The Case of the Missing Dinosaur Egg (8 page)

Although we wanted to bolt, we walked like a couple of robots toward the front door of the house, forcing ourselves not to look back. One important thing I’d learned about Barnaby was that he loved to chase things. Balloons—floating leaves—trespassers.

On the way to the house, Jack and I had to pass the professor’s egg shed. The door was wide open. We stopped and looked at each other. Surely that was a sign—an invitation to go inside.

“Do you think we should see if the professor’s in here?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

“You bet.”

Pretending to be Rebecca Turnbull, the fictional P.I. character in my short stories, I slid around the door frame, scuttled inside and flattened my body against the wall. My trusty assistant followed.

When Jack caught sight of all the eggs his eyes widened.

“Where’s the baby platypus?” he whispered.

I shrugged and shook my head.

The door to the back room was slightly open which meant the professor was either getting very slack or he was in there.

I caught Jack’s eye and pointed.

On tiptoe, with Pedro settled into the crook of one arm, I inched across the cement floor. Then, almost at the door I stopped and frowned. What if we found a body in the back room? What if the body was stiff and covered in blood?

My breath caught in my throat. My heart skittered like possums in a tree. I needed to ‘
go’
badly.

Perhaps we should just sneak back out again and leave Pedro at the professor’s front door. As Kate wisely said, ‘What the professor is doing on his own property is no business of ours.’

My mind on dead bodies and mad professors, I let out a loud and breathy
Oomph
as Jack’s hard-as-cement head punched me between the shoulder blades and sent me flying. Geez. How could anyone trip over fresh air? If Jack wanted to continue as my star-assistant he’d have to learn to pick up his feet.

In an effort to save Pedro from more pain, I flung out my one free hand and connected with the wooden door in front of me. The resulting noise echoed through the shed as the wooden door crashed open, bounced against the wall, shuddered and juddered several times and then came to a stop.

In the silence that followed I poked my head around the doorway. The professor sat on the floor, blinking like a startled rabbit, legs stretched out in front of him. He’d been feeding a featherless baby cockatoo with what looked like porridge. A baby crocodile had crawled up onto his shoulder and three tiny pink jellybean-like creatures were cuddled together on a hot water bottle, asleep in his hat.

“Er…h-hello,” I stammered, grinning nervously.

The professor frowned, the wrinkles on his forehead gouging into deep furrows.

“Not
you
again!” he growled.

“Um—sorry to scare you, Professor, but Jack and I found Pedro caught in the fence. It looks like he’s hurt one of his back legs.” I smiled at the little dog in my arms. Two sad doleful eyes blinked back up at me. “He’s in pain.”

“Pedro? Hurt?” The professor dropped the bowl of porridge on the floor beside the baby cockatoo and grabbed his walking stick. “Time out,” he told the bird then pushed himself upright. As he hobbled toward me I noticed the tiny leathery reptile on his shoulder adjust itself more securely.

“Pedro?” The end of the dog’s skinny tail wagged piteously. “You were supposed to be guarding the shed door. What were you thinking—leaving your post and trying to dig under the fence?”

Pedro closed his eyes and snuggled deeper into the soft folds of my plaid shirt.

“Perhaps he heard something?” I suggested. “There’s been lots happening in the paddock next door. We’re setting up a Cross-Country course in there.”

“Put Pedro on the table,” ordered the professor pointing to a shiny steel examination table just like the one you see in a vet’s surgery.

At first I’d been too worried about the professor being angry to check my surroundings. Now, I gazed around the room and felt a shiver skitter up my spine. Had we stumbled into Dr. Jekyll’s lab?

The back room behind the shed seemed to be set up like a laboratory. Expensive equipment that I didn’t know the name of covered tables and shelves. The only thing I recognized was a large state-of-the-art microscope which the professor had set up on a table by the window. Was he into germs? DNA? Cloning?

Beside the microscope I could see lots of see-through test tubes containing a mysterious red chemical…

Or was it blood?

With a gulp, I clutched Pedro closer and shivered again. Cages lined every wall of the room. Cages with living creatures that squeaked, cheeped, slithered, or squawked. This egg mystery was getting curiouser and curiouser.

And scarier and scarier.

