Encyclopedia Brown Cracks the Case by Donald Sobol Read Free Book Online

private. They each spent time alone in the room before Mr. Sansbury noticed the stamps were missing.”
    â€œBut you said you already found the stamps,” Mrs. Brown said. “Didn’t they also lead you to the thief?”
    â€œWe searched each of the three suspects thoroughly,” Chief Brown answered. “Then Officer Lopez discovered that someone had pried up a corner of the carpet and slipped the stamps underneath. The thief must have intended to go back for the stamps at a later date. But it’s impossible to find out which one of the three is the real thief.”
    Mrs. Brown glanced at Encyclopedia. She seemed a little disappointed that he hadn’t solved the mystery yet.
    â€œTell us about the suspects,” she prodded.
    Chief Brown turned the pages of his notebook. “Each one of the suspects was alone in the room for a short time. The first was a Mr. Beckman from Tampa. He told us that he already had these stamps in his collection, a fact that Mr. Sansbury was able to confirm.
    â€œMrs. Dwyer is planning to open a stamp museum and store in the northern part of the state. But she couldn’t believe that a serious stamp collector would hide such valuable stamps on a damp concrete floor where they could be damaged.”
    â€œPerhaps it was the third suspect,” Mrs. Brown said.
    â€œThat may be,” Chief Brown said. “Mr. Patterson has a well-known album of early American and Confederate stamps. And he has long been searching for these two to complete his collection.”
    Mrs. Brown looked at Encyclopedia. She had run out of questions herself and hoped he was ready to ask the one that would truly crack the case.
    Suddenly his eyes opened. “What kind of carpet was on the floor?” he asked.
    â€œA standard dark blue carpet for a place like the convention center where there’s lots of foot traffic,” Chief Brown answered. “The thief had pulled up one corner.”
    Encyclopedia opened his eyes. “Then it’s obvious who the thief is, it’s…”
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    WHO WAS IT?
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    (Click here for the solution to “The Case of the Stolen Confederate Stamps.”)

SOLUTIONS
    The jewel thief was forgetful. Mrs. Brown suspected he might have written his hiding places down, and she was right. As soon as Encyclopedia learned about the onion juice he was able to shed some light on the situation.
    Onion juice can be used as an invisible ink. The words, but not the smell, disappear as soon as the juice dries on the paper. Encyclopedia realized that while the thief had used a regular pen to write what seemed like ordinary letters, in between the lines, he wrote with onion juice. The thief knew that his mother would keep all his letters. She never dreamed of the secrets they contained.
    Encyclopedia and his father carefully heated the letters under a 150-watt lightbulb until the secret writing appeared. Each letter revealed a hiding place for a secret stash of jewels.
    Chief Brown called the police chiefs in each and every town, and soon all of the stores had their jewels back.
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    Bugs may not have signed the book, but he gave away his trick when he penned the author’s name for Encyclopedia. He got the name right, but he spelled it wrong. Alice in Wonderland was written by Lewis Carroll, not Louis Carol.
    When confronted with the proof, Bugs admitted that he saw Taffy on Melissa’s front lawn and thought the tiger would make a great mascot for his clubhouse. He went home, found the old book, and had Rocky sign it with the author’s name. He made up the tiger thief story when Melissa didn’t want to trade.
    If Bugs’s baby cousin hadn’t cut pictures out of the book and ripped out the title page, they would have known the correct spelling of Lewis Carroll.
    Luckily for Melissa, they didn’t.
    Bugs gave back Taffy the Tiger and apologized—gritting his teeth the whole time.
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    Bugs wanted to get even with