The Mystery Of Wandering Caveman Part 6

[image]

[image]

[image]

[image]

[image]

[image]

[image]

[image]

He held up the letter so everyone could see it. It said: I HAVE YOUR CAVE MAN AND I WILL KEEP HIM SAFE UNTILL I GET $10,000. IF YOU DO NOT GIVE ME THE MONY I WILL.

BERY HIM WHERE YOU WILL NEVER FIND HIM. YOU WILL.

HERE MORE FROM ME.

"Now we know," said Jupe. "We know why somebody stole a bunch of bones - to hold them for ransom!"

Chapter 10.

The Four-Toed Footprint "TEN THOUSAND!" cried Eleanor Hess. "It's too much!"

Newt McAfee snorted. "If I catch the guy who did this, I'll fill him full of holes!"

The deputy took the ransom note from McAfee. He glanced at the postmark on the envelope, then read the note again.

"The thief doesn't spell very well," said the deputy. "He's got four words wrong.

He does plan ahead, however. This was mailed yesterday in Centerdale."

He put the letter in his pocket. "Mr. McAfee, who has keys to the museum?"

Newt McAfee took a bunch of keys from his pocket. "I do. This one is it right here," he said. "The only other one's on a board in the kitchen."

Eleanor hurried away to the house, but she was back in a moment to announce that the museum key was missing from the board in the kitchen.

"There was a tag on it," said Eleanor. "I guess that's how the thief knew ..."

"I guess so," said the deputy. "You left your back door open, didn't you? People in this town always leave their doors open. The thief just walked in and picked up the key. Even if you hadn't left the door open, he could have got into the kitchen.

Anybody could open that old-fashioned door lock with a skeleton key - or even a penknife."

Newt and Thalia McAfee withdrew to their house, completely crestfallen, and Eleanor went with them. The Three Investigators climbed to their loft and sat down near the window. Jupe scowled at his friends.

"I wonder," he said, "who knew about the key in the kitchen?"

"Who knew?" Pete echoed. "Hey, would anyone have to know? Lots of people keep their spare keys in the kitchen, and if the door was so easy to -"

"You're going to say that anyone could have taken the key," said Jupe.

"Unfortunately that's true. But there's another thing that makes me wonder. There's the footprint in the cave."

Bob looked surprised. "What about it?" he wanted to know. "It's the thief's print, and he was wearing tennis shoes or running shoes. So what?"

"Remember how the cave looked last night?" said Jupe. "When McAfee first showed us around?"

Pete and Bob both looked puzzled.

"The earth around the bones was all trampled," said Jupe. He shut his eyes as if he were picturing the fossils half-buried in the earth. "Then John the Gypsy had a nightmare in the middle of the night, and he claimed the cave man got up and walked away. Then McAfee opened the museum and we all saw the cave man again. That time, were there footprints?"

Pete and Bob frowned. Then Pete said, "No. No, you're right. But that means ...

that means that McAfee must have tidied up - brushed the earth smooth around the bones."

"We'll see," said Jupe.

He climbed down from the loft and jogged across to the McAfee house and pounded on the door.

Thalia McAfee answered the knock and her husband appeared in the doorway. He and Jupe exchanged a few words. Jupe turned and hurried back to the barn . . .

"McAfee says he didn't do any tidying up in the cave," Jupe reported to his friends, "and he says John the Gypsy couldn't have. He never left John alone in there - not even for a minute."

"So that means that during the night, somebody went in there and wiped away those footprints," said Pete. He gulped. "That doesn't make sense. The door was locked. Unless the ... the cave man did did get up. But that's impossible!" get up. But that's impossible!"

"Well, somebody left a footprint in the meadow, at any rate," said Jupe. "I'm going down to the village for a few minutes. I saw a hobby shop yesterday on one of the side streets, and I want to get something there. You stay here and keep your eyes open."

Jupe vanished down the ladder again, and this time he was gone for almost half an hour. When he came back, he had a package. "Plaster of Paris," he said. "I'm going to make a cast of that footprint in the meadow."

He began to rummage among the odds and ends on the workbench in the barn, and soon he had an empty paint can and several pieces of wood of varying lengths.

Jupe poured plaster of Paris into the can and wet it with water from the outside tap on McAfee's house. Then he stirred it with a stick until it was about as thick as melted ice cream.

"What do you expect to prove with all of this?" asked Pete as the boys set out across the meadow.

"I don't know," said Jupe. "Perhaps nothing. But a barefooted person walked here, and I think we'd better have some proof of it before the footprint gets trampled or blown away in the wind."

When the boys found the footprint again, Jupe knelt and sprayed it with a can of hair spray that he had also bought in town.

"What's the hair spray for?" asked Pete.

"To seal the footprint and keep the plaster from picking up all sorts of dirt and debris," said Jupe.

Next Jupe fashioned a rude frame with four wooden slats from the workbench. He held the pieces of wood together with masking tape and placed the frame around the footprint.

When everything was ready, Jupe carefully poured a layer of plaster of Paris over the footprint. He put a few twigs into the plaster to reinforce the cast and waited for the first plaster layer to harden slightly. Then he poured again.

"Good work!" said Pete.

"It's too bad we don't have a client to appreciate all of this," said Bob.

"Do you suppose Newt McAfee would like to hire us?"

"Do you suppose The Three Investigators would like him as a client?" Jupe countered.

"No, sir!" said Pete vehemently. "He is one mean guy, and I don't like his wife either. I don't know how Eleanor Hess stands those two."

