The Mummy's Curse Read online

  EGMONT

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  First published by Egmont USA, 2014

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 806

  New York, New York 10016

  Copyright © Penny Warner, 2014

  All Rights Reserved

  www.egmontusa.com

  www.pennywarner.com

  www.CodeBustersClub.com

  Interior illustrations by Dave Melvin

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

  CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Warner, Penny.

  The mummy’s curse / Penny Warner.

  1 online resource. — (The Code Busters Club ; case #4)

  Summary: A trip to a museum to learn about Ancient Egypt turns into a new case for the Code Busters when they discover that someone may be stealing artifacts and replacing them with cunning forgeries.

  ISBN 978-1-60684-459-5 (Hardcover)—ISBN 978-1-60684-460-1 (eBook) — ISBN 978-1-60684-459-5 (hardback) [1. Cryptography—Fiction. 2. Ciphers—Fiction. 3. Museums—Fiction. 4. Egypt—Antiquities—Fiction. 5. Mystery and dectective stories.] I. Title.

  PZ7.W2458

  [Fic]—dc23

  2014005906

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright holder.

  v3.1

  To my Code Busters: Bradley, Luke,

  Stephanie, and Lyla

  READER

  To see keys and solutions to the puzzles inside, go to the Code Buster’s Key Book & Solutions on this page.

  To see complete Code Busters Club Rules and Dossiers, and solve more puzzles and mysteries, go to

  www.CodeBustersClub.com

  CODE BUSTERS CLUB RULES

  Motto

  To solve puzzles, codes, and mysteries and keep the Code Busters Club secret!

  Secret Sign

  Interlocking index fingers

  (American Sign Language sign for “friend”)

  Secret Password

  Day of the week, said backward

  Secret Meeting Place

  Code Busters Club Clubhouse

  Code Busters Club Dossiers

  IDENTITY: Quinn Kee

  Code Name: “Lock&Key”

  Description

  Hair: Black, spiky

  Eyes: Brown

  Other: Sunglasses

  Special Skill: Video games, Computers, Guitar

  Message Center: Doghouse

  Career Plan: CIA cryptographer or Game designer

  Code Specialties: Military code, Computer codes

  IDENTITY: MariaElena—M.E.—Esperanto

  Code Name: “Em-me”

  Description

  Hair: Long, brown

  Eyes: Brown

  Other: Fab clothes

  Special Skill: Handwriting analysis, Fashionista

  Message Center: Flower box

  Career Plan: FBI handwriting analyst or Veterinarian

  Code Specialties: Spanish, I.M., Text messaging

  IDENTITY: Luke LaVeau

  Code Name: “Kuel-Dude”

  Description

  Hair: Black, curly

  Eyes: Dark brown

  Other: Saints cap

  Special Skill: Extreme sports, Skateboard, Crosswords

  Message Center: Under step

  Career Plan: Pro skater, Stuntman, Race car driver

  Code Specialties: Word puzzles, Skater slang

  IDENTITY: Dakota—Cody—Jones

  Code Name: “CodeRed”

  Description

  Hair: Red, curly

  Eyes: Green

  Other: Freckles

  Special Skill: Languages, Reading faces and body language

  Message Center: Tree knothole

  Career Plan: Interpreter for UN or deaf people

  Code Specialties: Sign language, Braille, Morse code, Police codes

  CONTENTS*

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Code Buster’s Key Book & Solutions

  Acknowledgments

  *To crack the chapter title code, check out the CODE BUSTER’S Key Book & Solutions on this page and this page.

  I give up!” Cody said to her mother as she entered the breakfast nook before school Monday morning. Cody bounded into the room dressed in a yellow short-sleeved T-shirt that set off her curly red ponytail. Well-worn jeans and a pair of red Converse Chucks completed her simple outfit. Lately the spring weather had been so sunny, all she’d need was her red hoodie and she’d be set for the short walk to Berkeley Cooperative Middle School.

  “What’s the matter?” Mrs. Jones asked her thirteen-year-old daughter, before sipping from a mug of hot, steaming coffee. Already dressed in her uniform, Cody’s mother was ready for her job at the Berkeley Police Department. “Did you have trouble figuring out the puzzle Ms. Stadelhofer gave you for homework?”

  “No,” Cody said and signed, so her deaf four-year-old sister, Tana, would be included in the conversation. “That was pretty easy.” She sat down on a stool, filled her bowl with Cheerios, her favorite cereal since she was little, and added milk. “We’ve been studying ancient Egypt in class, and Ms. Stad gave us these cool decoder cards that have the Egyptian hieroglyphic alphabet, so I knew that was the key.” She took a spoonful of cereal.

  “What mean h-i-r-o …?” Tana tried to fingerspell the word.

  Code Buster’s Key and Solution found on this page, this page.

  Cody slowly respelled the word using the American Sign Language manual alphabet, then signed, “Hieroglyphs are like words and stories written in pictures.”

  She turned to her mother. “We’re going to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose on Friday to see some hieroglyphs and ancient artifacts, and even a mummy.” Cody had never seen a mummy before, except in movies, and they always looked fake. She wondered if she’d be creeped out by a real one.

