CHAPTER THREE
Professor Quillings, I Presume?
"OH, SORRY ABOUT THAT." He reached up and pushed the leather and brass up onto the top of his head. As his eyes went back to normal size, my heart started to beat again. He'd been wearing magnifying goggles.
The man came out from behind his table, smoothed down his hair (to no avail, I might add), and straightened his orange bow tie, which was singed at one end. "Miss Throckmorton?" He held out a hand and peered down at me.
I bobbed a quick curtsy. "Yes, sir, and whom do I have the pleasure of meeting?"
"Dr. Seymour Quillings. Head of the Brotherhood of Chosen Keepers Research and Development branch."
"How do you do?" I turned my gaze from the strange man back to the room behind us. "This is a lovely laboratory you have. You must do nothing but remove curses from dawn to dusk!"
He chuckled. "Not exactly. Wigmere's been telling me the most extraordinary things about you."
"Really?" That may or may not have been a good thing, I realized.
"Yes, about your remarkable abilities. Not to mention some of the very clever ideas you've been using in your work with ancient magic."
"Oh. Well. Thank you."
"I was especially fascinated by your use of wax and the moonlight. Fascinating. I've been doing some further experiments on those principles myself."
"Well, that's lovely, and I'm sure you'll find some, er, wonderful results." For all her emphasis on etiquette, Grandmother Throckmorton and her governesses neglected to teach me the proper response when discussing a person's experiments.
He stared at me a moment longer, as if I were a strange mechanism he were trying to understand, then clapped his hands together suddenly, startling me. "Well, I guess you'll be wondering why you're here?"
"I was, rather."
"Knowing the dangers and challenges you'll face, Wigmere did not want you going out unprepared. He wanted to outfit you properly for your mission."
I warmed at his words. Even from thousands of miles away, Wigmere was still looking out for me. "Excellent! What sorts of tools would those be?"
"Well, the first priority is to be sure you don't disappear. Wigmere did say you have an uncanny knack for finding trouble."
"I would have said trouble has an uncanny knack for finding me," I corrected, as the distinction seemed important.
"Either way, we don't want to lose track of you. Here, let me show you." He led me to a cluttered worktable that was full of springs and cogs and small chisels and screwdrivers the size of sewing needles. He brushed aside some brass shavings and tiny silver screws. "Here we go," he said triumphantly.
"A watch?" I inquired politely, although in truth, it was the largest, strangest, ugliest watch I'd ever seen. It was more than two inches thick and about three inches in diameter. A half dozen knobs protruded from its case. Honestly, it was about the size of a small wind-up clock.
"No, no. Not a watch. It is a Quillings's Homing Beacon and Curse-Repelling Device." He lifted his eyes from the contraption and gave me a worried look. "I took the liberty of naming it after myself. I don't think anyone will mind, do you?"
"I shouldn't think so. How exactly does it work?" I asked, eyeing the contraption with newfound admiration.
"Using alpha particles," Quillings proudly announced. "We have discovered that dark magic and curses give off something called alpha particles, a mild form of radiation, which is why being around them for too long can be so corrosive. I've only just this year invented something that allows us to use that phenomenon to our advantage. If you must work around a particularly vile curse, turn this knob here and it sends out a small electromagnetic pulse that repels the corrosive heka and allows you to escape unscathed. However, if you turn the knob this way, it acts as a homing beacon. The pattern of the alpha particles allows us to locate you with this." He held up a huge piece of photographic equipment.
"Is that a camera?"
"Not quite, but it works on the same principle. The alpha particles create a pattern on the thin film of gold inside, allowing us to track your movements that way. Wigmere wants us to keep a close eye on you."
"I daresay it can't hurt," I agreed. I took the clunky watch and strapped it to my wrist. Hoping Quillings wouldn't be offended, I tugged my sleeve down to cover it up. I looked up to find him watching me. "So my mother won't ask inconvenient questions," I explained.
His face cleared. "Ah, of course. And I see you wear gloves."
"Always," I said. "I try to minimize my contact with curses." One can never be too careful—black magic and curses have the most annoying habit of trying to work their way into one's skin.
"You might be interested in these, then." He led me over to a table against the back wall that held a small mountain of gloves. "As I said, I was very interested in the work you'd been doing with wax, and I've been conducting a few experiments. These gloves are made especially with wax-coated thread—"
I gasped. "Brilliant!"
His old cheeks pinkened. "Why, thank you. I thought it was worth a try. It works wondrously well—absorbs the curse right off an object so you can touch it if need be. The only drawback is that the gloves are a little sticky. Here. Let's find you a pair." We spent a few moments sorting through them till we found a white pair that were almost small enough for me. As I tucked them into my pocket, he motioned for me to follow him to yet another workstation in the middle of the room.
"Wigmere wanted you to have some offensive weapons at your disposal as well."
"Offensive weapons?" I repeated, not sure I'd heard correctly.
"Yes. Like this one." He picked up a gold fountain pen. "This contains a curse, a rather nasty one. It causes the recipient to suffer the agonies of a hundred scorpion stings over and over again. If you are backed into a corner, you twist it here, like so, and the inside capsule snaps apart and releases the curse. You'll need to point it at whatever you wish to use it on, then get away quickly, before it has a chance to zero in on you instead."
I stared at the pen, both fascinated and repelled. "How cunning."
"Here, take it."
With great reluctance, I reached out and gingerly took the pen.
"And lastly, this," he said, producing a fetching little silver compact, just like the one Mother uses when she powders her nose.
"Oh, it's lovely!" I said. "But I'm afraid I'm too young to wear powder."
Quillings chuckled. "Oh, trust me. You wouldn't want to wear this powder. This is made from ground-up sandstone collected from inside a pharaoh's tomb—"
"Which has magical properties!"
"Yes! You know of it?" He looked duly impressed.
"I do. In fact, I used it once when I was cornered by a very nasty man."
"Well then, I shall hardly have to tell you how it works. Here you go."
I stared at the compact, remembering Bollingsworth's ruined face. Slowly, I shook my head. "I don't think I should, sir."
"Why ever not?"
"It seems wrong, somehow."
"But you just said you'd used it before."
"Yes, but I'd been backed into a corner and outnumbered and there was nothing else at hand. It was a choice of last resort."
The professor looked at me oddly, almost as if he was a little disappointed in me. "I was given to understand you had used Egyptian magic quite comfortably."
"I don't know that comfortable is ever the right word to use regarding Egyptian magic." I eyed the pen in my hand. "I have, on occasion, been forced to use magic to ensure my own safety. But it was only making do with what was at hand. Carrying it around with me and planning to use it seems very different. Especially with such vile curses as these. Besides," I said, putting the pen back onto the table, "I don't expect I'll need it. I've only to hand off two artifacts when I first arrive in Luxor, and then the rest of my time will be spent working on my mother's dig."