Great Bicycle Race Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner Read Free Book Online

He yawned. “Or maybe the backward hat man.”
    “Or maybe it was Al,” said Henry softly.
    They walked back to their tents and helped put them back up. Soon the camp had settled down again. People began to fall asleep.
    But Henry and Jessie lay awake in their tents, trying to figure out who wanted to sabotage the bike race, and why.
    “Oh, good. No glue in the locks this morning,” said Benny.
    A yawning crew member shuffled by and heard Benny’s words. She smiled wryly. “That’s because we left someone on guard,” she said. She shook her head. “We have strict security to guard the bicycles in the corral. No one allowed in without their bike number and race ID pass. But who thought we’d have to guard the food?”
    She yawned hugely and said, “I need a shower,” and broke into a trot toward the shower wagons.
    The Aldens quickly ate their breakfast of cold cereal, juice, and muffins, and headed for the bike corral. On the way, they ran into Nan.
    “Hey,” she said. “How’s it going?”
    “Okay,” said Henry. He didn’t feel like talking about everything that had gone wrong.
    Nan fell into step beside him.
    Henry looked down. “What happened to your leg? Did you fall off your bike?”
    A large new bruise was on Nan’s shin. It was purple and shiny.
    “I bumped into something last night,” she said.
    “Why didn’t you use your flashlight?” Violet asked.
    Nan made a face. “Well, it was late. I didn’t want to wake people up. I thought I could find the bathrooms in the dark.”
    “You’re lucky you didn’t fall into someone’s tent,” said Soo Lee with a little laugh. “Our tents fell last night.”
    “Was that the noise I heard? I’m all the way at the end of the tent city, so I couldn’t tell what it was,” Nan said. She showed her rider identification and race number to the corral volunteer.
    They were among the first riders to get there. The volunteer guard waved them through.
    Nan walked straight down the rows toward her bike, but it took the Aldens a little while to find theirs. When they did, they discovered that something was wrong.
    “Hey,” Benny said. “This isn’t my helmet. My helmet doesn’t have pink stripes on it!”
    “My helmet’s not orange and silver,” said Henry.
    “This helmet’s the wrong color and the wrong size,” said Soo Lee, turning to show a helmet that was sliding down over her nose.
    “All our helmets have been mixed up with other people’s,” said Violet.
    “Not just ours,” said Jessie. “Look!”
    As bikers poured into the bike corral, voices were raised all around them in indignation. Several rows of helmets, which had been tied to the bikes during the night, had been switched around.
    For the next hour, noise and disorder ruled. Cyclists ran up and down the row, peering at helmets and waving the ones they had above their heads.
    Henry finally found his helmet and the owner of the one that had been attached to his bike. He helped Benny locate his helmet while Violet, Soo Lee, and Jessie looked for theirs.
    “What about Grandfather?” asked Violet suddenly. She had just found her own helmet, much to her relief. “I’ll see if he needs help finding his helmet.”
    But the helmets on Grandfather’s row, much farther away, hadn’t been switched around.
    Violet also couldn’t help but notice that the helmets on the row where Al had his bike hadn’t been switched, either. All the riders in his row of parked bicycles were calmly picking up their helmets and putting them on.
    Then Violet noticed something else: The man with the backward hat was standing just inside the entrance of the bike corral, staring at the rows of bicyclists trying to find their helmets. He had his hands in his pockets and no expression at all on his face.
    As if he felt Violet staring, he turned. He smiled at her, that funny jerk of the corner of his mouth.
    Violet gave him a halfhearted wave, ducked her head, and hurried back to join the others.
    As they