“I saw it! I saw it, too!” Soo Lee jumped up and down. “Somebody went down a hole in the street. Just like a rabbit!”
The older children looked at each other. Whomever Soo Lee and Benny had seen had disappeared.
“You mean where that manhole is over there?” Jessie asked.
“And somebody just went down it,” Benny said.
Henry looked up and down the street. “Are you sure, Benny? I don’t see any power company workers around or anything. Pete mentioned they sometimes use the underground tunnel to check on things. Was the person wearing a hard hat?”
“No,” Benny said. “He was wearing a white beard.”
The children stared at the manhole. The outer rim of the cover was sticking up as if someone had been too rushed to pull it tight. Then a car drove right over it, and the manhole cover locked into place.
“Whoever went down there better be careful about coming up again,” Benny said.
“He could get squished!” Soo Lee said.
Now the Aldens were full of curiosity and not a bit tired anymore.
Benny kept staring at the manhole cover. “Hey, I have a good idea! Let’s find out who’s down there. The person has to come out somewhere.”
“Okay,” Henry agreed. “I’ll tell you what. You and I will go back into the museum to that entrance Pete took us through last night to get to the passageway.”
“And Violet and Soo Lee and I will go to the door at the other end in the apartment house,” Jessie said, suddenly enjoying the idea of an adventure.
“We’ll see who finds the disappearing man first,” Violet said with a laugh.
“One, two, three, go!” Benny shouted.
The Aldens split up. Jessie, Violet, and Soo Lee headed to the apartment building. Henry and Benny raced back to the museum.
“Why would anyone go down under the street at nighttime?” Violet asked Jessie.
Jessie winked at Violet. “Maybe Benny and Soo Lee didn’t really see anything,” she whispered. “But let’s pretend anyway. They’re having fun, and so am I.”
“Okay.” Violet turned back to Soo Lee. “Let’s see if we can find the person before Benny and Henry do.”
When the girls reached the apartment building, the doorman let them in the back way.
“Maybe the man is in the tunnel,” Soo Lee said when they didn’t see signs of anyone in the back hall.
“Okay, okay,” Jessie said. “Let’s check.” She turned the doorknob to the passageway door, but it was locked. “I guess you have to have the key like Pete did. Let’s just wait for Benny and Henry to come back.”
Across the street, back in the museum, Henry and Benny banged on the side entrance door. Again, they heard a voice: “The museum is closed! Come back tomorrow.”
They banged again, and this time Pete and Nosey came running.
“Oh, it’s you and Benny,” Pete said. “Sorry it took so long, but Nosey thought he heard something down at the other end of the museum.”
“He did?” Benny said. “Well, guess what? We saw somebody go down the manhole in the street. We came to find out if the person came into the museum through the underground part.”
Pete laughed. “Well, if somebody did, the person is stuck down there. You have to have a key for any of the doors that lead off of it. And if you had a key, then you sure wouldn’t need to go down the manhole to get inside the museum or apartment. You could just walk in the front door!”
This didn’t stop Benny. He was ready for an adventure, and he was going to have one. “What if somebody wants to sneak in a secret way? Maybe Nosey did hear somebody.”
Pete patted Benny’s curly head. “Tell you what, Benny, I’ll take you down to the passageway myself, and we’ll check it out. That’s my job. First let me take a look at the television screens to make sure everything is A-OK in the rest of the museum.”
Benny and Henry walked quickly to the guard booth. This time Pete let Benny inside so he could get a look at the screens that showed different rooms in the museum.
“See any prowlers or anything suspicious on any of those televisions?” Pete asked Benny.
“Just me!” Benny said with a laugh. He made faces at the camera that was pointing right at him from the ceiling of the guard booth.
“That’s a dangerous face if I ever saw one!” Pete joked.
Henry checked out the row of televisions, too. “This is pretty neat,” he said. “Do you ever see anything on the screens?”
“Not so far,” Pete said. “It’s pretty dull. Once in a while I get excited when I see a person on the screen, but it always turns out to be somebody who works here. I still like walking around, not just watching these televisions the whole night.”
