Barnabas Tew and The Case Of The Missing Scarab Page 6

  “I don’t know,” replied Wilfred. “But does it seem to be getter louder to you?”

  The sound was, in fact, increasing quite quickly in volume now, as though whatever was making the noise had changed course and was making its way swiftly towards them.

  “It sounds like bees,” observed Barnabas, frowning. He was listening to the droning part of the noise, the part that sounded like the rapid flutter of insectile wings. Barnabas, who was afraid of bees and any other flying thing that stung, did not much relish the thought of a swarm of bees, particularly Egyptian underworld-type bees.

  “Or a great lot of dogs barking,” suggested Wilfred, who was now noticing the more vocal part of the noise, which sounded like an incessant chattering. It sounded like the sort of noise a great mob of people make when they are being rowdy but much more animalistic. He was not keen to find out what sort of a mob this might be that seemed to be approaching with such speed.

  By this time the noise had grown so loud that the din made it difficult to think. Barnabas and Wilfred looked about, searching for the source of the noise. Neither, however, thought to look up, to look into the sky until it was too late.

  A flicker of movement from the air at last caught Wilfred’s eye. “Ahhh!” he screamed.

  Barnabas, following his gaze, screamed as well. “Monkey-demons!” he squealed. (This statement would have seemed nonsensical to anyone who wasn’t there or who hadn’t experienced the Egyptian underworld first-hand. Unfortunately for Wilfred, though, the statement made perfect sense.)

  The thing that had been making all the racket had come upon them at last, and it was far more terrible than either of them could have imagined: a great swarm of flying creatures about the size of cats. Since they were now quite close, Barnabas and Wilfred could see them individually, and neither much liked what he saw.

  The creatures, though small, were quite terrifying. They looked like little gorillas, with high brow ridges and bushy eyebrows. Their eyes were red and mere slits, and their mouths were too small so that their long, yellow teeth, which looked horribly pointy, stuck out akimbo from between their lips.

  The things shrieked and snarled and spit as they came close, so that the overall effect was one of extreme unfriendliness. In response, Barnabas and Wilfred gave in to panic and began to run about in circles. They flailed their arms in terror as the things descended upon them.

  “Oh! Oh!” yelped Barnabas as a monkey-demon dipped down and swiped at his head with its claws. Only his hat saved him from suffering a cruel scratch to the scalp. The creature tried to fly away with the hat, but Barnabas held on to it tightly with one hand whilst swatting ineffectually at the loathsome creature with his other. “My hat!” he yelled. “Stop it, stop it, stop it!” Together, he and the flying monkey pulled back and forth determinedly at the hat in an absurd tug-of-war.

  Two of the other monkeys grasped Wilfred by the arms of his coat jacket and seemed intent on carrying him away entirely. They were far too small to do so, of course, but as a third and then a fourth descended upon him, he saw that, if enough of the nasty little fellows worked together, they might just succeed. “Help!” he cried, waving his arms in a vain attempt to cast off his attackers.

  In his struggles, he fell to the ground. Immediately, more of the things fell upon him. At last there were enough of them, and he felt himself being lifted off the ground. He turned his head, looking for help, and saw that Barnabas was suffering the same treatment.

  Terrified, both men struggled madly to throw off their attackers, but it was no use. There were too many of them; each time one was kicked or swatted away, two more swooped in to take its place. It seemed that Barnabas and Wilfred had lost this battle and were to be carried away to whatever foul purpose the monkey-demons intended for them.

  Suddenly, a greater, louder sound than that the monkey-things had made boomed across the land. It was so loud that the very air vibrated from it. The monkeys all stopped their chatter and froze in midflight so that there was a moment of complete and intense stillness.

  The eyes of the little monkeys were no longer narrow slits, but round and wide with fear. Barnabas and Wilfred exchanged a glance from where they hovered in mid-air, still in the grip of their captors.

  Barnabas and Wilfred were thinking the same thing: if they were afraid of the monkey-things and the monkey-things were afraid of whatever it was that had made this new, horrible sound, then it stood to reason that Barnabas and Wilfred wouldn’t much like it either.

