"What's the idea, bringing us 'way out here on a wild-goose chase?" Mortimer snorted at them. "We've got more important things to do."
"If this is your idea of a joke, you two'll never make a living as comedians," said Jeff. "We oughta toss you in the swamp."
Little Dinky started to blubber. "Honest Injun, Jeff. Somebody has been out here. There wasn't any egg there when Freddy and I were here yesterday."
"Scout's honor!" said Freddy, giving the sign.
"Maybe you dug in the wrong place. You guys don't dig things too well, you know," said Mortimer sarcastically.
"Maybe we did. But who filled our hole up?" said Dinky, kicking sand at him. His voice was all choked up, and there was a big tear running down the left side of his face.
"How do I know? Maybe the whole thing was in your head," Mortimer jibed at him.
While they were arguing, I noticed that Henry had lifted the-big egg out of the hole and was examining it closely with his pocket magnifying glass. There was a mysterious smile on his face as he placed it back in the sand.
"What's so funny, Henry? Can you see the dinosaur in there already?" I asked him.
Henry started, as though he hadn't realized anyone was looking at him. "Everything's fine, Charlie. Just fine," he said, and covered the egg up with sand.
But everything wasn't "just fine" as far as Dinky and Freddy were concerned. Dinky moped all the way home; and later he and Freddy told me they were certain the egg had been missing when they had tried to dig it up the day before.
"We think my cousin Harmon has been up to something, and we aim to find out what he's doing," Freddy explained.
"We've got to prove to the other guys that we're not nuts," Dinky added.
I felt sorry for both of them, and I agreed to help out in setting a watch on Harmon's clubhouse. This wasn't difficult, because Harmon's gang always meets on the second story of an old garage in back of Stony Martin's house. It faces Egan's Alley, and across the alley and just a little way down is the old Blaisdell barn. The Blaisdells are an old couple that can't run very fast, and they long ago got tired of trying to chase us out of their loft. Old man Blaisdell just decided to buy more insurance and relax, and we've had the run of the place ever since.
It's a neat place to spy from. There're windows at both ends of the loft, and there's a cupola on top that you can climb up into and look out through the ventilation slits. From it we could keep a good watch on Stony Martin's garage.
That night we saw Stony come out and dump a bucketful of stuff into a trash can in the alley. It sounded like rocks. Then he chipped away at the inside of the bucket with a screwdriver and washed it out with a hose. After he went back inside the garage, Dinky couldn't contain his curiosity any longer. He sneaked across the alley and shinnied up a telephone pole so he could peek inside the lighted window on the second floor. We held our breath, hoping nobody would come out and see him there. Suddenly we saw him swing over onto the sloping roof of the garage and lie flat against it. Harmon came to the lighted window and raised the sash so he could look out into the alley. He took a good look around, then pulled his head in and closed the window again. We breathed easier, but Dinky lay motionless on the roof, pressing himself against the shingles. Pretty soon the light went out, and we could hear them clumping down the stairs inside. Harmon and Stony came out the back door, locked it behind them, and disappeared down the alley.
As soon as they were out of sight, Dinky scrambled down the pole and came running pell-mell toward Blaisdell's barn. We met him halfway down the ladder from the loft.
"They've got our egg!" he said in a breathless whisper. "I saw it sitting on a table up there."
We dashed across the alley and Dinky shinnied up the pole again. He jumped onto the roof of the garage and let himself down over the eaves onto the windowsill. The window was unlocked, and it took him only a second to scramble inside. Then he groped his way down the stairs in the dark and unlatched the alley door. I slipped inside and went upstairs with him while Freddy kept watch behind one of the trash cans in the alley. Dinky's flashlight picked out the table against the wall, and sure enough, there was the big egg sitting unprotected in the middle of it. We looked around for something to wrap it in and found a pile of burlap bags in one corner. I pulled a couple of them off the top of the pile and felt something hard under the next bag. Pulling it aside, I shined my flashlight onto what looked like a couple of small wash basins. Dinky stood beside me, breathing hard.
"What are those, Charlie? They look like big hunks of plaster."
