The Curse of the Blue Figurine by John Bellairs Read Free Book Online Page A

been standing, but there was no one there. For some reason Johnny felt relieved. Then he peeked at the moon, which was silvering the shingles of the professor's house. Johnny yawned and climbed into bed, and very soon he was asleep.

CHAPTER FIVE
    In the weeks that followed, Johnny and the professor became friends. It was an odd kind of friendship, the old man and the twelve-year-old boy. But the friendship worked. Johnny was a shy kid. He did not feel at home with very many people. But he felt comfortable talking with the professor. At chess they were pretty evenly matched: Johnny won about half the games they played. As for the professor's famous temper... well, he didn't use it around Johnny. He crabbed now and then, but he crabbed in a humorous and kidding way, so that Johnny always knew he was not being serious. Gramma —as you might guess—did not know what to make of the friendship that had developed between these two. She herself did not care much for the professor's com pany, but she didn't have anything serious against him, so she just sighed and shook her head and said many times that it takes all kinds to make a world.
    The blue figurine stayed in its box in Johnny's closet. One afternoon when he was on his way home from school, Johnny took a detour and stopped in at the library. He went to the reading room and picked up a copy of Hobbies magazine. As the professor had said, it was a magazine for antique collectors. It was full of information about mechanical banks and oil lamps and bisque figurines and Toby jugs and Simon Willard clocks. And on one page there was a question and answer column. Johnny sat down and copied the address of the magazine into a notebook he was carrying. Later, when he was back at home, he went up to his room and got out his Royal portable typewriter. He set it up on his bed, and kneeling in front of it, he pecked out a note:
    Dear Sirs:
    I own a blue statue shaped like an Egyptian mummy. It is old and the label on the bottom says SOUVENIR OF CAIRO, ILLINOIS. I wonder if this statue is valuable.
    Sincerely, 
    John Dixon 
    23 Fillmore St. Duston Heights, Mass.
    P.S.: Do not send a reply to my home. I will go to the library in the coming months to read your magazine and see if you have answered my query.
    Johnny folded this note up neatly, put it in an envelope, and printed the Hobbies magazine address on the outside. He slapped on a stamp and put the letter in his briefcase, and the next day, on his way to school, he dropped the letter into a mailbox. And he thought about how nice it would be if the blue gizmo turned out to be worth fifty thousand dollars or something like that.
    March was a wintry month in Massachusetts that year. Sea gales battered the town, and the snow stayed on the ground. Life went on in its usual routine for Johnny, for a while. But in the middle of March some rather odd things started to happen.
    First there was the problem of the spiders. One day Johnny came home from school and found Gramma down on her knees on the parlor floor. She had a spray gun in her hands, and she was squirting insect spray along the baseboard. She looked upset.
    "Hi, Gramma!" said Johnny. He threw his books onto the couch and walked over to get a closer look at what his grandmother was doing. "Whatcha doin', huh?"
    Gramma glowered. She hated stupid questions. "What does it look like I'm doin', huh? I'm sprayin' away like crazy with this Black Flag insect stuff, on account of the house is full of spiders! Spiders! Can you imagine it, in the middle of winter?"
    Johnny wanted to point out that it was not exactly the middle of winter but more like the end of it. But Gramma didn't like being corrected, so he said nothing.
    He watched for a few minutes as she shuffled along on her knees, spraying as she went.
    "I haven't seen any spiders," said Johnny after a while. "What kind are they?"
    "Those rotten little gray ones," Gramma grumbled. "And if you haven't seen 'em, you must be goin' blind!