I leaned out of the window. Down below I could make out the cultivated greenery of the college gardens, the glint of boats on the canal and the untamed spaces of Port Meadow beyond. What I had assumed was a sheer stone wall, was, in fact, old and crumbling: plenty of places where an enterprising urchin might grab on to jutting stones. But what made it even more likely that someone had climbed up these walls was the rampant Virginia creeper. The gnarled roots of the flourishing shrub that covered Worcester College’s walls were thick enough to support the weight of a child, I was sure of it.
I was glad Rachel was not here. Not to mention my father and all the other people in my life, lining up to tell me how reckless I was. Biting my lip, I eased myself over the windowsill. Moving with extreme caution I found a foothold in the creeper. Then a handhold and then, everso carefully, down I went. You might think I had taken a foolish risk. Believe me I knew what I was doing. I had always enjoyed climbing trees, but I was acutely aware that this time I was not scrumping for apples. If I lost my hold and fell, or the creeper broke, I would be dashed to pieces on the flagstones eighty feet below.
Halfway down the creeper, I became convinced that someone else had made this perilous descent, and very recently too. Fronds of the Virginia creeper were displaced and broken and many of her leaves flattened. Some twenty foot above the ground I saw something white poking out of the creeper’s foliage, just past my hand. Straining, I reached out for it and retrieved the thing—a slip of cloth. It was a handkerchief, a dainty piece of the finest white linen. Embroidered in the corner was a monogram of fine curling letters:
G. C. Gaston Champlon
I couldn’t help crying out in triumph, causing a student in white cricket flannels who was strolling over the lawn with his nose in a book, to look up in surprise. Luckily whatever he was reading was more interesting than a girl climbing the creeper, for he gave me but a glance. So, I thought, Gaston must have climbed down this creeper. Or, at the very least, someone who had stolen his handkerchief.
The slip of fabric clutched tightly in my hands, I fell down to the ground. The passage of human beings must have left some marks. Nothing, of course, in the flowerbeds under the walls except clods of earth and some withered, wintry stumps of plants. But on the frost-dusted lawn two sets of footprints were visible. The urchin’s strange twig-like tracks and following them, at a run by the look of the smudged marks, a set of adult prints. The feet were hurrying away from the college toward the edge of the garden and the canal.
In hot pursuit, I set out after them.
The Mummy Snatcher of Memphis Page 20