"I think I know," I said. "And I think they can tell us a lot about what's been going on."
We got the big egg off the table and fitted it into the depression in one of the chunks of plaster. It fitted perfectly.
"These are plaster molds," I whispered. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Yeah! That's what Stony was throwing away in the ash can. Old chunks of plaster of Paris."
"Yes! But don't you see? These are two halves of a plaster mold made from our dinosaur egg. What would they make a mold for?"
"To make another egg," said Dinky.
"Exactly! And that's what's out in the swamp right now: a fake egg made out of plaster of Paris and painted up."
"I wonder why they'd do that?" Dinky hissed.
"So they could claim they found the egg, instead of us, and get all the credit. That Harmon would do anything; but this time he's gonna get fooled."
"Whatcha gonna do?"
"We're going to beat them at their own game," I said. "We're gonna switch eggs on them, and they'll never know the difference."
We wrapped the egg in a couple of burlap bags and beat it out of there, being careful to leave the door unlocked. It took us about two hours to get out to the right place in the swamps, find the fake egg in the darkness, and put the real egg back in its place. Then it took us another two hours to get back to Egan's Alley. Our hearts were thumping pretty loudly when we tiptoed up the creaky stairs of Stony's garage again; but it was well after midnight, and we figured we were pretty safe as long as we didn't make any noise. Since we found the door still unlocked, we were pretty sure nobody had discovered the egg was missing.
When we got to the top of the stairs, we groped our way carefully to the table. I reached out for the edge of it and almost screamed out loud when my hand came down on what felt like another human hand.
"It's about time you got back," said a voice. "What took you so long?"
Dinky jumped back clear to the top of the stairs and snapped his flashlight on. My heart had stopped, but it started beating again when I saw that the figure sitting at the end of the table was Henry Mulligan.
For a minute I had all sorts of wild thoughts. What was Henry doing here in Harmon Muldoon's clubhouse? Was he in cahoots with Harmon for some reason? How did he know what we were up to?
"Jeepers, Henry, you scared the daylights out of us," said Dinky.
"What on earth are you doing here?" I asked, when I could find my voice.
"Never mind," said Henry. "Put the egg back, and let's get out of here!"
"This isn't the real egg," said Dinky. "We found the real one here and took it back out to the swamp."
"I know all about where you've been," Henry said quietly. "You just had to prove you were right, didn't you? Now put the egg down and let's scram."
I propped the egg up on the table, just where we'd found the other one, and we cleared out of there. At least Dinky and Freddy had vindicated themselves. And even though we didn't know exactly what Harmon was up to, we figured we were a step ahead of him. The big question, though, was Henry Mulligan's strange behavior. And it became even stranger during the next several days.
He seemed to spend hours and hours in the clubhouse, fiddling around with our ham radio set, and he wouldn't even talk about dinosaurs or let anyone go out to check on the egg. "The egg is all right," he would say. "Don't worry about it." Finally, one day, we talked him into going fishing, and w
e all got on our bicycles and rode 'way up into the hills to a favorite stream of ours. Henry didn't catch any fish, though. He almost never does. Somehow or other it seems that really smart people just don't attract fish. I think they just get bored with it all and aren't patient enough.
By early afternoon, Henry had talked us all into going back to town. When we got back to his house there was a man sitting on the porch waiting to see him. He introduced himself as a science reporter for one of the big city newspapers.
"I'm Mr. Bowden from the Globe-Democrat ," he said. "I'd like to ask you a few questions about this big egg you found."
"What big egg?" asked Freddy Muldoon.
"The big egg that's supposed to be a dinosaur egg," said Mr. Bowden.
"Oh, that egg!" said Freddy. "You'll have to talk to Henry Mulligan about that. He's our chief scientist."
"Thank you," Mr. Bowden said politely. "He's the one I came to talk to."