As I lay Pedro gently on the cold table I tried to stop my hands from shaking. For a moment it felt like a scene from a horror movie. You know, just before the two innocent victims are captured, tortured and hacked into tiny pieces.

Don’t make a scene. Don’t say anything to upset the professor. Put the dog down and scram. Fast.

I could see Jack studying the cages, the microscope, the test tubes; his expression as confused as mine.

“Get ready to run!” I whispered from the corner of my mouth. If I’d been closer I’d have grabbed him by the elbow and yanked him through the door.

Not getting my message—Jack’s jaw set in a stubborn line.

Uh! Uh! Trouble!

I watched him square his shoulders and take a step forward. “Excuse me, Professor,” he said politely. “What’s with the weird lab? I hope you’re not doing live tests on animals? ’Cos if you are—I’m dead against it. In fact, I’ll report you to the police.”

What was wrong with Jack? Couldn’t he see we were in a big heap of trouble here? Didn’t he realize we could be the professor’s next experiments?

For several long silent seconds the professor gazed at Jack with strange unfocused eyes.

Ooh no…he was going to turn from Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde. Any minute now he would burst through his clothing, develop muscles the size of dumbbells and sprout long black hair all over his body.

Without a word, the professor slowly reached into a drawer and drew out a pair of long shiny pointed scissors.

My eyes almost popped from my head.

Jack tripped over his feet as he took a hurried step backwards.

“Hey, if you feel that way, Professor,” I gabbled, my throat dry with fear, my heart racing like an out-of-control motorboat, “we don’t know a thing.”

The professor put the scissors on the table and took out a small steel bowl and a bottle of disinfectant.

“Seeing as you are here,” he said, his voice quiet and dead flat. “You may as well make yourselves useful.”

Like a snake his eyes held mine. “You,” he said, “hold Pedro still while I clean and bandage his leg.”

His hypnotic gaze fell on Jack. “And you…whoever you are… can finish feeding Alex.” He indicated the bald baby bird squawking indignantly on the floor. “Remember though, after every mouthful of porridge, Alex needs his face wiped. You can use that damp cloth next to the bowl.”

I couldn’t believe it. There was something like amusement tugging at the corners of the professor’s mouth now. Was he playing with us like a snake plays with a mouse before gobbling it up?

It seemed to take Jack a few moments to shake off the scissors-scare. At last he peered down at the gaping mouth of the hungry bird under his feet and shrugged his shoulders.

“Me? Yeah. Cool.” Jack tried to dodge the baby cockatoo, fold his flapping arms and legs and lower himself to the floor—and almost sat in the bowl of porridge.

“Ever heard of a native animal sanctuary?” With a gentle hand the professor bathed the blood and dirt from Pedro’s leg and applied some sort of yellow disinfectant to the wound.

Geez…what was this scary man hinting at? Finding a nearby animal sanctuary so he could feed us to the crocodiles?

“Um—I guess it’s a place that looks after native animals, like koalas, kangaroos and bilbies.”

“Right. But
my
sanctuary will have native birds and reptiles too,” added the professor as he deftly wrapped a white gauze bandage around Pedro’s back leg.

And then the professor smiled at me. A smile that lit his face up—like a Christmas tree, when you turned on the colored lights.

“Contrary to what you think—I am
not
a mad professor.”

Could have fooled me.

“I am setting up a small sanctuary for all native fauna,” he went on, his glance resting on the animals in their cages. “I have the council’s approval, the funding is in place and in a few weeks’ time the builders will arrive. They will build runs and shelters for these little creatures to live in when they are old enough.”

“And the laboratory?”

Ugggh…Jack couldn’t let it go, could he?

“Simple. I am a Professor of Veterinary Science. No good running an animal sanctuary without veterinary back-up.”

“But why eggs?” Jack asked. “Why not full-grown animals?”

“These little darlings were born here. They won’t miss the wild because they have no knowledge of it. Isn’t that better than capturing full-grown animals, birds and reptiles and subjecting them to the trauma of captivity?”

Okay, I could go along with that. But I was still confused.

“Animals don’t hatch from eggs,” I argued. “Only birds and reptiles.”

“It is surprising the number of people who think that.” Filling a syringe with something from a small bottle, the professor injected Pedro, then picked him up and settled him into an empty cage lined with shredded paper. “There are three Australian egg-laying mammals. The platypus, and two species of Echidna.”

