Chapter 5
With the front door locked and the shades pulled down low over the windows, the boys immediately set to work looking through the Souvlakis books. As they worked, the separated them into categories. Puzzle books, of which there were dozens, filled the bench in the front window. In addition to the crossword books, there were books of logic puzzles and rebuses, cryptograms and ciphers. There was another large collection of books on animals, which was no surprise considering that Souvlakis worked with animals, after a fashion, professionally. It was Quinn who came to the box where the stuffed squirrel and frog were packed. He set them on the corner of the counter. The frog had a tag on the bottom where Souvlakis had written “Kermit.” The squirrel, which was mounted on a wooden stand, had a similar tag that said “Berkeley.”
“They’re pretty great,” observed Quinn.
Jack and Cable were too busy sorting books and papers to respond.
“You know, I’ve never really thought about the process of stuffing an animal before,” mused Quinn. “When I think of a stuffed animal, I think of a kids toy, y’know. A plushy doll thing. A real stuffed animal, though. What do you think, they start with a real animal, right? And peel the skin off?”
“That’d be the only way to get a skin, I reckon,” said Jack.
“Then they have some kind of statue of the animal that they drape the skin over?” continued Quinn, “Does it have a skeleton? What is it on the inside? And does the skin last forever? Doesn’t skin decompose? I know hair doesn’t, but – are either of you guys even listening?”
“I’m not listening,” said Cable.
“I am, but I’m not sure why,” said Jack.
“Fine,” said Quinn. He picked up the frog looked at it. He stroked its head. Then he brought it close to his face and sniffed it. Then, cautiously, he stuck out his tongue and touched the tip of his tongue to the frog’s head to see if there was any taste. Then he kissed it.
“With my luck, it’ll turn into a stuffed prince instead of a real princess,” he announced.
Jack, meanwhile, finished going through a box of anatomy and taxidermy books and pulled the lid off another one. It was a box full of papers, both loose and rolled. Cable noticed its contents and said, “That was all on the table in the dining room.”
Jack nodded and sifted through it. He pulled out several brightly printed brochures from the Smithsonian. They were standard issue tourist brochures. One for the Dinosaur Exhibit, one for the newly renovated Hall of Mammals, and others for the other exhibits, the Oceans, Gems, Anthropology, Birds, and a large one for the museum as a whole. Jack set them aside and plunged back in. He pulled out several sheets of graph paper, covered with line drawings. Each page showed a cube of some sort, each of them different shapes and sizes, but all of them basically just boxes. At first Jack assumed that they were just geometric doodles. Then he noticed that some were crossed out and others were circled in red marker. Jack looked more closely at those. The first one he examined showed a horizontal cube, drawn in pencil. It has a squiggly trim around the bottom, like a baseboard. It also had a drawer drawn on the side. Jack flipped to another of the drawings circled in red marker. This one was a taller cube, but without a drawer. It had dimensions noted along the sides and at the top of the page it said ‘bobcat.’ Another drawing was labeled ‘armadillo.’ There was a door in the side of that cube, with the scratched notation, ‘pressure-latch’ underlined in red.
“Take a look at these,” said Jack. He lay the three drawings down side by side. And he spread the others out with them. “What do you think a pressure-latch is? And what does it have to do with an armadillo?”
Cable and Quinn came over and looked at the drawings.
“What are the animal names?” asked Quinn. “That one says bobcat. This one is lemur. Armadillo, jaguar, lion, peccary.”
“Are the boxes supposed to be the animals?” asked Cable.
“Maybe they’re packing boxes,” said Quinn, “for transporting them.”
“That could be,” said Jack, “but look at the drawers and panels in them. See. Pressure-latch, sliding panel, and this one where he wrote ‘J-hook,’ whatever that is.”
“Where’d you get those?” asked Cable. “This box. The one you said was in the dining room.”
Cable reached over and picked up one of the rolled pages. It was larger, and held with a rubberband. “I looked at some of these before I packed them,” he said as he unrolled it. “They’re Smithsonian things. “
The large sheets unrolled to reveal floor plans.
“What is this?” asked Jack. “Where is this?”
“These are the exhibition halls at the Smithsonian,” said Cable. “This is the mammal hall. This is the gems. This one is the new gift shop. They’re labeled.”
“And what is Franklin and Rogers?” asked Jack, looking at the name in the legend box, in the bottom corner of the plans.
“They’d have to be the architects, I guess, or the contractors,” said Cable.
“Look,” said Quinn, “the mammal hall plan shows the same animals as are on the graph paper. They’re just marked as rectangles, but they’re labeled. Lion, Jaguar, Elephant, Gorilla. There’s peccary.”
“These are blueprints, right?” asked Cable, “so are these the halls that are being renovated?”
“Hang on,” said Jack, “I’ve got these brochures here.” He picked up the stack and found the Hall of Mammals brochures and unfolded it. “The Hall of Mammals was renovated last year. It opened in March. The floor plan in this brochure pretty much matches the blueprint.”
“What’s that?” asked Cable, pointing to something on the brochure that was marked with the same red marker.
“It’s just a slash or a plus sign, I think,” said Jack.
Cable shook his head, “no it’s not,” he said, “that’s an X. As in X marks the spot.”
Jack looked at it. “Or ‘X marks the Armadillo,’” he said.
Cable picked up the blueprint and rummaged for the graph paper sketches beneath it. He glanced it quickly, then held it out triumphantly to Jack and Quinn, “an armadillo with a pressure-latch in the side,” he said.
“Like a compartment?” asked Quinn.
Cable nodded, “There have been three or four books on secret compartments.”
“So what are you saying,” said Jack.
“I think Souvlakis worked at the Smithsonian--” said Cable.
“We know he worked at the Smithsonian,” said Quinn, picking up the ID badge and waving it in front of his brother before draping it around his own neck.
“And I think he worked on the renovation of the Hall of Mammals,” continued Quinn. “And I think there are secret compartments in the animals.”
Cable had a triumphant gleam in his eye as he announced his hypothesis. But Jack and Quinn did not respond. They were both studying the blueprints and graph paper sketches intently.
“Guys?” said Cable.
“But look,” said Jack, “there are compartments and what-not on a bunch of these drawings.”
“Yeah, and what are those cubes anyway? Wouldn’t a taxidermist be able to draw actual animals, instead of cubes?” asked Quinn.
“What about my theory,” said Cable.
Quinn shook his head, “I’m not feeling it,” he said.
“You explain it, then,” said Cable.
“Explain what?” asked Quinn, “I thought we were just going through boxes. Why do I need a theory?”
“To explain the drawings... And the missing taxidermist… And why Jack closed the store…” said Cable, feeling deflated.
“Are you saying that Souvlakis is in the compartment in the armadillo?” asked Quinn.
“No,” said Cable.
“So what is?” asked Quinn.
“I don’t know,” said Cable.
“So I don’t understand your theory then,” said Quinn.
“Jack, help me out here,” said Cable, “Quinn never questions your theories.”
“That’s because my theories make sense,” said Jack.
“Hey!” said Cable.
Jack rolled up the blueprints. “Let’s go check,” he said.
“What do you mean?” asked Cable.
“Let’s go to the Smithsonian and check.”
“When? Now?” asked Cable.
“As soon as Max can meet us there,” said Jack. I’ll call and see if he can meet us first thing tomorrow,” said Jack. “We can see if he found anything out about Souvlakis and then we see what there is to see in the mammal hall.”
“All right, let’s go,” said Quinn.
“And Cable,” said Jack, “while we’re driving, you can work on your theory.”
“It’s a good theory!” insisted Cable.
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