The Mummy's Curse by Penny Warner Page A

now?”
    Cody smiled. “No reason. Just thinking about everything. You know, we never did figure out who drew that last picture in the classroom. Or what it meant.”
    â€œI guess we’ll have to wait until Monday for the answer,” Luke said.
    â€œYeah, but what if Stad doesn’t know either?” Quinn added. “And what if the person who did it never confesses?”
    Cody nodded thoughtfully. “Steganography iswhat started all of this—and that assignment to draw those pictures with hidden messages inside.”
    â€œIn a way, steganography is what led us to discover the fake Eye of Horus,” Luke said. “The Eye was hidden right in front of our eyes. We just didn’t see it at first.”
    â€œWell, I love learning Egyptian hieroglyphs,” M.E. said. “It’s weird that people first thought they were just drawings of birds and hooks and things, but after that guy cracked the code, those symbols turned out to be letters and words.”
    â€œYeah, hieroglyphs are cool,” Cody said, sketching the Eye of Horus in her Code Busters notebook. “We need to use them more when we send secret messages. And steganography, too.”
    â€œExcept that everyone in class has a decoder card for hieroglyphs, so our messages won’t be very secret,” M.E. said, staring at Cody’s drawing. Cody used a ruler as she sketched each part of the Eye. When she was done, she labeled the sections with fractions.

    â€œWhat’s that for?” M.E. asked.
    â€œNothing special,” Cody said. “I just think it’s cool how you can use the Eye to measure stuff if you don’t have a ruler,” Cody said. “Each part measures part of an inch—one-half, one-fourth, one-eighth. Even measurements were hidden in the Eye.”
    â€œThat Eye of Horus is full of mystery,” M.E. said. “And so was Ms. Cassatt.”
    â€œDude, I’m glad we figured out what she was doing with that Eye,” Luke said. “Otherwise, the fake one might never have been discovered.”
    â€œDid Ms. Cassatt really think she wouldn’t get caught?” M.E. asked.
    â€œSeriously!” Luke said. “She even wore the fake in plain sight. Still, she fooled a lot of people.”
    â€œWell,” Quinn said, “we learned other ways to send secret messages, too, like knitting Morse codewith yarn and writing sentences with i’s and t’s for dots and dashes.”
    â€œOr shaving your head and tattooing a message,” Luke added, then he readjusted his Saints cap. “Dude, no way am I shaving my head just to send a code.”
    Cody laughed.
    â€œAnd we learned about hidden symbols on money,” Quinn said. He took out a five-dollar bill and held it up to the light. “There’s the watermark and the security thread. I guess this one isn’t counterfeit.”
    The kids smiled.
    â€œMy favorite code is still hieroglyphs,” Cody said. “There are so many ways you can use them to send messages. Maybe we should invent our own style of glyphs.”
    â€œGreat idea,” M.E. said. “Like, the letter
a
could be a drawing of an apple or an airplane.
B
could be a ball or a bat.
C
could be a cat or a crown.”
    â€œSure,” Cody said, “those are all pretty easy to draw. Or we could just use symbols from the computer. That way, we could send secret computer messages.”
    Quinn got out his Code Busters notebook and a pencil. “Let’s get to work. We’ve got some Code Buster glyphs to create!”
    When the four kids returned to school on Monday, they had completed their own glyph code using computer keyboard symbols and had e-mailed each other secret messages.
    M.E. had written:

    Luke had sent:

    Quinn had typed:

    And Cody had e-mailed:

    Code Buster’s Key and Solution found on this page , this page .
    They’d also printed out some coded messages and hidden them in