Excitement bubbled inside of me.

“Echidnas? Can we see a baby echidna?”

“None have hatched yet, I am afraid. However, there are six echidna eggs under heat lamps in the shed. Maybe there will be a new-born puggle for you to see next time you come.”

“Puggle?”

“That is what baby echidnas are called,” he said, “Even a baby platypus is sometimes called a puggle. Here, help me put these little guys back to bed.”

Bending down he scooped one baby platypus up in his hand and passed it to me.

“Put him in the end cage, the one with the blanket over it. Platypuses prefer the dark.”

I looked down at the creature sitting in the palm of my hand. So warm—so odd looking. Afraid I’d squash the tiny bundle, I carried it carefully to the end cage and placed it on the clean straw.

“Later I will add other native animals, like kangaroos, wallabies and koalas to the sanctuary. Baby animals that have lost their mother,” the professor continued as he put the other two platypuses to bed. “But this lot will be enough to get me started.”

“Wow!” said Jack, looking completely blown away. “All those eggs in the shed. They’ll hatch into snakes and lizards and other cool stuff. Right?”

“That is right. Now, I think Alex has had enough porridge.” The professor picked up the baby cockatoo from the floor, wiped him down and settled him back in his cage. “You too, Larry,” he said, unhooking the lizard from his coat and tucking him into another cage with three other baby blue-tongues. “And I think it’s time I walked you two children back to the front gate. You don’t want the riding school to send out a search party. Do you?”

While we walked, Jack bombarded the Professor with questions about the sanctuary. He didn’t even stop talking when Barnaby trotted up behind him and butted his pocket, looking for more carrots.

You know, one thing I’ve always liked about Jack—when he gets caught up in a project, he always gives it his full attention.

TWELVE

One eye on the stable clock, I pulled a notebook from my horse gear bag and flicked it open at the page headed: ‘Professor’s Egg Mystery’. The cartoony horse’s head on the front of my horse gear bag glared at me. ‘Hurry-up-you’ll-be-late-for-Kate’s-lesson’, the glare seemed to say. Turning my back on the bag, I read the following:

Why does the professor have so many ‘No Trespassing’ signs on his property?

What is he hiding?

Is he an egg smuggler?

Does he have a mean accomplice hidden somewhere nearby?

Why does the professor need a people-eating bull to keep trespassers away?

Do platypuses hatch looking like pink jellybeans?

Okay, most of these questions had been answered…sort of. But was I missing something? My gut feeling kept telling me the professor and his eggs weren’t as squeaky clean as he made out. Yet, his explanation made sense. Starting a native sanctuary by hatching the eggs was an environmentally friendly way to go.

Still deep in thought, I returned the notebook to the bag, picked up my riding helmet and crammed it on my head. Truth was—I didn’t really want to let go of the professor’s egg mystery. Deep down I didn’t want him to be a vet instead of a mad scientist.

How was I supposed to write another Rebecca Turnbull P.I. mystery when there was no mystery to solve?

*

Rebecca Turnbull tightened the belt on her pale peach trench coat. She slipped on a pair of soft leather gloves and strode out into the cold night-air, her fierce Doberman, Fang, panting at her heels.

She was bored.

Bored. Bored. Bored.

Her mobile phone wasn’t ringing. The police hadn’t contacted her for weeks. No convenient dead body had turned up on a park bench or in a cupboard or dropped from a tree.

Seriously, if she didn’t land a new case soon, she’d resort to buying a king-size container of double-chocolate-mud ice cream and sharing the tub with Fang…

*

I had three minutes to get ready for Kate’s group lesson. Taking extra care, I fastened Shakespeare’s tendon boots and stood up. Yesterday, one boot fell off as I trotted over the trot poles. Instead of blaming me, Kate blamed Noah for not showing me how to fasten the boots correctly. But it wasn’t Noah’s fault—he was a stickler for safety.

Funny thing, the more I had to do with Noah, the more I was able to put up with him. Okay he’d never be best friend material and was still
Short Dark and Very Irritating
, but he did have his good points. He was a mega-good teacher. So it beats me how the tendon boot just up and jumped off Shakespeare’s leg. Perhaps my mind had been on the professor’s eggs instead of on pressing all the Velcro straps down firmly.