So, did we solve the puzzle?” M.E. asked.
“The Eye of Horus,” Quinn said. “That has to be it.”
“I guess so,” Cody said, looking over the answer, “but it seems like something’s missing. It was almost too easy.”
“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Luke said. “We show it to Ms. Stad and see what she says.”
The kids found their teacher in the museum lobby, checking the papers of a few other students who had also completed the puzzle. Ms. Stad read over their paper, but instead of a prize, they each received a small card with a question mark on the front. Cody took her card and flipped it over. On the other side was another drawing of an eye, but this one looked different from the one in the triangle. It was fancy, with black strokes around the lid, a long eyebrow, a curl coming out of the eye, and what seemed like a tear. It reminded her of the necklace Ms. Cassatt was wearing.
On the bottom of the picture were the words “How many Eyes of Horus can you find in the museum?”
Cody read aloud the note written underneath the drawing. “The Eye of Horus was often found carved or drawn on an amulet, and was used for protection, power, and health. If you look closely, you’ll see the design is actually made up of seven different hieroglyphs used for mathematical measurement.”
“Interesting,” Quinn said, after Cody finished reading. “Well, let’s go see if we can find all the Eyes.”
They returned to the first of the four rooms and began scouting for Eyes of Horus. It wasn’t an easy task, since there seemed to be Eyes all over the place. After locating as many as they could find, the Code Busters marked them on their papers and headed for the next room. Finally, in the last room, Cody spotted another Eye of Horus artifact, but there was something odd about this one. It sat alone on a pedestal inside a clear case the size of an upended shoe box.
“This looks almost exactly like the necklace Ms. Cassatt has on,” Cody said. “And like the Eye of Horus Dr. Jordan was working on. Only the iris is green like Ms. Cassatt’s necklace, not blue like the one in the lab.”
Cody tapped one side of the case that protected the valuable artifact. A small side door popped open.
Cody jerked her hand back and glanced around.
“Whoa!” Quinn said, staring at the case.
“What’s wrong?” M.E. asked.
“The side of the case—it opened!” Cody said. She glanced around for security guards, but they were nowhere in sight.
“Uh-oh. You busted it,” Luke said, his eyes wide.
“I did not!” Cody protested. She tapped the door to close it, but instead it ricocheted and bounced back open again. “Somebody left it unlocked!”
“Seriously?” M.E. said, staring at the Eye.
“Dude!” Luke said. “Anybody could just walk in here and steal this thing!”
M.E. reached up as if in a trance and stuck her hand inside the case. She lifted the artifact before Cody could stop her. “It’s so beautiful.”
“Put that back!” Cody whispered to M.E. She glanced around to see if anyone was watching, but the other students were busy hunting for other Eyes and didn’t seem to notice them. “You’re going to get us in trouble!”
To Cody’s horror, M.E. flipped over the Eye of Horus and studied it up-close. “I just want to look for a moment. Look, there’s something written on the bottom!”
M.E. raised her palm and showed the tiny carved drawings to the others.
“Hieroglyphs!” Cody whispered, suddenly excited to see the hidden inscription.
“What’s it say?” Luke asked.
Cody pulled out her decoder card and quickly translated the symbols:
Code Buster’s Key and Solution found on this page, this page.
“How weird,” Cody said. “What’s it supposed to mean?”
Quinn spoke up. “ ‘An eye for an eye’ means that when someone hurts another person, he or she gets a similar punishment—or something like that.”
“That’s weird,” M.E. said. “I wonder why it says that.”
“Guys, watch out!” Luke whispered. “One of the security guards just came into the room. You better put that thing back! Fast! Or he’ll think we’re trying to steal it.”
The kids huddled around the display case to block the view of anyone nearby. M.E. set the Eye back on its small stand, and Cody forced the slightly warped door closed.
Just then a voice came from behind them. “So, what are you students up to?”
Cody jumped. The Code Busters spun around to find Dr. Jordan staring down at them. He seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. Cody thought she saw an odd smile on his face, as if he knew what they’d been doing. Had the security guard said something to him? Or had it been her imagination, and her guilty conscience?
“We were … just looking at this Eye,” she said. “It’s pretty cool.”
“Ah, yes. That’s one of the artifacts I was working on this morning. It’s beautiful, isn’t it, now that it’s all cleaned up and back on its pedestal?”
