The Dinosaur Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner Page A

where several white blocks were lined up. “There are some other dinosaur fossils inside these blocks. Perhaps you could drill off the plaster casts and get it down to the rock matrix.”
    The children began their work and didn’t even look up when the phone rang sometime later.
    â€œFine, Archie,” the Aldens overheard Dr. Pettibone say. “Yes, you can bring the other children down to the lab as long as you or Emma stays here with them. They can label some of the fossils with Violet’s labels. I have an appointment, so just let yourself in. I’ll leave the door unlocked.”
    As soon as he hung up the phone, Dr. Pettibone seemed rushed again, the way he’d been in the elevator. He grabbed his coat and hat and paced up and down. As soon as he heard Mr. Diggs at the office door in back, he yelled out: “Come in, Archie. I’ll talk to you later.” With that, he pulled up his coat collar, pulled down his hat, and rushed past Mr. Diggs, Benny, and Soo Lee.
    â€œTitus! Titus!” Mr. Diggs called out, but Dr. Pettibone had disappeared out the door.
    â€œHey, neat pieces of rock.” Benny picked up some chips Violet had chiseled away. “What’s inside that hunk anyway?”
    â€œA dinosaur joint,” Violet answered without looking up.
    â€œCan we watch?” Soo Lee asked, her eyes alive with curiosity. “I want to see the rock turn into a dinosaur bone.”
    Mr. Diggs came over to watch Violet, too. “I knew this would be a good job for you. While you won’t be able to finish such a detailed job during your short visit at the Pickering, whatever you get done will be a good start.”
    With Mr. Diggs supervising, the older children worked all afternoon, carefully chipping the outer layers of plaster and rock on the fossils.
    â€œHere, Benny and Soo Lee. Help me brush some of this protective coating on some of these fossils,” Mr. Diggs told the younger children. “Mind you, you’ll have to wear these rubber gloves. We can’t touch the fossils directly, or they’ll get damaged.”
    Benny and Soo Lee stood on step stools so they could reach the workbench.
    â€œThis is just like painting,” Benny said as he carefully brushed each fossil with a thin coating. “Hey, I just thought of something. Even if the missing dino bones show up, won’t they be wrecked if someone touched them?”
    Mr. Diggs looked up from what he was doing. He took off his special binocular glasses and sighed. “That’s what we’re all afraid of, Benny. The Tyrannosaurus skeleton bones are already protected with this coating, but they are still very delicate. If the person who took or disturbed the bones doesn’t know how to handle them, he or she could cause a lot of damage.”
    Henry put down the rock chunk he had been drilling. “Do the police have any idea yet who might have taken the bones?”
    Mr. Diggs sighed again. “They’ve talked to the whole staff, and no one saw anything that night except the shadow you mentioned. Jessie and I heard that alarm. And Jessie saw that light. But Pete says something’s wrong with the system that makes it go off. So that was a dead end, too. We wonder if someone on the construction crew might have bumped into the skeleton by mistake, broken off some of it, then tried to make the accident look like a theft. There are all kinds of theories about what happened, but nothing definite.”
    Violet took a soft, dry brush to whisk away the rock chips. “Would any of these bones fit on the Tyrannosaurus ?”
    â€œI’m afraid not, Violet,” Mr. Diggs said. “The Tyrannosaurus skeleton was found complete, with every bone in place. It was a unique find. It was going to be the main attraction of Dino World. If the actual bones don’t turn up, Titus and Mrs. Diggs and I are going to have to make some plastic bone models.”
    Jessie put down her