The Mystery Of Wandering Caveman Part 13

"There were all these groceries in the back," said Pete brightly, "so I beaned him with an aubergine!"

Chapter 18.

The Million-Dollar Motive THE DEPUTY SHERIFF sat on the terrace behind the Spicer mansion and looked with open longing at the swimming pool that sparkled in Tuesday morning's sun.

"We have a good case against DiStefano," he said. "His fingerprints are on the trunk we found at the old train station yesterday. Also, his landlady identified, the trunk. He swiped it out of her attic."

The officer looked around at the people who had gathered on the terrace. Newt and Thalia McAfee had come in response to a call from Terreano. Eleanor Hess, who had spent the night with Mrs. Collinwood, was sitting close to the housekeeper. Now and then Mrs. Collinwood reached out and patted her arm in a comforting way.

Jupiter, Pete and Bob had spent part of the evening with the sheriffs men in Centerdale and then had returned to Citrus Grove with Eleanor. They had seen the McAfees start up the road that morning and had trailed along.

Philip Terreano and James Brandon had come out of their workrooms. Dr. Hoffer, who had been in the pool when the deputy sheriff arrived, had climbed out, wrapped himself in a towel, and joined the circle on the terrace.

"What about my cave man?" said Newt McAfee. "When do I get him back?"

"The bones in that trunk are not your cave man!" cried Brandon. "They are the bones of my African hominid!"

"There were two fossil individuals," said Terreano. "There simply had to be two!"

"Then why don't you ask her her," Thalia McAfee pointed to Eleanor.

"Wouldn't put it past her to have taken those bones and hid them, just to be difficult."

Eleanor's head came up in defiance. "No. I don't know anything more than . . .

than what I've already told."

"If you told so much, why aren't you in jail right now?" demanded Thalia. She turned to the deputy sheriff. "You want us to go down and sign a complaint or something? She's the one who helped that DiStefano, ain't she?"

"Miss Hess is free on bail right now," said the officer.

"Bail?" rumbled McAfee. "Who'd put up bail for her? I sure wouldn't."

"I did," said James Brandon.

McAfee gasped. "You did? Why?"

"Because I chose to," said Brandon. "Anyone who has had to live in your house all these years can be forgiven a great deal."

Thalia McAfee quivered with indignation. "Don't you talk like that!" she shrieked.

"We ain't the ones who did wrong. She did it! And after we took her in and made a home for her!"

Eleanor sat straighter in her chair. "I only wanted to get back a little of what's really mine! I wanted to leave here and go to work in San Diego or Los Angeles, and maybe get some more schooling and have a ... a place of my own and some friends.

And every time I had any money, you took it away and talked about how much it cost to feed me. I was going to be stuck here forever, and you'd have everything!"

She leaned towards Thalia McAfee, who cringed back in her chair.

"I didn't want much," said Eleanor. "Maybe five hundred or so. Well, now I'm going to get a lot. I'm going to get a lawyer, and he'll see that I get an accounting of my money."

"What money did you ever have?" cried Thalia.

"My father had insurance, didn't he?" said Eleanor.

Thalia pressed her lips together and looked away.

"And there's the house in Hollywood," said Eleanor. "It's really mine, isn't it?

What happened to the money from the rent on that house all these years?"

Newt McAfee cleared his throat. "Now, now, Ellie," he said. "We don't have to go running to lawyers about this. If you want to leave here, why, you're old enough to know your own mind. We can set you up in an apartment in San Diego, or maybe Oceanside, and stake you a few hundred to get started. No need to take on so about it."

"A few hundred?" cried Eleanor. "You think you're going to get out of this for a few hundred?"

"A thousand," said Thalia. "No. No, two thousand."

Eleanor glared at her.

"Five thousand?" said Thalia.

"Ten!" said Eleanor.

"All right, Thalia," said Newt, "Ten thousand. And n.o.body can say we ain't done the right thing."

Eleanor sat back. "I should have done this long ago," she said. "Next time I'll be smarter."

"And braver, Eleanor," said Terreano. "Try courage. It beats scheming every time."

"Now about them bones," said Newt McAfee. "I want ..."

"I'm sorry," said the deputy sheriff. "We have to hold the trunk and the bones until there is some disposition of DiStefano's case."

"You probably want to hold the other fossils too," said Jupiter. "The American ones."

All heads suddenly turned towards him.

"They're in the crypt in the old church, aren't they, Dr. Hoffer?" he said.

Hoffer sat like a man turned to stone.

"You wanted to discredit Dr. Brandon," Jupe went on. "You wanted to be sure of getting the million-dollar Spicer Grant so that you could go on with your own experiments. You went to the museum the night before it was to open. This was a well-planned operation, and I expect you had borrowed the key to the museum from McAfee's kitchen and had it duplicated sometime earlier. You removed the American fossils from the cave and subst.i.tuted the African bones you had taken from the cabinet in Dr. Brandon's room. Then you brushed the dirt smooth.

"When you left with the bones from the cave, John the Gypsy woke up and saw you. You had prepared for this eventuality. You had wrapped yourself in an animal skin and you were wearing a wig. Poor John thought he was looking at a cave man."

Hoffer sneered. "Totally ridiculous!" he said.

"I didn't begin to suspect you," said Jupe, "until the fossils of the African hominid were discovered in the trunk in the train station. Do you know how delighted you looked when that happened? It was enough to set me thinking.

"I remembered that there are dozens of animal skins in this house, and that one of Mrs. Collinwood's wigs was missing at the time the cave man was kidnapped, then suddenly turned up again. That pointed to someone from the foundation.

"When Pete and Bob and I went out across the meadow and through the woods to the ruined church, you saw us and it made you a trifle nervous. So you followed us to make sure we didn't discover the bones. You came into the church and sat down on the steps there - right over the trap door that led down to the crypt. You were sitting on it so we wouldn't notice it and open it."

