The Encyclopedia Brown Encyclopedia

Sometimes, Chief Brown took time out of his busy day of not being able to solve cases to revisit cold cases that he wasn’t able to solve years earlier. On this particular night, he was thinking about the robbery at the Diamond Mart, which had taken place five years earlier. This robbery was on his mind because Tim Nolan, one of the men who had been accused in the crime, had recently died.

Shortly after the robbery, Nolan had been brought in for questioning, but was eventually released. Chief Brown had suspected that Nolan robbed the store with Daniel Davenport, but he had no evidence to prove it. Since the only person in the entire town with any capacity for critical thinking – Encyclopedia – was only 5 years old at the time and possibly too young to solve mysteries, the crime went unsolved.

No one seemed to mind that these criminals went unpunished. In fact, cases like this disprove the claim made in every Encyclopedia Brown book that no criminal ever got away with their crime.

Now that Encyclopedia was old enough, Chief Brown decided to just give him all of the information so that he could figure out what happened in under five minutes.

Nolan and Davenport met in prison in South Carolina. They became friends because of their mutual interest in codes. When Nolan was released, he settled in Idaville and started a palm tree nursery which barely gave him enough income to live comfortably. Really, he should count himself fortunate that he was able to start up his own business fresh out of prison.

When Davenport got out of prison, he moved in with Nolan. A week later, the Diamond Mart was robbed. Neither Davenport nor the stolen jewels had been seen since.

When the police discovered Nolan, his will – which stated that everything would be left to Davenport – was on the kitchen table, along with Davenport’s address and a slip of paper from a desk calendar that read “Nom Utes Sweden Hurts.” Chief Brown’s theory was that Nolan sensed that he was dying, so with his last bits of strength, he skipped calling 911 and made sure that all of his affairs were squared away and easy for others to find. He also thought that the slip of paper was a code for Davenport as to where the stolen jewels had been hidden, but he was clueless as to what it meant.

Chief and Mrs. Brown went back on forth trying to figure out the code, but they weren’t getting anywhere. Encyclopedia figured it out though. He asked his father if Nolan had a fir tree on his property. If so, that was where the jewels were buried.

Take the four words written on the slip and scramble the letters. Since this was written on a piece of paper from the calendar, let’s add the word “day” to the end of each of the scrambled words. Then we get “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.” Next in the sequence would be Friday. Take away “day” and we get “fri.” Scramble those letters and the only combination that produces an actual word is “fir.” That worked out perfectly, since he happened to have a fir growing on his property. If he didn’t, who knows where Nolan would have hidden the jewels or what kind of code he would have used. It’s a good thing Nolan knew he was dying. Otherwise, Davenport would never find the jewels.

What I don’t understand here is why they bothered robbing the jewelry store. The obvious guess would be that they did it for money, but that clearly wasn’t the reason. These jewels had been stolen five years earlier and in that time, one of the robbers completely disappeared with only his partner knowing where to find him. Why didn’t he take the jewels? No one was tracking him, because only Nolan knew where he was. He could have gotten money for the jewels, sent the money to Nolan who could have laundered it through his legitimate business. No, instead Davenport spent five years hiding and Nolan buried the jewels in his yard never to be seen again in his lifetime while he continued to plod away at his business that was barely scraping by.

It almost seems as if robbing this jewelry store wasn’t even worth it.

Dustin Durant was selling people the opportunity to pose with the President of the United States for $5 a photo or $3 if they brought their own camera. In reality, it was just a cardboard cutout. I’m not sure why people were willing to pay $5 to have their photo taken with a cardboard cutout, but whatever.

Minutes after giving Encyclopedia and Sally a free photo, Dustin told them that two men had taken his camera. Dustin had seen the two men seated on a nearby bench just before they took the camera, and had listened to some of their conversation. The taller man, who was bald with a dark mustache, said something about “delivering the goods” to a house on Highland Street. He told the shorter man, who had red hair and whose arm was in a sling, not to write anything down and to remember that it was the last upside-down year and that the next one won’t come for another 4,000 years.

When the two split up, the shorter man got a photo with the president. That’s when the taller man appeared and yelled at his partner about getting his picture taken. He then took the camera to get rid of the evidence.

