The Case That Time Forgot

THE SHERLOCK FILES

CASES: UNSOLVED

BOOK 3

THE
CASE THAT TIME FORGOT

 

TRACY BARRETT

 

 

Henry Holt and Company
New York

 

 

 

 

 

 

Henry Holt and Company, LLC

Publishers since 1866

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, New York 10010

www.HenryHoltKids.com

 

Henry Holt® is a registered trademark of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

Copyright © 2010 by Parachute Publishing, LLC

All rights reserved.

Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Barrett, Tracy.

The case that time forgot / by Tracy Barrett. — 1st ed.

p.     cm. — (The Sherlock files ; 3)

Summary: Xena and Xander Holmes, an American brother and sister
who are living in England, use clues from their ancestor Sherlock
Holmes's casebook when they are asked by a classmate to find an
ancient Egyptian artifact that has been missing for many years.
ISBN 978-0-8050-8046-9
[1. Mystery and detective stories. 2. Brothers and sisters—Fiction.
3. Egypt—Antiquities—Fiction. 4. London (England)—Fiction.
5. England—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.B275355Cas 2010    [Fic]—dc22    2009024148

 

First Edition—2010 / Book designed by Greg Wozney

Printed in March 2010 in the United States of America

by R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company, Harrisonburg, Virginia

 

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

A
t first, Xander Holmes thought that the slip of paper must have fallen out of his own notebook. But even as he stooped to pick it up, he noticed some details that most people wouldn't have seen. This was partly genetic—he was, after all, the great-great-great grandson of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes—and partly habit. He and his sister, Xena, had started solving mysteries several months earlier, shortly after their arrival in London.

The paper was normal notebook paper, white with faint blue lines. It had been folded and refolded into a narrow rectangle. The size of the slit in my locker, Xander thought, and then, I don't remember folding any paper like that.

He paused. What else? The ink used by whoever had written on it had bled through a bit. His pens didn't do that.

It was probably just a note from his sister or
one of his friends. The lockers at school had been installed only recently, while the students were on fall break, and he wasn't used to them yet. Probably people left notes in lockers all the time. He unfolded the paper.

He was still staring at the writing and trying to figure out what it meant when the locker next to his slammed shut. He looked up to see redheaded Andrew Watson, a friend and fellow member of the SPFD, the Society for the Preservation of Famous Detectives.

“What a pain these lockers are,” Andrew grumbled. “You should figure out who's been stealing things so we can go back to storing our gear in our desks like before.”

Xander understood that Andrew was just being grouchy, as usual. Andrew knew that he and Xena only investigated problems from Sherlock Holmes's notebook of unsolved cases. The SPFD had given them the precious casebook, and Xander and Xena had already solved two of its most baffling cases.

“Did you hear that Jill Fenton had her MP3 player nicked this morning?” Andrew asked.

“Uh, no,” Xander said. He wasn't really paying attention. He was too intrigued by what he was looking at to think about anything else.
What the paper said was odd enough, but it was the handwriting that interested him. Did anybody write like that, for real? It was all in capitals, and was written so plainly that it looked like a page from a penmanship book for little kids.

“Xander!” His sister was coming down the hall toward him. She was chatting with Hannah, her new friend. Xena's long dark hair with its blond streak looked almost black next to Hannah's light brown curls. She was followed by two boys named Shane and Jake. They played on what Xander still thought of as the varsity soccer team, despite the fact that they didn't say “varsity” in England. Xander, two years younger, was on what would be the junior varsity in the States.

Xena came up to Xander while the others stopped to talk with Andrew.

“What are you
doing
?” she asked. “I called you three times. I wanted to tell you I'm staying late after school with Hannah. I phoned Mom to say I'll come home with you after your soccer practice.” She paused. “What's so fascinating about that paper?”

He handed it to her. “It's weird. I can't figure out what it is.”

Xena read the few lines on the paper:

“So the bullet missed?” the detective asked.

“Yes, she ducked, or—”

“What, son?”

But he was on his way out the door. “Dad,” he called back over his shoulder, “be sure, lock the door on your way out. I'm going to the homes.”

“What is this?” Xena was bewildered. “It doesn't even make sense! It sounds like whoever wrote it doesn't speak English very well.” Most of the students at their school were British or American, but others who hadn't been in London very long sometimes had trouble with the language.

Xander grinned. “I think I figured it out. Read it out loud.”

“Aha!” Xena said. “‘Ducked, or, what, son, sure, lock, homes'—those words sound just like ‘Dr. Watson, Sherlock Holmes'! Someone's trying to tell us they know we're related to Sherlock Holmes!”

