Barnabas Tew and The Case Of The Missing Scarab Page 4

  Well, he thought dramatically, these government ruffians would find it not so easy to rid themselves of the attention of Barnabas Tew. He would sniff out their trail like a bloodhound after a fox. He would uncover their secrets like a badger digging out the tunnel of a rodent. He would…

  “Aaah!” he yelped, startled out of his daydreams of grandeur by the sight of four tiny figures running straight towards him. His hands flew up to flutter in a great furor about his head, but he was far too frightened to leap to his feet.

  The four figures racing towards him were about the size of children, but they, like Anti the grumpy boatman, were not entirely human. They each had the head of a different animal. One looked like a lion, another a hyena, yet another a tiger, and the last looked like a canary. (A canary? thought Barnabas. The other creatures looked ferocious and fearsome, but the canary was not that scary at all. Indeed, it was quite adorable, really.)

  Still, Barnabas did not find it at all adorable when the four of them reached out, dragged him to his feet, and began to bear him away quite roughly.

  “Unhand me!” he shouted, affronted and afraid. “You scoundrels! I’ll have the bobbies on you before you… Ow!” he squealed as the canary delivered a mighty peck to his hand.

  He looked at these new, tiny malefactors in shock. He happened to catch the eye of the hyena-child, who snarled at him. Thick saliva dripped from viciously sharp fangs, and Barnabas decided that discretion was most definitely the better part of valor. He stopped struggling and yelling (he most definitely did not want to be pecked by that awful little canary again) and decided to see where they would take him instead.

  Perhaps they were taking him to meet with the rogue Parliament members right now! If so, Barnabas was confident in his ability to talk his way out of this mess. Surely even a law-breaking Parliament member must still be civilized enough to listen to reason. Barnabas would convince them that this was all a big mistake, a colossal misunderstanding, and they would let him go. Perhaps they would even lend him a carriage to take him back to Marylebone, which would be nice indeed, since Barnabas was quite exhausted from the adventures of the day.

  However, such was not to be, for it was not to a Parliament member that the hostile animal-headed children delivered him. Instead, they dropped him rudely at the feet of a man who wore the head of a jackal.

  “You!” cried Barnabas from where he lay in the black dirt. (He wondered briefly why all the ground here was so black, not a speck of grass to be seen anywhere. It was most unpleasant, thought Barnabas.) “It was you in the museum! You made the mummy attack me! That thing knocked me unconscious. I’ll have quite the headache tomorrow from all of this, I’m quite sure!”

  The jackal-headed man laughed. “Oh, I think not,” he said, his tone quite amiable despite all that he had put Barnabas through. “You are quite beyond headaches now, I think.” He smiled knowingly at the attendant standing beside him (who had the head, thankfully, of a normal person).

  Barnabas, despite his fear, was quite put out with being spoken to in such a cryptic, condescending fashion. First, Anti had spoken to him thus, and now this jackal person. How dare they subject him to such things and then speak to him as though they enjoyed the idea that they knew things that he did not. It was really beyond tolerable, he thought. Quite insufferable!

  He put on the crispest, most politely aggrieved tone that he could manage. “Whatever do you mean by that? Such a statement! Beyond headaches? Why, it makes no sense, no sense at all. Kindly explain yourself, sir!”

  The jackal-headed man made a placating gesture with his hands. (Or were they paws? Barnabas couldn’t quite tell.) “Calm down, please,” said the jackal. “No need to get all excited.”

  “Ah!” exclaimed Barnabas indignantly. “You want me to calm down, you say? You whisk me off to this terrible place and have these…these…” He gestured towards his four little abductors, searching for the proper term for them. “Monsters! Yes, you have these monsters snatch me from the beach and then ask me to calm down!”

  The canary took great offense at being called a monster, it seemed, and made as though to peck Barnabas once more. “Oh!” squealed Barnabas as the fluffy yellow agitator nearly took him on the arm with its beak. Barnabas pulled his arm back just in time to avoid the blow.

