The Encyclopedia Brown Encyclopedia

Encyclopedia and his father went out for an exciting day of fishing. I use the word “exciting,” because while the two were getting ready, Encyclopedia noticed his father slip a gun into the lunch box.

Chief Brown explained that there was a teensy bit of a chance that while out fishing; they could run into two armed robbers who stole $300,000 worth of stuff from a millionaire’s home out on the islands. They were never apprehended. There was a possibility that while making their getaway at sea, the two robbers got caught in a heavy storm. There had been four days of heavy winds since then, so they could run into them.

Chief Brown doesn’t let two potentially dangerous armed robbery suspects at-large ruin a day with his son, so the two threw caution into the wind and went out to fish.

While on the water, Chief Brown saw a boat in the distance. To overcorrect for possibly putting his son in the crosshairs of these men, he radioed the Coast Guard. Hey, it could have been the two robbers, or it could have been someone enjoying the open sea. Brown didn’t know. Everyone out in sea was a suspect.

I joke, but of course it was the two robbers. But we don’t know that yet (except we do, otherwise, this story wouldn’t exist).

The Coast Guard told Brown that if things were going to start happening, their ship would be safest for him and his son. Uhh, unless the robbers started firing on them, right?

Anyway, the Browns dropped anchor and climbed aboard the Coast Guard ship, which then went to investigate the boat. When they got there, they found two sweaty men who claimed that they had been fishing when the storm hit them. Since then, they had been stranded with no food and water because water had gotten into their gas tank.

The Coast Guard, for some reason, allowed Chief Brown to search the boat – despite the fact that this was way out of his jurisdiction  – and they seemed totally fine with the idea of Chief Brown sharing information in the case with his son.

I suppose it was good he did, because Encyclopedia noted that the supposed stranded fishermen had been sweating a great deal despite the fact that they had no access to water for four days. Where was this sweat coming from? They should be dehydrated.

After searching the boat, Chief Brown figured that their story checked out. No food. No water, Water in the gas tank. Most importantly, there was no loot from the millionaire’s house. That’s because they threw everything overboard when they saw the Coast Guard.

However, I’m going go ahead and say that Encyclopedia wasn’t necessarily needed for this case. We can assume that the Coast Guard has experience picking up people who had been lost at sea for several days. I would imagine that they would have a medic on board. Even if they didn’t, they should know what a dehydrated person would look like, and they would know that anyone wiping sweat off their foreheads was clearly not dehydrated.

Encyclopedia and Sally were sitting in the Kimball’s living room after dinner when they heard rustling outside. Sally was convinced that it was a peeping Tom and was ready to brain the sicko with a floor lamp. Encyclopedia’s cooler head prevailed, and he told Sally to turn the light off so that they would be able to see who was outside in the dark.

Of course, now that we’ve established the fact that you’re unable to see outside a closed window when it’s dark outside but light inside, we know that this is going to play as part of the solution. So… act surprised when this comes up later.

It turned out it wasn’t some sick pervert hanging outside Sally’s window; it was Scott Curtis, trying to take a photo of Encyclopedia and Sally without their knowledge. See? That’s not weird at all.

Scott was participating in the Junior Photography Show, and he was heavily favored to win. The only person standing between Scott and the top prize – a bicycle – was Winthrop Ledbetter, who had a reputation for cheating at everything. Why it was widely-known that he was a cheater, but he was allowed to get away with it each time is never explained.

The day of the contest, Scott displayed his four photos. They looked pretty good, but Winthrop’s sole entry was much better.

It showed a girl, in a well-lit room lighting a candle. On the table, near the candle, are some wrapped Christmas presents, and behind her to one side is a Christmas tree. On the other side is a window, and through the window, we can see that the picture snapped just in time to show a woman outside of the window, falling. It was explained that the night the photo was taken, the woman was up one story, hanging out of the window (for whatever reason) when she was blown away by a strong gust of wind. The woman landed on an awning, and escaped with only a broken leg.

If it was windy, that meant that the window was closed, as the candle remained lit for the photo and the curtains didn’t seem to be moving. If that was the case, then the camera wouldn’t have been able to pick up what was going on outside.

That dirtbag, Winthrop, admitted that he had cheated and Scott won, learning the valuable lesson that it’s okay to creep around outside people’s windows, so long as you could potentially get a bicycle out of it.

Red Slattery had quite the scam going against the children of Idaville. He would ask children to give him change for a quarter, and after the victim would give him the money, Red would “forget” to give money back. Bugs, of all people, caught wise to Red. When Red asked Bugs for change and Bugs declined, Red literally mugged Bugs and threw him into Mill Creek.

One wonders why Red would go through the trouble of coming up with this whole “asking for change” rouse if he would just end up forcefully emptying the pockets of anyone who denied him. I’m also curious as to why Bugs would go to the police with a parade of fake stories about kidnappings and burglaries, but the one time when someone legitimately put him in danger, he kept silent.

