Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Treasure Hunt (4 page)

“You should feel great,” Sally told Pablo. “You beat all the other artists.”

Pablo refused to be comforted. “Second prize is a bathroom rug,” he said dejectedly. “First prize is a weekend trip to the state capital and all you can eat.”

“I think John Helmsly cheated,” Sally said angrily. “He used a knife.”

“That isn’t against the rules,” Pablo muttered.

Sally wouldn’t give up. “Maybe he didn’t tell the truth about himself or his picture. The boat could be a whale sneezing. Encyclopedia, if you can prove John Helmsly lied, Pablo would be moved up to first place.”

Encyclopedia smiled. “Of course he lied.”

HOW DID ENCYCLOPEDIA KNOW?

(Turn to
this page
for the solution to
The Case of the Painting Contest.)

O
rson Merriweather had always wanted to be a tree.

“A tree is out of the rat race, settled down,” he told anyone who understood such things. Orson was nine.

He used to stand around with his arms outspread, making believe he was Mr. Big of the tree world. He quit that when he was eight. A woodpecker mistook him for a dwarf oak.

Since then he put out
The Social Directory of Big Trees
. In it he listed the tallest trees of their kinds.

“If you know a tree who always wanted to
be somebody, let me know,” he’d say.

Orson entered the Brown Detective Agency on Tuesday morning. He laid twenty-five cents on the gas can beside Encyclopedia.

“I’m here to hire you,” he said.

“What’s the problem?” Encyclopedia asked.

“My dad is bringing home a foot-high tree, a lignum vitae, this afternoon,” Orson said. “I’m afraid one of the kids on the block will steal it.”

“Who’d want to steal a tiny-tot tree?” Encyclopedia inquired.

“A lignum vitae is a very rare tree,” Orson said. He looked embarrassed. “I’ve been shooting off my mouth about it to some of the kids. It can make them famous.”

“Famous? Oh, that’s silly,” Sally protested.

“No, it isn’t,” Orson said. “I’m going to grow it into a national champ. Then it’ll bear my name. Anyone who discovers a
biggest
tree, or grows one—
or steals one
—can name it after himself.”

“A lignum vitae is one of the slowest growers on earth,” Encyclopedia said. “You’ll be lucky if it puts on four inches a year.”

“The slower a tree grows, the more valuable it is,” Orson declared.

“In a hundred years it’ll be barely thirty-three feet high,” Encyclopedia pointed out.

“But every inch a champ,” Orson said. “My great-grandchildren will name it after me, the ‘Orson Merriweather.’ It’ll stand in the backyard—the tallest lignum vitae anywhere. I’ll be famous!”

“What is it you want us to do?” Sally asked.

“My dad is driving up from Isle End with the tree,” Orson said. “He should be home about two o’clock. Be there then and keep an eye open for tree thieves.”

The detectives promised to be there. After Orson left, Sally shook her head.

“Tree thieves! What next?” she said. “Orson talks as if he just came in from the forest.”

Orson lived on a block of attached, look-alike houses. Despite a light rain, the detectives arrived on time.

Nonetheless, they were too late.

“The lignum vitae has been stolen!” Orson wailed as he opened the front door. Sniffling, he told what had happened.

His father had reached home at one o’clock, an hour early. He had honked the horn, and Orson had rushed out and unloaded the tree from the trunk of the car.

“I made sure to slam the trunk lid hard because it sometimes doesn’t close properly,” Orson said. “I gave Dad back the trunk key, and he drove off to pick up my mom at my aunt’s house.”

“Why didn’t your father unlock the trunk?” Encyclopedia inquired.

“He has a cold, and he didn’t want to get out in the rain,” Orson said. “He just opened a window and handed me the trunk key.”

“Go on,” Encyclopedia said.

“As I got to the front door, I heard the telephone ring,” Orson continued. “The tree with all the dirt in the can weighed more than I expected. So I put it down to open the door. I ran inside to answer the phone.”

“Leaving the tree outside,” Encyclopedia guessed. “When you looked for it, it was gone.”

“Right. The caller kept me on the line for a couple of minutes. He tried to sell me a bunch of magazines. I had a hard time telling him I was only nine.”

“The telephone call was a fake to keep you inside while someone stole the tree,” Sally asserted.

Encyclopedia said, “How many kids on the block did you tell that your dad was bringing the tree home today?”

“Three,” Orson answered. “Ken Waite, Chuck Dugan, and Tom Winslow. The idea that you can have a tree named for you was news to them. Their mouths dropped so far, they looked like a two-car garage.”

“Let’s question them,” Sally said eagerly.

“Good idea,” Encyclopedia mumbled, while recalling the quickest way to stop a nosebleed. Tom, Ken, and Chuck were the holy terrors of the sixth grade.

Ken and Tom lived on either side of Orson. Chuck lived almost directly across the street.

Encyclopedia questioned them. It wasn’t easy. Bloodshed seemed seconds away. Each boy glared at the detective’s nose as if considering it as a landing spot for a punch. Then they noticed Sally standing quietly with fists clenched. They answered Encyclopedia’s questions.

Chuck said, “I heard a car horn. A little later I heard a trunk lid slam. I didn’t see the car. I wasn’t at a window.”

Tom said, “I saw Orson’s father drive away
as I passed the kitchen window. I got a banana and went up to my room in the back of house. That’s all I can tell you.”

Ken said, “I didn’t hear anything except a horn. And I sure didn’t see the tree you’re asking about. I was watching the ball game on television.”

Back at Orson’s house, Sally said glumly, “None of them said enough to mark him as the thief.”

“You didn’t listen,” Encyclopedia said. “The thief is—”

WHO?

