Mad Scientists' Club by Bertrand R. Brinley, Charles Geer Read Free Book Online Page B

barrel when the kid turned up in Cairo, Illinois. Seems he had fallen asleep in a box car down in the railroad yards and got all the way to Cairo before he could get anybody to let him out. Funny thing! His name was Alonzo Scragg, and now he's the mayor of our town.
    That was an exciting week for Mammoth Falls. And for the Scragg family, too. Just before young Alonzo disappeared, somebody with a bandanna tied around his nose held up the Mammoth Falls Trust and Deposit Company and got away with $75,000 in cold cash. He rode off on a horse down the Old South Road, and nobody ever saw him or the cash again.
    A lot of people thought they recognized the horse, though. They said it looked like one that belonged to Elijah Scragg, Alonzo's grandfather. It was a strawberry roan with a white splash on its nose, and there wasn't another one like it for miles around.
    Old Elijah was in high dudgeon, according to the newspaper accounts. He swore up and down that the horse had been missing for two days, and he figured somebody stole it just to pull off the bank job and throw suspicion on him. There was a big investigation and a regular court hearing. Elijah had two of his hired men to back him up on his testimony, but nobody was ever sure whether the three of them weren't in cahoots on the robbery.
    Elijah Scragg had been running for his tenth term on the Town Council. The judge ruled that there wasn't enough evidence to bring him to trial; but the mere fact he was suspected of being connected with the bank robbery ruined his chances for election. Emory Sharples, who was running against him, made a lot of the incident, and he got elected in Elijah's place.
    The Scraggses and the Sharpleses are two of the oldest families in Mammoth Falls, and they have always been great rivals; but after the bank robbery they were sworn enemies. They carried on a political feud that still goes on today. Whenever a Scragg runs for some town office, the Sharpleses always make sure they have somebody to run against him.
    This year was no exception. Mayor Scragg's term of office was due to expire, and Abner Sharples had announced himself a candidate. Abner is a young fellow, but he's one of the smartest lawyers in Mammoth Falls, and everybody figured he might get a few votes if he worked hard.
    Daphne and Homer had come up with a theory about the robbery. One witness had seen a rider heading up Brake Hill on the strawberry roan. They figured he must have cut off through the countryside, because he wasn't seen going through any other town. And if Elijah Scragg's horse was returned to his pasture the next morning, he couldn't have gone very far. He must have lived somewhere nearby, and he probably would have hidden the money somewhere until the affair blew over. The old Civil War cannon out at Memorial Point seemed like a good hiding place. They got more suspicious about it when they discovered three more stories in the Gazette complaining about vandals who kept trying to chip the concrete out of the barrel.
    "What makes you think there's any money hidden in the old cannon?" Jeff asked.
    "Just a hunch," said Homer. "It seemed like such a coincidence that it got plugged up the same week the bank was robbed."
    "You mean you think the bank robber hid the money in the cannon, and then before he could get it out again the Town Council sent a crew out there to plug up the barrel with cement?"
    "That's what we figure," said Homer, not so sure of himself now. "The money has never been found. We checked on that with old Mr. Willis down at the bank. Daphne's gonna do a story on the whole thing for the school paper and she figures she's got a real scoop."
    "It'd make a better story if somebody could prove the money was really there," Mortimer chipped in.
    "Bet that old robber was mad when he got back and found that cannon full of cement," Freddy observed.
    "He sure put it in a safe place," said Dinky. "I wonder if it's been earning interest?"
    "Just historical interest,"