The Mystery of the Grinning Gargoyle (3 page)

“Let's get out of here!” Benny yelled as his brother and sisters collided with him. “That spooky gargoyle's staring into the library at me!”

Benny pointed at a large window just outside the stairwell door. And as the four Alden children tumbled to the floor in a heap, Henry, Jessie, and Violet caught a glimpse of something in the window.

Something that floated.

Something with beady eyes.

Something with sharp teeth.

Something with a grin on its face.

“Yikes!” said Violet, falling on top of Jessie.

“Ouch!” said Jessie, falling on top of Henry.

“Huh?” Henry said, landing on the floor with his sisters and brother tangled on top of him.

All four Aldens struggled to free themselves from their twisted pile of arms and legs, trying to look back at the window where they all thought they'd just seen the beady-eyed, sharp-toothed, grinning face of a gargoyle!

CHAPTER
2

A New Mystery

The four Alden children untangled themselves from one another and picked themselves off the floor of the stairway landing. Then they all looked back to the large window where they'd just seen the face of a gargoyle—a grinning gargoyle just like the ones that decorated the top of the old library building.

But the window was empty. The gargoyle was nowhere to be seen.

“Did you guys see that?” Jessie asked.

“I sure did,” said Violet. “It was a gargoyle.”

“I saw it, too,” said Henry. “But gargoyles aren't real creatures. They're just stone statues.”

“But if I saw it, and you all saw it, then it must have been real,” Benny said. “Right?”

“We all saw something,” said Henry, “but the real questions are what exactly did we see and where did it go?”

Henry was already looking out the window—up and down and to each side—with his siblings crowded around him. “I don't see it anywhere,” he said. “I wonder where it went…whatever it was that we saw.”

“It couldn't have just vanished,” said Violet. “Could it?”

“Tell us exactly what happened, Benny,” Jessie said.

“Well,” said Benny, “I was running up the stairs, and I knew I was close to the top because my legs were getting tired. I stopped to catch my breath, and that's when I heard a scratching sound. When I looked out this door to see what was scratching and scraping, there was that gargoyle, smiling right at me through the window—and it wasn't a friendly smile, either!”

“Well, like I said, gargoyles are just stone statues,” said Henry. “There is no way they could fly down in front of a window, or make a scratching sound…”

Just then, there was a different sound from behind where the children stood. It was a thumping and bumping sound, and it was coming from the stairwell where the Aldens had just been.

Thump. Bump. Thump. Bump. The sound echoed all the way up to where the children were.

Benny gasped. “Could a gargoyle make that kind of sound?” he asked.

Thump. Bump. Thump. Bump.

“That sounds like someone—or something—running,” said Jessie. “Who's there?”

Thump. Bump. Thump. Bump. That's the only thing the children heard.

“Yeah,” Violet called down the stairs, “who—or what—are you?”

But there was no answer, just more thumps and bumps of footsteps, from either a human or something else, running down the staircase of the old library.

“Quick!” said Henry. “Let's follow the footsteps. Maybe it's the gargoyle, or somebody who saw the gargoyle, too.”

The children started to run down the stairs, but whoever or whatever they were following had too much of a head start. The thumping and bumping of the footsteps sounded farther and farther away.

Thump. Bump. Thump. Bump.

“Let's take the elevator,” said Jessie. “It will be faster.”

“Jessie's right,” said Henry. “We got to the top floor before Benny did when he took the stairs. This is our only chance to find out who or what was behind whatever it was that we saw and whoever it is that we're hearing.”

“It sounds like a mystery for us to solve!” Benny said, rushing through the door to the next floor.

As soon as the Alden children dashed out of the stairwell and onto the next floor of the library, Violet pushed the down button for the elevator. The bell dinged and the doors slid open. The children piled into the elevator and Jessie pushed the button for the ground floor.

“If we beat whoever it is to the bottom floor,” said Jessie, “we can wait at the bottom of the stairwell for them.”