  “So what’s the problem?” her mother asked.

  “I’m not sure what Ms. Stad’s word means.” Cody took out the assignment from her backpack and showed it to her mom. Written underneath the hieroglyphic symbols was Cody’s English translation.

  Code Buster’s Key and Solution found on this page, this page.

  Cody’s mom looked at the decoded word her daughter had written. “Did you look it up?”

  “The dictionary says it means ‘concealed writing’—kind of like a hidden message. But that’s all I know.”

  “Hmm,” her mom murmured. “It sounds like Ms. Stadelhofer has another mysterious puzzle for you to solve.”

  “Seriously! I hope there are a bunch of hidden messages at the museum. Ms. Stad said the place is full of mysteries. She said to make sure we study our latest spelling words, because they’ll be part of our assignment. I have a feeling she’s making up some puzzles for us, too.”

  “Sounds fun. Do you want me to quiz you?” Cody’s mother asked.

  “Sure.” Cody handed the word list to her mother. Cody was a good speller. She’d taught herself tricks for remembering difficult words and almost always got 100 percent on her tests. But this time she might not do as well because these new words were so different. They were the names of Egyptian gods and goddesses.

  As her mother read off each spelling w
ord, Cody wrote it down on a piece of paper. Most of the names weren’t too hard—Amun, Anubis, Bastet, Horus, Isis, Osiris, Sekhmet, Sobek. She could sound them out. But Maat was tricky—two a’s instead of two t’s like Matt the Brat. And Thoth was pronounced toth, so she had to remember to add the silent h.

  “How’d I do?” she asked her mother after she’d corrected the test.

  “Perfect, as usual,” her mom said. “Do you have to know why all the gods and goddesses were worshipped? They each had their specific purposes.”

  “Yep, I memorized them, and we picked our favorites as our Egyptian Code Buster names,” Cody replied. “Let’s see. Amun was the god of air and invisibility. That’s the one I chose, because I’d love to be invisible sometimes and just watch people. Anubis was the god of death. Bastet was the cat goddess. M.E. chose that one because she loves animals. Horus was the god of war and the sky. Isis was the goddess of magic. That’s Quinn’s favorite, since he’s been learning magic tricks. Maat was the goddess of truth and justice. Osiris was the god of the underworld and afterlife. Sekhmet was the goddess of lions and power. That’s Luke’s Egyptian code name, because he’s strong. Then there’s Sobek … Sobek … um …” Cody shook her head.

  “I think he’s the god of crocodiles,” Mrs. Jones said.

  “Right! Crocodiles,” Cody said. “And the last one is Thoth, the god of wisdom. I just have to remember Sobek. Then I’ll know them all!”

  “Good morning, students,” Ms. Stadelhofer said to her class of sixth graders after the students were settled in their seats. “As we discussed on Friday, the study of ancient Egypt has been steeped in mystery for centuries. Scholars tried to decode the hieroglyphs over the years, but it wasn’t until the Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799 that they even had a clue how to crack the code. And it still took another twenty years for scholars to decipher all the writings on the stone.”

  A student named Bradley raised his hand. “Twenty years? That’s a long time. It only took me about twenty seconds to decode the message you gave us for homework.”

  “Excellent,” Ms. Stad said. “How about the rest of you?”

  Several students raised their hands, including Cody. She loved how Ms. Stad always made her lessons fun. She often created puzzles for them to solve and made up games to help them learn. She even wore creative outfits, like college T-shirts, historical costumes, and arty jackets. Today she was dressed in safari pants and a khaki top with the words YOU CAN’T SCARE ME—I TEACH SIXTH GRADE! Around her neck she’d draped a long knitted scarf decorated with Egyptian characters. All she needed was a pith helmet to complete the outfit and she’d be ready for an archaeological dig.

  The homework assignment had been fun, too. Cody thought it would be cool to send coded messages in hieroglyphs to her Code Busters Club friends. She and MariaElena—M.E.—Esperanto, Quinn Kee, and Luke LaVeau were always looking for new codes to crack. And hieroglyphs were awesome because they looked like pictures.

  Cody pulled out her homework and read over her answers to make sure they were correct.

  STEGANOGRAPHY

  One of the pictographs—the letter s—looked like an upside-down hook. The t reminded her of a mountain. The e was represented by an arm. The g looked like a badge. And the letter a was some kind of bird. All the rest of the letters resembled something familiar—a zigzag for n, a lamp for o, a flying saucer for r, a shelf for p, a square curling in on itself for h, two feathers for y. The associations made them easier to remember.

  “We can now understand the Egyptian alphabet,” said Ms. Stad, “primarily because a soldier named Pierre-François Bouchard found a stone in Rosetta, Egypt. That’s why it’s called the Rosetta Stone. Years later, a teenager named Jean-François Champollion began decoding the stone. It took him fourteen years! Can you imagine working on a puzzle that long?”

  The students shook their heads. Cody was impressed.

  Ms. Stad smiled. “The young man finally figured out that hieroglyphs were not really pictures but signs for sounds, just like we use in English. For example, the image of the upside-down hook is the sound for s. So, who can tell us what the homework message says?” asked Ms. Stad.

