Lewis Lamb stood at the foot of the drive, hollering after his associates. “You half-witted hayseeds! Can’t you tell a hoax when you see one? Get back here this instant! Get back here!”
As the carriage whipped out of sight, he noticed us and made a beeline for Charlie. “You! You incompetent, incapable clod of a copper! I told you to have that delinquent locked up! Just look at what he’s done! Look at it! He couldn’t stand to let my team manage the excavation, and now he’s ravaged the whole site with his underhanded skulduggery. This has gone too far!”
The complaints continued as we made our way back up the foothills. The closest wall of the canvas barrier hung loose and drooping, and as we neared, I could see why. The whole right side of the structure had been torn down roughly, shreds of fabric ground into the dirt. Lamb did not bother with the entrance flap. It still stood more or less intact, but it was superfluous now. He stepped over the battered canvas and fell silent, his rage overwhelming him beyond words. He just mutely waved both hands at the landscape before us and then threw his Panama hat into the dirt.
The dig site was a mess. In the past few days, Lamb’s crew had dug a deep trench all the way around the figure and freed the skeleton almost completely from the earth. From what I had seen, their work had been conducted meticulously, but the bones before us were no longer laid out in neat, careful arrangements. Enormous fossils were scattered across the site, and the broad keel bone had been cracked in half. Atop a pile of battered ribs lay the tremendous femur I had lifted on my first visit, its surface raked with . . .
“Are those tooth marks?” I asked.
“I’m sure he would want you to think so,” Lamb growled. “It does finally explain why he pilfered that tooth, which was bad enough. This, though . . .” He waved a shaking hand at the site again. “This is unconscionable.”
“You still believe Owen Horner is behind this?” Charlie asked.
“Of course Owen Horner is behind this! His trick with the foot bones didn’t fool anybody, so he had to step up his scheme. The staged bite marks and the false footprints—they’re better this time, since at least he made them look a little more believable—but they’re still so painfully obvious. I don’t even know what nasty trick he managed to pull on my associates, but I’ll see that he answers for that as well.”
“Mr. Horner is a scientist, just like you,” said Charlie. “I can understand why you might suspect him of stealing bones, but why would he vandalize them?”
“To conceal that he has stolen them,” Lamb barked. “The left ulna, the clavicle, and several ribs, from what I’ve been able to inventory so far. I’m sure he was hoping I wouldn’t notice amid all the devastation. I would say he was a fool for thinking he could get away with such a brazen offense, but with a lousy lawman like you patrolling the valley . . .”
“Hey! That’s enough,” I said. Lamb sneered and rolled his eyes.
“Come have a look at these,” said Jackaby. He had wandered off while the scientist was raving, and now he stood over a deep imprint in the soil. Charlie and I joined him. Lamb just shook his head and sighed loudly.
“Waste your time if you like. They’re fakes, just like the last ones,” he grunted.
“They’re not,” my employer said when Charlie and I were close enough to make out the print clearly. It bore the same three wicked talons and single hind toe as the others. Although not quite as long as the fossil’s, each of the front toes in the imprint was easily larger than my employer’s entire foot.
“Sir,” I said, swallowing hard, “do these tracks look even bigger than the last ones to you?”
Jackaby plucked the scale from his pocket and held it out in front of the damaged skeleton. He squinted and turned his head this way and that.