The Dinosaur Mystery (2 page)
P
ete deposited the children at Mr. and Mrs. Diggs's. “It's nice to be in a normal apartment,” Benny said.
An older gray-haired couple smiled at the children.
“Not too normal.” Grandfather Alden laughed. “Just take a peek in the other rooms.”
The children stuck their heads in the living room. Every inch of it was crammed with amazing things. Several animal skulls hung on the wall. Stuffed animals and birds of all kinds filled each corner. Benny looked admiringly at a collection of old snakeskins.
“We're so lucky to be living and working at such a fine museum,” Mrs. Diggs told Benny, “We get a lot of its leftovers.”
“I like leftovers!” Benny announced.
“You can't eat those leftovers, Benny,” Archie Diggs said. “But Emma and I made you folks some sandwiches from our roast chicken dinner.”
“Leftover chicken sandwiches are my favorites,” Benny said.
Laughing and talking, the Aldens sat down at the Diggses' kitchen table to eat sandwiches and to make plans for the next day.
“Now tomorrow morning, first thing, I'll give you a quick tour of the museum before it opens,” Archie Diggs began. “You'll meet Eve Skyler, who's head of the planetarium. And the day after, you'll work with our famous fossil scientist, Titus Pettibone.”
Mrs. Diggs put down her teacup when she noticed the Aldens frowning. “What is it, children? Is something wrong?”
“Mr. Bones might get mad at us,” Soo Lee said. “The man with the flashlight told us.”
“Told you what?” Mr. Diggs asked.
“That Titus Pettibone doesn't let anybody near the dinosaur room and, well ⦠that's where we wanted to help out,” Henry explained.
“We know you do,” Mrs. Diggs said. “That's the whole reason we asked you here. Why, with the Dino World opening just a week away, Titus knows he can't do every thing himself.”
“Not to mention all the problems we've been having around here lately,” Archie said. “Our alarm system seems to be acting up. And our new night watchman, Pete â a nice young man, mind you â still needs a lot of supervision. He just started on the job.”
“Now, Archie, you and Emma shouldn't worry,” Mr. Alden said. “Once Titus learns how careful these children are, he'll be glad to have them on board.”
“Thanks, James,” Mrs. Diggs said. Mr. Alden stood up to go. He would be back for the opening of Dino World. Mrs. Diggs handed him his hat and scarf. “I know your grandchildren and your grandniece will be a big help.”
After walking their grandfather to the door to say good-bye, Henry, Jessie, and Violet rejoined Benny and Soo Lee in the kitchen, When they got there, the food had been cleared away, and in the middle of the table was Benny's rock box. Benny was sitting next to Mrs. Diggs and explaining where he had found each and every rock. “This one came from the stream next to where we lived in our boxcar,” Benny told Mrs. Diggs. “I'm saving it forever and ever.”
Mrs. Diggs put on her glasses for a closer look. “This one's a nice piece of black shale, Benny. Now tell me, what's in that jar?”
Benny slowly took out a mayonnaise jar full of shiny dead insects.
“Your cicadas, Benny!” Jessie cried. “You brought your dead cicadas, too?”
Benny held up the jar as proudly as if it held gold nuggets. “A whole jar full!” he told Mr. and Mrs. Diggs. “They fall out of the big tree in our
backyard every summer, and I save them. I don't think they live long.”
“You'll make a good scientist,” Mr. Diggs told Benny. “Adult cicadas only live a few weeks, but they sing up a storm for those few weeks. They look quite nice in that jar too. Good place for them. This week, I'll take you to the Entomology Room.”
“Entomology is the study of ⦔ Mrs. Diggs began to explain to the children.
“Bugs!” Benny and Soo Lee shouted together.
“Pete told us when he took us to the bug room,” Violet said.
Mrs. Diggs looked surprised. “Took you to the bug room? Whatever for?”
“He thought it was a shortcut to get to your apartment,” Henry said. “But we came here a different way, over by the dinosaur room.”
“You were in the dinosaur room, too?” Mr. Diggs asked. “How on earth did you get inside? I hope Pete didn't fool with that lock. He's still finding his way around, I'm afraid.”
“I was afraid, too,” Soo Lee said, biting her lip. “The big dinosaur made big shadows way, way up.”
Mrs. Diggs patted Soo Lee on the shoulder. “Well, you needn't be afraid. We'll get Titus to give you a tour during the day. My goodness, I wonder what Pete was doing over on that side of the museum at this late hour? Well, let's get you all off to bed and figure this out in the morning. You children have a big day ahead.”
“And a big dinosaur ahead, too!” Benny said in an excited voice.
With Mr. and Mrs. Diggs leading the way, the children followed the couple up a short set of stairs to two rooms off a landing.
“Now that Dino World is nearly ready,” Mrs. Diggs explained, “we've had to move a lot of things wherever there's room. You'll even find a few interesting things in these guest quarters. Usually we have scientists and museum people staying there, so it's all decorated with specimens from the museum. I hope you children don't mind.”
The children stepped inside a small room with a second room connecting to it. Just like the rest of the apartment, these rooms were jammed with all kinds of objects from the museum.
Mr. Diggs pulled down a tiny, stuffed animal with huge eyes to show Benny and Soo Lee. “Now this little fellow is a marmoset monkey. He's about thirty years old. There was no room for him at the museum, so we adopted him.”
Benny stroked the stuffed animal, which looked as if it had just jumped down from a tree.
“I can move some of these things to a closet,” Mr. Diggs offered. “If they bother you.”
“Oh, but we like all this stuff,” Benny said. “Soo Lee and I take walks and find things â like my cicadas. I keep them in my room.”
Soo Lee showed Mrs. Diggs her special box. “Violet and I found it in the woods. It's a bird's nest.”
