"And risk getting splattered with pigeon shot by your father? I think not, but good try."
Bother. He'd seen clean through that one, hadn't he?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
If You Give a Governess Enough Rope...
I WAS UP EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, or perhaps it was more truthful to say I never really fell asleep. I spent the entire night wrestling with all my dilemmas. It was a relief to be able to get up, actually.
I immediately made my way to the foyer. Father was snoring loudly, sprawled up against the far wall and dangerously close to one of the lassos.
Saving that one for last, I checked the corner of the room closest to the entrance. The wax was white, which meant that no foul spirits had been near. Shoving the wax into my pocket, I kicked the rope behind a pedestal holding a bust of Nefertiti. Then I hurried on to the second corner near the big bay of windows at the front of the museum. The wax there was also still white.
The third corner was clean, too. Bother. I hated to think I'd gone to all that trouble and caught nothing! Cautiously, I approached the corner Father inhabited. Wouldn't it just cork it if his corner happened to be the one the spirit had gravitated to? Which made sense, really, as disgruntled spirits loved to make trouble for the living.
Tiptoeing as quietly as I could, I stepped around Father. The wax was a familiar green-black color, and I caught a whiff of sulfur.
Reaching out, I grasped the end of the rope in my gloved hands, then quickly tied a knot, then another one, then another, until there were seven knots in all. The knots would bind the disgruntled spirit to the rope until I could find a safe repository for it.
As I headed to my carrel, there was a loud knock.
"Hello? It's me, Miss Sharpe," she called out, her voice muffled by the front door.
Bother! Why couldn't she use the side entrance like the rest of the employees?
She knocked again, and Father's snoring was replaced with a sputter. "Wh-what? Who's there?"
"It's only me, Father. Miss Sharpe's here."
He got up off the floor and smoothed his hair down with his hand. "Well, don't just stand there. Let her in."
"That's what I was doing," I told him. Huffing over to the door, I opened it to admit Miss Sharpe, surprised to see a crowd out there again. Hadn't these people anything better to do? I scanned the faces, searching for Will, but didn't see anyone looking even remotely like him.
"Good morning, Theodosia," Miss Sharpe said.
"Good morning, ma'am."
Her gaze fell onto the rope in my hand. "What are you doing with that?"
I shrugged. "Oh, well, I—"
Her mouth flattened in disapproval, and she stuck out her hand. "Give it to me. Fun and games are over. It's time for our lessons."
"But it isn't a game," I protested.
"Theodosia," she warned with a glint in her eye. I recognized that glint. It was the one she got just before she pinched me, and I wasn't wearing my coat. I stared down at the rope in my hand, then back at Miss Sharpe, a rather evil thought occurring to me. "Why, certainly, Miss Sharpe," I said, then held the rope out to her.
She took it from me with a look of triumph, followed by a slight frown as she shivered delicately. "Goodness, it's chilly in here. Let's get to the reading room so we can begin your studies."
It was a long, horrible morning with policemen sniffing about in all the nooks and crannies of the museum and Miss Sharpe being her awful pinchy self. Because I was so distracted, I flubbed my lessons four different times and earned a pinch for each mistake.
And what, may you ask, was I so distracted by? The rope, that's what. Miss Sharpe seemed to have grown very attached to it, and as I worked on my lessons, she slapped it threateningly against her palm, like a whip.
"What is the square root of sixteen?" Slap.
"What is seven thousand two hundred seventy-seven divided by thirty-two?" Slap.
"What year did Queen Victoria declare India a part of the British Empire?" Slap.
And on it went. Luckily, she was cold enough that she had decided to keep her gloves on. But even with her hands protected, I was worried about what such prolonged contact with the corrupted rope would do.
Until she pinched me the third time. Then I decided I really didn't care.
And as if that wasn't bad enough, Stilton kept hovering nearby, almost bursting with his report from the night before, but I couldn't get him alone.
I was sure none of the Chosen Keepers had ever been tested as sorely as I.
Around midmorning, the sun finally reached our side of the building.
"It's finally beginning to warm up," Miss Sharpe announced. "Which reminds me, when did your grandmother say we could begin conducting lessons at your home?"
"As soon as you proved you could be consistently punctual," I said sweetly.
Miss Sharpe pressed her lips together and two spots of bright color appeared high on her cheeks. Deciding to ignore me, she draped the rope over the back of a chair and began to tug off her gloves. I held my breath, wondering if she was going to slap them across my face, but she merely laid them onto the table.
When she saw me looking at the rope, a calculating gleam appeared in her eye. Her naked hands closed around the rope and she resumed whacking it against her palm.
The horrid woman! She was doing it only because she could tell the constant slapping was irritating me. Thoroughly distracted now, I kept looking up every couple of minutes or so until she finally said in exasperation, "What? What are you looking at, you rude child?"
That's when I saw it. A bright red boil had appeared on her forehead. And there was a pinkish spot on her left cheek where another one was beginning to rise up. "Um, I think you have a spot," I said, tapping my cheek.
"What?" Horrified, she let the rope drop to the floor, then reached for her purse and rummaged around until she found a little mirror. Ducking her head to see better, she peered into the mirror, a look of horror on her face. "Excuse me," she muttered. "I have to use the facilities."
As soon as she was out of sight, I grabbed the rope and stuffed it behind one of the bookcases until I could deal with it later.
"Miss Theo?"
At Edgar Stilton's voice I jumped away from the bookcase, hoping he hadn't seen me stash the rope. "Stilton!"
"Tefen," he corrected.
"Tefen," I repeated. "We have to hurry because I don't know how long Miss Sharpe will be gone. What did you find out?"
Stilton came fully into the room, rubbing his hands. "Well, Befen, Petet, Mestafet, and I followed the mummy—"
"Tetley. His name is Tetley."
"Oh. Right. We followed Tetley down to the docks."
"The docks!" I echoed stupidly. This was odd. Last time Chaos had been in London, they'd been housed at Carleton Terrace. "Go on."
"Unfortunately, the mumm—er, Tetley—was seen by rather a lot of people. He created quite a panic whenever he was spotted."
"I should think so," I muttered. "Which dock?"
"The East India docks," Stilton said. "There was a small, rundown tavern there, and the mummy went right up to it and smacked into the door. A rough voice called out, 'Here's another one, mates!' There was a burst of laughter, and then a man opened the door, grabbed Tetley by the waist, tossed him over his shoulder, and pulled him into the tavern."
There was a moment of silence as I digested all this. "What was the name of the tavern?"
"The Salty Dog." Stilton wrung his hands. "I hope we did right, Miss Theo. We talked about following the mummy in, but by the sound of their laughter there were quite a lot of them, and rough, too. You hadn't said anything about confronting dockworkers, only to follow the mummy. Although what a bunch of dockworkers want with a mummy is beyond me."