M.E. started to ask, “What does the writing on the bot—”
Cody cut her off. “—on the bottle … over there—” She pointed wildly across the room, hoping at least one of the displays contained an antique bottle, since she’d seen several throughout the museum. They couldn’t let Dr. Jordan know they’d opened the display case and touched the Eye. If anything happened to it, they’d be blamed.
Cody led Dr. Jordan over to another case where a few students lingered, found a bottle that happened to be covered in hieroglyphs, and pointed to it. Moments later, more students entered the room, distracting Dr. Jordan from the display case. The Code Busters quietly backed out of the room.
“That was close,” Cody whispered.
“Sorry,” M.E. said quietly. “I almost gave us away!”
“No problem,” Quinn said to M.E. He turned to Cody. “Good thinking, Cody, distracting him like that.”
“Should we tell someone that the door on the case is loose?” Luke asked. “I mean, anybody could steal that Eye of Horus with that door unlocked.”
Cody thought for a moment. “Good point. How about we tell Ms. Stad, and she can tell Ms. Cassatt, since she’s in charge of the museum? Hopefully, Ms. Stad will leave us out of it.”
Luke and Quinn nodded, but M.E. was staring at her hand, frowning.
“M.E., what’s wrong?” Cody asked.
She held up her hand. “Look!”
Cody examined her friend’s fingers, then sniffed them. M.E.’s fingertips looked as if they’d been smudged with brown ink, and they smelled like chemicals.
“How did you get your hand so dirty?” Cody asked.
M.E. shrugged. “I don’t know. All I did was pick up that artifact. I don’t remember touching anything else.”
Cody looked at her three code-busting friends. While the other students stood across the room listening to Dr. Jordan talk about one of the artifacts, Cody stole over to the case again. She glanced around, then pulled open the unlocked door, reached in, and ran her index finger over the top of the Eye. Removing her hand from the case, she closed the door, then held up her hand.
Her fingertip was brown. The same shade of brown as the amulet.
“Guys,” she whispered. “I don’t think the color is supposed to come off like that.”
M.E. checked her hand again, then looked at the others.
“Do you think that Eye is a fake?” Luke asked.
Cody shrugged. “What do we do? If we tell the museum people we touched it, we could get in trouble. But if it’s a fake, wouldn’t they want to know? The forger could be a thief, and get away with stealing valuable art.”
“That writing on the bottom was weird,” M.E. said. “An eye for an i?”
“Shh!” Quinn said. “Dr. Jordan is watching us again. I’m sure he thinks we’re up to something. We need to move.”
Cody turned around and saw the museum guy staring at them strangely. A chill ran down her back. “Come on, it’s time to turn in our assignments to Ms. Stad. We’ll figure out what to do during lunch. Follow me.”
Cody led her friends out of the room and into the lobby, where other students had already gathered with their teachers. Luke and Quinn joined Mr. Pike’s group, while Cody and M.E. headed for Ms. Stad’s class. When all the students were seated on the floor, Ms. Stad asked, “So, did everyone find all of the Eyes of Horus in the museum?”
Hands shot up.
“How many did you find, Ryan?” she asked the blond kid with glasses, sitting in the middle.
“Eleven!”
“Good,” Ms. Stad said. “Anyone else find a different number?”
“Our group found twelve,” said Stephanie.
“Nice,” Ms. Stad said. “Anyone else?”
M.E. raised her hand. “We found thirteen.”
“Wow!” exclaimed Ms. Stad. “Are you sure?”
M.E. nodded and held up her paper.
“Well, believe it or not, our parent volunteers only found twelve when they counted them earlier,” Ms. Stad said. “I guess your group found one we missed. Hmm. I wonder if the number thirteen is a coincidence.”
Cody remembered the number of thirteens they’d found on the dollar bill. Interesting how that number kept coming up.
“Did you know that many cultures consider thirteen a number associated with luck?” Ms. Stad asked. “Some say the Egyptians were the first people to become superstitious about the number. They thought it brought good luck and immortality, and was related to the thirteenth stage of life—the afterlife. Later, the number was associated with death. Other cultures think the number brings bad luck. Can you think of some examples of bad luck associated with thirteen?”
Lyla raised her hand. “Friday the thirteenth!”
“Yes!” Ms. Stad said. “Some people believe that’s an unlucky day.”