  Most of the students raised their hands. Ms. Stad called on Cody.

  “Steganography,” Cody said, hoping she pronounced it correctly.

  “Right. Do you know what that means?” Ms. Stad asked her.

  “I looked it up. It means ‘the practice of concealed writing’ or ‘creating hidden messages.’ ”

  “Exactly,” Ms. Stad exclaimed. “Stegano comes from the Greek word for ‘covered’ or ‘hidden,’ and graphia or graphy is Latin for ‘writing.’ ” She glanced around at the students. “How many of you got it right?”

  Most of the students put their hands up again. Cody noticed that Matt the Brat wasn’t one of them. She figured he probably didn’t even do the assignment—as usual. How was he ever going to make it to seventh grade?

  “Good job, students!” Ms. Stad smiled. “As Cody said, steganography means ‘the art of hiding secret messages in plain sight.’ When you look at Egyptian drawings, they appear to be random pictures—at first. But if you study them, you’ll find they have hidden meanings. Does anyone know other ways of hiding a message in plain sight?”

  M.E., Cody’s friend who sat in the back of the classroom, raised her hand. “You could write a message on an envelope and cover it with a postage stamp,” she said, “and then steam off the stamp to read the message.” The Code Busters were very familiar with that method of sending hidden messages. They often mailed each other notes in code, with the key hidden under a stamp on the envelope.

  “Yes, M.E., that was a popular method for spies who wanted to send top secret information over long distances during wartime. Does anyone else know how to hide a message?”

  Matt the Brat blurted out, “You could shave your head and write a secret message with a marker and then grow your hair back and it would be hidden.”

  “True, Matthew,” Ms. Stad said. “Soldiers often did that. But they wouldn’t just write a secret message on the person’s head. They tattooed it.”

  “No way!” Matt said, rubbing his head. “That would hurt!”

  Ms. Stad smiled patiently. “There are lots of ways to hide messages. I could even be hiding one in the scarf I’m wearing today. While you’re looking at the Egyptian symbols on the scarf, the real message could be hidden by tying knots into the strands of yarn using Morse code. Spies used to knit the knotted yarn into a sweater or scarf, and the person who received the item simply unraveled it to decode the knotted message.”

  Awesome, Cody thought. She would have to try that. As soon as she learned to knit. She glanced back at M.E. and finger-spelled:

  Code Buster’s Key and Solution found on this page, this page.

  “Now, I’ve got a surprise for you, class,” Ms. Stad announced, interrupting M.E.’s message back to Cody.

  The buzzing students quieted down and waited for their teacher’s announcement.

  “We have a special guest. I’ve invited the curator from the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum to come and tell you all about puzzles, codes, and messages that are hidden in art—another form of steganography.”

  Ms. Stad turned to a woman who had just entered the classroom. She was tall and thin, with white-blonde hair twisted up at the back, vivid green eyes thickly outlined in black, and bright red lipstick. She wore a black turtleneck, black slacks, and black high-heeled shoes, but what caught Cody’s attention was the pendant she wore around her neck. It was a large golden “eye,” about the size of an Oreo cookie, heavily outlined in black, much like the woman’s eyes. Her hands were covered with large gold rings, one in the shape of an eye that nearly matched the one on her necklace.

  Cody was intrigued by the woman’s exotic looks, clothes, and jewelry—especially the eye that hung from her neck. The woman played with her necklace nervously as she faced the class. Cody wondered if she wasn’t used to speaking to
school students.

  “Everyone, this is Ms. Mirabel Cassatt. Please welcome our special guest!”

  The students greeted her in unison.

  “Hello, students.” Ms. Cassatt stepped forward on her tall, spiked heels and spoke softly as she continued to fuss with her pendant.

  Ms. Stad grinned at the class. “Do any of you know what a museum curator does?”

  No one answered.

  “Well,” Ms. Stad began, “a curator is generally in charge of the museum. She obtains art and antiquities, authenticates them to make sure they’re real, sets up the exhibits, and plans educational programs for students and the public.”

  Ms. Cassatt nodded. “That’s right. Plus, there’s a lot of paperwork,” she added.

  “Does anyone know what we call the object on Ms. Cassatt’s necklace?”

  “A mutant cyclops?” Matt the Brat called out. The class laughed.

  “No,” Ms. Stad said, after giving Matt a stern look. “Anyone else?”

  A girl named Iman raised her hand. “It looks like an eye.”

  “That’s right,” Ms. Cassatt said. “It’s a replica of an amulet called the Eye of Horus. The real ones were considered to be magic charms in ancient Egypt and symbolized the ability to see wisdom and truthfulness. The All-Seeing Eye was often buried with its owner to protect him or her in the afterlife. Mine is similar to one of the many artifacts you’ll see when you come to the Egyptian Museum later this week.”

  “Is that really from ancient Egypt?” Matt blurted out.

  Ms. Cassatt clutched the pendant. “No, as I said, this is a replica. The real ones are in museums. I’d have to have an armed guard with me if this one was authentic, or someone might steal it.”

  “Is it worth a lot of money?” Matt asked, ignoring Ms. Stad’s glare.