Squiggle Read Online Free PDF

they wanted privacy, or wanted to sleep, or if it got too rainy and cold outside; but nobody was there now. She squeezed through the metal bars, jumped out of the cage, and ran down a corridor. The building seemed very dim after the bright sunlight outside, and very quiet, and very solemn. The only person in the building was a janitor with a broom, and Squiggle waited until he was facing the other way and then darted down a different corridor. He didn’t see her, and he didn’t hear her because her feet were padded and didn’t make any noise on the marble floor.
    At the end of the corridor she came to a huge set of double doors and was just wondering how she was going to get them open, when they suddenly flew open from the opposite side. Sunlight streamed in. The steps outside were packed with zookeepers and people and a police officer, and for one moment they all stood still and looked at the little monkey on the floor in front of them.
    â€œThere it is!” somebody shouted, and the crowd came boiling in the door. Squiggle turned and ran with the throng at her back.
    They chased her down one corridor and along another one, up a flight of stairs, and down a long carpeted hallway that was lined on either side with wooden doors. It was a straight hallway, without any side branches. Squiggle realized that when she got to the end, she would be trapped. One of the doors along the hallway stood partly open and she jumped inside. Maybe she could find a place to hide before the crowd followed her in.
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9
    Squiggle stopped just inside the door and looked around. The room had a frayed carpet with exotic African designs on it. Along one wall a bookshelf was lined with the most heart-stopping, horrible things floating in jars—bits of people, and bits of sea creatures, eyeballs and fingers and worse things, pickled and labeled, so that the room looked like the larder of a cannibal. In the center of the room was a desk piled high with books and maps and pads and sheets of paper. And sitting at the desk (Squiggle suddenly realized) was a person.
    The person had been reading a map. Squiggle could see it was a map because part of it flopped over the edge of the desk. He still had his finger on the center of it, where he had left off tracing a route. But now he was looking directly at Squiggle. He didn’t look at all surprised or frightened. That much was good, but that was the only thing about him that was encouraging.
    He was a lumpy bulgy man, too short and too wide, with red hair like coat-hanger wire standing out all over his scalp and his chin in twisty directions. Framed in all that hair his face would have been a pasty, disgusting white, except that it was mostly covered with tattoos. The tattoos didn’t seem to mean anything. They were mostly triangles and circles. But here and there you saw a frowny-face with fangs or a clawed foot worked into the design. Each of his eyes had a bright red circle and a green square around it that made him look angry—although, when you looked closer he didn’t seem to be angry at all. He was hideous. But Squiggle had no time to run back out and try another room. When she heard a trampling of footsteps outside the door, she dove into the wastebasket and pulled a paper bag over her head. (The bag smelled like bologna.)
    She couldn’t see what was going on but she heard everything. The door banged open and a lot of people scuffled and muttered and coughed.
    â€œCan I help you?” said a voice. It was the strangest voice, and she knew right away that it belonged to the tattooed person sitting at the desk. It was polite in a way that sounded like it would get dangerous at any moment. It was rough and pitted like an old rusty fence, the kind with spikes on top. It sounded like it wasn’t used to speaking softly.
    The voice must have had an effect on the people in the room because they all went quiet.
    â€œSir, I think you can help us,” said