Bradley raised his hand. “My dad’s office building doesn’t have a thirteenth floor because it’s supposed to be bad luck. It just goes from twelve to fourteen.”
“Great example,” Ms. Stad said. “Many hotels, apartment buildings, and office buildings don’t have a thirteenth floor. Isn’t that interesting?”
The students grinned and nodded.
“By the way,” Ms. Stad continued, “many of you students are thirteen years old. How many of you think it’s a lucky number?”
A few hands went up. But Cody was having trouble paying attention. She looked at the stain on her fingertip and rubbed it with her thumb. The color had dried and wouldn’t come off.
Why is there fresh paint or ink on that artifact? And why is the case loose? Did a thief really steal the Eye of Horus and replace it with a fake?
And if so, then who?
Cody thought Dr. Jordan was the most likely person. He was the one working on a similar artifact in the conservation room. He had access to the displays in the museum. Plus, he knew all about creating forgeries. And he seemed to enjoy riddles, like that hieroglyphic tattoo on his neck. “An eye for an i” sounded like a riddle to Cody.
He’d also been watching the Code Busters when they gathered around that plastic case. Cody wondered if he had ink stains on his fingertips. No, she remembered he’d been wearing latex gloves. But Ms. Cassatt said he was an expert on forgeries.…
“Cody?” Ms. Stad said, interrupting her thoughts.
M.E. nudged her and whispered, “She asked you a question.”
“Oh, sorry, Ms. Stadelhofer. What did you say?” Cody said.
“I asked you a riddle. ‘If you see my face, you can see twelve but not thirteen. What am I?’ ”
Cody tried to think. A face? Without thirteen? It made no sense. Hands shot up around her. She finally shrugged and said, “I … I don’t know.”
Ms. Stad called on Lyla, who said, “A clock!”
“Correct! Students, I want you to keep your eye on the clock. It’s time for lunch—and more conundrums, enigmas, and riddles. Please take a handout, then gather your lunch bags, go outside to the courtyard, and return in half an hour with your solutions to these questions. After you’ve solved them, we’ll talk about how mummies are made—and more.” She smiled mysteriously as she passed out a sheet of paper to each student.
Cody and the other Code Busters headed outside and found a bench where they could eat their lunches. While Quinn, Luke, and M.E. read over the questions and brainstormed answers, Cody noticed the two guards talking to each other. She overheard the man say to the woman, “… losing money if they don’t get that tunnel cleaned out … may have to close …”
She wondered if the museum was in some kind of trouble. Was the tunnel really that important for attracting visitors?
“Earth to Cody!” M.E. said, bringing her back to the moment. “Come on. We need help solving these.”
Cody blinked several times. “Sorry. I just can’t help thinking about that unlocked case and the Eye of Horus inside.”
“We’ll deal with that when we’re done with the assignment, okay?” Quinn said. “We got the first one—it was easy. But we’re stuck on the second one.”
Cody read over the first coded question written in hieroglyphs to see what she missed:
“Rap music?” Luke suggested. “Get it? Wrap and rap?” They wrote down the answer on their handouts. Cody liked jokes and riddles because they played with words and had double meanings, although at the moment, she was finding it hard to concentrate. Quinn read the rest of the questions aloud and they all jotted down the answers.
2. 
4. 
5. 
6. 
8. 
9. 
Code Buster’s Key and Solution found on this page, this page-this page.
By the time they finally finished the questions, it was time to return to the museum. Cody couldn’t stop thinking about the fake Eye. She had to tell Ms. Stad.
Ms. Stad and Mr. Pike called the kids to attention in the lobby. As Ms. Stad gave the answers to the assignment, the students groaned and laughed at answers. Then it was time to return to the Conservation Lab and learn about mummies.
Cody decided to check on that Eye of Horus one last time before she talked to Ms. Stad, so while the other students filed into the lab, Cody glanced around to see if anyone was watching, then slipped away.
She tiptoed into the empty room and over to the display case. Placing her hand on the door, she tried to pull it open.
It didn’t budge.
She tried again. Nothing.
Then she tried tapping it.
It was stuck tight.
It was locked now. But who had locked it?
The thief, covering his tracks?
If so, how could she and the other Code Busters prove it?
Cody pulled out her cell phone and took a picture of the object … just in case.