“Good thinking!” said Henry. “That way we can see whoever it was making those noises.”

“And maybe that person knows something about the spooky gargoyle we saw,” said Benny.

They stood inside the elevator and watched the light for each floor light up to show how fast they were going down.

“Eight!” said Henry, calling out the floor number.

“Seven!” Jessie said as they reached the next floor.

“Six,” said Violet. “We're almost halfway there!”

But instead of continuing down five more floors on its speedy trip to the library's lobby, the elevator slowed and groaned to a stop on the sixth floor. The elevator doors creaked open.

“Oh, no,” said Benny. “We were so close!”

Once the doors had opened all the way, the Alden children were met by the same library worker they'd seen earlier. The man was still pushing the same connected carts of books.

“Excuse me,” said the man as he pulled the carts onto the elevator. “Library books coming through. Make way for library books.”

The elevator was hardly big enough for four children, a library worker, and lots of neatly stacked library books stored on carts. If the children hadn't been in such a hurry, Benny might have started talking to the library worker, asking the man's name and how he was doing and other friendly questions. But Benny just tapped his foot impatiently and under his breath told the elevator to “Hurry up!”

As Jessie was about to ask Benny to please be a little bit more polite, the elevator slowed and stopped once again.

“We're only on the third floor!” Benny said.

“This is where I get off,” said the library worker. The man rolled the carts off of the elevator and told the children goodbye, not realizing what a hurry that the Alden siblings were in.

It seemed to take forever for the doors to shut once again. Benny called off the last two floors. “Two! One! We're here!”

By the time the elevator finally stopped on the first floor of the library, and by the time the doors slid open for the last time, and by the time that Henry and Jessie and Violet and Benny spilled out of the elevator and into the library lobby, there was no one in sight—no one, except for Miss Hollenberg.

“Miss Hollenberg, Miss Hollenberg!” Benny shouted, sprinting out of the open elevator. “I saw it! I saw it! And my brother and sisters did, too!”

Jessie quickly caught up with her noisy little brother, taking him by the arm. “Benny,” she said, “remember that we're in a library…you can't just yell and run around. People are here to read and study and learn.”

Sure enough, Miss Hollenberg had been working away at her computer, but looked up at the sound of running and yelling. The old librarian started to shush whoever was making the racket, and saw the Aldens coming her way.

“What's the matter, children?” she asked. “You look like you've seen a ghost.”

“A gargoyle!” Benny said. “We saw the gargoyle, and it saw us!”

“Now, now,” said Miss Hollenberg, “you must have seen one of the statues.”

“But it wasn't one of the statues,” said Violet. “The gargoyle we saw was floating outside of the window, and then it disappeared.”

“And the gargoyle statues were up at the top of the roof,” said Benny, “but I saw—we saw—this gargoyle on the floor right below the top floor.”

“And then we heard someone or something running down the stairs,” Jessie said, “but they got away because the elevator ride wasn't as fast as we thought it would be. Did you see anybody—or anything—run out of the stairwell right before we did, Miss Hollenberg?”

“I'm sorry, children. I was busy working,” said Miss Hollenberg. “I didn't see anyone running around here except for the four of you.”

“Now we have a new mystery to solve,” said Henry. “We've solved quite a few mysteries already, and we have gotten pretty good at it, too.”

Miss Hollenberg shook her head. “Children,” she said, “while solving mysteries sure sounds like fun, and is probably something you're good at if you're as smart as your grandfather, you must remember that this is a library…”

“That's a great idea!” said Henry. “Miss Hollenberg, are there any old books or papers here in the library that might tell about the gargoyles? Maybe we could solve the mystery by reading about it.”

“Gargoyles? Stairway chases? Mystery solving? You children certainly have good imaginations, don't you?” Miss Hollenberg chuckled. “I know this old library inside and out, and there aren't any gargoyles here, other than the statues. Like I said when you arrived—it's just a legend. And like I've already told you, please remember that this is a library. People are here to read and study, not listen to a bunch of ruckus.”

