I decided to wait until Saturday to spring my plan on Dad.
It was torture. I wanted to run up to him and yell, “Dad! I just made the archeological discovery of the century! You’re going to be famous!” But that would have left me with a lot of explaining to do. Saturday would be the most natural time to just “happen by” Dad’s office, so I just had to wait.
My father used his Saturday mornings to catch up on things he hadn’t been able to get to during the week. He’d be off to his office by eight, and then show up home for lunch and be ready to start his weekend.
It was around eleven when I tapped on the door to his office.
“Hello? Come in.” I pushed open the door. “Ahoy! Marcus m’boy! And what could it be that draws you to visit me in my lair on this fine day?”
I looked around his office. Total chaos.
Dad is actually fairly neat around the home, no piles of socks or dirty dishes or anything, but in his office? Forget about it!
Books, papers, file folders, and God-knows-what were piled everywhere.
Ah, but that suited my purpose perfectly.
I leaned against a table. “I was just passing through,” I said casually, “and I thought I’d stop by and say ‘Howdy’. So how’s the book coming?”
Okay. That was mean. I couldn’t help it. The devil made me do it.
Dad’s smile faded slightly, but quickly he was able to force it back into place. “The book? Uh, splendidly, just splendidly.”
“Gee, Dad, that’s great.”
Gee? Why was I talking like an old Archie comic book?. I figured I’d better get on with it before he started getting suspicious.
“Uh, it’s a nice day out there if it doesn’t rain.” Lame, I know, but it did the trick. Dad turned and looked out the window to verify my weather report.
That gave me my opportunity to “accidentally” knock a pile of books off the table.
“Dang!” I said. “Don’t you ever clean up around here?”
Dad shrugged. “If I did I’d never find anything again.”
I bent down and began shuffling through the heap of books I’d just spilled on the floor. Lifting one particularly dusty old volume, I somehow discovered a couple of folded pieces of typing paper stashed between the pages.
Now how did those get in there?
“What’s this?” I asked in my best imitation of mild surprise. “It looks like a letter. Whoa, it’s got a date on it: March 3, 1913.”
That did the trick. See, my father is a sucker for antiquity. Anything labeled with a date over fifty years old is guaranteed to get his attention.
“Hello. Let’s have a look at that.”
“Sure Dad,” I said easily, and handed over the papers.
“My dear Professor Fontaine,” he began. “You will be pleased to hear I have made a most remarkable discovery…” As he read further, his eyebrows kept creeping higher and higher up his face until I started worrying he would run out of forehead.
“Eugnosis of Alexandria!” he exclaimed. “Who the heck is that?”
I cut in. “What have you got there?”
“I can’t say as I know exactly,” he answered. “It appears to be a letter from a…” he paused to find the name. “…Dr. Everett Lewes. Now where have I seen that name? No matter. Anyway, he seems to be describing the discovery of an ancient manuscript in the Egyptian desert. He says it’s by one…uh…Eugnosis of Alexandria. Strange, I’ve never heard that name before.”
Dad continued reading. “He claims that this is a manuscript by a previously undiscovered Greek philosopher! And, get this, he says he has forwarded it here to Gierman College! Good God! How is it that I’ve never heard any of this before? I’m supposed to be an expert in this sort of thing!”
I reached out my hand. “Can I see that letter?”
He handed it over, which left him holding the second letter, the one written on old Gierman College stationery.
As he began reading the second letter, I pretended to read the first one.
Of course, I didn’t need to read it to know what it said. After all, I’d written it myself.
“Whoa!” I said, as convincingly as possible. “This is something!” I looked over at Dad. “What’s that other paper?”
. He scrunched his face to read my other masterpiece. “I’m not sure,” he said. “It looks to be some kind of official memo from a Dr. Gierman stating that after the sudden death of this Professor Fontaine fellow…”
I interrupted. “You mean the guy that received this first letter?”
“Correct. It says that after Dr. Fontaine’s death, all of his papers should be boxed and stored in room 318 of the Gierman Library.”
Dad looked up. “Strange, it goes on to say that in no uncertain terms should Dr. Fontaine’s papers be catalogued and placed in the library’s regular collection. Now what’s that all about?”
I shrugged.
Dad began pacing. “Would this manuscript Professor Lewes described be included with Fontaine’s papers? Why weren’t they put in the library’s collection? Did this Dr. Gierman know about the manuscript? Great Caesar’s ghost! If such a thing were to be authentic…”
He froze where he stood and stared at me wide-eyed. “Could this manuscript still be sitting up there in room…” he looked at the paper in his hand. “…room 318?”
“Whoa, Dad! This is so cool! A mystery! Nancy Drew! Hardy Boys! ‘The Case of the Missing Manuscript’!”
Dad laughed and opened the door.
