Encyclopedia Brown Tracks Them Down (5 page)

“I docked my boat, and being curious went into the cave. I found a sack filled with
jewelry
hidden under a rock. I reported what I had found immediately to the police.”

“I checked the cave,” said Chief Brown. “The jewelry in the sack matched the list of pieces stolen from Mr. Fairchild, except that a set of cuff links was missing. I got a warrant to search Sol Schwartz’s home. The cuff links were in a dresser drawer in his bedroom.”

“Did Sol confess?” asked Mrs. Brown.

“No,” answered Chief Brown. “He said he’d never seen the cuff links before.”

Encyclopedia sat in glum silence. Sol always wore a shirt with “Idaville Riding Academy” sewn on the back. Worse, the white-and-black horse with the bell-shaped mark on the shoulder was Half-and-Half. Only Sol rode him.

Half-and-Half was twenty-three, old for a horse. As the years had passed, the black spots had faded from his left side, leaving him entirely white there. But the side which Earle Coughlin had seen, the right side, remained spotted black and white.

Twice a week Sol took old Half-and-Half out for a ride along the seaway path and returned to the academy by the inland path through the woods.

“Sol admitted riding the horse on the seaway path when Earle Coughlin claims to have seen him,” said Chief Brown. “But Sol says he never dismounted. He insists he had nothing to do with the jewelry robbery, either.”

“Earle Coughlin could have put the jewels in the little cave himself,” pointed out Mrs. Brown. “He could also have sneaked into Sol’s bedroom, planted the cuff links in the drawer, and reported everything to you.”

“Do you think he’s trying to frame Sol?” asked Chief Brown.

“If Earle Coughlin is the real thief, he certainly would put the blame on someone else. Then he could collect the five-thousand-dollar reward,” said Mrs. Brown.

“I’ve thought of that,” said Chief Brown. “But Sol has no alibi for the time the jewelry was stolen from Mr. Fairchild. Sol says he was out riding when the robbery took place. Unfortunately, nobody saw him.”

“Sol has got to be innocent,” insisted Encyclopedia. “Something is wrong with Earle Coughlin’s story.”

The boy detective closed his eyes. He always closed his eyes when he did his hardest thinking.

“If Sol only had a witness besides Earle Coughlin,” said Mrs. Brown.

Encyclopedia gave a start.

“That’s it, Mom!” he exclaimed. “Sol does have another witness—old Half-and-Half!”

 

WHAT DID ENCYCLOPEDIA MEAN?

 

 

 

 

(Turn to page 93 for the solution to
The Case of the Half-White Horse.)

Buster Wilde was the star of the West Side Midgets, Idaville’s Peewee League football champions.

During the off-season, Buster carried his football helmet everywhere he went. Whenever he felt like it, he toughened up his skull. He put on the helmet and charged the nearest tree headfirst.

On the day he came into the Brown Detective Agency, however, he wasn’t carrying his helmet. He was carrying a bird.

“Look what I found,” he said. He laid the bird on the desk in front of Encyclopedia.

“It’s a cedar waxwing,” said Encyclopedia. “They fly through Idaville on their way north every summer. What about it?”

“This,” said Buster and gave the bird a gentle poke. “Watch.”

The bird took two steps and fell on its face.

“It’s hurt, poor thing!” cried Sally.

“Naw,” said Buster. “It’s drunk.”

Encyclopedia put his nose close to the bird’s beak and sniffed.

“You’ve got a point,” he gasped in disbelief. “It smells like a beer garden.”

Buster explained that he had found the bird on the way to visit his grandmother.

“I saw this big oak tree,” he said. “Since my grandmother doesn’t like me to play football, I didn’t bring my helmet. I decided to have a go at the tree anyway.”

“Bareheaded?”
exclaimed Sally.

“Yep,” answered Buster. “I’ve always wondered how tough my head really is.”

He had found out. When he awakened, the tree was still standing. But birds were falling off the branches.

“At first,” said Buster, “I figured I was still dizzy. I wasn’t. The birds were. They were so cock-eyed drunk they couldn’t see through a ladder.”

“That I want to see,” said Encyclopedia.

Sally placed the tipsy bird in the sun to recover. Then the three children biked to the scene of the mystery.

Buster pointed to a large yard full of trees and berry bushes behind a white house. “See for yourself,” he said.

Encyclopedia beheld dozens of birds, most of them cedar waxwings. Some were falling off branches. A few were flopping around as if lost in a fog. The rest were so high they couldn’t even leave the ground.

