The Mystery of the Grinning Gargoyle Read Online Free PDF Page B

Jessie ate a Greek salad with crisp, green lettuce and chunks of salty feta cheese. Violet took a bite of the delicious fried eggplant sandwich that she had ordered, wiping the tangy tomato sauce from the corners of her mouth.
    â€œThis Gargoyle Gyro is great!” said Benny. He had sauce all around his mouth, too—the creamy cucumber sauce that covered the tasty gyro meat and enormous pita filling his plate.
    â€œWe all agree,” Grandfather Alden smiled. “Goldwin Gyros is still the best restaurant on campus!”
    â€œI still use all of my father’s recipes,” Izzy said. “But as you can see, I’ve made some changes to the restaurant.”
    â€œIt doesn’t look much different from when we were students and would stop by to have burgers and shakes,” said Grandfather Alden. “Except for the gargoyles, of course.”
    â€œWhy are there so many gargoyles everywhere?” Benny asked.
    Izzy laughed. “After my father retired, business slowed down at the restaurant. I think people were used to the way he made the food. But then, with all of the gargoyle craziness going on around campus, I decided to turn it into something fun. That’s how I came up with the idea for the Gargoyle Gyro. And now that students are talking about gargoyles and even making online movies about gargoyles, Gargoyle Gyros are selling like hotcakes—or gyros!”
    â€œI’m sure glad you did, Mr. Izzy,” said Benny. “But I still don’t like actual gargoyles. Especially not after I saw one staring at me today!”
    Benny and his siblings told Izzy about what they had seen, and about chasing the noise down the library stairs.
    â€œClose call!” Izzy said, wiping sweat from his bald head and twirling his mustache. “It sounds like you almost caught yourselves a gargoyle.”
    â€œBut gargoyles aren’t real,” said Jessie.
    â€œYou don’t believe in the legend of the grinning gargoyles?” Izzy asked.
    â€œNo,” said Henry. “That’s all it is—a legend. And Miss Hollenberg the librarian even said there was no such thing…”
    â€œYeah,” said Benny, “Miss Hollenberg even called it ‘boulder trash’ when we told her about what we saw.”
    â€œIt’s ‘balderdash,’” Henry laughed. “She called it ‘balderdash,’ which is another word for nonsense. Miss Hollenberg didn’t seem to think that the legend was true.”
    â€œI’m not so sure that the gargoyles are nonsense, though,” said Izzy.
    â€œWhy do you say that?” Henry asked. “Have you ever seen one?”
    â€œI haven’t seen any gargoyles, other than those beautiful sculptures at the top of the old library,” Izzy said. “But I have read about the legend—at the library.”
    â€œWhere did you read about it?” asked Jessie. “Miss Hollenberg said there weren’t any books or papers about the gargoyles in the library.”
    â€œI didn’t read about it in a book or a paper,” said Izzy. “I read about it online. I was at the library, using the computers there to research old articles about my father’s restaurant. While scrolling through the old issues of the college newspaper, The Goldwin Gazette, online, I found an article published about the gargoyles.”
    â€œWhat did the article say?” Henry asked.
    â€œIt talked about how the gargoyles protect the library,” Izzy said. “Maybe now that the new Alden Library is being built to replace the old library, the gargoyles are angry.”
    Grandfather Alden laughed. “You’re still quite a joker, Izzy. I bet even the gargoyles—if they were real—would appreciate the new library I’m helping Goldwin University build. Change isn’t a bad thing. Why, your restaurant has changed from when we were students, but it’s still the best one