The Mystery of Wandering Caveman - M. V. Carey [35]
“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 nobody 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 shaggy 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 substituted 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. Assuming 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 sunshine 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 clustered 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