The Mystery of the Wandering Cave Man Read online

  THEMYSTERY OF

  THE WANDERING CAVEMAN

  M. V. Carey

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  Chapter 1

  The Stranger in the Fog

  “Are you all right?” said a woman’s voice.

  Jupiter Jones stood still and listened.

  The afternoon was thick with fog. Fog muffled the noise of the traffic on the Pacific Coast Highway. It hung like a curtain between The Jones Salvage Yard and the houses across the street. It seemed to press in on Jupe. He felt cold and lonely, as if he were the only person in all the world.

  But someone had spoken, and now there were footsteps. Outside, just beyond the gates of the salvage yard, someone was walking.

  Then a man spoke, and two people appeared, moving like shadows in the grey light. The man was bent over, and as he walked his feet made slow, scuffling noises on the pavement. The woman was girlish and thin, with long, fair hair that hung straight about her face.

  “Here’s a bench,” she said, and she guided the man to a seat near the office. “You rest a minute. You should have let me drive. It was too much for you.”

  “Can I help?” Jupe moved closer to the pair.

  The man put a hand to his head and looked around in a dazed fashion.

  “We’re looking for … for …” He caught at the young woman’s hand. “You do it,” he said. “Find out where we … where we …”

  “Harbourview Lane,” said the young woman to Jupe. “We have to go to Harbourview Lane.”

  “It’s down the highway and off Sunset,” said Jupe. “Look, if your friend is ill, I can call a doctor and —”

  “No!” cried the man. “Not now. We’re late!” Jupe bent towards the man. He saw a face that was grey and glistening with sweat. “Tired!” said the man. “So tired!” He pressed his hands to his forehead. “Such a headache!” There was surprise and dismay in his voice. “So strange! I never have headaches!”

  “Please let me call a doctor!” begged Jupe.

  The stranger pulled himself up.

  “Be all right in a minute, but now I can’t … can’t …”

  He sank back against the side of the office, and his breathing became heavy and harsh. Then his face crumpled and twisted.

  “Hurts!” he said.

  Jupe took hold of the man’s hand. The flesh was cold and clammy to his touch. The man gazed at Jupe. His eyes were fixed and did not blink.

  Suddenly it was very quiet in the salvage yard. The young woman bent to touch the man. She made a sound like a whimper of pain. There were brisk footsteps on the pavement, and Jupiter’s aunt Mathilda came through the gate. She saw the man on the bench and the girl bending over him. She saw Jupe kneeling in front of him.

  “Jupiter, what is it?” said Aunt Mathilda. “Is something wrong? Shall I call the paramedics?”

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  “Yes,” said Jupe. “You … you call them. But I don’t think it will do any good. I think he’s dead!”

  Afterwards Jupe was to remember a confusion of lights and sirens and men hurrying in the fog. The blonde girl wept in Aunt Mathilda’s arms. People clustered at the gate of the salvage yard, and there was a terrible hush when the stretcher was put in the ambulance. Then there were more sirens, and Jupe and Aunt Mathilda were driving to the hospital with the blonde girl between them in the car.

  Jupiter felt that he moved through a dream, grey and unreal. But the hospital was grim reality. There was a corridor where people hurried about. There was a waiting room stale with cigarette smoke. Jupe, Aunt Mathilda, and the blonde girl sat and leafed through old magazines.

  After a long, long while a doctor came.

  “I’m sorry,” said the doctor to the girl. “We couldn’t do anything. It’s … sometimes it’s best that way. You aren’t a relative, are you?”

  She shook her head.

  “There will be an autopsy,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s usual in cases where someone dies without a doctor. It was probably a cerebral accident — a ruptured blood vessel in the head. The autopsy will confirm it. Do you know how we can get in touch with his family?”

  She shook her head again. “No. I’ll have to call the foundation.”

  She began to sob, and a nurse came and led her away. Jupiter and Aunt Mathilda waited. After a long while the girl came back. She had made a telephone call from the nursing director’s office. “They’ll come from the foundation,” she told Jupiter and Aunt Mathilda.

