The Vandemark Mummy by Cynthia Voigt Page B

flashlight.”
    â€œI’m not a professor,” Mr. Hall said, “just an instructor. Call me Sam.” He led the way inside.
    Lights shone in the corridors, and they hurried along, turning left, turning right, turning left and then right again. At the door, they all stopped. The door was just slightly ajar. On the door itself, and on the frame, there were concave dents, like a car after a fender bender.
    â€œI figure, he must have used a crowbar. The same kind of marks are on the door from the library.”
    â€œSo he got back into the cellar from inside the library?” Althea asked. “How did he get in the library?”
    â€œGood thinking, young lady. A window, it must have been left unlocked, open, into the reading room.”
    â€œWell,” Mr. Hall said, and pushed with his shoulder against the door. It swung open. He pulled his sweatshirt down over his hand to switch on the light.
    At first glance, the room looked exactly the way they’d left it the evening before. The mummy lay on her table, the artifacts were lined up on the shelves. While his father and sister went to look at the shelves, Phineas checked on the mummy. She looked up at him, with her sad little smile. She hadn’t been touched.
    â€œI think the alarm probably scared him off,” Mr. Lewis said from the door. “Everything present and accounted for Pro—Sam?”
    â€œAs far as I can tell. Althea?”
    She nodded.
    â€œIt took me maybe five minutes to get over here once the alarm sounded in the office. I figure he’s long gone.”
    â€œIf the door was like that, he probably never even went inside,” Phineas said.
    â€œMy guess exactly,” Mr. Lewis said. “Of course, I could be surprised. I’ve been surprised a few times in my life.”
    â€œI thought things were pretty crime free up here,” Phineas said. “Who do you think—?”
    Mr. Lewis shook his head. “No idea.”
    â€œIt’s a good thing you put in that alarm,” Althea said.
    â€œIt’s an even better thing only the four of us knew about it,” her father answered.
    â€œYou two kids,” Mr. Lewis said, “why don’t you go back to bed, now you’ve seen what there is to see?”
    Phineas hesitated. He would rather have stayed, to find out what it was like being questioned by the police. One look at Mr. Lewis’s face, however, convinced him that it was a good idea to go back home. Mr. Lewis was looking him straight in the eye, waiting to be obeyed. He looked like the kind of man accustomed to having people do what he told them.
    Mr. Lewis thought he was hesitating for a different reason. “You’ll be perfectly safe, walking back. You’ll be fine alone in the house.”
    â€œThat wasn’t—” Phineas didn’t want Mr. Lewis thinking he was afraid, but his father cut him off.
    â€œTell me something, Dan, why is it that everyone seems to know all about my private life? I haven’t even been here four weeks.”
    â€œIs that getting to you?” Mr. Lewis asked. “If it is, myadvice is, you better get used to it. Vandemark’s a small place. You show up with two kids and no wife—or wife equivalent these days—and people want to know why. If it helps, the gossip’s mostly done with good intentions. There’s never more than just a little spicing of malice.”
    The two men looked at one another, and laughed. “Okay,” Mr. Hall said. “Then how about you? How long have you been here? I know you’re ex-service, but what else is there? A family? Where did you serve? What branch were you in?”
    Phineas and Althea left them to it.
    *  *  *
    They walked across the empty campus without speaking. Phineas wasn’t sleepy, just the opposite. The night silence, the trees looming over the deserted pathway, the vast dark sky full of stars—it all made him feel as if