The Mystery of Wandering Caveman - M. V. Carey [13]
“Just investigating,” Jupe called. “There was some disturbance and your … your watchman saw somebody going away across the meadow.”
Thalia McAfee appeared on the porch, and Newt stamped down the steps and trudged across the meadow to the museum.
“What happened?” he asked John the Gypsy, “Did that crazy Brandon come snoopin’ around?”
“It was the cave man,” said John the Gypsy. “He’s gone away!”
“What?” McAfee stared in disbelief. Then he raised his voice and shouted,
“Thalia! Get my keys!”
Thalia McAfee came running with the keys, and McAfee opened the museum door and snapped on the lights. He strode through the doorway and past the display cases and the models and photo blowups. Lights went on in the underground chamber, and McAfee looked in at his treasure. The boys peered past McAfee. They saw empty eye sockets looking back at them, and the remains of a grinning mouth.
They saw ribs jutting from the smoothbrushed earth, and a hand reaching. McAfee turned on John the Gypsy.
“You’re crazy!” he said. “The bones are right here. What’s the matter with you?”
“He walked away!” insisted the other. “I seen him go. He was wearing a fur thing like one of them shawls that the Mexican people wear, only fur! And he had hair! He was alive!”
“You shut up!” snapped McAfee. “You want to get the whole town up here?”
He put out the lights in the cave and marched out of the museum. The others followed him.
“Got up and walked, huh?” he said. He made a mocking noise, locked the museum door, and went back to his house. Eleanor was waiting there at the bottom of the porch steps.
“Get inside, Eleanor,” commanded McAfee. “It wasn’t anything. Crazy John’s been seeing things.”
He looked back. “John, you keep awake! I ain’t payin’ you to nap, you know!”
He and Eleanor vanished into the house. John the Gypsy mumbled something under his breath and took a folding chair out of the van. He placed it halfway between the van and the museum. He then took a shotgun from the van and sat down.
The Three Investigators went back to the loft.
“Must have been a dream,” said Pete softly.
“The old guy doesn’t seem too bright,” said Bob.
“No,” Jupe agreed, “but does that mean he sees things that aren’t there?”
“Well, no. But anyone can have a dream and not be sure what really happened and what didn’t,” said Bob.
“He seemed very positive,” said Jupe.
“What about the door? It was locked,” said Pete.
“Someone could have had a key,” said Jupe. He sat up in his sleeping bag and stared out through the window and across the meadow. The trees onthe far side of the field were deep black against the night sky, but the grass on the meadow was silver with dew. A series of darker patches crossed that silvery field — a trail that ended in the shadows under the trees.
Had someone walked that way, crushing the grass underfoot and disturbing the droplets of dew?
Jupe started to get up. Then he saw John the Gypsy rise from his chair and look out across the meadow. John held his shotgun in the crook of his arm, and his head was to one side as if he were listening.
He went to his van after a minute or two and took a blanket from his bed. He wrapped it around himself and sat down again in the chair.
“Perhaps it was a dream,” said Jupe softly. “But John the Gypsy believes it was the cave man, and I think he’s afraid.”
Pete looked nervously out of the window at the moonlit meadow. “I don’t blame him,” he said. “If I saw a cave man wandering around, I’d be terrified!”
Chapter 7
A Busy Morning
JUPE WAS THE FIRST one up and out of the barn on Saturday morning. In the bright sunlight the woods did not look particularly dark and mysterious. Jupe began to walk through the meadow towards them. He went slowly, keeping his eyes on the ground, but he didn’t see a single footprint. The dark patches that he’d seen in the grass the night before had disappeared with the morning dew.
He had gone perhaps thirty metres when he spotted a place where the grass was quite thin and the dark earth showed through the green. He knelt, feeling a shiver of excitement.
He was still