Zeuglodon Read Online Free PDF

the back of my jacket, and the tunnel smelled like old moldy leaves and other discarded things.
    I was glad to get back to the museum kitchen, where the heater was going, although as soon as I got in and was safe, the strangest thing happened. I started shaking all over and then started to cry, because I couldn’t help it. It was as if I could feel the Creeper’s arm around me and see his face again. Brendan and Perry told me it was all right to cry, and so did Old Sally, who poured hot cocoa for us and found some cookies in the larder, as she calls the pantry, and pretty soon I was all right again.
    In about ten minutes Uncle Hedge and Mr. Vegeley came back empty-handed. They hadn’t caught the Creeper, who had probably doubled back up the Glass Beach trail and gone into the lumberyards. Old Sally poured cups of coffee for the two of them and then poured one for herself, and Uncle Hedge had us tell him the story from the beginning—how Perry had hear suspicious noises, which led him to the workroom, and how he and I had tried to imprison the Creeper by closing the trap door, but had failed.
    “So he took the briefcase!” Uncle Hedge said when I got to that part. For some reason he didn’t seem unhappy about it, which was strange, although it wasn’t something that I paid attention to at the moment. “And the three of you!” he said, looking narrowly at us. “I believe I told you to stay out of trouble, and here you were attacking this Creeper fellow with your bare hands. He might have hurt you just because you had gotten in his way, and nothing served by it either.”
    “We didn’t know who he was,” I said, “and we didn’t want to fight with him.” It sounded like a lame excuse, because it was.
    “It was very brave of you,” Uncle Hedge said in a kindly way. “And I honor you for it, but it was the wrong thing to do. It was an IQ test, and you two failed it. I believe a possum could have passed it. I’ll remind you that Ms Peckworthy would take a dim view if one of you were to be knocked on the head or carried away. Let me attend to the man, if he needs attending to. Probably he’s long gone by now, and with any luck he’ll keep going.”
    “What was that thing he stole?” Brendan asked. “That old briefcase?”
    Uncle Hedge thought for a minute, as if he were making up his mind whether to tell us or not, because maybe it was too dangerous to tell us. I could see that he didn’t want us mixed up in this thing at all, whatever it was. But then because we were already mixed up in it, he did tell us, and this is what he said: the Creeper had stolen some hand-written journals—the journals of a man named Basil Peach, a member of the Guild of St. George, and an adventurer and explorer. Peach’s explorations took him to far-flung parts of the world, and he made maps of secret places, which he drew right into the journals. Some of his maps charted openings into the land at the center of the Earth, and it was one of those maps that had led my mother into the depths of the Sargasso Sea, never to return. The Feejee Mermaid belonged to Basil’s ancient father, Cardigan Peach.
    Uncle Hedge hadn’t seen Basil Peach for a long time, nearly twenty years, and during that time the Mermaid and the briefcase with the maps and journal had been stored in the Secret Museum for safe keeping, except it turned out not to be all that safe after all. The Creeper wanted the very two things in the museum that were the rightful property of the Peach family. But why? That was the unanswered question. There was a silver lining to the whole thing though. Uncle Hedge had removed the most important maps from the journals back when my mother made her fateful trip to the Sargasso, and he kept them locked up safe at home. The Creeper thought he had the maps, you see, but he didn’t, or at least he didn’t have the ones that mattered.
    By the time we left the museum, taking the Mermaid with us, it was dark. The rain had stopped,