  The booming sound happened again, and, at once, the monkey-demons sprang back to life. Hastily, they dropped their prisoners (who were, in truth, only a few inches from the ground, but nevertheless found the experience of falling most frightening and undignified). Then, making as much noise leaving as they had in coming, the monkey-demons flew swiftly away.

  Wilfred looked to Barnabas, hoping that his employer would have some strategy for escaping whatever new menace now came towards them. Barnabas, however, merely squinched his eyes shut and pretended to be either dead or sound asleep. Wilfred, with no other better idea, did the same.

  They heard footsteps approaching and soon felt a shadow fall over them.

  “You can open your eyes, you know,” said a voice.

  Neither complied.

  The voice sighed. “I know you’re pretending,” it said. “I’m not stupid.” The toe of a boot prodded each one in whichever body part was nearest to the owner of the voice: the thigh for Barnabas and the ribs for Wilfred. At this, they decided there was nothing for it but to obey, and so they both reluctantly opened their eyes to see the figure that stood above them.

  Chapter Six

  Standing before them, blocking the sun from their view, was a large, barrel-chested man. Both were relieved to see an actual human rather than the strange hybrid creatures that were so prevalent here. He smiled a bit as he looked down at them, trying to hide a laugh at their absurd attempts to feign unconsciousness.

  “Well, hello,” said Barnabas, recovering his manners as best he might under the circumstances. “Who might you be?”

  “I am Bes,” said the man, “the god of sweet dreams.”

  “Sweet dreams?” asked Wilfred. “As in cakes and things?”

  “I wouldn’t mind a nice pastry,” agreed Barnabas.

  Bes blinked, taken aback by the silliness of the two people he had just saved. He wasn’t quite sure how to answer, and he contemplated just leaving the two of them lying there. However, they looked so afraid, and yet so hopeful at the mere thought of pastry, that he found he didn’t want to simply abandon them. In light of the fright that the two had just taken, he decided to take the way of patience.

  “No,” he said slowly. “As in the opposite of bad dreams. I chase away nightmares and other scary things.”

  “Oh,” said Barnabas, clearly disappointed that there were to be no cakes or pastries.

  “I believe that I’ve heard of you,” said Wilfred. “You are one of the protector gods, yes?”

  “Indeed I am,” agreed Bes, thinking now that perhaps the two of them had a set of wits, between them at least.

  “Ah, how exciting!” exclaimed Wilfred. “Barnabas, we have been rescued by one of the oldest gods in the Egyptian pantheon!”

  “Well,” said Barnabas. “Thank you very much.” He rose and dusted himself off as best he could. Wilfred did the same beside him. “Those horrible monkey-things meant us no good, I am sure,” continued Barnabas.

  “No, they did not,” agreed Bes. “Terrible creatures. They like to carry their prey alive to their dens and then…” He broke off upon seeing the looks of horror on Barnabas’ and Wilfred’s faces.

  “Are they… Are they quite gone?” ventured Barnabas after a slight pause.

  “Certainly,” said Bes. “But I must ask: what brings you to this deserted place? It isn’t safe to just wander about the underworld, you know.”

  “We are on a job,” proclaimed Barnabas. He stood up tall and tried to look dign
ified. The effect was marred somewhat by the splotch of flying monkey feces that had landed upon his coat lapel, but he was blissfully unaware of that as yet. “We have been commissioned by Anubis himself.”

  “Ah, yes!” said Bes, tactfully ignoring the mess. “You must be the detectives Anubis hired to find Khepre.”

  “We are!” exclaimed Barnabas proudly.

  “How did you know that?” asked Wilfred suspiciously at the same time.

  “Oh, everyone knows everything around here,” said Bes (sounding rather self-important, Barnabas thought). “It’s a small place, you know.”

  Wilfred looked around the vast, empty place doubtfully. “Well,” he said politely, “alright. I suppose so.”

  An idea struck Barnabas. “Well then!” he cried. “If everyone knows everything, then you must know the whereabouts of Khepre!” He smiled, pleased at the thought that he had solved the case so easily.

  “Oh, well, no, not exactly,” said Bes.

