Mad Scientists' Club Read Online Free PDF

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 we 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