  Despite his terrible predicament (or, perhaps, because of it), Barnabas laughed. The sight of the adorable little canary, eyes blazing, feathers ruffled up, struck him as intolerably funny. Politely, he tried to hold back the laughter, but the giggles erupted from him uncontrollably. Soon they grew into great, heaving guffaws that shook his entire body.

  In truth, there was a bit of hysteria in Barnabas’ laugh, which made him seem a bit crazy. Anubis looked sidelong at the attendant beside him, raising his eyebrows and pursing his lips. The attendant shrugged and looked away uncomfortably.

  Barnabas’ laughter only enraged the canary further. It cheeped and puffed out its chest whilst scratching its little feet on the ground like an angry chicken (trying, it seemed to Barnabas, to seem threatening but only managing to look more than a little ridiculous). The lion, however, held the canary back so it could not assault Barnabas. The canary flapped its wings and squawked as it tried to lunge at the laughing detective. This, of course, made the situation even more absurd than it had already been, and Barnabas laughed all the harder.

  “Enough!” boomed Anubis, whose voice was powerful enough to make the very rocks tremble beneath Barnabas’ feet. Immediately, Barnabas and the canary desisted and, like naughty children, hung their heads sheepishly, and shuffled their feet.

  Barnabas couldn’t help but think that it was outrageous for this jackal-headed fellow to treat him, a respectable detective, as though he were a child to be chastised (and he was more than a little annoyed with himself for his own subservient response). However, Anubis’ voice was simply so powerful, so absolutely commanding, that Barnabas felt quite intimidated.

  He stole a sidelong look towards the canary and saw that the little bird was doing the same to him. The miscreant’s face was scrunched up and his beak clamped tightly shut as though he were struggling to keep his mouth closed. This annoyed Barnabas, and so he pulled a face of his own, which he had to admit was quite childish but also extremely satisfying.

  Anubis heaved a heavy sigh of exasperation, which made everyone immediately face forward again. “There,” said Anubis. “That is better.” He looked to his four animal-headed minions and gestured for them to leave. “Go. You have done quite enough. I have important business with the detective.”

  As the four creatures left, Barnabas couldn’t help but look triumphantly at the canary. The canary, however, had apparently decided to take the high road and didn’t even deign to glance at Barnabas, but instead walked with his back straight as a ramrod and his head held high. He looked out into the distance beyond Barnabas with a snooty air as though he had much more important things to attend to.

  Barnabas, of course, felt immensely silly, shooting dirty looks at a canary who was in the process of ignoring him. He harrumphed grumpily.

  “Are you quite done?” asked Anubis, a long-suffering expression on his face.

  “I’m quite sure I don’t know what you mean,” answered Barnabas primly.

  Anubis sighed again. “Alright. Superb. Shall we get on with our business then?”

  “Yes, indeed!” said Barnabas. “I should very much like to know why I am here!”

  “You are acquainted, I presume, with a certain Egyptian fellow, a man by the name of Kesim?” asked Anubis.

  “Mr. Kafele?” replied Barnabas. “Why, yes, I did quite good work for him not long ago. I helped him find his necklace that was stolen, as I recall.”

  “Yes, well, that necklace was an ankh, an object of great power. Mr. Kafele was not quite ready to wield that power and so it killed him.”

  “Oh dear!” exclaimed Barnabas, shocked and saddened that the one recent case that he had thought a success had actually turned
out to be a failure after all. It was difficult to build a decent reputation for oneself, and to have repeat business or references, if most of one’s cases resulted in the death of the client. “But that is terrible! The necklace killed him? What a tragedy!”

  “Yes, yes, well, no time for sadness. Kesim Kafele is dead, and that’s that,” said Anubis briskly. Barnabas wondered for a moment if perhaps he ought not to have been so chagrined at the idea of deadness since, after all, Anubis was the god of the dead. (Barnabas had, by now, quite given up on the idea that this matter had anything whatsoever to do with Parliament. Now he was beginning to suspect that this Anubis fellow was precisely who he claimed to be.)

  “Anyway,” continued Anubis, “since Mr. Kafele is dead, he came here, of course. And that is how I learned of you.”