Encyclopedia knew that those two men fit the description of the two who had held up Polk’s Jewelry Store the previous day. The last time we heard about Polk’s Jewelry Store, it had been robbed by a man with a limp. As prone to robberies as this business is, at least their robbers have some easy-to-recognize physical feature, like a limp or an arm in a sling. It makes it easier for the police to apprehend them later.

The boy detective decided it would be best to go to Highland Avenue and keep an eye out for these men. Sally pointed out that that street was over twenty blocks long and that there was no way to know which house to keep an eye on. But Encyclopedia knew where to find them.

They went to the house and they caught a glimpse of the shorter men. That’s when Encyclopedia did something that we’ve never seen him do before – he called the police. The police came in and arrested the men.

But how did Encyclopedia know which house to go to?

The taller man said that the house was at the last upside-down year. Encyclopedia knew that 1961 looks the same written right-side up and upside-down. So the place to meet up was 1961 Highland Avenue. When the tall man said that the next one wouldn’t be for another 4,000 years, he was referring to the year 6009.

This short suspect doesn’t sound all that bright. Why did the tall guy think that his partner would understand that whole “upside-down year” thing? I’m just imagining the short guy writing a bunch of numbers down and turning the paper upside-down to see if that was the right one.

Caswell Philpott went to the Brown Detective Agency and immediately started prattling on about yoga. He went on to say that he has taken to practicing his headstand. He mentioned that while fishing at Mill Pond, he decided to do a headstand there at the pond. While he was doing that, he overheard two men walking by. One of the men was talking about stealing Blue-Point Blackie’s overnight bag at the bus station that afternoon.

No one knew who Blue-Point Blackie was, but it sounded like an important bit to overhear. Caswell didn’t get a good description of the men, because he was upside down. Sally asked Encyclopedia if he wanted to get his father involved, but he decided to leave the police out of it, because there weren’t enough facts. After all, they didn’t even know if Blue-Point Blackie was getting in on a bus into Idaville or not, so they just decided to go to the bus station themselves.

Yeah, that seems like a good idea. The Blue-Point Blackie was in danger of being robbed, there was no reason to bother the police. There was no reason to waste police resources on finding out whom or where this man was and ensure his safety. There are better ways the police could spend their time, like staking out for a fictitious creature or investigating something that may not even be illegal. This Blue-Point Blackie would be fine under the watchful eyes of a few 10-year-olds.

Also, I think it’s a really good idea for children to hang out at a bus station; especially when there was a possibility of someone being robbed.

Caswell was really annoying Encyclopedia by suspecting everyone he saw at the bus station. First, it was a man in a tan hat at looking through a magazine on the rack. He eventually bought a paper and sat down. Caswell thought he wasn’t really reading it, but looking out for Blue-Point Blackie. Then it was two men he saw at the soda machine. Then it was two men in dark suits near the ticket window who wasn’t actually buying ticket; no one wore dark suits in Idaville in the summer.

Encyclopedia kept an eye on the men in dark suits, but lost sight of them when the 2:00 bus from Glenn City came in. That’s when he heard a woman scream. Encyclopedia ran over to the source and saw a dark-haired man unconscious on the ground. He didn’t seem to have an overnight bag, so it had probably been stolen.

Encyclopedia found Caswell who admitted that he got bored looking for people, so he started doing headstands and didn’t see anything. How did Caswell go from being completely interested in looking for possible suspects to being so bored that he decided that his time was better spent doing headstands in a crowded bus station? This kid’s attention span seems dangerously low. He explained that he saw the man in the tan hat. He had folded the newspaper in half and was reading the bottom half. Caswell said he got distracted by trying to read the headlines that were facing him, but he was having problems because it was upside down.

This kid’s a complete idiot.

At this point, Officer Carlson arrived on the scene and recognized the victim as Blue-Point Blackie. He was surprised that a “Chicago crook” was in Idaville. Why was a Chicago criminal so well-known in Idaville? If he was known for being a crook, then why was he not in jail?

Also, this serves as good example why Encyclopedia should have told his father what he knew. Chief Brown would have responded, “Blue-Point Blackie, the very famous criminal from Chicago who is not currently serving time, is possibly coming to town? And people plan to rob him when he gets off his bus? We should probably look into that.” The Idaville PD would have arrested Blue-Point Blackie, who had apparently been eluding the Chicago PD, as soon as he got off the bus and they may have even apprehended his would-be robbers.