Hector Conklin was on his way to the bank with his penny collection when he saw Red. Knowing he didn’t want to lose all of his money, Hector ducked away to the Brown Detective Agency. Encyclopedia knew that Red was such a bad kid that they would need the help of an adult. Who best to deal with someone who steals money and throws children into the creek? Encyclopedia’s own father and the Idaville PD’s Chief of Police? No, even better; they went to Mr. Link, an artist who works from home.

Link was more than happy to help with Encyclopedia’s plan. He asked to borrow $7.19 from Link and he sent Hector out to speak to Red. Meanwhile, Link and Encyclopedia watched Hector and Red from Link’s window.

Just as Red started talking to Hector, Mrs. Link entered to room to tell her husband that it was time for lunch. In the time Link turned around to respond, the exchange was over. They missed it. Link ran out after Red and demanded to know what happened. Red claimed that he didn’t take the money, they exchanged it fair and square. He also claimed that Hector somehow managed to lose the money he got received five seconds earlier.

Encyclopedia said that there was no way Hector was able to give change for anything, because he was holding a $5-bill, a $1-bill, a half-dollar, a quarter, four dimes and four pennies. It would be impossible to give change for that amount.

Also, even though Link turned around for a split-second to respond to his wife, there’s no way Hector would have lost it in that time. There’s also no way that Red would know that he was being watched, which means that he wouldn’t know that Link turned away. So Link could say, “I was watching you the entire time, you little shit, and you’re full of crap,” and Red really wouldn’t have a defense.

But that’s not all that bugs me most about this episode; it’s the fact that Mrs. Link was home to interfere with the whole sting operation. I don’t care that Mrs. Link actually screwed everything up. In fact, the idea that she had no idea what was going on in her house that afternoon worries me about how things are in the Link household. A few neighborhood children were hanging out with her husband in the middle of the day, and she either didn’t notice or she didn’t think to ask why they were there.

It’s Idaville, a town a good two decades behind in the times, in 1969. Of course Mrs. Link was. Almost alll of the married women were home. If that’s the case, then why didn’t Encyclopedia go to his own mother to help out with the case? Why did he have to bother the one man who spends his day working from home?

It’s because Idaville is sexist.

Since the Idaville PD had such an excellent record solving crimes, Chief Brown was sometimes called to neighboring towns to help out their police. One evening, he and Encyclopedia went to Ocean City to respond to a home invasion and robbery reported by a Mr. Bevan.

“Chief Brown,” Chief Moore of the Ocean City PD must have said at one point, “I don’t know how you do your police work back in Idaville, but here in the fine town of Ocean City, we insist at least one 10-year-old boy is present for the investigation of serious crimes.”

The problem was that Bevan didn’t remember anything between getting hit over the head and waking up in the hospital. The robbers may have taken his ring or he may have hidden it. He had no idea.

Two masked men forced their way into Mr. Bevan’s home in an attempt to steal a ring that once belonged to King Louis XIV. When the robbers asked him where the ring was, Bevan lied and told them that it was in his bedroom with his wife’s jewelry. One of them hit Bevan over the head and they began to tear the house apart.

Luckily, the police were able to find a typewritten note hidden in the house. It read:

Two men tried to steal the diamond ring. They hunted all over the house, raving about like madmen. They even split open the cat! When all failed, they beat me, but I didn’t tell and so they hunted a little while longer. I may be dying. I hid the ring in the vane.

They pieced together that Bevan must have typed this entire note after being hit in the head, but it didn’t really make any sense. He didn’t have a cat, so no felines were murdered during the search for this ring. And there was no way he would have climbed to his roof to hide the ring in a weather vane.

That’s when Encyclopedia figured out that being hit appeared to have affected his ability to type, as he was confusing his ‘c’s and ‘v’s. They weren’t raving about, they were racing about. They didn’t rip apart a cat, they ripped apart a vat of wine in the basement. And the ring wasn’t hidden in his weather vane, it was hidden in his cane.

So, to review, after being hit in the head, Bevan knew to hide the ring. He also knew he had to write a quick note and then hide that note from the robbers. Instead of writing a quick, “I hid the ring in my cane,” he went to the typewriter and typed out a pretty detailed account of the entire crime while leaving out any description of the intruders. Then he hid the note and then he passed out?

And what kind of head injury causes such a side effect? He was able to type properly except for confusing two keys that are next to each other on the typewriter? That’s a pretty specific head injury.

Best of all, there’s no mention in the story about whether or not the robbers were apprehended. I guess the police didn’t really care about catching the guys who invaded a man’s home and beat him unconscious.

