The Curse of the Cairo Cat A Lottie Lipton Adventure Page 2

  “Actually, it’s a tapestry,” said Uncle Bert. “It’s also five hundred years old and priceless.”

  Lottie smiled sheepishly at Uncle Bert and hung the tapestry back on the wall, taking great care.

  “Ugly thing, ain’t it?” said Reg, pointing at the llama. He turned his back on it and watched Lottie hang the tapestry. “If the cat’s not here, where’s it got to then? That’s what I want to – wah!”

  Reg suddenly fell forward, crashing into the display of beakers. He dropped to the floor and quickly turned to see a few of the delicate objects teetering at the edge of their tables. He dived to catch them as they toppled downward, saving them all like a champion goalkeeper. He clutched them close to his body.

  “Are these –?”

  “Priceless?” asked Uncle Bert. “Yes! Please, do be more careful.”

  “I couldn’t help it! I was kicked up the bum by –” Reg looked around. “Well, I never. There’s no one there.”

  Lottie turned and looked at the statue of the llama, which seemed to wear a cheeky smile that it hadn’t had before.

  “I think I can guess who did it.” She walked up to the statue and playfully rubbed its nose. “You should be more careful who you call ugly, Reg.” She smiled at the llama, then noticed something tucked behind its ear. “Jackpot!”

  She picked out the tiny papyrus scroll and unrolled it. On it was a clue, just like the last one, but as she looked at it Lottie couldn’t help but think that this clue may take a little longer to solve. It read:

  “It’s complete gibberish,” sighed Reg.

  “No, it’s a code,” said Lottie.

  Uncle Bert surveyed the scroll briefly and glanced nervously at his pocket watch.

  “And we have just under half an hour to crack it,” he said, mopping his brow with a handkerchief. “Anyone got any ideas?”

  Uncle Bert had insisted that they retire to his apartment for a moment, where they could concentrate on the task at hand. The three sat quietly in the untidy room, Uncle Bert at his desk, Lottie on the floor and Reg on the leather Chesterfield sofa, each with a piece of paper and a pencil, deep in thought. They only had thirty minutes to go, but Uncle Bert assured them that a rest would help them think. He sucked on a dried date as enlightenment hit him.

  “A-ha!” he barked loudly, making them all jump. “Of course. So simple, yet so effective.” He grabbed the scroll from the desk and scribbled furiously on it. Reg and Lottie exchanged looks.

  “In ancient Rome, the emperor Julius Caesar used a code called a Caesar Shift to encode important messages. To solve it, you take each letter and replace it with the letter that is three letters before it in the alphabet.

  “You mean ‘D’ becomes ‘A’?” said Lottie.

  “And ‘E’ becomes ‘B’?” said Reg, cottoning on.

  “Precisely,” said Bert, handing them the scroll. “And our message becomes…”

  Lottie smiled and looked up at Reg and her uncle.

  “Gentlemen,” she said. “Let’s go to ancient Rome.”

  Chapter Four

  The three shadowy figures clung close to each other in the dark of the Department of Ancient Roman Antiques.

  “Ow! That’s my foot,” whispered Lottie.

  “Shh!” hissed Uncle Bert.

  “What was that?” asked Reg.

  “It came from over there.”

  “It’s moving!”

  Sure enough, Lottie could make out a shape in the darkness. It was moving slowly and slyly, creeping towards them. She turned to Reg and Uncle Bert.

  “You two pounce on it and I’ll get the light.”

  “Right you are Miss Lottie!”

  “On the count of three,” whispered Uncle Bert, nervously. “One…two…three!”

  The dark figures of Uncle Bert and Reg flew at the creeping shadow ahead of them. Lottie ran to the wall and hit the light switch.

  “What on earth are you playing at?” roared the mystery being in front of them. Lottie, blinking in the light, finally saw what they had been tracking. Sir Trevelyan Taylor, Head Curator of the Museum, stood upright with a look of anger and confusion on his face. On seeing their catch, Uncle Bert and Reg let go quickly. Sir Trevelyan glared at Uncle Bert.

  “I am disappointed in you Professor West. Once you were the greatest mind in Egyptology. Now it seems not only are you capable of losing a giant golden statue of an Egyptian cat, but also of attacking your superior!”

  “Please Sir Trevelyan, we were hunting the statue,” said Lottie. As the curator’s furious gaze turned on her, she regretted opening her mouth.

  “Really?” he said in a babyish, patronising voice. “Well I hope your great uncle finds it or he will be hunting not just for a cat, but for a job and place to live too!”