Hoffer smiled tightly. "This is all conjecture," he said. "I a.s.sure you, I do not go trotting around at night wrapped in animal skins. If you want to stay out of trouble, you'll stop making these wild accusations."

"Some of it is conjecture," Jupe admitted, "but there is some hard evidence. You are a perfectionist, and cave men did not wear shoes, so you didn't wear shoes. You walked across the meadow in your bare feet. You left a footprint, Dr. Hoffer, and I made a plaster cast of that footprint, so I knew that the thief had small feet - and a hammer toe."

All eyes darted down to Hoffer's bare feet. Hoffer started to move them, as if he could hide them under his chair. But he realized that this was futile, and he stood up, the raised toe on his right foot in full view.

"I'm going to get dressed," he said, "and then I'm calling my lawyer."

"Hoffer, how could you?" said Terreano. His voice was mild, but his face was sad.

Hoffer did not try to meet his eyes. He went into the house, and the deputy followed him.

Brandon grinned. "I'm going to call my lawyer too," he said. "Maybe I can try to get some kind of an injunction to keep you from s.n.a.t.c.hing those bones away again, McAfee - at least for a while."

Brandon got up and went in through the doors to the living room, humming happily.

"Fat chance he's got!" said McAfee. "Those are my bones!"

"Not necessarily, McAfee," said Terreano. "After all, you're not the cave man's next of kin!"

Chapter 19.

Mr. Sebastian is Impressed A FEW DAYS AFTER the Three Investigators returned to Rocky Beach, they knocked at the door of a house on Cypress Canyon Drive in Malibu. The house had originally been a restaurant called Charlie's Place. Now, however, it was the property of Hector Sebastian, the screenwriter, who was gradually remodelling it and adding improvements to make it a comfortable, if somewhat unusual, residence.

Mr. Sebastian had once been a private detective. He had turned to writing mysteries while recovering from a leg injury, and he had become famous and successful because of his novels and screenplays. But the boys suspected that he still felt a certain nostalgia for the old days, when he had tracked down criminals and recovered stolen property. No matter how busy he might be now with his writing projects, he always had time to stop and talk with the Three Investigators about their cases.

On this particular afternoon Mr. Sebastian's Vietnamese houseman, Hoang Van Don, opened the door. He grinned when he saw the boys. "Mr. Sebastian waits for super sleuths!" he announced. "While waiting, he plays with new wonder machine.

Please to go in and Don will bring refreshments."

The boys went through the entry hall and into a huge, spa.r.s.ely furnished room that had once been the main dining room of the restaurant. At first they did not see Mr. Sebastian. However, they heard a soft clack-clacking that came from behind a bank of bookcases that part.i.tioned off one end of the room.

"Come and see what I've got!" called Mr. Sebastian.

The Three Investigators obeyed. They found the writer seated at his big desk, tapping the keyboard of a brand-new word processor. As he worked, Mr. Sebastian watched the words and paragraphs he had just written appear on the television screen in front of him.

"That's neat!" cried Jupiter.

"Yes, isn't it," said Mr. Sebastian. "When I arrived in Hollywood not so long ago, I had an old Royal typewriter that kept coming apart on me. Now I have this amazing computer. It's perfect for my writing. I can compose on it and I can change things without rewriting them from scratch. If I make a mistake I can fix it just by typing over it. And best of all, if I change the name of a character halfway through a story, I just notify the computer. The computer skips through the stored text and changes the name every time it appears!"

"Wow!" said Pete.

"And then, when I finally have everything set up the way I want it, I tell the computer to print it for me. Now watch this."

There was a printer on the desk next to the word processor. Mr. Sebastian touched a b.u.t.ton on the keyboard, and the second machine came clattering to life. A unit inside the machine zipped back and forth across a sheet of paper, and words appeared on the paper as if by magic.

"The Declaration of Independence?" said Bob.

"Just practising," said Mr. Sebastian. He, switched off the word processor and stood up. "I understand you boys have been doing great things while I've been computer shopping," he said. "Come outside and enjoy the view from my new terrace and tell me all about it."

He took his walking stick from beside his chair and limped across the room to a sliding gla.s.s door. "Don is all excited because you got your pictures in the paper. He's been making great preparations for your visit."

Outside, Mr. Sebastian sat down on a deck chair next to a big gla.s.s-topped table.

"Don!" he called. "We're ready!"

The Vietnamese came out on to the terrace with a tray. His smile was wider than ever. "Organically grown feast for continued health and vigour!" he announced as he put the tray on the table.

"Sesame seed and wheat germ soya cakes," said Don. "With mola.s.ses. To drink, melon flip."

"Melon flip?" echoed Bob.

"Squish melon in food processor," Don explained. "Pour into gla.s.ses with ice and also honey to make sweet. Very healthy. Give much energy quickly."

Don bowed himself off the terrace, and Mr. Sebastian looked apologetically at his young guests.

"What happened?" said Bob. "Don used to serve all the instant foods that he saw on television."

"He has become addicted to an afternoon TV show that is hosted by a health-food guru," said Mr. Sebastian.

"Oh," said Bob. He took a sip of melon flip and made a face. Then he picked up one of the little cakes from the tray and tried to bite into it.

"Don't eat that!" warned Mr. Sebastian. "You'll break your teeth. Leave it. I'll get rid of this food later, and we'll go out for hamburgers.

"Now, what about the kidnapped cave man?"

Bob had spent two days typing up his notes on the case. He handed them to Mr.

Sebastian and then sat back while the writer read through the file on the events in Citrus Grove.

"Terrific!" said Sebastian when he finished reading. "But frightening too.

DiStefano almost got away with it, didn't he?"