“Hey, why is this screen dark?” Henry asked.
Pete explained, “Oh, that one’s been on the blink for the past couple of weeks. It’s the screen for Dino World. We can’t seem to get the camera working right. Not that it matters. Titus Pettibone is a better guard of that place than any of the real guards.”
“But who watches over the place now that he’s away? Don’t forget, last night it was unlocked,” Henry said.
Pete looked away. “Oh, uh, well … maybe one of the work crew got tired of asking Titus for the key and taped the latch to go in and out. There’s a lot of work in there that still needs doing before opening day.”
Benny was getting impatient. “Is there a television screen for the passageway? If we don’t get down there, the person I saw will be gone.”
“The passageway isn’t rigged up to the remote cameras,” Pete said. “Only Mr. and Mrs. Diggs and a few other museum people ever use it. Or utility people when they check the water and gas lines. Anyway, the doors down there and the service elevator all lock from both sides.”
Just as Pete had said, the passageway was deserted when they got there.
“Rats! We took too long,” Benny said. “The person got away.”
“Guess so, Benny,” Pete said. “Want to help me out on my post tonight? Maybe there will be some other kind of excitement.”
Benny shook his head. “Nope. We missed it.”
“Well, so long, Pete. Thanks for checking things out for us,” Henry said. “Sorry to bother you.”
Pete unlocked the service elevator for the boys. “It’s no bother. As I said, it’s pretty dull around here.”
But Pete was wrong. Things were not pretty dull around the museum. In fact, they were about to get pretty exciting.
CHAPTER 5
A Tall “Tail” Mystery
The next morning when the Aldens got up, the apartment was empty.
“Gee, I wonder where Mr. and Mrs. Diggs went,” Henry said when he realized the Aldens were alone in the apartment. “Today’s the day for us to meet Dr. Pettibone.”
Jessie found a message on the kitchen counter and read it aloud.
Dear Aldens,
We’re sorry not to have breakfast with you. There’s juice in the refrigerator and coffee cake on the counter. Help yourselves. Titus Pettibone had an emergency this morning when he arrived from his trip, and we had to see him right away. Please meet us in the dinosaur hall.
Emma and Archie Diggs
“Wow, an emergency!” Benny cried.
In no time, the Aldens had eaten and were on their way to the museum, racing down the sidewalk as fast as they could. They showed their visitor passes at the museum entrance, then zoomed by the Viking boats and the whale without stopping. Outside the dinosaur hall a small, noisy crowd of people had formed. The children couldn’t get through.
“I can’t see,” Benny said. “There are too many people.”
“Where’s the dinosaur?” Soo Lee asked. “I can’t see either.”
Henry and Jessie, who were the tallest, stood on their tiptoes to see what was going on.
“The door’s roped off,” Henry explained to the younger children. “It looks like Mr. and Mrs. Diggs are talking to the police!”
Benny c
ouldn’t stand the suspense. Being small, he squeezed himself through the crowd. “Excuse me. Excuse me,” he repeated until he reached the Diggs.
He stopped. His eyebrows shot up. “Hey, that’s the man with the white beard!” he cried.
But just then Emma Diggs spotted Benny and came over to get him. “Goodness, Benny. How did you make it through this mob? I was just about to call the apartment to have you take the freight elevator and get off right in back at the dinosaur hall. I’ll have Pete fetch the other children. He’s about to go off duty anyway. Pete? Pete?”
Pete was so busy walking around and around the dinosaur hall with Nosey that he didn’t hear Mrs. Diggs right away. Finally she went to get him.
“Hey, Benny,” Pete said when Mrs. Diggs finally brought him over. “I guess I was wrong last night about things being pretty dull around here.”
Benny couldn’t stand the suspense. “What happened, anyway?” he asked,
“Let’s get the other kids, and I’ll tell you everything we know,” Pete said. “Coming through! Make way! Coming through!”
When they saw Nosey pulling at the leash, people in the crowd moved aside so Pete and Benny could get by and rejoin Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Soo Lee.