  “The statue will be ready,” said Uncle Bert, barely disguising his anger.

  “I hope for your sake it will be,” said Sir Trevelyan. “My deadline still stands. You have less than twenty minutes.”

  The curator marched out of the Roman section. Uncle Bert, Reg and Lottie each pulled a face behind his back. They caught each other’s eyes, and burst out laughing. Uncle Bert and Reg couldn’t stop and Lottie was the first to recover.

  “Quiet you two! We have work to do. Let’s split up.”

  They each went their separate ways and Lottie found herself walking past a large row of display cases. Inside were relics from Roman times – pots, urns, glassware, even old toys. Lottie stared at a carved wooden horse. It reminded her of a toy she once had as a little girl, when she lived in Egypt with her parents. She had loved living there and had vowed to return to Egypt one day and to help finish her parent’s work. She looked down sadly, but was distracted when she saw what she was standing on.

  Under her feet was a perfect recreation of a Roman mosaic, which had been transferred piece by piece from the floor of a villa in North Africa. It showed a slave in a toga, serving a tray of food at a banquet. Lottie had seen it many times before and had marvelled at the handiwork. However, she had never noticed that the slave was smiling…and pointing. Its fingers pointed to the other side of the large room, past the rest of the exhibits.

  “Thank you!” she said aloud to the mosaic and ran off down the gallery. As she passed more display cases, she glanced into them. She couldn’t believe her eyes. It seemed as though the whole museum had come alive to help Lottie; a display of Roman knives pointed their blades towards the south of the gallery, a hoard of Roman coins were laid out in a clear arrow and even the model of a Roman centurion pointed his spear southwards.

  “Thank you! Thank you!” yelled Lottie to the exhibits around her, no longer feeling foolish at talking to the ancient objects.

  She arrived at the south wall of the gallery, Reg and Uncle Bert appearing behind her. They stood before a raised statue of the Roman Emperor Nero. He was delicately sculpted in silver and copper and raised high on a tall marble plinth. His left arm was missing but his right arm pointed skyward.

  “There!” shouted Reg suddenly, nodding at the Emperor’s pointed finger. Around it was wrapped the now familiar scroll from the Cairo Cat.

  Reg lifted Lottie to the top of the plinth, and she climbed up the statue, finally finding herself on top of Nero’s shoulders.

  She reached out to knock the scroll from his fingers. As she scrambled to get down, she could have sworn she heard a voice whisper:

  “Well done.”

  She looked around, but all she could see was Nero, wearing a small smile.

  Reg and Uncle Bert peered over the scroll, scratching their heads.

  “Let me see!” said Lottie as she rejoined them. They handed it over. It read:

  “Lottie, we have just ten minutes. If you know how to crack that code,” said Uncle Bert, “Please, tell us now!”

  Lottie concentrated, focussing only on the clue. It was just letters and numbers, she thought. They might as well face it. All was lost.

  And yet…

  Why were t
here commas at the beginning of the lines? She knew that a comma always went at the end of a line, like in –

  “It’s a poem! But backwards.”

  She read it backwards, but the numbers still didn’t make sense. Reg snatched the scroll from her.

  “She’s right. And the numbers take the place of the vowels: A, E, I, O and U.”

  “So 1 is ‘A’, and 2 is ‘E’?” said Uncle Bert, taking the scroll. He slowly read out the solution.

  “As night draws in,

  It’s time to head,

  Back home again,

  Back to bed.”

  “Back to bed?” said Lottie. Then it dawned on her. She dashed to the main exhibition, where a crowd still waited. Uncle Bert and Reg jogged breathlessly behind her, but she couldn’t wait. Somewhere, a grandfather clock hit the first chime of the hour; time was running out.

  She slid into the hall and ran up onto the podium next to the covered case where the Cairo Cat was supposed to have been revealed an hour ago.

  “Ah, some action finally?” sneered Sir Trevelyan from the back of the room. The crowd laughed.

  Lottie, fixing him with a challenging stare, took a deep breath and addressed the crowd.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the magnificent, the mischievous, the magical – Golden Cat of Cairo!”

  She whipped away the cover on the case, but dared not look. The crowd gasped… and broke into applause. Lottie turned to see the golden statue next to her and sighed with relief. She smiled at the crowd, where Sir Trevelyan frowned with anger. The doors burst open to the side of her and Reg and Uncle Bert entered, out of breath, but smiling.

