Read Online The Wrong Chemistry by Carolyn Keene - Free Book Online

dusk Nancy and Ned met at the lab. Ned had agreed to go along with her plan even though Nancy couldn’t explain all the details. She had promised Dean Jarvis, after all, and somehow didn’t feel right about letting Ned in on what was top secret work. Luckily he understood. Meanwhile, Dean Jarvis had arranged for Craig Bergin to be the guard on duty.
    â€œSomeone got me reassigned,” he told them happily. “Just in time. It’s a little too cold to have to patrol the campus at night. I’ve been asked to keep my eye on the lab.”
    Nancy and Ned exchanged quick looks.“Great!” Nancy said. “I’ll be working in the lab all night tonight. Um, it’s a special arrangement, for that story I’m writing.”
    â€œYes, and I’ll be just outside with this, just to make sure things go smoothly,” Ned said, patting the walkie-talkie.
    Craig shrugged. “Suits me. I’ll be glad to have someone to talk to.”
    Nancy worked the combination to Maszak’s office effortlessly. After checking with Ned on the walkie-talkie, she promised to check back in an hour. She set the walkie-talkie down on the long counter and perched on Maszak’s stool. There were papers strewn all over the top as well as two big stacks of notebooks. A quick glance told Nancy they were Maszak’s students’ experiments.
    Nancy shuffled through the notebooks. The experiments seemed fairly standard. She checked idly through the advanced biology and chemistry classes, keeping an eye out for any names she might recognize. There were none.
    Sighing, she picked up another pile of papers—Maszak’s advanced biochemistry students, proposing their final projects. She went through them, noting names and grades and reading Maszak’s comments. The experiments were incredible! Some of them were straight out of sci-fi films. One paper in particular caughtNancy’s attention. Maszak had slashed a purple felt-tip pen across the first page and scrawled notes in the top margin.
    Looking more closely, Nancy’s heart began to pound. The subject of the paper was human growth hormones.

Chapter

Nine
    W ITH A GROWING SENSE of excitement, Nancy read on. The paper suggested some of the same things she had read in the startling article in the library. The student planned an experiment to see if one kind of animal could accept a growth hormone from another kind of animal. Then, at the very end of the paper, she suggested someday trying a human growth hormone. Maszak’s comments were angry and critical, impatiently explaining why the experiment was doomed to fail. He gave the student an incomplete and suggested she pick another topic.
    Nancy frowned. If her hunch was correct, thestudent wasn’t wrong at all—she had simply come dangerously close to copying Maszak’s own experiment. With an eerie feeling, Nancy stared at the fish and mice in the lab. Had Maszak already made a major breakthrough? Had he been using a human growth hormone on animals? Was CLT a human growth hormone?
    The floorboards in the hall creaked loudly. Quickly Nancy scattered the papers across the counter again. She ducked into a closet and held her breath.
    The lab door opened. She could hear someone moving around. At the same instant, she realized her walkie-talkie wasn’t with her. She had left it on Maszak’s counter. What an amateurish thing to do! She could kick herself.
    Concentrating, Nancy pictured the counter in her mind, trying to remember where she had left the walkie-talkie before taking refuge in the closet. Hopefully, it was buried under the stacks of papers. If it wasn’t hidden, the thief might realize someone was there. Even worse, Nancy realized as her stomach took a sickening plunge, there was no way now for her to contact Ned.
    Pressing the light on her watch, Nancy saw it was nine o’clock. An hour had passed since she last checked in. Ned might come down to see if she