Vandemark College is located on the outskirts of the town of Portland, Maine. During the summer before classes begin, the small campus seems especially quiet and deserted. Phineas and Althea spend their time reading, cycling, and walking into town for ice cream. The only diversion Mr. Hall can offer is the chance to watch people fly kites over the weekend. However, when they enter the basement room which houses the Egyptian mummy, they seem to enter another world; there is a sense of awe, a sense of being bound to ancient times, which they all feel in the presence of the mummy. But this is a contemporary novel, and reality soon intrudes in the form of a break-in, a robbery, and an attempted murder.