No one actually saw Blue-Point Blackie get attacked, but Encyclopedia knew that something Caswell saw was helpful. Caswell said that he was having trouble reading the headlines on the man’s newspaper were upside-down. However, since Caswell was doing a headstand, the headlines should have appeared right-side up to him. That meant that the man wasn’t actually reading the paper, he was just pretending to, but keeping an eye for Blue-Point Blackie.

Encyclopedia remembered that this man was looking through a magazine, so the police got fingerprints from the magazine. The assumption there was that this man was the only person who handled that magazine in a crowded bus station. And with that, they were able to eventually arrest him. The man was actually in a rival gang who caught wind of the fact that Blue-Eyed Blackie was coming to town with a bag full of stolen diamonds. The gang wanted to steal the diamonds from him.

But that actually doesn’t make any sense. Encyclopedia figured out that the man was holding the newspaper upside-down and that he was probably just pretending to read it. But what he didn’t consider was the fact that at the time of the attack, Caswell was trying to read the headlines on a newspaper that this guy was reading. How could this man be pretending to read the newspaper and attacking Blue-Point Blackie at the same time?

So really, this guy’s crime was doing a shitty job of pretending to read a newspaper at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Encyclopedia and Sally went to Mario’s Restaurant for some lunch. After placing their order, Encyclopedia studied each of the fifteen customers in the restaurant. That seems like extremely paranoid behavior for a typical 10-year-old, but this is Encyclopedia. Crime can’t help but follow him. He knows that at any moment, someone’s going to pull some shit and since the law enforcement in the area is shitty at best, he’s the one that’s going to be the one to have to figure it all out.

Obviously, since he took the time to study everyone in the room, something was about to go down, so I suppose I should give a brief description of everyone.

At one table, in the corner, was a middle-aged couple. The slender man sat in the corner and facing him was a “beefy woman in a tight brown dress.” Another table, near the window, had three men and “a very fat woman.” Another table had two men and two women. The men talked baseball while the women looked bored. At the fourth table were five young men dressed in the telephone company’s uniform.

We’re all up to speed? Good.

The slender man and the “beefy woman” paid their bill and left. As the five telephone company employees were paying, there was a woman’s scream from the back of the restaurant. Being gentlemen, they ran out of the store. Don’t worry, five young men, the screaming woman will just fend for herself.

When Officer Carlson appeared, Mario explained that his daughter, Isabel, went to the bank to make a deposit every Tuesday. Isabel went to the ladies’ room to freshen up before heading to the bank, when someone barged in, punched her and took the money.

According to Mario, only the employees knew of this bank routine, and they were all accounted for. John Rizzo had worked there as a cook, but he had been fired the previous week. There was no sign of him near the restaurant that day.

Also, there was the question of who could have beaten up Isabel. She was a tough little lady, so it was assumed that no woman could ever knock her out with a single punch. It must have been a man. But the door to the ladies’ room was visible to all of the customers. Someone would have noticed a man walking into the ladies’ room. Who was it?

Encyclopedia was clueless, but Sally had it all figured out. She wasn’t surprised that Encyclopedia didn’t know, because “boys today haven’t learned their manners.”

It was the “beefy woman,” who was actually John Rizzo dressed in drag. Sally knew this because proper etiquette dictates that when a man and a woman are sitting at a table, the man should have his back to the rest of the room and the woman should sit in the corner so that she can see and be seen. Since Mr. and Mrs. Rizzo were both cross-dressing, the female was sitting with her back to the wall; the only problem was that she was dressed as a man so it looked like the supposed taboo that I had never heard of was being broken.

Okay, I guess I understand why Mr. Rizzo would dress as a woman. First off, it’s a decent disguise. Secondly, it would give him access to the ladies’ room without turning any heads. I don’t understand why Mrs. Rizzo would need to dress as a guy. She’s not involved in the actual crime; she’s just along for the ride. There would have been nothing suspicious about two women eating lunch together at a restaurant, why go through that extra trouble?

But here’s where Sally’s case starts to fall apart. Everyone would have been able to see the ladies’ room door. That means that the customers would have seen someone enter the ladies’ room right before Isabel screamed. Was it the “beefy lady”? I’m guessing not, and here’s why.