Jupiter sighed. "The woman who owns the hobby shop knew Eleanor's mother,"

he said. "Mrs. Hess was pretty, and the woman thinks Thalia McAfee was jealous of her. She hinted that Thalia takes it out on Eleanor. She said right out that Newt is so stingy he makes Eleanor pay for her room and board, and he's made her pay ever since her parents died."

Bob looked startled. "But she was only eight! How could she pay? Did her parents leave money?"

"They owned a house in Hollywood," said Jupe. "McAfee rents it and collects the rent."

"Oh," said Bob. "And you got the hobby shop lady to tell you all that? How'd you manage that?"

"I mentioned that we were camping in McAfee's barn, and she wanted to know how much he was charging. When I told her, she just shook her head and started to talk. She also told me that John the Gypsy can't read or write. He supports himself with odd jobs, and she thinks Newt cheats him because he has trouble keeping track of the time he spends working for Newt."

"Well, so much for John the Gypsy," said Bob. "If he can't write, he couldn't have sent the ransom note."

"He could be an accomplice, but somehow I don't think he is," said Jupe. "He isn't really bright enough to be taken into anyone's confidence. And I think he wasn't acting this morning. He was really afraid. So let's eliminate him. The case could be involved enough without him."

"So we are are taking the case, huh?" said Pete. "Who's our client? Eleanor?" taking the case, huh?" said Pete. "Who's our client? Eleanor?"

"Do we have to have a client?" asked Jupe. "Isn't the puzzle fascinating enough by itself? A fossil man, dead for ages, was stolen, and the thief was able to introduce something into the sprinkler system so that an entire town went to sleep."

Bob grinned. "It's so crazy that I love it." He sat down on the ground, took a pad from his pocket, produced a ballpoint pen, and began to write.

"A missing cave man," he said. "Some mysterious drug in the water system. A ransom note that's poorly spelled, and that may not even be important. The spelling, I mean. It could be faked. And that brings us to the suspects."

Bob looked up at his friends. "Brandon?" he said. "He wanted the bones out of the cave, and he could have sent the ransom note to cover up."

"He was asleep in the park when the bones were wiped." Pete pointed out. "I woke up leaning on him. Hey, everybody in town was asleep in the park. We don't have any suspects!"

"We don't know for sure that everyone everyone in the town was at the ceremony," said Jupe. "And anyway, the kidnapper may have had some way to avoid the effect of the substance in the sprinklers. If that's the case, anyone in town could be a suspect." in the town was at the ceremony," said Jupe. "And anyway, the kidnapper may have had some way to avoid the effect of the substance in the sprinklers. If that's the case, anyone in town could be a suspect."

"Careful," said Bob. "Here comes Eleanor."

Jupe looked around and saw Eleanor Hess coming across the gra.s.s.

Quickly Jupe shifted so that he sat between Eleanor and the plaster cast in the ground. "Hi," he said when Eleanor was fairly close. "We were just . . . just talking about all the strange things that happened today."

Eleanor nodded, and after she hesitated for a moment as if she were unsure of her welcome, she sat down facing the Investigators. "I . . . uh . . . I'm going up to the foundation now, and I thought maybe you'd like to ... to come along."

"That would be very nice," said Jupe, "and we'd ..."

"You don't have to," said Eleanor. "I just thought if you have nothing to do."

Suddenly she blurted out, "Ten thousand dollars! That's an awful lot of money!

Uncle Newt's gone to talk to some other people in town about getting it together and ... and it's getting to be such a big deal!"

And Eleanor burst into tears.

"Hey, it's not that bad," said Bob. "I mean, the cave man is just a bunch of bones.

It isn't as if somebody were holding a real live person for ransom, is it?"

"No. But my uncle's as mad as if it were. He's so mad he scares me. He says he's losing money every second the cave man is gone. I guess he is. The cave man could have paid much better than the hardware store. Things can get slow at the store."

"Do you help out there?" asked Jupe.

Eleanor nodded. "When I'm not at the foundation. But I'd rather be at the foundation. n.o.body yells there except Dr. Brandon, and he doesn't really mean it."

She smiled suddenly, and her cheeks became quite pink. "Dr. Brandon is kind. He says I should go to college - San Diego State or one of those schools."

"Why don't you?" Bob asked.

"Well, I'd need one of the cars to get there, and Aunt Thalia says no. She says it's a waste of money to send a girl to college, and besides I shouldn't forget what cla.s.s I come from."

"What does that mean?" Pete asked.

"I guess it means I'll be getting uppity if I go to college," said Eleanor. "Aunt Thalia says my mother got uppity and she thought she was too good for this little town, so she went off and married my father, and look what happened."

Eleanor stopped. Her face went grim and hard. "She gives me a swift pain!" she announced. "My mother could have been in a car accident anywhere. You don't have to be wicked or stuck up to get hit by a bus in an intersection. My mother was nice.

She had pretty hair. My father was nice too. He played the oboe for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and I remember him practising. The oboe is really a wonderful instrument. We don't have any music in the house now - except on radio and TV."

She stopped again, then burst out, "I want to get away! I'm saving all I can. I have over a hundred dollars saved from my job at the foundation. Uncle Newt and Aunt Thalia use the rent from my parents' house in Hollywood to pay my expenses, but the foundation money is mine!"

"Have you asked your uncle and aunt about the rent money?" said Jupe. "If you left here, they wouldn't need it for your expenses, would they?"

She looked startled. "But I couldn't do that! They'd be furious! They'd throw me out."

"So what?" said Pete. "You want to leave anyway."

"But I don't have anywhere to go!"