Jessie leaned over to pet Nosey. “What’s going on, Pete? Mrs. Diggs said there was an emergency.”
Pete took off his guard hat and brushed back his hair. “You’re not kidding there’s an emergency — a missing bone emergency! When Titus Pettibone arrived this morning and checked the Tyrannosaurus skeleton, parts of the jawbone and tailbones were gone! Disappeared. This is the only museum with a complete skeleton — or was the only one.”
Benny hopped from one foot to the other and tried to get Pete’s attention. “But that’s the man I saw last night going down the hole in the street,” he said, pointing to the man with the white beard.
Pete gave Benny a friendly punch on the shoulder. “Oh that! Maybe your eyes were fooling you. That’s Dr. Pettibone! He just got back from the airport this morning and came straight here”
This didn’t stop Benny. “Wait — Soo Lee saw him, too. Come on Soo Lee, let’s go find the man.”
Soo Lee hadn’t been in the Alden family too long, but already she liked adventures and mysteries and emergencies just as much as her cousins. She followed right behind Benny. The two of them scooted through the crowd with Henry, Jessie, Violet, Pete, and Nosey trying to keep up.
When the crowd parted, Benny jumped up and down. “There’s the man who went down the hole!”
“Benny is such a good detective,” Jessie whispered to Violet, “but this time I wonder if he’s right. Dr. Pettibone does have a white beard, but he looks so important and so serious, I’m sure he wouldn’t be sneaking down a manhole.”
“That is the man we saw,” Soo Lee insisted when she overheard Jessie. “Do you think he forgot his key and couldn’t get in?”
Before Jessie could answer, Archie Diggs and the bearded man came over. The Aldens could see that the man was upset. He never once looked directly at the children.
“Titus, I would like you to meet James Alden’s grandchildren, Henry, Jessie, Violet, Benny, and Soo Lee, his grandniece,” Mr. Diggs began. “Children, this is our famous fossil expert, Dr. Pettibone.”
The children all said their hellos, but Dr. Pettibone was too busy trying to keep Nosey from jumping on him. “Young man,” he said to Pete, “get that dog out of here! It only adds to all this confusion.”
“As I started to say, Titus, these are James Alden’s …” Mrs. Diggs began until she noticed how upset Dr. Pettibone was, “Are you all right, Titus?” she asked. “I know you’ve had a great shock. I’ll go get you some water. Maybe there’s some way these children can help out. James Alden has told me many times how helpful they’ve been in emergencies. If nothing else, they can do some small things that need doing so you can focus on those missing bones.”
“Missing bones?” Dr. Pettibone said, as if he didn’t know anything about them. “Ah, yes. The missing bones.”
Just then, two police officers stepped through the crowd. Mrs. Diggs turned to the children after Titus Pettibone and Archie Diggs went off to speak to the police. “You children will have to forgive Titus’s manners today. He’s simply beside himself. He can’t seem to figure out what to do, poor man. This dinosaur is his whole life. Why, he went and called the newspapers before he called the police. Imagine!”
The children leaned their heads back to get a better look at the Tyrannosaurus skeleton. While it wasn’t as scary during the day, the dinosaur was still plenty huge and plenty frightening, even without part of its big jawbone and some of its tailbones.
“Who would want a dinosaur bone anyway?” Henry asked.
“I sure would!” Benny answered before he realized what he’d said. “I mean if I found one or they sold them in the museum shop.”
This made Mrs. Diggs smile. “Don’t worry, Benny. You don’t look like a bone thief, if there was a thief, that is. The police wondered if perhaps somebody on the staff or work crew somehow disturbed the skeleton without meaning to and possibly broke the bones. Of course, no one’s been in here since Titus was gone, so I’m probably wrong.”
“We were here,” Soo Lee announced. “The other night.”
Jessie looked embarrassed. “It’s true, Mrs. Diggs. Remember we told you we thought we saw someone — or Benny thought he did — so we came right in. The door wasn’t even locked.”
A police officer came up to Jessie. “Did I hear you say the dinosaur hall was unlocked the other night? You children were actually in here?”