She already left.  The story clearly says that the skinny man and the “beefy lady” paid their check and left. It didn’t say anything about her doubling back and heading to the ladies’ room. Way to go, Sally; you just accused one of the two people in the story who was not in the restaurant at the time of the robbery.

Here’s how I see this playing out. Based on Sally’s theory and the description the two detectives give, Officer Carlson will look for this “beefy lady.” He will find her, accuse her of being a man in drag and then proceed to ask her about a robbery that took place after she had left the restaurant. The “beefy lady” will be visibly upset, but Carlson would be relentless and demand to know why she wasn’t sitting with her back to the wall like any other respectable woman with proper manners. The “beefy lady,” who already had issues with her physical appearance because of years of being referred to as a “beefy lady,” explained that maybe she didn’t want everyone in the restaurant to see her ugly face. Carlson will realize that he accidentally offended a woman and try to make amends by complimenting her, but it would be kind of difficult for him, considering that he had just accused her of being a guy in drag. The “beefy lady” and the skinny man will then go file a complaint to Chief Brown who will then demote Carlson to what is referred to as “Bugs Meany duty.”

I don’t see this playing out any other way.

And Sally is pretty inconsistent about judging people who follow the rules of etiquette. When a woman screamed, five able-bodied young men immediately fled, moving as quickly as their ten cowardly little legs could take them. Sally didn’t think twice about the fact that maybe these men could have helped the woman in peril in some way. But when she spotted woman sitting with her back to the rest of the room, all sorts of alarms went off in her head. 

Encyclopedia and Sally were at Hector’s Department Store when a bull passed the two detectives.

It was actually a bull made of papier-mâché being carried in two pieces. The bull was followed by people carrying bullfighting costumes and a bullfighting poster. Behind them were people carrying female figures and petticoats.

Encyclopedia and Sally followed them and saw that they were decorating a display window to sell women’s toreador pants. Apparently in this world, toreador pants were all the rage with women that year.

While they were watching the display window decorating, which sounds just riveting, two gunshots were fired.

Sally disappeared. While looking for her, Encyclopedia found his father. Chief Brown explained that no one had been hurt and that over $100,000 worth of diamonds were taken from the jewelry department. Sally then showed up, explaining that she had chased the thieves. They had gotten away, but she wrote down the getaway car’s license plate number.

When asked how Sally knew who did it, she got really snotty with Encyclopedia, saying that only a girl would have figured it out. She explained that a bunch of people had passed by with decorations for the toreador pants display, but one of the items that were carried by wasn’t necessary: the petticoats. Sally reasoned that the man carrying the petticoats was able to get to the jewelry department undetected. Only a girl would know what petticoats are and that they didn’t fit with the bullfighting scene.

Okay, that may be true. You say to me “hey, while you’re at the store, could yet get me a petticoat?” and without any follow-up questions or research on my end, I’d probably bring back the wrong thing. Also, I’m not sure where you can get petticoats nowadays.

However, the scene wasn’t being narrated for Encyclopedia. He was there. He saw the petticoats being carried by, and by simply looking at petticoats, anyone (male or female) should know that it doesn’t really go with toreador pants because they’re undergarments that go under dresses or skirts.

So, Sally really needs to dial back the sass a bit, because it’s pretty unnecessary in this case.

I also don’t understand the thief. In this case, it worked out pretty well. But does he normally go to the department store carrying a few petticoats on the off-chance that he was going to come across people on their way to decorating a store front window? If so, how many times has he shown up to the store carrying a bunch of petticoats for what turns out to be no reason? I imagine a lot, because those windows are normally decorated when the stores are closed.

Tyrone Taylor was always hitting on the town’s 5^th grade girls. Sounds really creepy, until you realize Tyrone was 10 years old. Taking that into account, the creepiness factor decreases, but doesn’t completely disappears.

He was pissed off because he was trying to woo Betty Holden, but Stingy Stetson snaked Tyrone’s love interest. Stingy, as the nickname suggests, was a cheapskate. Tyrone saw Stingy at Mr. O’Hara’s drugstore with Betty. Stingy had bought her an “Idaville Special” with three scoops of ice cream.