  Jupiter wondered what the foundation might be, but he didn’t ask. Aunt Mathilda announced that they must all have a good strong cup of tea. She took the girl by the arm and propelled her out of the waiting room and down a corridor to the hospital coffee shop.

  For a while they sat without talking and drank their tea, but finally the girl spoke.

  “He was very nice,” she said. She went on in a low voice, staring down at her rough hands with their jagged, bitten nails. The dead man was Dr. Karl Birkensteen, a famous geneticist. He had been working at the Spicer Foundation, studying various animals for the effects his experiments had on their intelligence — and that of their offspring. The girl worked there, too, helping to care for the animals.

  “I’ve heard of the Spicer Foundation,” said Jupe. “It’s down the coast, isn’t it? Near San Diego?”

  She nodded. “It’s in a little town in the hills there, on the road that goes over to the desert.”

  “The town is called Citrus Grove,” said Jupe.

  For the first time the girl smiled. “Yes. That’s nice. I mean, not many people know about Citrus Grove. Even if they’ve heard of the foundation, they don’t know the name of the town.”

  “Jupiter reads a great deal,” said Aunt Mathilda, “and he remembers most of what he reads. However, I don’t know about the town, or the foundation either. What is it?”

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  “It’s an institution that fosters independent scientific research,” said Jupiter. Suddenly he sounded like a college professor discoursing on some little-known subject. It was a way he had when he explained subjects in which he was well versed. Aunt Mathilda was accustomed to it, and she did not seem to notice, but the blonde girl stared at him curiously.

  “Abraham Spicer was a manufacturer of plastics,” said Jupe. “His company produced such items as dish drainers and food containers. He made millions in his lifetime. However, he never achieved his real ambition, which was to be a physicist. He therefore instructed that when he died, his money was to go into a trust fund. The income from the fund was to support a foundation where scientists could do original, and perhaps revolutionary, research in their special fields.”

  “Do you always talk like that?” asked the girl.

  Aunt Mathilda smiled. “Too frequently he does. It may have something to do with all that reading.”

  “Oh,” said the girl. “Okay. I mean, that’s nice, I guess. I didn’t tell you my name, did I? It’s Hess. Eleanor Hess. Not that it matters.”

  “Of course it matters,” said Aunt Mathilda.

  “Well, what I mean is, it’s not as if I were really anybody. I’m not famous or anything.”

  “Which is not to say that you’re nobody,” said Aunt Mathilda firmly. “I’m pleased to meet you, Eleanor Hess. I am Mrs. Titus Jones, and this is my nephew, Jupiter Jones.”

  Eleanor Hess smiled. Then she looked away quickly, as if she were afraid of revealing too much of herself.

  “Tell us more about your work at this Spicer Foundation,” said Aunt Mathilda. “You said you take care of animals. What kind of animals?”

  “They’re experimental animals,” said Eleanor. “White rats and chimpanzees and a horse.”

  “A horse?” echoed Aunt Mathilda. “They keep a horse in a laboratory?”

  “Oh, no. Blaze lives in the stable. But she’s an experiment
al animal just the same. Dr. Birkensteen used isotopes or something on her mother. Her dam is what you’d say, I guess. Anyway, that did something to her chromosomes. I don’t understand it, but she’s really smart for a horse. She does arithmetic.” Aunt Mathilda and Jupe both stared. “Oh, nothing complicated,” said Eleanor hastily. “If you put two apples in front of her, and then three apples, she knows it’s five apples. She stamps five times. I … I suppose that isn’t really so — great, but horses don’t come awfully smart. Their heads are the wrong shape. Dr. Birkensteen’s chimps are the clever ones. They talk in sign language. They can say some complicated things.”

  “I see,” said Aunt Mathilda. “And what did Dr. Birkensteen plan to do with these animals, once he had them properly educated?”

  “I don’t think he was going to do anything with them,” she said softly. “Not really. He didn’t care about smart horses and talking chimps. He wanted to help people be better. You have to start with animals, don’t you? It wouldn’t be right to start with a human baby, would it?”

