“Dr. Webb!” cried Mimi. “You have to help me call the dingoes back! They might listen to you.”
Dr. Webb rolled his sleeves up and nodded. He put a finger in his mouth and made a loud whistle. One of the dingoes came running back with his tail wagging, but the others were busy chewing on sticks and rolling in the grass.
“I guess we will have to do this the old-fashioned way! Violet, you and Benny stand near the gate. When the dingoes come back to the yard, open the gate for them, but then close it after so they don’t get back out. Henry, Jessie, and I will go chase the others down. Mimi, would you get some of the special treats from inside?”
Mimi went to get the treats while Henry and Jessie trotted out of the pen. At least two dozen dingoes frolicked in the lightly wooded area outside the yard. It looked like all the dingoes were having a great time playing. A couple dingoes smelled the special treats and ran to Henry and Jessie when they called. After they came back into the yard, Violet and Benny gave them the treats for being well behaved. Then they carefully latched the gate so they couldn’t escape again.
Some of the dingoes were more interested in playing tag with Dr. Webb. They wagged their tails and let him come close, but then ran away at the last second. Jessie could swear the dingoes had a sense of humor and were having fun teasing them.
Eventually, they managed to corral the dingoes back into the pen. Dr. Webb counted them to make sure every one had been found.
Mimi locked the gate to make sure it would stay shut.
“I wonder who opened the gate,” she said. “When the gate’s come open before, it’s been by accident because it wasn’t latched all the way. But I know that I latched it properly today. It couldn’t have opened by accident.”
“And look at that,” said Benny, pointing down at the path. There was a footprint in the dirt that didn’t match the footprints left by the children, Dr. Webb, or Mimi. “Doesn’t that look like a sneaker?”
It had taken at least half an hour to find all the dingoes and call them back to the yard. The gate might have been opened so that everyone would be busy finding the dingoes. No one would have been inside to keep an eye on things—including the box and the artifact.
The Aldens exchanged glances. They knew who might do such a thing. The same person who wore sneakers that matched the footprint by the gate…
GERTRUDE CHANDLER WARNER discovered when she was teaching that many readers who like an exciting story could find no books that were both easy and fun to read. She decided to try to meet this need, and her first book, The Boxcar Children, quickly proved she had succeeded.
Miss Warner drew on her own experiences to write the mystery. As a child she spent hours watching trains go by on the tracks opposite her family home. She often dreamed about what it would be like to set up housekeeping in a caboose or freight car—the situation the Alden children find themselves in.
While the mystery element is central to each of Miss Warner’s books, she never thought of them as strictly juvenile mysteries. She liked to stress the Aldens’ independence and resourcefulness and their solid New England devotion to using up and making do. The Aldens go about most of their adventures with as little adult supervision as possible—something else that delights young readers.
Miss Warner lived in Putnam, Connecticut, until her death in 1979. During her lifetime, she received hundreds of letters from girls and boys telling her how much they liked her books.
Gertrude Chandler Warner, The Detour of the Elephants
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