Tyrone had no idea why Stingy was suddenly making it rain, so he assumed the worst. He accused Stingy of stealing money. He even dropped a quarter at the Brown Detective Agency so that Encyclopedia could find out what was going on with Stingy.

Encyclopedia reminded Tyrone that accusing someone of stealing money just because he stole his woman isn’t very nice. Tyrone explained that he had actually seen Stingy outside of the Medical Building the previous day. What was he doing there on a Sunday? It was closed.

Now, what happens next is needlessly complicated. Tyrone was hanging out by the Medical Building (by the way, that’s capitalized, which leads me to believe that that’s the actual name of the building) when he saw Stingy and his older brother, Pete, doing some weird walk across the parking lot to their truck. He couldn’t see the lower half of their bodies, but he could somehow tell that they were walking funny. Encyclopedia figured out they were walking along the white lines that marked the parking spots.

Encyclopedia later asked his father if the Medical Building had been robbed the previous day. Wouldn’t you know it, yes it was. About $200 was stolen from petty cash boxes in several offices. The thieves snuck into the building, but the security guard spotted them. Well, he spotted their feet as it turned a corner up the stairs. The guard went to chase them, but when he reached the top of the stairs, they knocked him out. When he regained consciousness, he saw a service truck for Mac’s Service Station – the same truck Tyrone saw – drive away out of the parking lot. The guard called Mac’s and found out that Pete Stetson normally drove the truck on Sundays, and some days he took his little brother along on some calls.

This is an open and shut case for the Idaville PD, right? No. Because when Pete and Stingy returned to the station, they were wearing shoes.

Are you kidding me? That’s their alibi? No, the thieves were barefoot and these two were seen several minutes later wearing shoes. There’s no way they would have been able to put on their shoes at any point between leaving the Medical Building and returning to the service station. It looks like this one is unsolvable.

Well, no. Encyclopedia figured out that the reason why they were walking along the white lines of the parking lot was because they were barefoot. They walked along the lines to keep from burning their feet on the hot blacktop.

To review, this kid planned to steal some money from a bunch of doctor’s offices and decided the best partner for that kind of crime would be his 10-year-old brother, the little brother used the money stolen to pick up chicks and the only reason why they got caught was because a horny 10-year-old was pissed about losing his would-be girlfriend. Also, the Idaville PD is enormously terrible at police work.

But we already knew that.

Otto Beck burst in on the Browns as they were having dinner saying that he had just seen the ghost of Jennifer MacIntosh walking on the beach.

According to legend, Jennifer MacIntosh lived in Idaville a century earlier. Her husband-to-be was lost at sea the day before they were supposed to be married. As the story goes, MacIntosh’s ghost wanders the beach in her wedding dress, searching for her love. That’s the whole story. I think there’s something missing in this ghost story – how she died. For her to be a ghost wearing her wedding dress, it could be assumed that she was so saddened by her true love’s death that she committed suicide on what was supposed to be her wedding day. That part was omitted; probably because this is a children’s story.

Also, according to this website, the name Jennifer was rarely seen outside of Cornwall before 1906. If she lived in Idaville a century earlier (this book was published in 1972), and she was old enough to get married, that means she was born no later than the 1850s. I’m not buying this ghost story at all, but let’s move on.

Chief Brown asked Beck if he had seen anyone else around. Beck answered that he noticed a man with a limp carrying a bag going the opposite direction about an hour before the ghost appeared.

A man with a limp carrying a bag? That’s odd, because Polk’s Jewelry Store had been robbed earlier that day after it closed. A witness saw a man with a limp carrying a bag. Encyclopedia reasoned that if the man had a limp, then the limp would be evident in the footprints on the sand. Chief Brown decided that he should probably take a look on the beach. He and Beck headed out for the beach. Since potentially dangerous jewelry store robber was possibly involved, Chief Brown thought it’d be best to take is 10-year-old son as well.

At some point, it suddenly occurred to Chief Brown that Barney Slade walked with a limp and lived near the beach. Chief Brown theorized that Slade stole a car and parked it near the dock, giving the impression that the thief sailed out, and then cut across the beach to his home. But what about the footprints?

The three went to where Beck saw the limping man walking and saw that the footprints had been smoothed over. Did Barney go back and smooth out his footprints? Wouldn’t he worry that someone would see him doing that?