“We'll be quiet,” promised Jessie.

“Yeah,” said Benny, “especially if you help us solve this mystery…”

“There have to be books or papers that talk about the gargoyles, don't there?” said Henry. “This library is really big and really old. I bet there are books and papers about everything in here.”

“Well, there are thousands and thousands of books in this old building,” said Miss Hollenberg. “And nearly as many old papers and documents. But I can assure you children that there aren't any clues about gargoyles hidden in books or papers, so don't bother looking.

Henry thought that was not a very librarian-like thing for Miss Hollenberg to say. Most every librarian he had ever met—and since Henry loved books, he'd met quite a few—loved when children wanted to read old books and learn new things. Miss Hollenberg was acting strange.

The old librarian continued talking. “Now, I clearly remember hearing your grandfather tell you to meet him at the football field,” she said. “That would be a much better place for such loud and rambunctious behavior, don't you think?”

As the Aldens trudged across the campus of Goldwin University to the football stadium, they were a little discouraged.

“I wish we could have stayed at the library,” said Henry. “There must have been clues we missed that would have solved the gargoyle mystery. I'm sure that the gargoyles aren't real, and that someone is just trying to scare people.”

“I wish Miss Hollenberg had listened to us,” said Violet. “Maybe she could have helped us solve the mystery, since she knows so much about the library.”

“I wish that elevator had been a little bit faster,” said Jessie. “We could have solved the mystery if we had made it downstairs a little sooner.”

“And I wish,” said Benny, “that we had something to eat. I'm hungry!”

Benny was always hungry, and the scare and chase he'd had at the library made his stomach growl even louder than usual.

“The Bruin Beanery,” said Jessie, pointing at a shop ahead of them on the sidewalk. “Maybe there's something to eat there.”

“What's a bruin?” Violet asked. “And what's a beanery?”

“Bruin is just another word for bear,” Henry said. “The mascot of Goldwin University is a bear, or a bruin.”

“And beanery is another way to say coffee shop,” said Jessie. “Most coffee shops also have food for sale…”

Before Jessie could finish her thought, Benny's nose had already caught the scent of something tasty. The youngest Alden ran down the sidewalk and through the front door of the Bruin Beanery, yelling, “I smell chocolate chip cookies!”

Benny's siblings reached the counter of the coffee shop and found their brother already ordering from the clerk.

“I'd like four chocolate chip cookies, please,” Benny said to the clerk behind the counter.

The clerk was a gloomy-looking college student dressed in black. Her hair was jet black, too, and she wore black eyeliner around her eyes. The Bruin Beanery badge on her chest said that her name was Raven. “Four chocolate chip cookies for the four of you?” the girl asked.

“No,” said Benny. “The cookies are for me. I'm really hungry!”

With their afternoon snacks sitting on a table in the middle of the coffee shop, the Alden children sat down on tall stools. Henry had ordered a bagel with cream cheese. Jessie munched on a slice of zucchini bread. Violet had a blueberry muffin, with juicy, purple berries oozing through her fingers.

“These cookies sure are great,” Benny said kind of loudly. “They almost made me forget about that scary gargoyle I saw.”

“What did you say?” asked Raven the coffee-shop clerk from across the shop.

“I said these cookies are delicious,” said Benny. “Did you make them yourself?”

“No,” said Raven. “What did you say about a gargoyle?”

“My little brother Benny saw a gargoyle at the library,” said Jessie.

“Actually, we all saw it,” said Violet.

“You saw a gargoyle?” Raven asked. She didn't look so gloomy anymore. Instead, she looked very excited and rushed out from behind the cash register, coming over to the children's table. “Tell me about it.”

Henry told Raven all about the gargoyle Benny had seen, about how it disappeared, and about the slow elevator ride to the first floor of the library as they chased the source of the mysterious thumping and bumping sound they had heard echoing up the stairwell. “Why are you so interested in the gargoyles?” Henry asked. “Have you seen one before?”