Xander nodded.

“But why? A lot of people saw us on TV when we found that missing painting.” The first case that Xena and Xander solved involved a
painting that had gone missing in Sherlock Holmes's time. Xena handed the note back to her brother. “I think everybody at school knows Sherlock was our ancestor. Why wouldn't they just say something? Why the note?”

“That's what we have to find out!”

“What—
now
? It's the middle of school!”

Xander looked at the clock on the wall. “I have time. It's still my lunch hour, and I ate fast. Mom gave me tuna fish.” He made a face and didn't need to say more. Xena knew how he felt about tuna. He went on. “And isn't this your free period? You said Ms. Perella doesn't care if you're late.”

“Okay.” Xena was eager to do a little detecting. “Let's see. Who could have been in the hallway?” She looked around at the rooms near the lockers. Science lab, teachers' lounge, janitor's closet, sixth-grade rooms.

“Almost anybody. You could tell the teacher you were going to the bathroom—”

“There aren't any bathrooms right here.”

“No, but you could
say
you were going to the bathroom and then come this way.”

“True.” They considered. Then Xena said, “What about the paper?”

Xander examined it. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Except—what's this?” He touched the
fold, and his finger stuck a bit when he pulled it away. He tried again, then sniffed at the sticky spot. “Honey!”

A hoot behind him made them turn around. It was Shane, who said in a high voice, “Yes, sweetie?”

Xander felt himself flush, but Xena laughed. “Cut it out!” Her tone was playful, and Shane grinned at her before going back to his conversation with Andrew.

“Jerk,” Xander muttered.

Xena took the paper and studied the single page. She turned it over, angling it at the light. “Whoever left this wrote something else on a piece of paper on top of it and made some marks. Let's see.” She squinted, her eyes close to the dents that made a light tracing over the letters. “Something about love. No, about Lord N-E-L . . .” She spelled out all the letters she could make out.

“Lord Nelson. It's got to be someone in my class! We've been studying the Battle of Trafalgar, where Lord Nelson was killed.”

“Someone in your class who had honey on his or her fingers . . .”

Xander shook his head. “Sorry, I didn't stick around long enough to see who had what for dessert,” he said.

Xena wasn't paying attention to him but was looking down the row of lockers. People were closing them and getting on to class, rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the polished wood floor. Only a few students were left, putting things away or taking out textbooks and notebooks. Xena was good at reading body language—telling how people were feeling from the way they were walking or gesturing or even standing—and something had caught her eye.

“Do you know that guy?” She pointed at a dark-haired boy who was hanging up a jacket on the hook in his locker.

“That's Karim Farag. He's in my class. He's nice. Why?”

Xena kept her eye on the boy. “He just looks—well, he looks tense. And he took that jacket off the hook, hung it up, took it off again, and now he's hanging it up again. I think he's stalling, like he wants to stay here in the hallway for some reason.”

“Let me check.” Xander slung his backpack over his shoulder and went to where Karim was lingering.

The other boy looked up and nodded at Xander. He took his jacket off the hook again.

“I'm starving,” Xander said to him. “I didn't
like my lunch so I hardly ate any of it. Do you have anything?”

Karim looked surprised. “My mom gave me these.” He pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket. “Honey candy. My grandma made it. Want some?”

Xander felt a flush of satisfaction. “Thanks.” He helped himself to a handful. “Hey, I didn't get everything Ms. Jacobsen was saying about Nelson. Can I take a look at your notes?”

Karim nodded and dropped his backpack on the floor. He rummaged around in it for a minute and then pulled out some papers. He handed them to Xander, who took one look, and then glanced at Xena and grinned. She smiled back and made her way toward them through the thinning crowd of students.

“Looks like you need a new pen,” Xander said. “Yours is leaking all over the place.”

Xena came up. “Okay,” she said. “We know you wrote that note about Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson and left it in Xander's locker. What's up? If you wanted to ask him about our great-great-great grandfather, why didn't you just say something?”

Karim looked around and then beckoned them to come closer. “I had to know if you were
good detectives,” he whispered hoarsely. “I wanted to see if you could figure out what the note meant and that I was the one who left it. I thought that if you could find all that out, then I could trust you with something.”

“Trust us with what?” Xena asked, also pitching her voice low. “Is it about whoever's been stealing things from school?”

“No, it's not about the school thief. It's about Sherlock Holmes—and a case he worked on a long time ago. He never solved it.” Karim swallowed. “And I need it to be solved. I need to know what happened to—”