“Whew!” Henry said several hours later when the children finally finished moving the construction materials to the hall. “Dr. Skyler wasn’t kidding. That sure was a lot to clear out of there.”
Jessie pushed back her braid for the umpteenth time. “Not to mention just plain old cleaning. We still have to vacuum, wash, dust, you name it.”
“I name … lunch!” Benny piped up.
“I’m hungry, too,” Soo Lee said. “Is it lunchtime, Jessie?”
“It sure is,” Jessie answered. “Dr. Skyler took a break, so we might as well do the same.”
“Let’s eat at the museum cafeteria,” Violet suggested. “Mrs. Diggs said she would leave coupons for us there for anything we wanted.”
When the Aldens got to the busy museum cafeteria, chicken fricassee was the special of the day. The children took trays and got on the long line. While they were waiting, Jessie felt a tap on her shoulder.
“So you couldn’t finish the job after all, could you? Had to rush off so you could go help Dino World,” Dr. Skyler said. “I don’t know what Emma and Archie were thinking, bringing a bunch of children to work in a museum.”
Jessie put down her tray. “Sorry. We were only taking a lunch break. We finished moving all the construction things out, just like you told us. This afternoon we’ll do the real cleaning. I’m sure we can finish so you can start up the sky shows tomorrow.”
This didn’t calm down Dr. Skyler. “Not if you’re taking lunch breaks all the time.”
The woman stomped out of the cafeteria.
The younger children looked at Jessie and Henry. What was this all about?
“Oh, bother,” Henry said, “I guess we’d better have a quick lunch and get right back.”
After eating quickly, the children headed back to the planetarium. When they arrived upstairs, they saw Dr. Skyler pushing a loaded cart.
Henry ran ahead. “Wait! Wait! Why are you moving that stuff back inside?” he asked Dr. Skyler. “We put it all down the hall next to the Dumpster the way you told us.”
Dr. Skyler whirled around, startled by Henry’s voice.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, “I was just returning to get something.”
Jessie checked one of the black trash bags, “But I know I put this bag in the Dumpster down the hall where you said.”
“Never mind what you did and what I said,” Dr. Skyler snapped. “I need you to finish up in here. There’s still plenty of rubbish to take out, not to mention the vacuuming and cleaning. You’ve got a full afternoon’s work here. This list has all the jobs left to do. Here, take it.”
With that, Dr. Skyler left. When the children went inside the planetarium, they got a big surprise.
“Somebody moved things back here!” Henry cried. “Those are the same tool boxes we moved out of here before lunch.”
“We practically have to start over again,” Jessie said.
Eve Skyler was right. It did take the Aldens the whole afternoon to get through the work list. They were too tired and too busy to figure out how so much of the construction rubbish wound up back inside the planetarium instead of outside where it belonged.
This setback didn’t stop the Aldens. They were going to finish up no matter what was going on with Dr. Skyler. They swept, and they vacuumed. They washed, and they dusted. And by the time they were done with all of it, the museum was closed, and it was dark outside.
“We haven’t had a breath of air all day,” Jessie said. “Let’s take the long way back to the apartment and walk outside, okay?”
“Good idea,” Henry agreed. “I could use some fresh air after all that dust and dirt.”
The children left a note telling Dr. Skyler they had finished.
“Phew, I’m glad we’re done with that,” Jessie said when everyone reached the sidewalk. “It feels good to be outside. I guess tomorrow we’ll put up some of those posters Mr. Diggs showed us. That’ll be a lot more fun. And Dr. Pettibone will be back. Maybe we can work with him instead.”
The children walked along slowly, happy to be outdoors for a change. If they hadn’t been so tired, they would have enjoyed looking in the shop and restaurant windows just like all the city people with a free night ahead.
“Maybe tomorrow night we could eat in one of these cozy restaurants,” Jessie told the younger children, who were trailing behind. “A city like this has so many different places to eat. Wouldn’t you like to try one of them, Benny?”
For once, Benny didn’t have anything to say, even about eating. Something more important than food had caught his attention.
“Hey, did you see that?” Benny pointed across the street.
“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. |