“Come along, Watson,” he called. “The game’s afoot!”
I had to nearly jog to keep up with him as we crossed the campus.
“So how do we find this room 318, Holmes?” I asked. “And how do we get in?”
Oops! Did I say too much? “If it’s locked, that is.”
Dad didn’t notice anything amiss. “Elementary, my dear Watson. I have been issued a master key which allows me complete access to all of the rooms in the Gierman Library.”
“Brilliant, Holmes!” I exclaimed. “How do you do it?”
Zach was waiting for us in the library.
We exchanged our silent greetings.
He followed along as Dad and I made our way up the stairs to the third floor; this time without having to act like ninjas. “The floor’s empty,” Zach said. “You folks have the whole place t’yourselves.”
Dad called out. “Here we go, room 318.”
Dad’s key easily opened the door and we entered the old storeroom.
I made a pretense of being shocked at all the clutter, but left it to Dad to say anything about it. “Holy Moley! Would you look at all this crap!”
“I say, Holmes,” I said, “we’d best split up or we’ll be here all week. I’ll start back by that window.”
Dad nodded. “Excellent, Watson,” he said, moving over to a pile of boxes. “I shall begin over here.”
I went back to the pile of old yearbooks. I figured I’d give it 15 or 20 minutes before I made my discovery.
I didn’t want it to look too obvious.
We both went to work. “Yearbooks!” I said. “Jeez, there must be a hundred boxes of them here!” I started picking up boxes and moving them aside.
Fifteen minutes later, Dad was only on his second box. “Good Lord it’s VonZiegler’s commentary on ‘Caesar’s Commentaries’! A first edition, no less!”
“Now that’s a rare thing,” Zach added. “I started that back in 1921 and never did get to finish it.”
Great. Dad and Zach could stop to read every dusty out of print text book in the room. If it was left up to those two, we’d find the trunk just in time to celebrate my 200th birthday.
Time to cut to the chase. I climbed back into the space between the boxes of yearbooks and the back wall.
“I say, Holmes,” I called, “come have a look at this.”
Dad dropped the moldy old textbook he’d been thumbing through and hurried over to me.
“What have you got there, Watson?”
“It looks like there’s an old trunk buried under all these boxes.”
Dad wedged his head and shoulders into the space. “Hello, look at this sticker! Alexandria, Egypt! By George! Watson, you might have something here. Give me a hand and let’s move these boxes!”
There was no more dawdling over old books. Dad and I worked quickly, and in less than twenty minutes, we were hauling the trunk over to the center of the room.
The old trunk was a little over four feet long and about three feet wide. It wasn’t all that heavy, but was locked.
It was sealed with an oversized padlock that looked old, but plenty sturdy.
Dad studied the situation. “I suppose there’s no hope of finding a key,” he mused. He looked around the room. “What I’d like to do would be to take this thing home, but I’m not all that certain I’m prepared to explain why I’m hauling an antique trunk out of the library.”
I could see how that could be awkward.
Dad stood thinking. After a minute or so he clapped his hands decisively.
“Okay,” he said, “here’s the plan. Let’s square this mess up and leave the trunk here. We’ll bring the car around after dinner, just before the library closes and see if we can get this thing down the back stairs and out to the loading dock without being seen.”
It sounded like a good plan to me.
Besides, I had a pretty good idea of how to take care of the not-being-seen part.
With Zach’s help, Dad’s plan went down smoothly. We told Mom about what we were up to at dinner and she insisted on coming along.
“Then who will remain to post our bail, should we get caught?” Dad joked.
Mom looked at him hard. “You just finished explaining in great detail how this little maneuver was perfectly legal.”
Dad put up his hand. “A joke, my dear, a mere joke. I am simply availing myself of certain uncatalogued material for scholarly purposes. They shall be duly returned. It’s all entirely proper…I think.”
With Mom’s help, we had the storeroom tidied up in no time.
We then started lugging the trunk down the stairs. There was one dicey moment when Zach warned me that two librarians were hanging out by the door to the loading dock taking a smoke break.
I stalled for time, first by claiming a backache, then by stopping to retie my shoes. Finally, Zach gave me the all-clear.
“Like clockwork, it was!” Dad exulted as we drove away.
“Another success for the Impossible Missions Force,” I added.
Mom rolled her eyes. “If you get any ideas about lifting the Hope Diamond, count me out.”
When we got home there was still the matter of the lock, but Mom dug a hacksaw out of her toolbox and, I thought Dad and Zach would explode with impatience. Finally, the blade cut through the last stubborn bits of steel and the lock fell away.
“Bravo!” Dad exclaimed as he hurriedly opened the trunk.
A thick bundle of papers covered in Greek type script lay right on top.
