He opened the door for Mother, then closed it after her and turned to me. "This way."
As we made our way back down the hallway, I was dying to ask if he carried a message from Wigmere, but a public hallway didn't seem the right place for such a question. Especially since I had no idea how many at the Antiquities Service were part of the Brotherhood of the Chosen Keepers. It was a brilliant cover, I thought, hiding a secret organization dedicated to minimizing the corrosive effects of ancient magic and keeping it out of the wrong hands inside the Antiquities Service.
However, the longer I thump-bumped along behind Bing, the clearer it became that he was leading me far away from the exhibits. Perhaps we were heading for the refreshment first. I certainly wouldn't refuse something cool to drink and a place to sit down and grow accustomed to the thick pool of heka I was wading through.
Except, as we went farther and deeper into the museum, we seemed to have passed all the offices altogether. A faint niggle of concern settled along my shoulders and I remembered the rather maniacal look he'd had in the train station when he'd first spotted us. "Mr. Bing, where are you taking me, exactly?"
He looked over his shoulder at me and I was struck again by his intense eagerness. To make matters worse, his hair had escaped the confines of whatever tonic he'd combed it with that morning and was starting to stick up in odd places, which made him look slightly demented. "We're almost there," he said.
I knew he meant it to be reassuring, but instead it was as if someone had just flipped a caution switch inside me. I wasn't sure I should be following him.
I mean, what did I know about him, really? He said Wigmere had sent him, but surely any of the Serpents of Chaos could pretend he had been sent by the head of the Chosen Keepers. I abruptly stopped walking.
It took Bing a half dozen steps before he realized I was no longer following him. He stopped, then looked around. "What are you doing back there?" he asked.
I folded my arms and tried to look implacable. "I'm not taking another step until you tell me exactly where we're going."
He quickly retraced his steps until he was standing right in front of me. "I told you. Wigmere sent me," he said in quiet tones.
"Yes, but anyone could say that, couldn't he? And I would have no way of knowing whether or not he was telling the truth."
He opened his mouth as if to argue, then closed it again. He looked crushed. "You mean you don't trust me?"
I hated to hurt his feelings, but one thing I've learned in the past few months is that everyone is suspect until proven innocent. I thought briefly of asking to see his wedjat eye tattoo—the one that all Chosen Keepers had—but decided against it. For one, if he was an impostor, I didn't want to spill the beans about their secret tattoo. Second, it was beyond scandalous—even for me—to wander around demanding to see strange men's chests. "Let's just say I have a cautious nature."
His smile put me a bit off balance. "And so you should, but really, there is nothing to worry about. We're almost there and then you'll see. Here, come." As he spoke, he reached out to grab my arm.
I tried to leap back out of his reach, but he had rather longish arms and was able to snag me anyway. "Let go," I said, pulling on my arm with all my strength.
"I told you," he grunted, trying to tug me down the hall. "We're almost there." Suddenly, he seemed to remember something and stopped tugging. Without him pulling on me, I tumbled backwards, nearly landing end over teakettle.
"I forgot! I'm supposed to tell you, I'm a traveler, come from the West."
Hearing the code phrase that Wigmere had given me cleared my suspicions instantly. "Well, honestly! Why didn't you say so in the first place?" I asked, straightening my frock.
"Sorry," he said with a sheepish grin. "I'm rather new at this."
Clearly, I thought.
Bing resumed walking and I fell into step behind him. He led me down the hall to a door, which led to another hallway, which in turn led to a back staircase of some sort. "Where are we going?" I asked.
"Lord Wigmere wanted you to meet with one of our senior research and development team members before you left for Luxor." Mr. Bing stopped in front of a small door. At first it appeared to be a closet—a closet full of an amazing collection of ancient Egyptian bric-a-brac. There were medium-size obelisks leaning up against the wall, plinths, busts of ancient Egyptians carved from stone, unused stone tablets and stele stacked atop one another like dinner plates. A fine layer of dust lay over everything. Mr. Bing went over to a towering wooden mummy case propped against the wall. As he went to lift the lid off, I saw that it was hinged, and it swung open to reveal a door.
"Very clever," I said admiringly.
"Isn't it, though?" Mr. Bing beamed and motioned for me to go first.
The passageway led to a large, winding stairway that seemed to disappear deep into the bowels of the museum. As we clattered down the stairs, the orb in my reticule bruised my leg with each step. The stairs were steep, almost a ladder, really, and they were circular. We went round and round, so that by the time we reached the bottom, my brain was spinning inside my head. "Where are we?" I asked. The walls down here seemed to be of rock rather than wood or plaster.
"It's an underground chamber, built under the museum, dug right into the ground itself," Mr. Bing explained. "Most people don't even know it's here." He crossed over to two large steel doors and pressed a buzzer on the wall. There was a loud clunk as something unlocked, and then Mr. Bing pushed open the door. "Here she is, Professor. I'll come back for her in a bit." Then he stepped back out and closed the door behind me with a resounding clang.
I found myself in a large, cavernous room. Dark shadows obscured the high ceiling, and it was easy to imagine hundreds of tons of rock and Cairo streets far above.
A scraping noise came from a distant corner of the room and my pulse quickened.
"Hello?" I called out.
Rows of tables and benches swept out in front of me, stacked high with all manner of strange things: blocks of paraffin wax, rolls of beeswax, crocodile eggs, a mortar and pestle, long skinny reeds, papyrus leaves. There was even a large fish tank in the middle of the room, filled with what I thought might be oxyrinchus fish.
Half a dozen mummies in various states of undress lined one wall. Next to them were wine kegs, huge jars of golden honey, slabs of clay and unworked stone—basalt, granite, and alabaster. Thin sheets of gold and lead were scattered on one of the tables like playing cards, while a thick pot of what smelled like bitumen boiled sluggishly nearby.
"I'll be with you in just a moment," a voice called out.
I turned toward the voice, relieved to see a thin man hovering over one of the tables. He was taller even than Father and had stooped shoulders, as if he'd spent his entire life in a room that was too short for him. He wore a white canvas coat that came down to the knees of his plaid trousers. His hair was white and put me in mind of a dandelion just before all the fuzz flies away in a stiff breeze.
"There we go," the man said. "Done." He set whatever he'd been working on down and looked up at me. I gasped and took a step back, ready to run for the door. His face was half metal and leather, and his eyes were enormous, the size of billiard balls, as they swiveled crazily in my direction.