  Chapter Five

  Uncle Bert and Reg sat at the side of the main hall, looking ready to drop with exhaustion. The exhibition’s launch party was over and now most of the guests were leaving, putting on their coats and strolling off into the night, the cold London air blowing through the hall as they left. Lottie was politely talking to some of the guests and telling them all about their night’s adventure. She wasn’t sure that they all believed her, but it didn’t matter as they all smiled and made nice donations to the museum. She curtsied to a very rich couple as they left and rejoined Reg and Uncle Bert, who were nearly falling asleep.

  “That went well,” she said. Uncle Bert looked up at her in disbelief.

  “Well? Well? In what way did it go well?”

  “We got the Cairo Cat back in time and everyone enjoyed the party. Sounds like a successful night to me!”

  “That blinkin’ Cairo Cat!” said Reg, “I’ve half a mind to put padlocks on that display case to keep it in. Maybe even iron bars!”

  Lottie laughed. “I don’t think that will be necessary!”

  She stopped laughing as she saw Sir Trevelyan Taylor walking over to them. He looked cross.

  “Evening Sir Trev!” said Reg cheerily. The curator ignored him.

  “I don’t know how you pulled it off Bertram, but well done. Everyone is talking about the Golden Cat of Cairo.”

  “Does that mean we can stay in the museum?” asked Lottie. Sir Trevelyan glared at her and reluctantly nodded. They cheered, and Lottie gave Sir Trevelyan a big hug, which he didn’t seem to enjoy.

  “But mark my words,” he said through gritted teeth as he peeled Lottie’s arms from around him. “I’ll find a way to get rid of you. A museum is not a home for a dozy professor and his know-it-all niece. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll –”

  “How’s the donations box looking?” interrupted Uncle Bert.

  “Full,” said Sir Trevelyan.

  “All because of my know-it-all niece and this little kitty,” said Uncle Bert, patting the Cairo Cat’s display case. “Perhaps you should be grateful, hmm?”

  With a final glare, Sir Trevelyan turned and walked away, grumbling.

  “We haven’t heard the last of him,” said Reg.

  “Oh well,” said Uncle Bert. “I’m sure we’ll come up with something if he tries his old tricks again.”

  Lottie relaxed. Her home was safe once more and she had another adventure to write up in her diary. She glanced over to the Cairo Cat, now proudly standing in its display case. She saw another small scroll, half buried in the sand at the statue’s feet. Peering through the glass, Lottie could just make out the message:

  “Reg,” she said with a sigh. “We may need those padlocks after all.”

  Glossary

  Nero The Emperor of Rome who ruled from 54 to 68 AD.

  British Museum A large museum in the centre of London which contains thousands of objects from world history.

  Curator Someone who manages a section in a museum, and oversees the objects there.

  Egypt A country in Northern Africa. In ancient times, it was ruled by the Pharaohs, who built the Pyramids and the Sphinx.

  Inca The ancient civilisation from Peru in South America. They ruled over the area from the 13th century to the 16th century.

  Japan A country in Asia with a rich history and a rising sun on its flag.

  Sudan A country in Northern Africa, to the south of Egypt.

  Did You Know?

  •The Incas were great inventors. They invented panpipes, freeze dried foods and hanging bridges!

  •In ancient Japan, Samurai warriors believed their swords contained spirits and so gave each of their swords a name.

  •It is believed that the first cookbook was published in ancient Rome. It was called De Re Coquinara and gave recipes for dishes such as boiled ostrich!

  •Cats were worshipped as goddesses in ancient Egypt. When a cat died, the members of the family who owned it had to shave off their eyebrows as a sign of mourning.

  Code Breaker

  Use the Caesar Shift code from Chapter Three to decipher this message from Lottie. Remember, take each letter and replace it with the letter that is three letters before it in the alphabet. Good luck!

  A-Maze-ing!

  The Cairo Cat has escaped again! Help Lottie get to the centre of the maze.

  A LOTTIE LIPTON ADVENTURE

  The Secrets of the Stone

  ISBN: 9781472911841

  A mysterious clue appears on the Rosetta Stone.

  Can Lottie Lipton, nine-year-old investigator extraordinaire, solve the clue and beat Bloomsbury Bill?

  This electronic edition published in 2015 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  First published 2015 by

  A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP

  www.bloomsbury.com

  Bloomsbury is a registered trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  Copyright © 2015 A & C Black

  Text copyright © Dan Metcalf

  Illustrations © Rachelle Panagarry

  The moral rights of the author and illustrator have been asserted

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  ISBN 978-1-4729-1178-0

  ePub ISBN: 978-1-4729-1179-7

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