“That would be Professor Lewes’ copy of Eugnosis of Alexandria’s manuscript,” Zach pointed out
Dad snatched it up immediately and began reading, while Mom and I continued to explore the trunk.
Beneath Lewes’s manuscript there were three leather-bound notebooks. Mom opened one of them as I probed further into the trunk’s contents.
“These must be Lewes’ journals,” Mom stated. “You can follow his itinerary: Rome, Athens, Troy, Ephesus…there are weather reports, expense accounts. It looks like this guy accounted for every dime he spent!”
“That’s Lewes alright,” Zach put it. “He was always a thorough scholar.”
“Excellent!” Dad smiled. “Let’s hope the rest of his notes are as precise as these. I’ll need to verify the authenticity of this manuscript and a quality record from the late Professor Lewes is essential to the task.”
There were some of Professor Lewes’s personal effects, an old passport, some important looking papers in foreign languages, even a cool old pocket watch. But I set all those things aside quickly.
I knew what I was looking for.
Then I came across an ancient cardboard box. Pulling it out, I opened it and found it filled with photographs. 8x10’s. There looked to be about a hundred of them.
I lifted the top one an examined it.
There was a small number “1” scrawled up in the corner. It looked to be a photograph of a ragged piece of paper covered in writing. The script showed up quite clearly in the photo. Even I could recognize it. It was Greek.
“What’s this?” I asked.
Zach started to explain, “Near as Henry Clay and I could figure, Prof Lewes..”
Dad interrupted his story by taking one of the photos from me and examining it. “Oh my,” he said. “Now I am impressed. Our Professor Lewes was quite thorough. I’d guess that this would be a photograph…a quite excellent photograph, I might add…of Eugnosis’ original scroll.”
He went on. “This is precisely the passage I just finished reading in the typed script. It’s an introduction, let me translate. ‘Herein, good reader, you will find collected…uh…an account of the travels and commentaries of Eugnosis of Alexandria as written in his own hand…”
Dad froze. “In his own hand?” He leapt out of his chair and bent over the trunk.
Next to the box of photos, there was a clutter of crumpled newspapers. Dad pawed through them quickly. As he tossed them aside I picked one up. I didn’t recognize the writing at all. It looked like squiggles.
Zach broke in from just over my shoulder. “Arabic,” he said.
“I suppose you read Arabic too,” I telepathed.
Zach laughed. “Not yet. I reckon that’s probably just padding to protect old Eugnosis’ scrolls.”
Just then Dad sat up. “Eureka!”
He was holding a metal cylinder about as big around as an oatmeal box, but longer.
“Dare I open it?” Dad asked.
“Dare you not?” Mom answered. “After all this work, holding out on us could be hazardous to your health.”
“My dear, your violent threats aside, we must proceed carefully. If this is indeed a 2000-year-old scroll, it could be easily damaged if it’s mishandled. One would need the proper equipment, a climatically controlled laboratory…”
“Look,” Mom said, “you can at least open the cylinder and see if there’s anything inside.”
After a minute, Dad agreed that merely peeking inside should be safe enough.
“Just to see if there’s anything in there,” he added.
There was.
“What is this? Papyrus?” Dad asked, looking at the contents of the cylinder. It looked like a rolled up paper scroll to me, but then papyrus was the plant favored by ancient Egyptians for paper-making.
Dad squinted at the cylinder. “No, not papyrus, linen. That’s odd. It still appears to be quite supple. Neither cracked nor brittle.”
He paused thoughtfully. “I really shouldn’t do this, but it looks safe enough. Marcus, get a clean bed sheet and spread it on the kitchen table. Make sure the table is clean and dry. Sharon, my dear, I believe you have a pair of cotton gloves…”
“Hmm,” Mom said. “I’m pretty sure I know where I put them.”
“Excellent!” Dad said heartily. He was clearly enjoying himself. “You shall do the honors. We can’t have the oil from our fingers contacting the material.”
Mom and I set up our impromptu laboratory in the kitchen.
Dad handed her the cylinder and she carefully tilted it down and laid the scroll on the sheet-covered table. As she did, small flecks of some kind of material began to spill out.
“Wait!” Dad called. He ran to a drawer and returned with some wax paper. “I want to catch that stuff. I’ve got an idea.”
We laid out the scroll and, with excruciating care, unrolled about fourteen inches of it.
Dad leaned over Mom’s shoulder and read silently. “Yes, that’s it, all right. It’s the same text as in the photograph. You can even see that little smudge mark in the corner.”
Dad clapped his hands together. “Excellent! However, we had better not push our luck. Let’s put this thing away before we do any damage.”
Carefully, we packed away the contents of the trunk, all except for Professor Lewes’ manuscript. Dad took it in his hand and immediately headed for the sofa. He stretched out and began reading, while Zach hovered invisibly over his shoulder.
They were still there when I finally crawled off to bed.