“Yes, we were,” Jessie confessed. “I mean, we didn’t know we shouldn’t come here. We heard a noise and thought we saw something, so we came to check.”
The police officer looked very serious. “I see,” she said. “Well, I’d like to take a statement from you. Now, please tell me how long you were here, how you got here, and so forth.”
When Mrs. Diggs saw how upset Jessie looked, she spoke to the officer herself. “Lieutenant, all these children are friends of our family. They’re here for a visit. If they were in the dinosaur hall the other night, it’s because someone, perhaps a work person, left the door open. The children wouldn’t touch a thing. They’ve been staying with us and wouldn’t so much as use a spoon without asking for permission!”
This didn’t stop the police officer. “That’s very well and good, Mrs. Diggs, but this isn’t an apartment, and there are valuable fossils missing, not a spoon. I must do my job. Anyone who was in or near this dinosaur hall in the last few days has to make a statement. That includes these children. I’m sorry.”
“We don’t mind,” Violet said firmly. “We came in here because we thought we were chasing someone.”
“Chasing someone?” the police officer asked. “Who were you chasing?”
“A shadow Benny saw,” Soo Lee answered.
When she heard this, the police officer lost interest. “Oh, a shadow. Well, small children are always seeing shadows. My six-year-old nephew thinks the shadow of the tree branch outside his bedroom is a big snake.”
This upset Benny so much, he couldn’t be quiet. “It wasn’t a snake I saw or a tree branch shaped like a snake. It was a real shadow that belonged to a real person. I chased it with my brother Henry, but it disappeared when we got inside here.”
Soo Lee tilted her head back and looked up at the giant dinosaur skeleton. “Then we saw this skeleton all over the ceiling, all black and pointy with big teeth, from Pete’s flashlight.”
The officer took another look at Soo Lee. “You mean the night guard over there?” she said, pointing at Pete. “He was in here with you?”
Soo Lee nodded. “Not the whole time. First we were in here by ourselves. I was scared. Then Pete came.”
“I see, I see,” the police officer said. “I have to talk to that fellow again. People keep telling me he’s often in places where he shouldn’t be. And despite several work orders,
he never did arrange to get the remote security camera fixed in here.”
“Dear, dear,” Mrs. Diggs said after the officer went off to question Pete. “I’m afraid poor Pete is in for it.” With that, Mrs. Diggs went off to join Mr. Diggs.
“Did I do okay, Jessie? Did I?” Soo Lee asked.
Jessie smoothed the little girl’s shiny, black bangs. “Of course you did. We all told the truth, and that’s always okay. The police have to interview everyone.”
Violet came over to Jessie and spoke in a low voice. “One thing I’m not sure about is where Pete was when we were in here. Was he already inside or did he follow us in?”
The Aldens looked at each another. No one had an answer to that.
CHAPTER 6
No Bones About It
After all the excitement had died down, Mr. and Mrs. Diggs cleared everyone from the dinosaur hall. Only the Aldens and Dr. Pettibone were left.
“Now Titus,” Mrs. Diggs began. “I know you must be very distracted by this terrible loss, not to mention losing a morning’s work so close to the opening. This is the perfect time for the Aldens to pitch in.”
“Who are the Aldens?” Dr. Pettibone had completely forgotten that he’d already met the children.
Why, these children here, Titus. James Alden’s family,” Mrs. Diggs said. “They are very eager to work on the dinosaur exhibit.”
“With my dinosaurs?” Dr. Pettibone said. “No, Emma, I don’t think so. I plan to work alone right up until the opening, even if I have to stay up every night.”
Soo Lee and Benny found it hard not to interrupt. They kept waiting for Mrs. Diggs and Dr. Pettibone to stop talking.
“Can I ask him about being in the manhole?” Benny asked Henry in a loud whisper.
When Dr. Pettibone overheard this, he stopped right in the middle of his sentence and turned away from the Aldens. “I simply can’t do my work with all these children around, Emma. Send them away. Just send them away.”
Mrs. Diggs sighed and motioned to the children to follow her out. When they reached the lobby, the children could see how upset Mrs. Diggs was.