By this time Jeff had gotten hold of one of Freddy's ears and pulled him off to the side. Mr. Bowden explained that the American Museum of Natural History in New York had made fluorine tests on the shell fragments we sent them and were of the opinion that they were from the Jurassic period of the Mesozoic era. They thought the egg was probably that of a large sauropod dinosaur -- possibly a brontosaurus, or maybe even a brachiosaurus. They were quite excited about it and had asked an expert from the state university to come down to Mammoth Falls to examine the egg. That was why Mr. Bowden was here. There would probably be reporters from other papers coming down with the expert.
"Who is he?" Henry asked.
"He's Professor Mudgeon, a very well-known paleontologist," said Mr. Bowden. "He'll be here tomorrow."
"What's all this stuff about the jackass period and all that?" asked Dinky Poore.
"That's Jurassic ," said Henry. "All it means is that the egg is probably a hundred and fifty million years old, like I said."
The next day we all went over to the town hall to meet Professor Mudgeon, who had agreed to hold a press conference there. Mayor Scragg was there, of course. Whenever there's anything going on in Mammoth Falls that might get into the newspapers, you'll always find him in the middle of it. Today he was in great form, beaming and smiling, and patting Henry on the head as he introduced him to Professor Mudgeon. Henry kept ducking, trying to keep from getting his hair mussed, because he always figures a scientist should look as dignified as possible. Professor Mudgeon didn't look too dignified, though. His suit was a little rumpled, and his shirt collar was a little dirty, and he had bright, shining eyes that twinkled behind his thick-lensed glasses. And he had enough hair to make up for all that Mayor Scragg was lacking, and then some.
"We're very proud of these young men," said Mayor Scragg, mussing Henry's hair again.
"Well, I'm sure you should be," said Professor Mudgeon. "They may have made an important discovery." He had a habit of sucking air in through his teeth with a slurping sound after every statement, and then laughing with his teeth still closed.
After everybody had sat down, the professor gave a brief explanation of why he was there, and told the reporters something about dinosaur fossils. In answer to a reporter's question, he explained the various methods scientists use to determine the age of fossils or bones. When he got to the uranium method, of course, the reporter from the Mammoth Falls Gazette had to get up and ask him if this egg was radioactive, and if there would be any danger to the community.
"No! I hardly think so," said the professor, laughing through his teeth again.
"What a dope that reporter is," said Henry, under his breath.
"When do we get to see the egg?" another reporter asked.
"Well, that's up to these young men here," said the professor, looking toward Henry. "I haven't seen it, myself, yet. As a matter of fact, I don't even know where it is."
"We buried it," said Henry, nonchalantly.
"Buried it? What for?"
"To see if it would hatch."
This brought the house down. Even the professor was laughing -- with his mouth open this time. Then a second laugh broke out when the Gazette reporter asked if there was any remote possibility that the egg might hatch, and a live dinosaur be born.
"No, of course not!" said the professor, laughing openly again. Then suddenly his face clouded and the scientist in him reasserted itself. "On the other hand, I don't really know," he said seriously. "Things like that are decided by an authority greater than I."
Mayor Scragg was in such an expansive mood that he volunteered the services of both the town police department and the fire department to transport everybody out to a point where we could walk into the swamps. He even lent the professor a pair of leather puttees that he had left over from World War I. All the way out there he kept telling the professor what an important place Mammoth Falls was for geological exploration, and the professor kept saying, "Very interesting. Very interesting indeed!"
A lot of other people who hadn't been invited came trailing along after us, and we noticed Harmon and some of the members of his gang among them. Dinky Poore, of course, had to run out ahead of everybody so he could be the one to show the professor where the egg was; and when the rest of us rounded the end of the little hill where the sandpit jutted into the swamp, he came dashing back through the bushes shouting, "The egg has hatched! The dinosaur has gone!"
Sure enough, when the rest of us got to the little clearing, all we saw were broken fragments of what once had been the big egg, lying in a shallow pit in the sand. Professor Mudgeon stopped at the edge of the clearing and asked everyone to stand back. He looked at the ground very carefully, and then he tiptoed over to the edge of the bog where a series of tiny depressions were visible in the wet sand. He straightened up and drew a large magnifying glass from his coat pocket. Then he bent down and studied the depressions very closely.