Young thespian Cicero Sturgess was dressed like a sailor and being chased with an angry cook wielding a knife when he spotted Encyclopedia and Sally.

Encyclopedia really gets no time to himself. Even when he’s not working, he runs into someone who is in some sort of jam and needs him to get out of it.

Cicero was preparing for a role in which he was in the Navy, so when the destroyer John Adams docked into Idaville, he thought it would be a good idea to follow the sailors around town. Personally, I don’t know how comfortable I would be about allowing my young son to hang out with a bunch of sailors on shore leave, but maybe Cicero’s parents aren’t the worry warts I am. Luckily for everyone, Cicero’s time was not spent boozin’ and whorein’, but instead eating a hamburger.

Cicero realized that he didn’t have enough money to leave a tip for his burger, so he tried to slink away. In trying to do so, he bumped into a sailor and was knocked to the ground. Since he was on the ground, he figured it would be best to just crawl out of the burger joint. A few moments later, the cook spotted him on the street and chased him with a knife.

By some strange coincidence, the sailor that Cicero bumped into was just about to pull out a gun and rob the burger joint. The cook just assumed that Cicero was in on it, so he chased Cicero when he couldn’t find the sailor.

The police eventually found the sailor, who denied ever stepping foot in the burger joint. The sailor cooperated with the police, but eventually got sick of the accusations. “Look, I’ve done everything you asked, I even came back to this place. I’m telling you, I didn’t do it.”

Encyclopedia noticed that the sailor said he “came back,” which went against his previous claim that he hadn’t been there before. Why Encyclopedia was around when a suspect was being questioned is beyond me. That’s just how the Idaville PD rolls.

Bryan Horton, some odd little 6-year-old, came to the Brown Detective Agency babbling about how when he grew up, he wasn’t going to shave; he would just pull his beard off for pictures. Encyclopedia tried to explain to Bryan that that’s not how facial hair works, but Bryan insisted that he saw someone pull his beard off right in front of him.

Bryan said that he saw a photo of that sometimes-bearded man, but he wasn’t able to read the words on the poster that had the photo. He then told Encyclopedia that he saw the photo at the post office.

The two went to the post office, and from there, things were started to make sense for Encyclopedia. This guy, William Matson, was wanted for armed robbery, and he must have been wearing a fake beard as a disguise. Bryan saw Matson remove the beard.

Bryan said he saw the man at his father’s motel. When the police went to the motel, Matson had already checked out. Mr. Horton had the license plate number on file, but when they looked into it, they saw that it was a rental car that had already been returned to the rental place near the airport.

Well crap, this Matson guy could be anyway. In the room where Matson stayed, police found a list of places: Moscow, Odessa, London, Paris, Palestine and Athens. So, this is an international bank thief?

No, those are all places in Texas. Matson was eventually found in Palestine, Texas.

Why was he only hitting towns with international names? That’s just strange. Actually, there’s a better word for it: idiotic. Texas is huge. Some of these towns are nowhere near the others and some of them have less than 200 people living in it. He could probably hit the same number of banks in a section of the Dallas-Fort Worth area than in these six towns combined.

It’s no wonder his crime spree was ultimately brought to its end by an illiterate 6-year-old.

Elmer Evans came to the Brown Detective Agency a broken, dejected boy. It seemed that his record for holding his breath had been shattered. Wilford Wiggins had claimed to have reached the bottom of Old Bear Cave, a cave outside of Idaville that is filled with poisonous gases.

If it’s filled with poisonous gases, then why is it called Old Bear Cave? It doesn’t seem likely that bears would live in this cave, unless they were the kinds of bears that didn’t need to breathe.

For some reason, Elmer got it in his head to attempt going down the cave as well. Yeah, that seems like a good idea. He wasn’t able to get down to the bottom of the cave, but he was fortunately able to get out alive. It was still pretty dumb of him to attempt it, though.

Elmer told Encyclopedia that Wilford called for a meeting to tell everyone what he found at the bottom of the cave. Since Wilford once tried to sell everyone sugar water, claiming it was muscle tonic, Encyclopedia figured he’d check it out.

The two got there and listened to Wilford tell his story. He had apparently used scuba equipment for his climb. This was news that delighted Elmer as it meant that his record was still intact. Maybe he could have found that information out before risking his own life.

Wilford said that at the bottom of the cave, he found drawings from the time of cavemen. He even passed around some photos of the drawings. You know, standard caveman drawings; wooly mammoths and cavemen hunting dinosaurs. He encouraged everyone to buy shares of the cave because it was about to come a tourist attraction. Every child who invested was going to be rich, for sure. Who wouldn’t want to visit a cave filled with poisonous gases? 

However, Encyclopedia pointed out that dinosaurs died out millions of years before cavemen. Not only did cavemen not hunt dinosaurs, but they didn’t have any idea that dinosaurs existed.