  “But I thought you said…”

  “Yes,” said Bes peremptorily. He waved his hand airily. “A figure of speech is all. Of course I don’t know where Khepre is or who might have taken him. But,” he continued, pausing for dramatic effect, “I do have a clue for you.”

  Barnabas (who had pursed his lips and squinted his eyes in disapproval of Bes’ dismissive tone) couldn’t help but be excited anew at the prospect of a clue. His lips un-pursed and his eyes un-squinted as he leaned forward eagerly. Still Bes’ dramatic pause continued on. It seemed the god was in no hurry to divulge his information. “A clue?” Barnabas prompted at last when he grew tired of waiting.

  “Yes, indeed! Here it is,” said Bes. He rummaged about in, first, one pocket and then the other. “Wait a moment. I had it just a minute ago.” Bes searched his pockets for an aggravatingly long time whilst Barnabas and Wilfred waited impatiently. It seemed that Bes never looked quite all the way to the bottom of any of the pockets, merely patting about at the top, so that each pocket had to be investigated multiple times.

  The process went on for so long (how many pockets did the fellow have, thought Barnabas, and why couldn’t he look through any of them properly the first time?) that Barnabas was barely able to suppress a sigh of exasperation. But at last, Bes pulled something that looked like a stick triumphantly out of the very first pocket he had searched and thrust it proudly into Barnabas’ face.

  “Oh, yes, well, quite informative, that,” said Barnabas politely, although he had no idea what the thing was.

  But it seemed that Wilfred did have an idea. “Oh no!” he exclaimed when he saw it.

  “Yes,” said Bes gravely.

  “Where did you find it?” asked Wilfred sombrely.

  “Over there,” said Bes, pointing towards the north towards the giant cliff that Barnabas had mentioned earlier and had been loath to go around. “In the desert. Near Set’s abode,” he added meaningfully.

  “Ah, Set,” said Wilfred thoughtfully. “So, it’s just like before, then, you think?”

  “Perhaps,” said Bes. “It certainly doesn’t look good.”

  “No,” said Wilfred. “Not good at all.”

  “Yes, terrible,” agreed Barnabas, not wanting to seem slow-witted, although he couldn’t have said why the two of them were getting so worked up over a stick. Still, he was annoyed at being left out of the conversation and felt that he ought to contribute somehow.

  “Well, that would certainly explain all of these hippos,” said Wilfred.

  “Indeed it would,” agreed Bes.

  “Mmmm,” said Barnabas, attempting to appear to be carefully thinking over the matter of the stick whilst wondering what the hippos had to do with it.

  “So,” said Wilfred, “have any other of his, uh, well…” He paused delicately. “Have any of his other parts been found?”

  “No,” said Bes. “Just this…”

  At that moment Barnabas realized that the thing that Bes was holding was no stick. Indeed, it was the leg of a giant bug. Probably, more precisely the leg of an enormous scarab beetle god named Khepre. “Ewww!” he squealed, horrified.

  Wilfred and Bes looked at him quizzically, so that Barnabas flushed in embarrassment. “Sorry,” he said. He tried to think of a way to cover his late arrival to the conclusion that Wilfred had reached so quickly. “Just a bit of hippo dung is all.” He brushed at his shoe, pretending an interest in the imaginary excrement.

  “Well, alright then!” said Bes, feeling that he had done his duty by these two odd little detectives and could now, in good conscience, leave them to their own devices. “Do be careful. And good luck!” he said by way of taking his leave. He turned to go, then looked down at Khepre’s leg, which he still held in his hand. “Oh, here you go,” he said, proffering the leg to Barnabas, who took it reluctantly and politely thanked him.

  “One last question,” said Barnabas. “If you don’t mind, that is?”

  “Of course,” replied Bes graciously (masking his impatience to be off and away quite well, he thought. He had already spent more time than he had thought to spend with Barnabas and Wilfred, and he still had a lot of work to do today. After all, demons and nightmares were rampant across the underworld, and, as the official god in charge of chasing away such things, he was kept quite busy.)

  “Does… Did… Ahem, that is to say… Is there a maid employed at Khepre’s estate?” asked Barnabas.