  Aunt Mathilda shuddered. Eleanor looked away, retreating into a cocoon of shyness. “You really don’t have to stay with me,” she said. “You’ve been great, but

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  I’m okay now. Dr. Terreano and Mrs. Collinwood will be here soon, and they’ll talk to the doctor and … and …”

  She bowed her head and the tears started again.

  “There, now,” said Aunt Mathilda quietly. “Of course we’ll stay.”

  And stay they did until a tall, bony, grey-haired man came into the coffee shop. Eleanor introduced him as Dr. Terreano. He had with him a plump, sixtyish woman who wore enormous false eyelashes and a curly, flaming red wig. She was Mrs. Collinwood, and she took Eleanor out to the car while Dr. Terreano went to find the doctor who had attended to Dr. Birkensteen.

  Aunt Mathilda shook her head when she and Jupe were alone.

  “Strange people!” she said. “Imagine doing things to an animal so that its offspring will be changed. That Terreano person who came in just now — what do you suppose he does?”

  “Some sort of research, if he’s at the Spicer Foundation,” said Jupe.

  Aunt Mathilda frowned. “Strange people,” she said again. “And that foundation — I would not like to go there. Once those scientists start poking and prying and changing things around, there’s no telling where they’ll stop. It’s not natural! Terrible things could happen!”

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  Chapter 2

  Bad Blood!

  Aunt Mathilda told Uncle Titus that night about the scientist who had come through the fog and died in their salvage yard. She said very little about the Spicer Foundation, however, and when Jupiter mentioned the place, she quickly changed the subject. The idea of genetic experiments plainly upset and frightened her. But she did not have a chance to forget the Spicer Foundation entirely, for as the cool, grey days of spring passed, that institution for scientific research was in the news again and again.

  First there were the reports on Dr. Birkensteen’s death. As the physician at the hospital had suspected, Birkensteen had suffered a stroke. There were brief accounts of his work in genetics, and the reports concluded with the information that the body was to be shipped to the East for burial.

  Scarcely a week later the Spicer Foundation was involved in an astounding discovery, and newspaper people swarmed into the little town of Citrus Grove to cover the story. An archaeologist named James Brandon, a scientist in residence at the foundation, had discovered the bones of a prehistoric creature in a cave on the outskirts of the town.

  “What a great mystery!” exclaimed Jupe. It was an afternoon in May, and Jupe and his friends were in the old mobile home trailer that was Headquarters for the detective firm they had started some time before. Jupe had the newspaper spread out on the desk. Bob Andrews was reorganizing the files while Pete Crenshaw was cleaning the equipment in the tiny crime lab the boys had set up.

  Pete looked around. “What’s a mystery?” he asked.

  “The cave man of Citrus Grove,” said Jupe. “Is it really human? How old is it? James Brandon, the archaeologist who found it, calls it a hominid. That could mean a man, or it could mean a manlike animal. Is it prehuman, or something else?”

  “Brandon is going to be on television this afternoon,” said Bob. “My folks were talking about it at breakfast. He’ll be a guest on the Bob Engel Show at five o’clock.”

  Pete wiped off the counter in the lab. “You want to watch?” he said.

  “You bet I do,” said Jupiter Jones.

  There was a small black-and-white television set on the bookcase near Jupe’s desk. Uncle Titus had acquired it on one of his buying trips. It had been out of commission when it came into the salvage yard. But Jupe had a knack for fixing things, and he had put the set in working order and had installed it in Headquarters. Now it flickered to life, and the boys saw Bob Engel, the talk show host, smiling at the television audience.

  “Our first guest today is Dr. James Brandon,” said Engel. “He’s the man who discovered the fossil remains of a prehistoric man in a cave right here in southern California.”

  The camera pulled back, and the boys saw a lean, rugged-looking man with close-cut fair hair. Next to him was a shorter, rather paunchy man wearing a cowboy shirt, a wide belt with an ornate buckle and high-heeled boots.

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  “Today Dr. Brandon is accompanied by Mr. Newt McAfee. Mr. McAfee is a merchant in the town of Citrus Grove, and he owns the land where the cave man was discovered.”

