The Secret of the Mummy's Tomb

By S.D. Livingston

On a creaking, windblown night, 11-year-old Madeline Mott’s dad disappears from the museum. He’s the Keeper of Unusual Items, so it’s no surprise that she finds a strange amulet on his desk. And when the amulet jolts her deep into the past she soon discovers where her dad’s gone—to ancient Egypt!

But she won’t have much luck finding him if she can’t get rid of Jack, a street urchin whose talent for picking pockets leads Madeline to discover it was the same amulet that swept him into the past, too.

He insists that Madeline can help him get back to Victorian London, and when the pharaoh’s palace turns out to conceal a deadly enemy, it might just be the clue to the entire mystery.

This is the first book in the Madeline M. series, and it launches Madeline and Jack on their time-travel adventures in an ancient land full of mummies, tomb robbers, and man-eating crocodiles. For readers 8-12.

• Language: English
• Publisher: S.D. Livingston
• Release date: Jul 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9780986771453

S.D. Livingston

For author S.D. Livingston, it’s all about history, mystery, and books. Her first novel was published by Avalon Books in 2008, and she soon followed that up with several self-published novels, including Kings of Providence (a political thriller) and A Queen’s Revenge.She writes in several genres, from sci-fi to suspense and historical fiction. She also enjoys working out the twists and turns of the spine-chilling Madeline Mystery series for young readers.She’s been a member of The Writers’ Union of Canada since 2008 and holds a BA History.

Book preview

THE SECRET OF THE MUMMY’S TOMB

A MADELINE M. MYSTERY

S.D. Livingston

Livingston Proof

NEWMARKET, ONTARIO

Copyright © 2013 by S.D. Livingston. Published at Smashwords.

Illustrations by S.D. Livingston. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the email address below.

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Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Book Layout ©2013 BookDesignTemplates.com

Ordering Information:

Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the Special Sales Department at the email address above.

The Secret of the Mummy’s Tomb/ S.D. Livingston. -- 1st ed.

ISBN 978-0-9867714-5-3

For Evan

Next time someone complains that you have made a mistake, tell him that may be a good thing. Because without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.

STEPHEN HAWKING

CHAPTER ONE

Into the Storm

Thunder grumbled across the night sky and the lights in the museum flickered. In a small, cluttered office high above the street, Madeline Mott peered at the storm through a skylight. It was an old-fashioned skylight, with thick, leaded panes, and rain rushed across it in furious sheets.

A jagged bolt of lightning flared against the storm and Madeline spun as shadows leapt across the room. High on a shelf, an ancient, moldy monkey stared down at her. Its lone glass eye gleamed wickedly in the creaking night, and Madeline shivered. With one last glance at the blustering sky, she turned and hurried back toward the front of the room.

Dad? Her voice was small against the crashing storm. There was no answer. She tried again, louder. Dad? Are you there?

But Arthur Mott, Senior Historian and Keeper of Unusual Items, did not reply. In fact, it had been almost an hour since Madeline had seen him. She was sure he’d been working as usual, puttering around among the dusty shelves while she finished her homework. But the museum had been closed for hours now, and nothing moved among the deep shadows behind her. Nothing but the jittery flash of lightning across the museum’s collection of peculiar objects, a musty, ancient assortment of things like two-headed spiders, gladiator swords, and poison darts.

Madeline turned away. She took a deep breath, slid her textbooks into her backpack, and zipped it shut.

This is ridiculous, she muttered. There’s absolutely nothing to be scared of.

And there wasn’t. Not really. After all, that stuffed monkey had been perched in her dad’s office for as long as she could remember. And there were much stranger creatures than the monkey to be worried about. There was the gallery of fierce, charging skeletons downstairs in the dinosaur exhibit, with their razor-sharp teeth and gigantic jaws. And the high-pitched, eerie squeaking in the museum’s bat cave. Not to mention the display of spooky Egyptian artifacts, which happened to include real Egyptian corpses preserved as mummies.

No, what really had Madeline worried was that her dad seemed to have disappeared into thin air. Not that that was possible, of course. Professor Arthur Mott was absent minded, there was no doubt about that. And his office held the strangest collection of rare, mystifying objects in the whole museum. But he certainly wouldn’t lock up his desk for the night, pull on his favorite tweed jacket, and forget all about taking eleven-year-old Madeline home with him. Would he?

Frowning, Madeline poked her head through the doorway and peered down the hall.

Dad?

Her voice floated away, vanishing into the hallway’s dim corners. She pulled her head back into the office and stood there, thinking. Madeline knew that the practical thing to do would be to walk down to the main floor, where the night guard patrolled the Great Hall, and ask if he had seen her dad. But Arthur Mott’s office was tucked high under the eaves, in the oldest, most turning, most twisting corner of the hundred-year-old building.

Going downstairs would mean that Madeline had to cross the long, shadow-filled hallway, and then make her way down four floors of dimly lit stairs. Past the totem pole with its grinning faces, through the menacing skeletons of the dinosaur exhibit, past the medieval armor that always looked as though it would leap at you if you turned your back at just the wrong second.

