Barnabas flushed. “Well, he seemed quite nice,” he said lamely.

  “Yes, very nice indeed,” said Wilfred in an attempt to help his employer. “A most helpful fellow, really.”

  Anubis scoffed and looked up at the sky for a long time. He was thinking of how best to impress upon Barnabas and Wilfred the magnitude of their mistake, but he could also see that their hearts were good and they had not intended any harm. And besides, they were not the first persons to be fooled by the wily Set and the equally tricky Khnum.

  Still, he was very upset by the disaster they had caused. Therefore, he decided to play upon their guilt a bit more, so that they might learn to become more wary, more careful, before allowing them to continue on with their quest.

  “So,” said Anubis at last. “You wanted to talk about manners. You wanted to talk about crazy old Khnum. Let’s talk, instead, about, oh, I don’t know, people being eaten by crocodiles?”

  “Oh dear,” said Wilfred.

  “Don’t let’s,” said Barnabas miserably, as if not speaking of it might make the whole thing not real. He had quite hoped that no one had actually been eaten and the crocodiles were merely having a bit of fun, but Anubis’ words seemed to give the lie to that idea.

  “Oh yes,” said Anubis. “Six people were eaten by crocodiles because of your little flood. And you are complaining about being pecked by a tiny canary?”

  “
Terribly sorry,” said Barnabas. “Really I am.” And, in truth, he was filled with immense remorse about the whole affair.

  “And the mold,” sighed Anubis. “The goddess of mold is having a smashing time, what with all the damp and what not.”

  “Heavens,” said Barnabas sadly. He didn’t care much about mold, though, not when he was still thinking about people being eaten by crocodiles. “But will the people who were eaten… I mean, that is to say…”

  “What?” snapped Anubis. “You mean to say what? Out with it!”

  “Since this is the underworld,” managed Barnabas, at last speaking the thought that had worried him since his arrival, “and everyone is already quite dead… Well, can they become, um, more dead? Dead again? Twice dead? Thrice?”

  “Oh yes,” said Anubis. “People can die here, especially if they are eaten by crocodiles. And once they die here, they are simply…” He waved his hand in the air. “Poof! Gone!”

  “Oh, no,” said Barnabas unhappily. He was saddened at the thought of having had something to do with the deaths of those villagers (and such a gruesome death it must have been!). He also, ungallantly, felt his fears for the safety of his own person much renewed, and therefore he was exceedingly uncomfortable.

  Anubis saw Barnabas’ misery and decided that he had punished the detectives enough. “So then,” he said briskly, “let’s get on with it, shall we? Perhaps you should try investigating someone less dire than the god of chaos himself, at least initially.”

  “Yes, of course,” agreed Barnabas, glad to change the subject. “But who might that be?”

  “There are lesser gods of chaos,” replied Anubis. “They could definitely be good suspects, and I imagine that they might be more your speed, so to speak. At least until you’ve had some practice dealing with evil gods and what not.”

  “Quite,” said Barnabas, not liking the sound of yet more gods of chaos but feeling slightly relieved at the “lesser” amendment to their name. “But why would they be suspects?” he asked.