  “Mr. Kafele spoke of me? To you? He is angry then. He must wish to get revenge upon me for failing him,” Barnabas said sadly, and with more than a touch of melancholic flourish.

  “Revenge?” Anubis laughed. “On the contrary! He recommended you to me.”

  “Recommended?” asked Barnabas, confused. “For what?” His mind raced, trying to figure out the implications. Then his face dropped, aghast.

  There was only one possible explanation for all of this. It was quite simple, when one thought it through. Anubis was the god of the dead. The work that Barnabas had done for Mr. Kafele had resulted in the man’s own death. When added together, there was only one possible sum. “You want me to kill someone for you!” he exclaimed. “Well, I will not, I say. Barnabas Tew does not kill people.”

  Anubis shifted on his seat, looking a bit uncomfortable at this proclamation. “Yes, well,” he said. “In fairness, Mr. Kafele might say differently.”

  “Oh, well, I suppose, but…” began Barnabas.

  “And there was, of course, Mr. Fothergill…”

  “Of course, but now, that was different.”

  “And poor Lady Rainford and the unfortunate business with the peanuts. One might say that you do, in fact, kill people. Somewhat regularly, it seems.”

  “Well, humph!” said Barnabas. “Yes, yes, all of that is true, but you see, all of those are accidental instances. I don’t kill people on purpose.”

  “Alright, alright,” said Anubis, impatient now. “You don’t kill people on purpose. That is beside the point, however. You see, I don’t want you to kill anyone. I’m not even sure why we are discussing it.”

  “Because you said that Mr. Kafele recommended me and that I had killed him,” Barnabas supplied helpfully.

  Beside him, Anubis’ attendant appeared to be trying to hold in a laugh.

  Anubis put his head down to cradle his forehead in his hands for a moment in exasperation. He muttered something under his breath. (Barnabas thought he said “Oh sweet baby Horus, why me?” but couldn’t be quite sure.) Then he lifted his gaze to peek up at Barnabas through splayed fingers.

  “Okay,” he said with an exaggerated tone of patience. “Let’s start from the beginning. Mr. Kafele had only very good things to say about you. He told me you found a certain object of great significance for him.”

  “That I did!” interjected Barnabas. “Can I help it if he killed himself with it? How was I to know that the ankh would make him dead?”

  Anubis inhaled noisily through his nose and looked so put out by Barnabas’ interruption that Barnabas apologized and put on what he thought was his most polite listening expression.

  “Right,” said Anubis. “So, I too have lost something of great value, and since you helped Mr. Kafele find his lost item, I thought that you could also find what I have lost.”

  “Ah, well, then,” said Barnabas. “I suppose that I could do that.” A thought occurred to him suddenly (and a dreadful one, at that). “It’s not another death-ankh, is it? Because I certainly don’t want to make a career of finding things of such ill repute.”

  “No!” boomed Anubis, losing his patience somewhat. “It is not a death-ankh.” He breathed in again deeply. “Please try to follow what I am saying, and don’t interrupt any more. Understood?”

  Barnabas nodded sheepishly.

  “Good. Listen carefully, then. You see, it is not a thing at all that is missing but a who. Do you know much about the Egyptian afterlife?”

  “Well, yes. No. A little, I suppose,” replied Barnabas.

  “No matter. I can tell you what you need to know, and I suppose it won’t be too difficult for you to figure out what you need to know to not get killed again.” Barnabas would have stopped him here to ask how one might get killed again if one were already dead (if, that is, he were to accept that he was actually quite dead himself and this entire experience wasn’t some bizarre scheme of sorts), but Anubis, alarmingly, continued at a rapid pace.

  “You see,” said Anubis, “Khepre has gone missing. Are you familiar with Khepre?”

  Barnabas shook his head.

  “Khepre is our scarab beetle. He is responsible for rolling Ra across the sky every morning and then down beneath the earth every night. Without Khepre the sun cannot move. The sun will no longer rise and set as it should.”

  “That is why it is so hot in here?” ventured Barnabas, proud of his deductive skills. He had noticed almost immediately how very bright the light was in this place and that the air was intolerably stuffy.

