The Mystery of Wandering Caveman - M. V. Carey [24]
“No, ma’am,” said Jupe. “By the way, one of the deputies told us earlier that the water from the sprinkler system was being tested. Do you know if they found anything in it?”
“They didn’t,” said Thalia. “One of the sheriffs men called a while ago. There was nothing in the sprinklers and nothing in the reservoir where the water comes from.
The sheriff thinks the whole town’s suffering from mass hypnosis!”
Chapter 12
A Noise in the Ruins
JUPE SIGHED AS Thalia McAfee went back inside. “I can’t believe in mass hypnosis,” he said to his fellow investigators. “Also, I keep being disturbed at the thought of that dead scientist.”
“I always find dead people disturbing,” Pete declared.
“That isn’t what I mean,” said Jupe. “I was referring to the pages missing from the appointments calendar. Surely they are significant. I’d like an opportunity to go through Dr. Birkensteen’s papers. I wonder if that could be arranged.”
“I’ll bet it couldn’t,” Bob predicted. “If his work was so important, those papers are probably locked up in a safe someplace.”
“Hm,” said Jupe. His tone was grim. But then he brightened again. “How interesting that Frank DiStefano wasn’t in the park this morning,” he said. “I wonder who else was missing when the cave man was kidnapped.”
Bob frowned. “Everybody we know was there, except DiStefano and … and John the Gypsy.”
Pete grinned. “Hey!” he said. “How about John the Gypsy? We shouldn’t forget him just because he acts like a dimwit. Maybe that’s just an act, and he’s really sort of brainy.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” said Bob. “He’s been here for years and years, hasn’t he? If he were smart, he’d have tipped his mitt long ago.”
“So he isn’t smart,” said Jupe. “Probably he isn’t even reasonably cunning. But last night he saw a cave man walk, and we have a plaster cast of that cave man’s footprint. Where did the cave man go?”
Pete looked towards the woods beyond the meadow. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go see where.”
The Three Investigators went first to the place where Jupiter had taken a cast of the footprint. Then they walked slowly on. They found no more prints until they were in under the trees. There was one low-lying spot where the earth was bare, and, sure enough, the shoeless wanderer had come that way. Pete pointed to the print. The Three Investigators skirted it and pushed on without a sound, moving stealthily as if someone might be lurking behind a tree, waiting to strike down a pursuer.
Finally the trees thinned, and beyond them was a clearing. The boys stood at the edge of the wood and looked out at grass and at brambles that surrounded the crumbling remains of an old building. It had walls of brick that were broken in several places and a red tile roof that had fallen in here and there, so that some of the supporting beams could be seen.
“Once upon a time,” Bob observed, “I think that must have been a church.”
No one answered him, and the three boys crossed the clearing.
Two great wooden doors had once closed the entrance of the church, but one of them had fallen off its hinges. It lay inside on the tile floor. The boys stepped over it as they entered the building.
“Do you suppose the barefoot cave man came in here last night?” said Pete. He looked around nervously.
“No way of telling,” said Jupe. “He wouldn’t leave any traces on this floor.”
Bob made a hesitant movement towards the front of the church. Two steps there led up to a place that was higher than the area where the boys stood.
“If there was an altar,” said Bob, “it would have been up there. And look. There’s a doorway that must lead into another room. Maybe it was a vestry where the priest or the minister could put on his robes.”
The Three Investigators waited in the silence, each one somehow unwilling to cross the church and go up the two steps and open the door to the hidden room.
Suddenly they heard a sound that made their hearts beat faster.
Someone was moving behind the closed door! There was a creaking and a rustling, and something fell clattering