(Turn to
this page
for the solution to
The Case of Orson’s Tree.)

W
hen he felt up to it, Encyclopedia dropped in on Lathrop McPhee. Lathrop had the largest collection of toilet paper in Idaville.

“Millions of people collect things like dolls, stamps, and coins,” Lathrop said. “I’m the only person collecting toilet paper. It’s different, and it’s endless. I can never have samples of all the paper in the world. The thrill is in the chase.”

There wasn’t room in his house to keep rolls. So Lathrop stuck with sheets. He stored them in albums in a small room off the garage.

When Encyclopedia stopped by Thursday evening, Lathrop was going over the collection with two friends, Tommy Barkdull and Paul Stanton.

“This is a big day,” he said as he greeted Encyclopedia. “Wait until you see what my Uncle Arnold sent me.”

He held out a hard, dimpled sheet.

“Every guest at the Hotel Calatrava in Madrid, Spain, gets a pad of these,” Lathrop explained. “Uncle Arnold sent it to me for a birthday present.”

“Must be nice to have someone like Uncle Arnold in the family,” Encyclopedia observed.

“He sent me a newspaper clipping, too,” Lathrop added. “It’s about a roll of toilet paper with doodlings by a famous German artist. The roll sold for twelve thousand dollars in New York last month.”

Tommy Barkdull and Paul Stanton had been leafing through Lathrop’s scrapbooks. At the mention of twelve thousand dollars, both boys looked up.

“I had no idea a piece of toilet paper could ever be worth so much,” Encyclopedia said.

Lathrop shrugged. “With me, it’s just a
hobby. I come home and get into the collection. It’s very relaxing.”

Encyclopedia began looking through an album of French toilet paper. Lathrop took him by the arm.

“C’mon up to my room. I’ve got two new sheets that’ll interest you. Tommy and Paul have already seen them.”

The two sheets were English. One was from the Imperial War Museum in London. The other was from the Duke of Marlborough’s castle. Each had
GOVERNMENT PROPERTY
printed on it.

The two boys spent half an hour in the bedroom talking toilet paper. Lathrop not only owned sheets from fifty-nine countries, but also he was a bathroom scholar.

When they returned to the storage room, Lathrop began tidying up. Suddenly he uttered a cry. “The sheet Uncle Arnold sent me from Spain! Where is it?”

The room filled with questions. Had he taken the sheet upstairs? Where had he seen it last? When?

Lathrop couldn’t remember.

At Encyclopedia’s suggestion, the boys
searched the house. Tommy Barkdull and Paul Stanton searched downstairs. Lathrop and Encyclopedia searched upstairs.

“We’re wasting time,” Lathrop grumbled. “I didn’t lose the sheet. It was stolen. We ought to search Tommy and Paul. They must think the sheet is worth big bucks, but it’s not.”

“You can ask to search them,” Encyclopedia said. “But if either Tommy or Paul is innocent, he’ll be insulted. You’ll lose him as a friend.”

The detective paused thoughtfully.

Then he said, “The guilty boy may try to hide the sheet and return for it later. Let’s wait.”

To be sure that the sheet hadn’t just been misplaced, Lathrop and Encyclopedia looked all over the second floor. The sheet wasn’t there.

Tommy and Paul hadn’t been any luckier.

“Why don’t you search
us?”
Tommy suggested. “We didn’t steal the sheet. Wait … Paul was searching in the garage a long time. He could have hidden the sheet in there.”

“You’ve got beans up your nose if you think I’m a thief,” Paul snapped. “What were you folding in the bathroom a few minutes ago?”

“I wasn’t folding anything,” Tommy retorted. “I was searching. Don’t try to pin this on me!”

“Take it easy, both of you,” Encyclopedia said. “Maybe we should look in the garage and the bathroom.”

Neither Paul nor Tommy objected. The four boys went into the garage first.

Lathrop checked among the garden tools. Encyclopedia looked through a pile of wood chips and paint cans by the vise on the workbench. Paul and Tommy watched each other as they searched the shelves.

The search took fifteen minutes. The sheet of Spanish paper was nowhere to be found.

The boys went into the bathroom.

“What do you make of this?” Lathrop asked. He picked three yellow pills out of the wastebasket.

Encyclopedia opened the medicine cabinet above the sink. He took down a tiny silver pillbox.

“Here it is,” he said. He pulled out the hard sheet of Spanish toilet paper. It had been folded in half eight times to make it fit into the emptied pillbox.

“What did I tell you?” Paul said triumphantly.

“You’re nuts,” Tommy cried. “Okay, I was in the bathroom searching while Lathrop and Encyclopedia were upstairs. But I never touched the pillbox.”

Lathrop nudged Encyclopedia out of the bathroom.

“It looks like Tommy is guilty,” he said. “On the other hand, maybe he’s telling the truth. That means Paul is lying, which makes
him
guilty.”

Lathrop shook his head sadly.

“They are both my friends,” he said. “The one who is the thief is trying to blame the other. If we only had a clue.”

“We have two,” Encyclopedia corrected.

WHAT WERE THE CLUES?

(Turn to
this page
for the solution to
The Case of Lathrop’s Hobby.)

W
hen Encyclopedia and his pal charlie Stewart went camping, they proved their courage.

They took Benny Breslin along.

Everyone liked Benny when he was standing up. It was when he lay down in bed that he made enemies.

There was no ignoring his snoring. At night his wheezes, gasps, and snorts sounded like boilers bursting up and down the block.

“Has Benny got a pair of nostrils—and a pair of lungs,” Charlie Stewart said woefully. “His new tent had better work.”