Encyclopedia had figured it all out. Slade had, in fact, parked a stolen car by the dock and then cut across the beach to his shack. But he saw that Beck saw him, so he convinced his wife to put on her wedding dress – posing as Jennifer MacIntosh’s ghost – with a wooden board attached to the train and to walk across the beach to smooth out the footprints. She would then get in the stolen car and drive it home.

I’d worry about Encyclopedia for coming up with such an insane scenario, except this is apparently how it all went down, which makes me worry about the mental health of the Slades.

For this story to be true, Slade would have had to come home after robbing a jewelry store and tell his wife that he thought someone spotted him walking across the beach. Slade would then have said, “I have an idea. Put on your wedding dress and walk across the beach pretending to be that ghost. That way, if that person is still around an hour later, no one would believe that he saw me because he was also claiming to see a ghost, and the evidence of my being on the beach will be wiped away.” And his wife would have agreed and actually follow through.

There are a few major problems with this plan:

1) What if Beck wasn’t still on the beach an hour later? Then he would have left the beach having seen just Slade on the beach, and Slade’s wife wedding dress would have been ruined for nothing.

2) Beck didn’t even think twice about seeing a man with a limp walk across the beach until he thought he saw a ghost an hour later. By having his wife pretend to be a ghost, Slade was only calling attention to himself. Had he not done that, Beck probably would have gone home and forgotten about the whole thing. Instead, he went directly to the police chief’s house.

3) What if Beck didn’t assume it was a ghost? What if, instead, he just walked up to the woman walking around on the beach in her wedding dress and asked her what she was doing? Would she answer with weird spooky ghost sounds or just a “oh, just walkin’ around in my wedding dress, as you do…”? Because either one would be pretty freakin’ suspicious.

4) By having Slade’s wife walk across the beach to drive the stolen vehicle from the drop-off point to their home, they’re reconnecting themselves with the stolen vehicle. What if an officer saw her driving a vehicle reported as stolen? Slade’s wife would have been stopped, and she would have been asked why she was driving a stolen vehicle while wearing a wedding dress covered in sand with a wooden board attached to it.

5) Why were they going through all of that trouble to wipe Slade’s footprints clean? Another witness had already connected Slade to the robbery. If Beck reported seeing Slade walk across the beach, then the footprints wouldn’t change anything. Slade’s only defense against all of this evidence would have been, “If I was seen walking on the beach, I would have left footprints,” and I can’t imagine any jury siding with that logic.

So in the end, Slade’s unnecessary and complicated cover-up was what led to him getting caught in the first place. This further proves my point. Crimes don’t get solved in Idaville because Encyclopedia is smart; crimes get solved in Idaville because the criminals are ridiculously dumb.

Jane Foster was screwed. Her father’s store was robbed while she was put in charge of it. Mr. Foster had to get to Glenn City, so instead of closing the store five minutes early, he had his daughter close up. Jane closed the store as planned, but forgot to lock the side door. As she was in the washroom, she heard the cash register ring. The thief ran out of the store with the money that was in the register.

She didn’t want to go to the police, because she didn’t want her father to think that he couldn’t trust her with the store, so she went to the Brown Detective Agency instead. Encyclopedia and Sally went to the store with Jane.

Since the only people who could access side door that had been unlocked would be the people who lived above the store, Encyclopedia reasoned that the thief would have to be one of those residents. But who?

Near the cash register were a pack of rubber bands, a can of oil, a magnet, a sheet of sandpaper and a pack of blotters. What had really happened was that the thief went to the store to buy a few things, saw the store was empty and decided to empty the cash register instead.

Encyclopedia asked about the people who lived upstairs. He zeroed in on Mrs. O’Quinn, the cleaning lady who also sews. All of those objects left at the register were items that could have been used by someone who sews.

The thief was actually O’Quinn’s daughter, Mary, who was sent down to get supplies for her mother. Mary returned with the money, and told her mother that the store was closed. Didn’t Mrs. O’Quinn find it odd that Mary was gone for as long as she was? If the store was closed, she would have been back right away. Since it wasn’t closed, Mary took a few minutes to walk around the store to do some shopping.

If Mary had been smart, she would have left with the supplies AND the money. That way, she would have been able to keep the money that her mother gave while not leaving any clues behind leading her directly to the crime.

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.

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.