While it is clear that Wilford made those paintings himself, I’m sure some idiot in Idaville used this as evidence that dinosaurs did, in fact, live in the same time of cavemen.

Sally arrived at the Browns’ garage to find Tiger member, Duke Kelly, running from the Brown Detective Agency’s “office.” By the way, Duke is the boy who once shot Charlie Stewart for hanging around his secret hangout.

Encyclopedia was nowhere near the garage at the time. He had actually gotten a phone call from someone telling him to meet him at the lighthouse. Encyclopedia waited an hour, but this person never showed up.

When Encyclopedia returned, Sally told him that she was convinced that Bugs had something to do with this, but Encyclopedia thought that Bugs was too busy getting ready for the Mr. Junior Idaville contest.

Yes, the Mr. Junior Idaville contest. It’s a contest hosted by the Y.M.C.A. where the title goes to the boy with the biggest muscles. That’s kind of sickening. Also, Bugs is entering this contest, which ups the icky factor.

Anyway, a perfectly tanned Bugs showed up to the agency with Officer Friedman. We’ve never seen Friedman before. Perhaps Officer Carlson got sick of dealing with Bugs’ false reports, or maybe he promoted to whatever rank in the Idaville PD where officers don’t have to handle Bugs’ cases.

Bugs claimed that his watch was stolen while he was sunbathing on the beach. He said he had been laying out in the sun for three hours when two men walked up to him and took the watch right off his wrist. And wouldn’t you know it; the watch was at the agency. Since Encyclopedia didn’t have an alibi – he was at the lighthouse, alone – Bugs reasoned that Encyclopedia was behind it.

Encyclopedia told Friedman that if Bugs had been wearing the watch while sunbathing for several hours, he’d have a tanline where the watch was. Since he didn’t, that meant he wasn’t wearing the watch on the beach, which meant he was probably lying about everything.

But, with a new officer handling Bugs’ case, maybe this one will be tougher on children who file fake police reports. Actually, no. That doesn’t happen at all. Bugs was still free to harass Encyclopedia and waste taxpayer money.

Gary Hale won a set of candles depicting Snow White’s seven dwarves. Gary barely had his winnings before Bugs came by and swiped one of the candles from him. Not wanting to start a fight with someone much bigger than him, Gary went to the Brown Detective Agency for help.

Gary told Encyclopedia that he saw Bugs and the other Tigers using the candle to light firecrackers the previous day; only it was very windy, so Bugs cut two holes in a soda can and used that to shelter the flame. The two boys went to the Tigers clubhouse, where they saw the burned candle facing the door, with wax drippings down the front.

Bugs claimed that he had bought the candle two days earlier and he lit it the previous night as a source of light – he had the door open so that the other Tigers could see that he was in there – and it hadn’t moved since. But Encyclopedia didn’t believe him. If the candle had been lit the previous night, then the wax drippings would have fallen on the dwarf’s back, not down its front. After Encyclopedia pointed this out, Bugs confessed.

I don’t know, it sounds like Bugs gave up a little easy. I suppose Encyclopedia had a point, but this is kind of a flimsy case. Bugs could have gotten away with this one if he hadn’t given too much information by saying he hadn’t touched the candle. Bugs needs to learn when to shut up.

Mr. Holt’s Silver Shop was robbed, or at least that’s what Mr. Holt claimed. This may or may not be the same Mr. Holt who had recently beaten Mr. Crane up after breaking into Crane’s home in an attempt to steal a diamond. If so, then why isn’t this guy in jail? Oh right, this is Idaville.

Holt’s shop had been displaying Mrs. Cartwright’s set of eight silver dishes. The agreement was that if the set sold, then Holt would get a cut of money. However, one day when Holt was alone in the store, a man sneaked up behind him and put a gun to his back. The man instructed Holt to hand over the silver dish set.

Already, I’m a little suspicious. Holt owned a silver shop. Why did this robber only want that one set?

Since Holt had his back to the thief, he wasn’t able to get a look at him; or so that’s what you would think. As he was handing over the pieces of the silver dish set, Holt, being ever-so tricky, held one of the bowls up so that he would be able to get a good look at the robber’s reflection. Holt told the police that he would be able to describe the robber.

Encyclopedia was doubtful. And for good reason. Holt had actually stolen the set himself and was going to sell it and keep all of the money. He made up the story about the robbery as part of the cover. As far as that bullshit about looking for the robber’s reflection; he did that so that he could tell the police that he made a valiant effort to get a look at the guy so that he could later identify him. But what kind of reflection can you see in a bowl? It would be upside-down and distorted.

Holt is an idiot. I hope he actually gets sent to jail this time for filing a fake police report and attempting to steal Mrs. Cartwright’s silver. But then again, they’re in Idaville, so probably not.