Mikes House of Cartoons - Duck Tales & Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers Site - Fan Fiction Novel by Engineer Jess, The Secret of the Black Pyramid Secret of the Black Pyramid - by Jessie Darkmatter
1. THE VALUE OF MAKING AUCTIONS
It was a quiet Sunday afternoon in Duckburg. The warm wind of late summer brushed by as Scrooge MacDuck wandered in the city park searching for dropped dimes. Today’s balance hadn’t been any remarkable, moreover it had cost too much for its value. Scrooge had found a coin, alright, but it was one of those tricky ones, glued purposefully on one of the park benches. With huge effort, he had been able to loose it from the wood surface.
The old banker was a bit tired because of the warmth and quietness of the atmosphere. Taking steps there along the sand lane, he noticed a large tent on the nearby grass plain. There stood some sign beside it.
“What might be there?” he pondered and took a shortcut through the grass. The plate told him in red letters: ‘Slick O’Soap’s Auction: Only Today! Come and make the best findings of the year! Our speciality: the estate of Professor Seth Dustscull!'
“Bursting bagpipes! Well… auctions are always interesting…” the duck thought and peeked into the tent. It was almost empty. At the back wall was a scaffold where a fat pig in a fast and enthusiastic accent presented all kinds of items. Behind him, there was a heap of that old junk. At the ground in front of O’Soap, the auctioneer, were several rows of chairs. All the visitors the tent had, seemed to be more or less asleep. A couple of beggars sprawled in the front row. A granny was knitting a sock in the last one. The only reason she was here was that she wanted to get into a cooler place from the sunshine out there.
MacDuck sat down to one of the benches to listen to the report about the auctioned items. There were Attila the Hun’s watch, the dentures of Caesar, a button from Napoleon’s coat… and such other as remarkable objects. Scrooge’s somnolence gradually got the upper hand of him, because there seemed to be nothing interesting in sight. When O’Soap turned to present the estate of this one professor, MacDuck was in full sleep.
The voice of the auctioneer was coming like from a hollow tube to Scrooge’s ears. “… now a trunk filled with the most intriguing objects the world can carry on it’s surface! An old umbrella! A pickaxe for digging! A…” The banker should not have awakened at this point. He stretched his arms and yawned long, then opened his eyes to hear the displeasing news.
“The trunk of professor Dustscull is sold to the old gentleman right there with 50 bucks!” O’Soap had got the impression of Scrooge’s rather visual wake-up that he wanted to buy the item with any price.
Scrooge’s eyes went wide. “Oh, no…”
---Later that day, the Money Bin---
Scrooge walked nervously and angrily a circle around the floor. His nephew, Donald Duck, cleaned some old cobwebs away from the ceiling, standing on a ladder that seemed to be too bad stuff even for a landfill. He worked now for his uncle, because of being penniless, again.
“You know, Uncle, you could have used those 50 bucks to buy me a new ladder!” Donald glared at his relative from the highnesses.
“50 bucks for ladders? Are you insane? When I was in the Klondike as a young man, I…”
“Yes, yes, I know that mantra”, Donald sighed.
“Don’t talk about money loss to me, any more, today. This rubbish I got from that con artist, is already making enough rain clouds upon my head!” the elder duck spat and kicked the trunk. It keeled over and let some items roll on the floor. Scrooge therefore hurt his web and danced with one leg for a while. “That dratted box! Wonder how it can be so heavy when it only consists of such trash!” he moaned.
Donald came down from his place to see what was wrong. Pouting to all those useless goods, he emptied the trunk to see what kind of material it was. “Plain wood. But it is really heavy.”
Suddenly a gleam ignited in Scrooge’s eyes. “Wait… there’s something peculiar in that thing. Why is the bottom so thick…? Hmm…” Soon he was squatting on the floor beside his nephew, trying to see if the little theory he had in mind was true. The knocks he did with his knuckles to the wood, seemed to prove it.
“This thing has to have some kind of a double-basis. It sounds completely hollow.”
“You’re right…” Donald added. “Maybe there’s a button that releases…” he let his fingers run along one side and unintentionally came to release a spring mechanism that opened the bottom in two halves. A black cloud of remains was blown straight against Scrooge’s face. He hackled and cursed and was about to give a whack to Donald with his cane, when he noticed the results.
Under the midsole of the trunk lied a stone tablet and a heap of stale papers.
“Through the tartan, what is this?” Scrooge picked up the stone, repairing the position of his glasses. “Hieroglyphs. Egyptian hieroglyphs.”
“But didn’t the Egyptians use papyrus, not stone, to write down?” Donald astonished.
“This seems to be a piece of some decoration, this is not a plain stone tablet. Someone has chopped this off some wall.” Scrooge turned the item over and checked out the ragged backside.
In the meantime Donald had studied some of the papers that he had dug out of the trunk. He read aloud the first lines of the yellowed ink text: “20. Mars, 1938… what I have come now to conclusion, the tablet tells the location of one of the lost mysteries of the ancient world, the black pyramid, that was taken by the sands right after it was sealed and the Pharaoh Khufu had been taken to the eternal rest. It is a historical fact that this place exists, although it has been considered mainly as a joke in the archaeological domains. What is the most intriguing, it might be that the property left from this mighty Pharaoh, might still be untouched by the grave-robbers… ”
Donald raised his regard to meet Scrooge’s eyes. It was sure, that the old treasure-hunter had now sniffed an opportunity for a great adventure. True that was, as he now nearly collared his nephew, while declaring out loud: “Khufu? Come on, we are going to need the help of your nephews with this: the Junior Woodhuck Manual never has failed to explain the riddles of the lost times!”
Soon the front door of the Money Bin banged after two rushing ducks that headed straight to Donald’s home.