  Bes thought for a moment. “Yes, I’m certain that Khepre must have had quite a few servants. Although I don’t know what will become of them now that he is missing. Perhaps they have sought out work elsewhere by now.”

  Barnabas, feeling vindicated and clever once again, shot a significant glance at Wilfred, who suppressed an amused smile. Bes turned to leave again and waved his hand in farewell. “Good day to you both,” he called over his shoulder, and he hurried off to be about his business.

  Barnabas and Wilfred waved goodbye to their erstwhile rescuer and watched as Bes strode jauntily off. His bandy little legs moved with surprising speed under his stout body, he was soon gone from view.

  “So,” said Barnabas, turning to Wilfred. “Interesting bit about the hippos, isn’t it?” He was anxious to know what Wilfred and Bes had been talking about, but he didn’t want to seem as though he didn’t know already.

  “Yes indeed!” said Wilfred. “Quite coincidental, don’t you think?”

  “Obviously!” said Barnabas. He paused, trying to think of a way to get more information out of Wilfred without coming straight out and asking for it. At last, he had an idea. “What then,” he tried, “do you find to be the most interesting connection with the hippos?”

  “Well,” said Wilfred, “we know that Set has already chopped up one god in the past. So we know he is quite capable of such a thing.”

  “Yes, yes,” agreed Barnabas. He remembered that Wilfred had said something earlier about Set hacking somebody up and scattering him piecemeal throughout the underworld. He looked at the leg in his hand and thought he saw where Wilfred was going with this. He held up the leg and nodded sagely.

  “So,” continued Wilfred, “if he could do it to Osiris himself…” (ah, yes! thought Barnabas, that was who had been chopped up. And, he remembered, Isis herself had gone about, collecting his parts and putting him back together), then he could easily do the same to Khepre.”

  “Indeed he could!” agreed Barnabas. A thought occurred to him. “But would he is the question! It seems so obvious that everyone would immediately think of Set as soon as they heard someone had been cut to pieces. Just as we did,” he concluded, ignoring the fact that he himself hadn’t jumped to that conclusion quite as quickly as he assumed everyone else would have.

  “You have a point,” conceded Wilfred, thinking it over.

  “And,” pointed out Barnabas, “one would expect a god to be a good deal more clever than to commit the same crime twice.”

  “Indeed,” agreed Wilfred. “One would expect.”

  “So it must needs be
someone else and they are framing Set,” said Barnabas.

  “And the coincidence of Set having a hippo head and all of these hippos, well, that could easily be part of a set-up as well.”

  “I’m sure that is what it is!” said Barnabas, glad to have the mystery of the hippo coincidence cleared up. “A set-up! A frame! Or,” he conjectured, “perhaps that is what Set wants us to think. Perhaps he really is the perpetrator and made the crime point so obviously to himself that no one would think he could have possibly done it!”

  The two of them thought this convoluted logic over for a few moments. However, no matter how hard they thought about the circumstances, they were unable to come to a satisfactory conclusion. They simply didn’t have enough information. And the only evidence they had was the beetle leg in Barnabas’ hand.

  “I suppose,” sighed Barnabas, “there’s nothing for it but for us to go to Set.” He eyed the huge cliff around which they must travel doubtfully. “Although I do wish that we didn’t have to walk around that enormous thing,” he said sadly.

  “If only there was a way to cross the river,” said Wilfred. “The going looks far easier on that side.”

  Now, it seemed, they were back to the same problem they were grappling with when they were so shockingly interrupted by the monkey-things: how they might cross the river in light of the depth and the current and the hippos. Once more, the problem seemed entirely insurmountable as neither could think of a satisfactory solution.

  “I know!” exclaimed Barnabas after quite a bit of time had passed. “We can wear disguises!”

  “Pardon?” asked Wilfred, not seeing how wearing a disguise would help with the problem at hand.

  “We can disguise ourselves so Set doesn’t know who we are. If he doesn’t know who we are, then he will have no need to chop us into little bits and scatter us about the place.” In truth, Barnabas had thought so long and so hard on the issue of crossing the river that he had grown bored and his mind drifted to their next difficulty: namely, Set’s penchant for separating people from their component parts.