  “Exactly,” said Anubis. “And if this continues for much longer, the heat and the constant daylight will spill out onto the mortal world. There will be famine and death and chaos. You can see that this must not happen.”

  “Of course,” agreed Barnabas. “That sounds perfectly dreadful.”

  “Dreadful, indeed,” said Anubis. “That is the task that I have for you. You must find Khepre for us. The fate of the world depends upon it.”

  Barnabas felt a rush of pride at being not only recommended but also chosen to perform this task. To think that he, a small-time detective (who had only this morning thought himself an abysmal failure) would be personally selected to rescue the world from a dreadful end was an incredible honor.

  He drew himself up, attempting, and nearly succeeding, in affecting an air of regal solemnity. “Fear not, Mr. Anubis,” he proclaimed. “Barnabas Tew is at your service.” He gave a stiff little bow to formalize his words. Anubis hid a smile behind a small cough.

  “Very good,” said he. “I am much pleased.”

  Anubis’ assistant interjected, “It was Set that took him. Everyone knows it.” He said this in a surprisingly petulant tone. Combined with the rather aggrieved look that Anubis shot him, it was clear that they’d had this discussion before.

  “It may well be,” began Anubis.

  “Who, exactly, is Set?” asked Barnabas.

  “The god of chaos and darkness,” replied the assistant with the air of superiority that people get when they are enjoying the fact they know something they believe obvious whilst others do not. “In my opinion, he’s the only one capable of such an outrageous thing.”

  “Again, I say, it may well be, but…” Anubis tried again.

  “It has to be Set!” interrupted the assistant. “I mean, remember that time he chopped up Osiris? He’s a terrible troublemaker and something should have been done about him long ago, if you ask me.”

  Anubis sighed heavily. He held up a hand and shot a warning snarl at his assistant. “I say!” he said. “It may well be Set, but there are others to consider. Things are not as black and white here as Peter may make it seem.”

  Barnabas wondered for a moment how an assistant to the Egyptian god of the dead came to be called Peter, but then he remembered that he himself, very much an Englishman, was in the Egyptian underworld as well. Clearly Anubis felt no compunction about harvesting British people when he needed them.

  The assistant (Peter, Barnabas repeated his name, in case the fellow were to be revealed to be important later in his investigation) huffed. “Got to be Set,” he muttered under his breath. He shuffled his feet so that he seemed like a small child wh
o felt himself unfairly chastised. “I’ll bet that it’s Set, and I don’t need to hire a detective to figure that out.”

  A sly expression crept over Anubis’ face. “A bet, you say? Very well. If it does turn out to be Set who kidnapped Khepre, then you win. I’ll make you into a minor god.” He thought for a moment. “The god of investigation! There. If Set is the perpetrator, you will become my official investigator. You’ll be the Chief Investigator of the Underworld!”

  Peter nodded, clearly relishing the idea of himself as a god. Barnabas, ridiculously, felt a wave of jealousy as though the title of Chief Investigator of the Underworld (a title that Anubis had obviously just thought up on the spot) ought to have been his.

  “But,” continued Anubis with a mischievous glint in his eye, “if it is not Set who did this, then, well, what shall your punishment be?” He templed his fingertips and tapped them together lightly whilst he thought. “I know! If Set didn’t do the deed, then I will make you into a bunny rabbit.” He clapped his hands together and laughed, delighted at the prospect.

  Barnabas saw Peter blanch. It was clear that the assistant did not enjoy the idea of himself as a bunny rabbit nearly so much as his master did. There was a look of utter horror on his face as he contemplated the idea. But in the end, Peter’s pride won out over his fear. “Fine,” he muttered.

  “Very good!” said Anubis. His tone was deceptively light, but Barnabas saw a clever intelligence writ upon the god’s face as well as a hint of slightly malicious pleasure at his assistant’s discomfiture.

  Barnabas suspected that this bet had not been made on a whim, but rather, the entire situation had been quite manipulated by Anubis. He told himself that this god would bear watching, and that he had best be most careful in his dealings with him.

  “So,” said Anubis, turning those penetrating eyes upon Barnabas. “I suppose you’d best begin?” he suggested.