The Case That Time Forgot

by Tracy Barrett

  “Oh!” Xena breathed. “It’s the amulet!”

  “I think you’re right.” Dr. Bowen’s voice was almost reverent. “It’s Thoth, carved in the right style, the right material. A lovely thing.” She reached in to touch it and then withdrew. “May I?” she asked Dr. Asano.

  “Of course,” he said. “Without you we never would have found it.”

  “It wasn’t me.” She put her hand behind her back, as though the temptation was almost too strong for her. “It was these two.” She nodded at Xena and Xander.

  “We wouldn’t have known about it without Karim,” Xander said.

  “Well, somebody take the credit and pick it up!” Mrs. Holmes said. “I’m dying to see it better.”

  Karim’s father said, “Go ahead, son. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”

  “Yes,” his grandfather added, “you hold it, Karim.”

  Karim picked up the amulet gently. For a moment he wrapped his fingers around it and closed his eyes. Xena could see that his hand was trembling.

  “Let me take a picture,” the young man said, and Karim opened both his hand and his eyes. While the photographer asked him to hold it first this way, then that, Karim looked at Xena and Xander.

  “Didn’t work,” he said.

  “What?” The young man took another picture. “Of course it did. I’m not using a flash, is all. It could damage the old gentleman here.” He nodded at the mummy and took another picture.

  But Xena and Xander knew that Karim wasn’t referring to the flash.

  “Can I hold it?” Xena asked. Karim passed it over. She closed her eyes and thought fiercely, Stop, time! Stop now!

  Nothing. She had never really believed in the magic, but she couldn’t help being disappointed.

  Then it was Xander’s turn. After a moment he shook his head and passed it back. Was the story of the magic amulet just that—a story? Had Sherlock Holmes been right when he called it “poppycock”?

  Xena glanced at her watch. It was only six in the afternoon. “What time is it in Egypt?” she asked Jake’s mother.

  “Two hours later than London.”

  Eight o’clock, then. Still Saturday! So what was the problem?

  Then Xander smacked his forehead. He beckoned to Karim and Xena, and they went back out into the waiting room while the adults continued admiring the amulet. “Of course the ancient Egyptians didn’t mean ‘midnight to midnight’ when they said ‘one day,’ ” he explained. “They meant sunup to sundown. The sun must have set in Egypt hours ago!”

  They all let the truth of this sink in.

  “Or maybe that thing about time standing still never was true to begin with,” Xena finally said.

  “Maybe it was,” Karim said.

  “I don’t know,” Xander said. “But I do know one thing!” The other two looked at him. “I know exactly where I’ll be fifty years from today!”

  “Me too!” Karim said.

  “No question,” Xena agreed. “We’ll be right here! In the Carberry Museum!”