Another roll of thunder boomed and Madeline jumped. She pulled her phone out of her jeans and tapped the screen. Nothing. No missed calls, no text messages. She crossed to her dad’s desk. His laptop was still open and the screen glowed with the subject of his latest research. Fractal Time.

Madeline wrinkled her nose and turned to the stack of books on his desk. A Brief History of Time. Ugh. Even more boring. She poked through the clutter around his computer, looking for a clue to where he could be.

Her elbow bumped a framed news clipping and she grabbed it to keep it from tipping over. She glanced at the faded headline and the photo of the sneering, dark-haired man beside it. Historian Disappears in Freak Storm, read the title. Professor Trevor Harcourt, a historian at the Royal Ontario Museum, was swept away in the freak tornado that tore through Toronto last night . . .

Madeline didn’t need to read any more of it. It had been there so long that she knew the whole thing by heart—just like the matching article on the other side of the desk. She set her phone down and reached for it.

Double Disaster Strikes Museum! the heavy black letters read. In a shocking double tragedy, officials now believe that last night’s tornado also took the life of Jane Mott. She’s the second missing person linked to the Royal Ontario Museum. She was last seen entering the museum just before the storm struck, and no one has spotted her since. She leaves behind her grieving husband, Professor Arthur Mott, and their infant daughter, Madeline.

Madeline stared at the smiling woman below the headline. The eyes looking back from the picture were the same shape as her own. And Madeline knew their exact color—emerald green—because the original photo sat on a shelf in her room. But right now Madeline needed to figure out where her dad was—not start daydreaming about the mother she could barely remember.

She put both articles down and flipped through the cascade of colorful sticky notes pasted everywhere. Maybe her dad had forgotten to tell her he had a meeting somewhere, and was delayed coming back in the storm. Or maybe he—

Another bolt of lightning crackled across the sky and Madeline spun. What was that? From the corner of her eye she caught the movement again—a dark, gleaming sort of shine. Like sunlight flashing on the black surface of the ocean.

There it was again. Curious, Madeline reached toward her dad’s chair. Something was wedged in the cushions. She pulled and the object came out easily. She stared at it in amazement. Of all the strange and mysterious objects in the museum, Madeline was sure she’d never seen this one before.

The dull gold case lay flat against her palm. It looked just like the oval brooches in jewelry-store windows, the kind with gleaming gems in the center. But the inky black center that winked and shimmered at her now was no ordinary jewel. In fact, as Madeline stared at it she realized it wasn’t a jewel at all. It was moving!

Wow! she breathed, leaning over to take a closer look. Cool!

For a moment she forgot all about her dad. She forgot all about the collection of weird relics around her. She even forgot about the storm that boiled around the building and the ferocious wind that rattled the windows. Instead, she stared at the object in her hand.

The black center shifted like water, but it wasn’t water. It was more like—like the sky, Madeline realized with a start. Exactly like the night sky, velvety black and dotted with stars, on nights when you could tip your head back and it made you dizzy because it looked close enough to touch.

And then that’s exactly what she did. She reached out the tip of one finger, touched it against the black, mysterious surface, and—

With a boom and a crash and the brightest flash of lightning yet, the storm plunged the entire museum into darkness. For a frightening moment it seemed that the whole world had gone dark. The blackness swirled, the floor shifted, and Madeline felt like she was spinning through air. Then, with one final, howling burst of wind—thunk. She landed flat on her back with a painful thud.

**

For a moment she was too dazed to move. At last she blinked, rubbed her eyes, and opened them. To her great amazement, she was staring straight up into a crisp blue sky. Madeline blinked again. She shook her head to clear it. This couldn’t be. It wasn’t daytime. It was night. And she wasn’t on vacation. She was in the museum, trying to find her dad. And the floor underneath her wasn’t supposed to be burning hot sand. It was—

Ow!

With a startled cry Madeline leapt to her feet. She swiped at the fine white sand that covered her clothes, and squinted around in the glare of the sun.

What in the world was happening? A moment ago she had been in the museum, holding that strange piece of jewelry. Now she was standing in some sort of desert, with hot sand gritting painfully inside her sneakers. She turned in a slow circle, trying to make sense of things.

Off in the distance, through a shimmering haze, she saw people moving. Is this some sort of new exhibit? she wondered in a daze. She quickly dismissed the idea. Everything was too big. Too blazingly, blindingly hot. And besides, she’d never seen a museum display that had real live lions in it.

Lions! Madeline blurted.

She stared in shock as two of the fierce-looking creatures padded silently by. The man leading them on a rope disappeared between two buildings without so much as a glance at Madeline.

Lions, she repeated numbly. And then, because she was certain the strange sight must have been nothing more than a dream, she rubbed her eyes again—and opened them to see an angry woman hurrying across the sand toward her.

Aha! the woman cried. So you thought you could get away, did you? Well, it’s a good thing I’ve got sharp eyes.

She wore a plain white dress that flapped around her knees. Several tiny charms hung on strings around her waist. They seemed to dance with excitement as she swooped down on Madeline with a determined look.