Free The Mystery of the Soccer Snitch by Gertrude Chandler Warner Page B

there aren’t any windows on this floor.”
    â€œCome on,” said Jessie. “Let’s find out what’s going on.”
    The three ran down the stairs as quickly as they could. They dashed down the stairs to the door of the next floor. Henry reached for the doorknob, anxious to find out where his brother was calling from. The door opened onto a floor with bookshelves full of books and a large window on one wall. It also opened onto Benny because at the very same time, Benny Alden reached for the doorknob on the other side, trying to get back into the stairwell. As Benny’s three siblings were about to exit the stairwell, though, their little brother bumped right into them.
    â€œLet’s get out of here!” Benny yelled as his brother and sisters collided with him. “That spooky gargoyle’s staring into the library at me!”
    Benny pointed at a large window just outside the stairwell door. And as the four Alden children tumbled to the floor in a heap, Henry, Jessie, and Violet caught a glimpse of something in the window.
    Something that floated.
    Something with beady eyes.
    Something with sharp teeth.
    Something with a grin on its face.
    â€œYikes!” said Violet, falling on top of Jessie.
    â€œOuch!” said Jessie, falling on top of Henry.
    â€œHuh?” Henry said, landing on the floor with his sisters and brother tangled on top of him.
    All four Aldens struggled to free themselves from their twisted pile of arms and legs, trying to look back at the window where they all thought they’d just seen the beady-eyed, sharp-toothed, grinning face of a gargoyle!

CHAPTER 2
    A New Mystery
    The four Alden children untangled themselves from one another and picked themselves off the floor of the stairway landing. Then they all looked back to the large window where they’d just seen the face of a gargoyle—a grinning gargoyle just like the ones that decorated the top of the old library building.
    But the window was empty. The gargoyle was nowhere to be seen.
    â€œDid you guys see that?” Jessie asked.
    â€œI sure did,” said Violet. “It was a gargoyle.”
    â€œI saw it, too,” said Henry. “But gargoyles aren’t real creatures. They’re just stone statues.”
    â€œBut if I saw it, and you all saw it, then it must have been real,” Benny said. “Right?”
    â€œWe all saw something,” said Henry, “but the real questions are what exactly did we see and where did it go?”
    Henry was already looking out the window—up and down and to each side—with his siblings crowded around him. “I don’t see it anywhere,” he said. “I wonder where it went…whatever it was that we saw.”
    â€œIt couldn’t have just vanished,” said Violet. “Could it?”
    â€œTell us exactly what happened, Benny,” Jessie said.
    â€œWell,” said Benny, “I was running up the stairs, and I knew I was close to the top because my legs were getting tired. I stopped to catch my breath, and that’s when I heard a scratching sound. When I looked out this door to see what was scratching and scraping, there was that gargoyle, smiling right at me through the window—and it wasn’t a friendly smile, either!”
    â€œWell, like I said, gargoyles are just stone statues,” said Henry. “There is no way they could fly down in front of a window, or make a scratching sound…”
    Just then, there was a different sound from behind where the children stood. It was a thumping and bumping sound, and it was coming from the stairwell where the Aldens had just been.
    Thump. Bump. Thump. Bump. The sound echoed all the way up to where the children were.
    Benny gasped. “Could a gargoyle make that kind of sound?” he asked.
    Thump. Bump. Thump. Bump.
    â€œThat sounds like someone—or something—running,” said Jessie. “Who’s