The Mystery Of Wandering Caveman Part 11

Jupe nodded, and again the minutes ticked by.

"Suppose someone finds that money," said the banker after a while. "Suppose someone stops to eat a picnic lunch in that rest area and ..."

"Shut up!" snapped Newt. He looked ill, and a faint beading of sweat appeared on his forehead.

Bob leaned on his elbows and wondered aloud where someone would hide the bones of a cave man. "In the movies," he said, "the villains are always stas.h.i.+ng things in the coin lockers in bus stations," he said. "There isn't any bus station here, though.

Everybody waits for the bus at the drugstore."

"There's a train station," said Jupiter.

There was a deathly hush in the cafe. McAfee and the cafe owner turned to look across the street towards the little train station at the lower end of the park. It looked as it always looked - dusty and crumbling.

"By golly!" said the cafe owner.

There was a mad scramble as the men erupted from the booth. McAfee was in the lead when they reached the door.

The boys raced after them, and they were only a few metres behind when McAfee thundered up on to the porch of the depot and bent to look through the streaked, grimy window.

"Don't touch anything!" cried Jupe. "There might be fingerprints!"

McAfee backed away from the window and flung himself at the door. The wooden panels began to splinter.

A crowd appeared as if by magic. Shoppers came running from the supermarket and housewives hurried from their homes. James Brandon and Philip Terreano had been driving past in Brandon's car, and Brandon pulled over to park. Elwood Hoffer strolled over from the drugstore and stood on the fringes of the crowd.

McAfee rushed at the door again and again. At last there was a wrenching sound as the wood gave way and the door popped open.

The crowd surged into the station.

"Stand back!" yelled McAfee. "Don't touch nothing!"

Everyone froze.

There was only a single battered trunk in the place. It stood in the middle of the floor. Around it were marks in the dust indicating that someone had dragged it in through the window.

"Is that where they are?" someone asked.

The cafe owner threw up the lid of the trunk and said, "Ahh!"

James Brandon shoved through the crowd. He stared down at the remains in the trunk - a jumble of fragments hardly recognizable as bones, and a skull that stared at the ceiling.

Brandon gasped. The colour drained from his face, then flooded back. He spun on McAfee. "What is this?" he demanded.

McAfee backed away, bewildered.

Philip Terreano put a hand on Brandon's arm. "Take it easy, Jim," he said.

He addressed McAfee. "There's some ... some terrible mix-up," he said. "Unless I'm greatly mistaken, these are the bones of an African hominid that Jim Brandon brought here, and ..."

"You're putting me on!" shouted McAfee. "This is my cave man!"

Brandon controlled himself, but plainly it was an effort. "You'll find the fragments tagged," he said. "I made labels to show the date they were found, and the location."

"Mr. Carlson!" shouted someone from outside. "Mr. McAfee!"

The crowd parted to make way for the counterman from the cafe. "Some guy just called," he reported. "He says if you want to find your cave man, look in the old trunk here in the station like you" - he gaped at the trunk - "like you already did."

"See?" cried McAfee. "These are the bones that came out of my cave. They've got to be. How else would the kidnapper know where they were? Unless ... unless it was all a fake!"

McAfee's eyes were wide now with fury. "A fake!" he shouted. "From the beginning! All a fake!"

McAfee leaped at Brandon and tried to get his hands on the scientist's throat.

"You planted them bones in my cave!" he shrieked. "You just pretended to find them!

You wanted people to think you were some kind of a big deal. You been using me!"

Brandon drew back his fist, and Terreano seized him.

"Here, here!" said Terreano. "Easy now!"

A deputy sheriff came into the station. He started towards McAfee and Brandon.

In that instant Jupiter looked past McAfee and Brandon and saw Dr. Hoffer hovering on the edge of the crowd. Hoffer was watching Brandon, his dark little eyes bright with interest, and the look on his face was almost one of pleasure.

Chapter 16.

Jupe Finds the Answer "JAMES BRANDON IS a reputable man," declared Terreano. "He certainly doesn't need publicity, and he would never fake a find!"

"He must have," said McAfee. "How else did the kidnapper know these bones were here?"

Jupiter stepped forward. "The kidnapper put them here," he said quietly.

Brandon glared. "Now listen here, you juvenile ..."

"Wait!" cried Jupe. "Listen! It's so obvious! There were two sets of fossils, right?"

"Right," said Brandon.

"The night before last, Mr. McAfee hired the man you call John the Gypsy to watch the museum so that n.o.body would try to get in. John the Gypsy camped near the museum entrance, and during the night he was awakened by a person he described as the cave man. He came to the barn, where we were sleeping, and roused us. He told us the cave man had walked away across the meadow, and that he had s.h.a.ggy hair and wore an animal skin of some sort.

"Now whatever John the Gypsy saw, it wasn't the prehuman creature whose remains had been in the cave. I believe he saw someone who had disguised himself as a cave man and who had somehow got a key to the museum, perhaps from McAfee's kitchen. The thief took the fossils from the floor of the cave and subst.i.tuted the fossils of the African hominid that had been stored in Dr. Brandon's workroom. The thief then relocked the door and escaped across the meadow with the American fossils."

"Crazy!" said Newt McAfee. "Why should anybody do a nutty thing like that?"

