Encyclopedia Brown Finds the Clues (7 page)

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Authors: Donald J. Sobol

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Mark said, “Boy, my leg still hurts.”
“That’s what woke me up,” said Benny. “Mark was leaning out the window shouting, ‘Thief!’”
“Where were you sleeping?” asked Encyclopedia.
“On the sofa,” answered Benny. “I needed a jack of spades for the scavenger hunt. I opened Sally’s present. I got interested in the pictures of the buildings on each card, and I began building a house with them.”
On the coffee table, which stood about a foot in front of the sofa, was a five-story house built of cards.
“After I used up all the cards, I got sleepy,” said Benny. “The next thing I knew, Mark was shouting, ‘Thief!’”
“Did you see a black car on the street?”
“No,” said Benny. “But I heard a car. By the time I got to the window, it had turned the corner.”
“I didn’t see the thief’s face,” said Mark. “But he wore a leather jacket with the letter L on the back.”
“That makes him one of the Lions, that gang of tough teenagers on Woodburn Avenue,” said Sally.
“Maybe,” said Encyclopedia. “Let’s look outside, Sally.”
The two partners stopped before the open window the thief had reportedly used. Encyclopedia studied the bushes below it. He found several branches were broken.
“The thief must have hurt himself jumping out,” said Encyclopedia. “I bet he didn’t get far. He probably hid the tool chest some place, and he plans on returning after dark for it.”
“Gee whiz,” said Sally. “Do you think that’s how Mark hurt his leg? Is he the thief?
“Of course,” said Encyclopedia. “It was in the cards all the time.”
 
HOW DID ENCYCLOPEDIA KNOW MARK WAS LYING?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
(Please see solutions section)
SOLUTIONS
Solution to The Case of the Mysterious Tramp
John Morgan said that Mr. Clancy walked around to the front of the truck and raised the hood.
He described how “Clancy fell over the radiator and slid down the front of the truck” after being struck by the tramp. Then he himself “climbed out of the truck.”
But he said he had been sitting in the front seat. So he saw the attack through the windshield.
Impossible!
The hood of the truck was raised, remember?
All John Morgan could have seen through the windshield was the hood!
Chief Brown recovered Mr. Clancy’s money. The guilty John Morgan was sent to prison.
Solution to The
Case
of the Rubber Pillow
Bugs claimed he had never been to Danny’s house.
Yet he knew the porch railing, the steps, and the front door were just painted and still wet.
How had he given himself away?
By: 1) jumping over the steps getting on and off the porch, instead of mounting them; 2) righting himself without touching the porch railing after he skidded; and 3) knocking on the glass window rather than on the front door when no one answered the doorbell.
Obviously, Bugs didn’t want to get fresh white paint on his hands and shoes!
Solution to The Case of Bugs’s Kidnapping
Bugs said, “I thought I’d take the hinges off the locked door, but no luck. The hinges were on the other side of the door.”
But then he said the door “swung into the room, knocking me down.”
Impossible!
Doors swing toward their hinges. So the door of the locked room would have swung into the
hall
, not into the room.
When trapped by his error, Bugs confessed. The kidnapping was a fake.
Bugs had dreamed it up to get even with Encyclopedia.
Solution to The Case of the Boy Bullfighter
Miguel lied when he said the dog attacked Charlie because of his red pants.
Dogs can’t be trained to attack the color red, because dogs are color blind!
So the big dog couldn’t have known whether Charlie had red or yellow pants on.
Therefore, Miguel must have ordered the dog to attack.
When reminded that dogs are color blind, Miguel gave back the tooth collection.
He also returned the seat of the red pants, which Charlie’s mother sewed back as good as new.
Solution to The Case of the Divining Rod
Encyclopedia realized Ace had painted a brick with a couple of dollars’ worth of gold paint and buried it. Then he pretended to find it with the divining rod.
The other children were ready to believe the divining rod really worked. However, the brick Ace supposedly “found” under the sand was a foot long, six inches wide, and six inches deep.
Ace could not have lifted it above his head with one hand if it had really been made of solid gold.
A solid gold brick of that size weighs nearly three hundred pounds!
Solution to The Case of the Bitter Drink
Melvin used the ice to cool himself in the heat of the day—and for something else.
He kept ice in his mouth to freeze the taste buds of his tongue.
With his taste buds deadened, he couldn’t taste a thing.
So he had no trouble at all in drinking the bitter drink!
Solution
to The Case of the Telltale Paint
Jim said he “walked” to the tool shed with the leaking paint can. But the paint drops on the path told otherwise.
Halfway toward the tool shed the drops “were nearly round. They had fallen about two feet apart.”
But on the last half of the path, the drops “were narrow. They had fallen about eight feet apart.”
That meant that on the last half of the path, Jim was covering more ground between the falling drops—he was
running.
(The drops were being flung instead of dropping straight down and therefore were “narrow.”)
Encyclopedia knew that at the halfway point, Jim had seen the thief. Becoming frightened, he had run into the tool shed and hidden.
When faced with the evidence, Jim broke down. The thief was quickly arrested, and Mrs. Carleton’s purse was recovered.

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