They certainly looked like the footprints of some unknown kind of animal. They were shaped a little bit like an acorn with three sharp little points at the top, or maybe more like the profile of a slightly deformed tulip, just opening up. There were smaller prints interspersed among them that looked like an empty acorn shell upside down. They proceeded in a wavering line along the short stretch of shore, and then disappeared in the bushes, where the sand was drier.
After studying them for a while, and shaking his head from side to side, the professor moved over to where the big chunks of broken eggshell lay in the pit and picked up one or two of them. Finally he snorted and rose to his feet.
"Very clever! Very clever!" he said. "But a complete fake!"
Mayor Scragg harrumphed loudly, and a babble of noise and excited questions broke loose from the reporters. Over it all I was sure I could hear the sound of Harmon Muldoon's laughter. To back up his statement, the professor picked up one of the egg fragments, crumbled it to a white powder between his fingers, and tasted it.
"Pure plaster of Paris!" he snorted, spitting it out.
Mayor Scragg had turned purple and his cheeks were bellowing in and out. He glared at Henry Mulligan and the rest of us. Then he looked back at the professor and harrumphed again. Professor Mudgeon had moved over to look again at the footprints in the sand.
"Somebody has done a very clever job of duplicating the footprints of an infant brontosaurus," he said, "but he forgot one thing. The brontosaurus had a long, heavy tail that he could barely lift off the ground, and there is no trace of a tail being dragged along the ground here." Then he turned toward Mayor Scragg. "I'm very sorry, Mr. Mayor. But I must also say that I'm a little disappointed at coming all the way down here to be victimized by a fraud and a hoax!"
"You don't know the half of it!" spouted the Mayor, turning all purple again. "I'm very sorry too, Professor Mudhen, but if you had to live in a town full of teenage Machiavellis you might be able to appreciate what I'm up against."
"Mudgeon!" said the professor.
"What's that?"
"Mudgeon!" he repeated. "My name is Mudgeon!"
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"Oh yes! Of course! Very sorry!" said Mayor Scragg.
"That's quite all right. I'm used to it," said the professor.
Several of the reporters were now taking photographs of the footprints and the egg fragments. A couple of others were trying to get information out of Henry, but he wasn't talking. "I'm not ready to make any statements," he told them, and walked over to where we were standing.
"What's going on?" Jeff asked him. "Is that our egg, or isn't it?" But Henry just shrugged his shoulders and moved away from us.
"It looks like you guys goofed," said Jeff, turning to glare at Dinky and Freddy and me.
"Yeah!" Mortimer taunted. "You probably took the real egg out of the hole and lugged it back to Harmon's clubhouse. You sure went to a lot of trouble to louse things up!"
"Tell it to the Marines!" said Dinky, not knowing what to say.
We stood there with our arms folded, waiting to see what happened next. None of us knew any more about what was going on than Mayor Scragg did. The Mayor was trying desperately to apologize to the professor, but the professor wasn't paying any attention to him. He was standing in the middle of the clearing, chewing on his spectacles and muttering to himself.
"What I don't understand," he kept saying, "is that my friend Dr. Hoffmeister at the museum was so certain those shell fragments came from the Jurassic period. He might be misled by a photograph, but not by the pieces of shell.... They were subjected to very scientific tests.... I don't understand it. I don't understand it at all."
"Perhaps there never was an egg," suggested a reporter. "Maybe all that the boys found were pieces of shell, and they invented the egg."
"Ah, perhaps so," said the professor. "But then they were extremely clever. Because the weight and the dimensions that they sent to the museum checked exactly with what we would expect for the egg of a brontosaurus."
"Excuse me, Professor!" came a voice from the crowd. "I can show you where the real egg is."
"What's that?"
Harmon Muldoon and Stony Martin pushed their way to the center of the clearing. "We found the real dinosaur egg," said Harmon "I made up this dummy egg and planted it in the quarry to fool these other guys. It sure worked, too. They've spent about two weeks trying to hatch that hunk of plaster."
Mad Scientists' Club Page 3