The boy detective moved carefully among the birds and the berry bushes. Strangely, there were no berries on the ground, and those in the bushes were still green.

Suddenly he spied a bird feeder hanging from a tree branch. It was filled with berries.

He frowned. “These are fermented,” he said.

“What does ‘fermented’ mean?” inquired Buster.

“It is what happens to fruits like apples and grapes and berries when they get old,” answered Encyclopedia. “For instance, fermented apple cider turns to apple wine. Some of the sugar is turned into alcohol, and alcohol can make you drunk.”

“Are you saying that someone has put fermented berries in the feeder to get the birds drunk?” asked Sally.

“Whoever it is picks the ripe berries from the bushes and off the ground,” said Encyclopedia. “Then he stores them. After they have fermented, he puts them in the feeder.”

“And when the birds drop down for a snack, they get drunk, just like a man who drinks too much wine,” said Sally. “What a cruel joke!”

“The fermenting berries could be stored in that tool house,” said Buster.

“Hey, you kids!” a voice called. “This is my yard. What do you want?”

It was Carl Higgensbottom, one of Bugs Meany’s Tigers. He came out the back door of the house.

“We know what you’ve been doing to the poor birds just for laughs,” snapped Sally. “You should be reported to the police.”

“This girl has counted too many cows,” said Carl.

“Don’t be smart,” said Sally. “Open the tool house. I’ll bet there are fermenting berries in there.”

“You ought to be playing with the squirrels,” jeered Carl. “Nobody’s been in the tool house for six months. But if you must see ...”

He drew a ring of keys from his pocket and unlocked the tool house.

Inside were a table and three chairs. On the shelf above the open window stood a half-filled glass jug of apple cider, a candle, and several boxes of matches.

“Last year we kept the lawn mower in here,” said Carl. “But the roof leaked. Then for a while this spring, us Tigers used it for meetings while we fixed up our clubhouse.”

“Encyclopedia,” whispered Buster. “There isn’t a berry in sight. Maybe we were wrong about Carl.”

Carl grinned. “You sure were, but nobody’s perfect,” he said grandly.

He went into the house and brought out a bag of doughnuts and four paper cups. He passed out the doughnuts and filled the cups with apple cider from the glass jug in the tool house.

“Are you trying to bribe us?” demanded Buster. He sank his teeth into the doughnut and drank the apple cider as if he enjoyed being bribed.

“I don’t want any hard feelings,” said Carl.

Sally turned to Encyclopedia. “Can’t you prove Carl is lying?” she said.

Encyclopedia tasted the doughnut and apple cider. Thoughtfully he licked his lips.

“The proof isn’t hard,” he said.

 

WHAT WAS THE PROOF?

 

 

 

 

(Turn to page 94 for the solution to The Case of the Apple
C
ider
.)

Sumner Finklefooter stepped up to the Brown Detective Agency and bellowed, “Down with one-dollar bills!”

“Gee, Sumner,” said Encyclopedia. “What have they ever done to you?”

“Nothing,” answered Sumner. “It’s what they’ve done to Thomas Jefferson that makes me sore.”

Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States, was Sumner’s hero. Once, when his father said he’d like to see some change in him, Sumner had swallowed five Jefferson nickels.

“What have one-dollar bills got to do with Jefferson?” asked Encyclopedia.

“They’ve made him the forgotten man!” said Sumner. “Everybody knows whose picture is on the one-dollar bill—George Washington’s. But how many people know who is on the two-dollar bill?”

“Thomas Jefferson,” whispered Encyclopedia.

“Aw, you’ve got too much head,” objected Sumner. “Nobody else in town would have known, because there aren’t any two-dollar bills around. Everybody uses one-dollar bills. I aim to correct that.”

“Are you going to write your Congressman?”

“I’m going to write every Congressman and Senator in Washington, D. C.,” said Sumner. “When you have a cause like mine, you can’t think small.”

“Sumner,” said Encyclopedia with admiration. “Jefferson would have been proud of you.”

“All I want is more two-dollar bills printed,” said Sumner. “What good is one dollar? You can hardly buy anything with it today.”

“You’re making sense,” said Encyclopedia. “I ought to raise my fee—”

“Not yet!” exclaimed Sumner. He laid twenty-five cents beside the boy detective. “I want to hire you. I need to get the names and addresses of all those men in Washington.”