  “Right!” said the chubby man. “And that’s McAfee: Mack-like in Mack truck-A-fee. A fee’s the money the dentist charges you to yank a tooth. Don’t forget it, ‘cause you’re going to be hearing that name lots from now on.”

  Bob Engel forced a smile, then turned his attention to his other guest.

  “All right, now, Dr. Brandon,” he said. “Could you give us a little background, in case some of us haven’t read about the discovery of the fossils?”

  The fair-haired man straightened in his chair.

  “It was pure luck that I found them,” he said. “I went out for a walk a week or so ago, just after the rains stopped, and I noticed that there had been a small landslide on the hill above Newt McAfee’s meadow. Part of the slope had come down, and, there was an opening in the side of the hill. When I got closer, I saw that there was a cave, and I could see the skull inside. It was nearly buried in the mud on the floor of the cave, and I didn’t know what I had at first, so —”

  “You don’t have nothing, buddy,” interrupted the man next to Brandon. “I’m the one that’s got it!”

  Brandon ignored this. “I went back to the Spicer house to get a torch,” he said.

  “And when he got back to my field, I was waiting with a shotgun,” said McAfee. “Come trespassing on my property and I’ll take notice!”

  Brandon took a deep breath. He seemed to be controlling his temper with difficulty. “I explained what I’d seen,” he said. “We looked closer, and I knew for sure that it was a skull!”

  “An old one!” cried McAfee. “Been there for thousands of years.”

  “In addition to the skull,” said Brandon, “most of the skeleton remains. I haven’t been able to really study it yet, but there are similarities to very old fossils discovered in Africa.”

  “And is it a man?” asked Engel.

  Brandon frowned. “Who’s to say exactly what makes a being a man — a human? There are definite hominid characteristics, but it isn’t what we would recognize as a modern man. I’m almost sure that it is older than any hominids found in America so far.”

  Brandon leaned forward. His tone now was enthusiastic. “There is a theory that the American Indian descended from Mongolian hunters who migrated from Siberia to Alaska during the last ice age. That was about eight thousand years ago, at a time when so much ocean water was frozen into ice that the level of the sea was quite low. The ocean bottom in the narrows between Siberia and Alaska was exposed, so Asian tribesmen could simply walk across from one continent to the other, following the gam
e they hunted to the New World. The theory has it that they then spread out and settled in various places, and some of them kept going until they reached the tip of South America.

  “That’s the accepted theory. It’s the one you’ll find in most schoolbooks. But now and then someone pops up with a different explanation. Some of these mavericks say that man lived on this continent long before the time the nomads are supposed to

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  have crossed that land bridge. Some even claim that modern man really originated in America, and that he migrated the other way, to Asia and Europe.”

  “And do the fossils in the cave at Citrus Grove support this theory?” asked Engel.

  “I can’t say right now,” said Brandon. “At this point I can’t even be sure how old those bones are. But we have much of the skeleton, and—”

  “You mean I have the skeleton,” said Newt McAfee. He glowed with perspiration and delight. “And that little guy in my cave sure is a human, right enough. Ain’t anything else it could be, is there? So if he’s been there two or three million years —”

  “Now wait a minute!” cried Brandon.

  “You said yourself you didn’t know how old he was!” insisted McAfee. “Had to be much older than eight or ten thousand was what you said. You was sure enough of that when you first saw him. So that means humans did start up here in America, and that little guy in my cave could be the great-grand-daddy of us all. Maybe it was his kids and grandkids that went across them straits to Asia and started humanity on its way. Maybe the Garden of Eden wasn’t someplace over there, like we always thought. Supposing it was in Bakersfield or Fresno. Wouldn’t that be a lick?”

  “You’re jumping to conclusions,” said Brandon in a dogged way. “When we have a chance to properly study the find—”

  “Ain’t going to be no studying done!” declared McAfee.

  Brandon spun around and glared at McAfee.

  “That little guy’s been in my cave right along, and he’s going to stay there!” said McAfee. “Ain’t nobody going to haul him away and cut him up and look at him through a microscope. And if you think the lines of people waiting to get into Marineland and Magic Mountain are long, just wait’ll you see the lines of people who’ll want to see a real cave man!”