“A fine hummingbird's nest,” Mrs. Diggs said as she turned back the covers on the beds. “You Aldens are all such curious children. I know our staff will enjoy showing you the Pickering's wonderful treasures.”
In no time, the Alden children were fast asleep, all except Jessie. Without Watch at the foot of her bed, she couldn't fall asleep right away. The guest room faced the street, and the street lamps and traffic sounds kept her awake.
“Too noisy,” she whispered to herself as she smoothed her covers, then her pillow, and tried to get comfortable.
“Too bright,” she whispered more loudly. She finally got out of bed and went to the window.
The big museum, straight ahead, was completely dark. Jessie watched the cars go by and the traffic lights change from green, to yellow, to red. Even at night, the city streets were so bright. Jessie reached for the windowshade to darken the room. As she did, she heard a faint buzzing sound in the distance. Was it traffic or a radio or a television or just ringing in her ears?
“I wish Watch were here,” Jessie said to herself as she pulled down the shade. Then she stopped. Why was a light moving across some of the museum windows?
“Huh!” she cried suddenly. There was a large dark shape in the tall windows across the way. Jessie stepped back.
Violet mumbled from her bed. “What's the matter, Jessie?” she asked in a sleepy voice.
Jessie squinted, but the light in the museum was gone, taking with it the shadowy forms.
“Nothing,” Jessie whispered to Violet. “It's nothing.”
She got into bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. The room was still too bright. On the night table, Jessie could see the small mouse skull that had looked so delicate and pretty in the light. And over on a bookshelf, the glass eyes of the stuffed marmoset monkey seemed to be watching her. Jessie pulled the covers over her face, but quite a few minutes passed before she stopped seeing the huge black outline in the museum window across the way â the moving shadow of the long-dead dinosaur!
“I
s it okay to have another muffin?” Benny whispered to Jessie the next morning at breakfast.
“Here, take mine,” Jessie told him.
“How come you're not hungry?” Henry asked his sister.
Jessie yawned. “I'm more tired than hungry. I had the worst time falling asleep last night. First I was too hot, then it was too light in the room, then I thought I heard an alarm.”
Just as Jessie said this, Mr. Diggs walked into the kitchen. “You must have heard a car alarm. They go off at all hours for no reason in a big city like this.”
Mrs. Diggs came back from the pantry with more food for the children. “Pete left a message on the phone machine that everything was quiet all night.”
At this, Jessie looked up. “Was he sure? I saw lights in the windows of the dinosaur room last night, right after I heard that alarm sound. Maybe it was Pete.”
Mr. Diggs came around with more orange juice for everyone. “Oh, I doubt it. Pete spends the night on the other side of the museum at the control desk. We have remote cameras so he can keep an eye on the whole museum from there.”
“But I saw a shadow in the dinosaur room, just like the ones we saw when Pete first showed us the
Tyrannosaurus
last night,” Jessie explained. “Somebody was in there!”
Mrs. Diggs shook her head and smiled. “Well, with an old building like this you get all kinds of reflections from the traffic, lights, and such.”
The children finished breakfast quickly. They couldn't wait to get started.
“Guess what?” Benny asked his sisters and brother. “Mr. Diggs is going to give me a real sorting box for my rocks and real museum signs â little ones â so I can label my collection.”
“And I'm going to give Soo Lee a display box for her bird's nest,” Mrs. Diggs told the children.
“And guess what else?” Soo Lee asked in an excited voice. “Benny and I are going to make a museum in the boxcar in Grandfather's backyard when we get home! Mr. Diggs said Pete will give us real museum tickets to use when people come to
our
museum!”
Mr. Diggs laughed. “Well, first you have to come to
our
museum to get some ideas. Let's go!”
That morning the museum was flooded with daylight. The five Aldens looked everywhere at once. In one hall, they passed a giant Viking boat with the longest oars the children had ever seen. A couple of rooms away, a giant whale hung from the ceiling, and fingers of light made it seem as if everything were underwater.
“First stop, the planetarium,” Mr. Diggs told the excited children. “Eve Skyler, our director, needs a lot of help there.”
Mrs. Diggs met everyone at the planetarium entrance. “I forgot to mention that this is a big surprise for Eve,” she said in a low voice. “She's been so upset with all the confusion around here. And who can blame her? All this dust and nails and banging, and with most of our staff busy with Dino World, she's had to cancel a number of sky shows.”
Mr. Diggs unlocked the door, and everyone stepped inside.
“Oooo!” the Aldens gasped as they stepped into the darkened room.
The only light came from hundreds of stars sprinkled across the ceiling. They could hear a woman's deep voice talking from somewhere in the room.
“And over in the West is Venus,” the voice was saying.
The children tried to see who was speaking, but it was much too dark.
“What on earth?” Mr. Diggs said.
“Or what in heaven?” Jessie said.
Benny asked, “How did it get to be nighttime? And how come we're outside all of a sudden?”
“It does feel exactly as if we're outside.” Violet whispered. “Listen, there are crickets!”
Violet was right. The sound of crickets filled the air just as if the children were in their own backyard looking at the stars.
“It's magic,” Violet whispered. “Like someone turned the morning into night and opened the roof to show us the stars.”
“Look.” Henry pointed to the lower part of the curved ceiling. “The moon is rising in the East.”
“It's just a movie of stars and the moon,” Henry explained. “And the person who was talking is just a recording, and so were the crickets.”
Mr. Diggs, who had been searching for the light switch inside the planetarium, called out, “Now get ready, children. I'll make it daytime again. One ⦠two ⦠three!”
With that, the light went on, and the sky, the stars, and the moon all disappeared. The Aldens found themselves standing in a room that looked like a round movie theater with rows of seats arranged in circles.
