"No, sir."
"Perfect." He removed an old, unremarkable stele, a brass chafing dish, a large brick of beeswax, and a chisel that looked to be from the Old Kingdom. "I think that ought to do it." He saw me staring at the chisel and leaned in close. "It belonged to Ptah, Miss Throckmorton."
I gasped. "How do you come to have it? Shouldn't it be in the Brotherhood's vault?"
"It was a personal gift and bears no curse or dark magic, only a small power of making."
Of course, because Ptah was the maker god.
"Miss Throckmorton, may I suggest you take that turban away from your monkey? If he puts it on his head, he will either go up like a cinder or become possessed of an evil sorcerous spirit. Neither one is what we need this evening."
"Yes, sir!" I jumped forward and gingerly removed the battered yellow turban from the monkey's tiny hands. As I replaced it on the shelf, Sefu turned and grabbed a small bronze bell with an ebony handle.
"Careful—he'll wake the dead, Miss Throckmorton."
For some reason, I was certain he'd meant that literally. I quickly took the bell away and picked up the monkey. He wasn't thrilled to have me holding him, but he didn't attack me or try to escape, either. In truth, he clung to me a bit, like a baby might have.
Major Grindle returned to his desk and rummaged around for a piece of paper and a pencil. "Could you sketch me a copy of what the tablet looked like?" he asked.
"Certainly." Juggling Sefu in my left arm, I sat down at the major's desk and began drawing.
As I sketched, Major Grindle began working at a long table against the wall. I watched out of the corner of my eye as he laid the stele down on the table. Then he pulled the brass chafing dish close, lit a candle under it, and put the beeswax in the dish.
"How's that sketch coming, Miss Throckmorton?"
I quickly turned back to the paper. "Almost done," I chirped, blushing furiously at being caught not minding my own business.
"Excellent."
I put the finishing touches on the drawing, then hopped to my feet and carried it over to him. "Here you are, sir."
He took the drawing from me, glanced at it, then narrowed his eyes. "Thoth, eh?"
"Yes, sir. And Horus. It looks as if Thoth is giving Horus something, although I can't make out what, exactly. The glyphs are Chaldean," I pointed out helpfully.
He cocked an eyeball at me. "I know Chaldean when I see it, Miss Throckmorton."
"Sorry, sir."
However, I quickly forgot my embarrassment and became absorbed in what the major was doing. When the beeswax had fully melted, he took a pair of tongs, grabbed hold of the stone tablet, and dipped it into the wax. When he pulled it back out, a thin layer of the white wax clung to its surface. He repeated the process three times until the tablet was thickly coated.
Once it had cooled, he laid it on the table, picked up the chisel, and very carefully began to re-create the images and glyphs from the original Emerald Tablet.
I craned my neck to see better. He'd managed a very good likeness, but I didn't think the wax was going to fool anybody.
"I'm not done yet," he said, a faint tinge of annoyance in his voice.
Was he reading my mind? "I know you're not, sir."
Next, he unstoppered a small jar and shook out a few grains of something into a shallow dish. I was dying to ask what the granules were, but I was afraid he would shoo me away if I reminded him I was there.
"Grains of sandstone from the inside of a pharaoh's tomb," he said, as if hearing my unspoken question.
"Thank you, sir. I was wondering."
"I know," he said dryly. "I could practically hear you."
Well, he didn't expect me to be incurious, did he? Not with such fascinating procedures going on right in front of my nose.
He took a feather—an ibis feather, I thought—and dipped the nib end into the sandstone granules, then began to write on the wax. He wasn't pressing very hard—in fact, only the barest marks showed. They looked like hieroglyphs, but no matter how closely I watched, I wasn't able to recognize any of them.
At last he was done and set the feather down. "One last step," he said, then lifted the top off a small box and took a pinch from it. "Powdered silver," he told me, "to call upon the power of the moon." He sprinkled it over the coating of the inscribed wax. He took another pinch of something—"powdered copper, for the green color"—and sprinkled that over the wax as well.
The effect was shocking and immediate. The symbols Major Grindle had drawn on the surface began swarming and writhing, moving in rippling waves. Sensing the magical activity, Isis lifted her nose from the leopard rug and watched.
As the glyphs moved, the wax began to discolor slightly and take on a different texture altogether. It also began to turn dull green, just like the original tablet. Within minutes, the mysterious symbols had disappeared, transforming the once-ordinary stone into a near-exact replica of the Emerald Tablet.
"Brilliant, sir!" No wonder he hadn't thought we'd need to bother the wedjadeen for the original.
"Thank you. However, the silver will only cleave the magic to the wax until the setting of the moon. After that, the deception will be revealed."
"We'd best hope the moon doesn't set before midnight, then," I said.
"It doesn't." He fished around under the table for some old scraps of leather and began wrapping the tablet in them.
"However did you learn that particular piece of magic? I've never seen anything like it in the papyruses I've read."
He quirked an eyebrow at me. "Read many, have you?"
"Yes, actually."
His lips twisted in a brief grin. "Chip off the old block," he muttered, and I swelled with unexpected pride.
"One of our brightest and bravest Keepers spent some time with a mysterious tribe in the desert—I'm guessing the very same tribe those men you know belong to—and learned a great deal of arcane magic at their hands. He recorded a few of the rubrics in his journals. Reginald Mayhew was his name."
"Mayhew?" I asked sharply.
For the first time, Major Grindle took his eyes from the faux tablet and stared at me intently. "Yes, why? Have you heard of him?"
"Yes," I admitted. According to Wigmere, it was Mayhew who had snatched the cache of artifacts out of the hands of the French and had them shipped to England, where they'd eventually been purchased by Augustus Munk and ended up in our basement. "But Wigmere hadn't said he was a Chosen Keeper." Oops. Had I said that last part out loud?
Major Grindle turned his attention back to the tablet. "Neither did I."
"But you did, sir! You just now said he was one of your brightest and bravest—"
"Must have misheard me, Miss Throckmorton."
"I must have," I said, catching on at last.
"Now, let's see about getting Gadji back, shall we?"
At the sound of his master's name, Sefu woke from his nap, scrambled up onto my shoulder, and looked around the room expectantly. "No, not yet," I told him. "But soon."
Major Grindle slipped the leather-wrapped tablet into a satchel. When he handed it to me, Sefu leaped from my shoulder and scampered over to the door, waiting.
As I was settling the load around my shoulder, the major crossed the room to his cabinet and quickly took a few things from a shelf: a large bronze arrowhead ("one of the Seven Arrows of Sekhmet," he explained), a small clay jar ("Rain of Fire"), two knives, and a sword.
"Don't you have a pistol, sir? Surely that would be more reliable. Von Braggenschnott seems very fond of his."
"Wouldn't be sporting, Miss Throckmorton, using modern-day weapons in an ancient temple."
Sporting? Sporting! This wasn't a game of cricket we were playing.
He looked up from hiding the weapons on his person. "Ready, then?"
"As much as I'll ever be," I said.