"Someone might want to discredit Dr. Brandon," said Jupe. "Sooner or later the bones in the cave would be examined by experts. The experts would find bones of an African hominid, complete with tags in Mr. Brandon's handwriting - tags identifying the bones as African!"

Terreano shook his head. "But Brandon took pictures of the cave man. a.s.suming there were two sets of bones, and they were in the cave at different times, there'd be differences. And they'd show in the pictures."

"Would photographs be conclusive?" said Jupiter. "The skull of the American hominid was partly buried. Anyone could claim that Brandon had planted the African bones and then photographed them."

"And that's what he did!" declared McAfee. "He did plant them other bones. And then somebody else swiped them and here they are - and me and my friends are out ten thousand dollars, with nothing to show for it!"

He turned to Brandon. "I'm going to have the law on you!" he threatened, and he stamped away.

Brandon glowered. Then he bent down and began to remove the fossils from the trunk.

"Sorry, Dr. Brandon," said the deputy. "We can't let you take those bones. We'll have to impound the trunk and everything in it. It's evidence."

Brandon grimaced with annoyance, and he, too, stamped out. As the spectators began to drift away the boys went with them. They stood in the suns.h.i.+ne on Main Street, and Pete grinned.

"You solved the case!" he said.

"Not really," said Jupe. "I merely presented one possible explanation. We won't really have the answer to anything until we know who impersonated the wandering cave man, and who put the town to sleep. Also, where are the fossils that Dr. Brandon first found in the cave?"

The boys started up the street towards McAfee's house, but before they had gone half a block, they were hailed by Frank DiStefano. The foundation's handyman had parked his car at the kerb, and he stood watching the people still cl.u.s.tered in groups near the train station.

"Hey, what's up?" said DiStefano. "Did I miss something? What are all those people doing?"

"The bones stolen from the cave turned up in a trunk in the station," said Bob.

"Oh, great!" said DiStefano. "What happened? Did they catch the guy who did it?

Or did McAfee and his buddies pay the ransom?"

"They paid," said Jupiter, "this morning."

DiStefano nodded. "Good deal," he said. "So now everybody's happy."

"Not quite," said Jupe. "There are some complications."

Jupe had a sudden inspiration. "Have you seen Eleanor Hess?" he said.

DiStefano shook his head. "No. Why?"

"There's something I want to ask her," said Jupe. "I think she may have gone to Centerdale. Are you on your way there?"

"Yeah. Want a lift?"

DiStefano slid behind the wheel of his car and leaned over to open the door on the pa.s.senger side. Pete and Bob pushed scuba gear out of the way and climbed into the back seat. Jupe sat next to DiStefano.

The car pulled away from the kerb and rolled down the street, past the shops and the train station, and then past the munic.i.p.al swimming pool, where kids were climbing to the high diving board and then jumping feet first into the water.

"Looks like fun, doesn't it?" said DiStefano. "I wouldn't mind doing that, if only I could swim."

The car sped on, out of the town and down the winding road towards Centerdale.

Jupe looked around at Pete. Pete was holding the scuba mask and frowning. When he looked up, his eyes met Jupe's, and Jupe gave a tiny shake of his head. Pete put the mask down and leaned back in his seat.

Jupe glanced at DiStefano. The handyman was smiling to himself as he drove, and his lips were pursed in a silent whistle.

There was a jumble of small objects on the seat between DiStefano and Jupe - several chewing gum wrappers, a plastic box with the lid missing, an empty soft drink can, and a torn envelope with bright green lettering on the back.

Jupe picked up the torn envelope. It was a list of things DiStefano had to do. "Fuel Pump" was on the list. Also "A & J Auto Suply, ready Tuesday" and "Scienserviss, Wadlee Road."

Jupe put the envelope down. "You don't swim," he said to Distefano.

"Nope."

"But you have all that scuba gear," Jupe pointed out.

"Oh, that. That's not mine. I'm keeping it for a friend."

"Are you?" said Jupe. His voice was low and intense, and there was something in his tone that caused DiStefano to look over at him, then look away again.

They were well away from town by now, on the open highway with trees edging the road on both sides. DiStefano touched the brake, gently with his foot and listened, his head to one side.

"Now what's that?" he said.

"What?" asked Jupe.

"That noise in the engine," said DiStefano. "Don't you hear it?"

He pulled to the shoulder of the road, set the parking brake, and began to get out of the car.

In the back seat Pete frowned. "I didn't hear anything," he said.

"Maybe you don't hear so good," said DiStefano. He was standing beside the car now, bending to look in at the boys, and his smile was mocking.

Jupe sighed. "The scuba gear," he said. "It makes sense now. There was an anaesthetic in Birkensteen's laboratory - something that would act very quickly and put an entire town to sleep, and then evaporate and leave no traces. But you didn't want to breathe it or get it on your skin, so you used the scuba gear and the wet suit.

John the Gypsy thought he saw a monster with one eye and tusks. What he really saw in that split second before he fell asleep was a diving mask and air hoses."

DiStefano stared at him, his face without expression.

"Eleanor Hess went to see you this morning," said Jupe. "Where is she now?"

Then, too late, Jupe saw that there was a plastic spray bottle in DiStefano's hand.

It had probably been tucked in next to the driver's seat. DiStefano was lifting it now, aiming it at Jupe.

Pete gave a cry and started to scramble forward to get out of the back seat.