The Encyclopedia Brown Encyclopedia

Hector Ames, president of the Idaville Junior Ecology Club, needed someone who really knew a lot of random stuff. Naturally, he ended up at Brown Detective Agency and hired Encyclopedia for some fact-checking.

The club was in the process of screening a prospective member, Justin Mudd, who claimed to have travelled the world and to be an animal expert. That would be a great addition to the club. Hector wanted Encyclopedia around to see if Justin’s stories were accurate. Since the club does volunteer work around the town, its members are able to get into baseball games for free. Hector didn’t want Justin lying to get into the club just for the free games.

Encyclopedia sat in during the interview.

Among Justin’s claims:

While in Mexico, he freed a cross-eyed fighting rooster – even though a rooster can’t be cross-eyed because its eyes are on the sides of its head. However, the idea of a cock-eyed cock is amusing to me.

He once saw a bunch of pigs look up at a low-flying plane and then they ran away because of the sound. Pigs can’t look up.

He once saw a tiger kill a giraffe in Africa, even though tigers don’t live in Africa, they live in Asia.

I could go on, but suffice it to say that every single story Justin told about animals was inaccurate; so much so that it makes me wonder what kind of ecology club this was. Any officer of a junior ecology club who doesn’t know that male kangaroos do not have pouches shouldn’t be given free tickets to a baseball game.

Chester Jenkins was volunteering at the Museum of Science for the new “Touch and Feel” exhibit for children. Chester is the gluttonous boy who almost got cheated out of a pie-eating contest.

Encyclopedia and Sally went to the museum to check the exhibit out and to see Chester. They watched as Chester helped the younger children enjoy the exhibit of stuffed animals – of the taxidermy variety, not of plush toy kind. When Chester had a moment, he spoke to Encyclopedia and Sally. He told them that he was enjoying his time, but he was especially excited for the refreshments that were to be served at 3 p.m. He worried that he would be too busy to get some food, so Sally offered to pull some strings. Her Aunt Wanda was running the refreshment stand, so she made sure that Chester got the first piece of cake. That seems fair; they should feed the volunteers.

When the two returned to Chester with the seven-layer cake – sounds kind of fancy for the opening of an exhibit for children at the science museum – he looked upset. Someone had stolen the rattle off of the rattlesnake under Chester’s watch. He felt terrible.

Luckily, Encyclopedia was around to get to the bottom of this.

He asked Chester if he had noticed anything odd beforehand. Chester answered that the only thing he could think of was that Esmond Dinglehoofer had asked Chester for the time. When Chester told him that it was 2:45, he mentioned wanting to get home in time to see an auto race.

Something that strikes me as odd is the fact that the boy’s name is Esmond Dinglehoofer.

Encyclopedia and Sally went to Esmond’s house and saw him hanging out in his front yard. When they asked why he wasn’t watching the race, he said that he had gotten bored with it. Encyclopedia explained that someone had stolen the rattlesnake’s rattle around the time that the refreshments were being served, Esmond claimed ignorance. He explained that he left before the seven-layer cake was brought out.

If he left before the cake was brought out, then how did Esmond know what kind of cake was served? Because he only told Chester he was leaving. He was actually waiting around for Chester to be distracted by the cake. Knowing that the fat kid loves cake as much as a, well, fat kid loves cake, he used that time to deface an exhibit in the museum and hack off part of real rattlesnake’s body.

What kind of sick bastard is this Esmond kid?

Edwina Silverstein came all the way from Glenn City with a mystery for the Brown Detective Agency. She wanted to know who on her team found out she was a girl. She had been the shortstop on an all-boy baseball team, disguised as a boy, until the previous night when the coach called to tell her that he had received an anonymous tip with the truth.

At 9 years old, it was easy for her to pose as a girl. She registered under the name “Ed Silverstein,” cut her hair short and wore sunglasses. I’m not sure how this plan worked for as long as it did. Edwina lives in Glenn City, as do her teammates. No one in this league knows her? No one knows her from school or church or lives on her block?

Whatever.

An hour or so before getting the phone call from the coach telling her that she was off the team, she saw that someone was snooping on her at her house. The snooper saw Edwina in a dress. Her rouse was up. She didn’t see who it was, because the boy ran as soon as he saw that she saw him. All she knew was that he was wearing the team uniform and a pair of sunglasses. When she went to chase after him, he fell, dropping his glasses.

Encyclopedia noted that the part of the frames that hooked over the right ear was bent outwardly. He didn’t think it was from the fall, because there was no other damage to the glasses themselves. They must have gotten bent beforehand.

The coach wouldn’t reveal who tipped him off, so their only option was to watch the next game and see if they could find any clues.

The game was pretty much a blowout. Edwina’s former team was getting beaten pretty badly. The new shortstop, Bob, had a few errors. Warren, the pitcher, allowed six runs in the first inning. He wasn’t actually a good pitcher; the coach liked to put him on the mound because he was the only left-hander on the team.

That was all Encyclopedia needed to hear. It was Warren. The way the glasses were bent indicated that its wearer had routinely taken them off with his left hand. Since Warren was the only lefty on the team, it must have been him.

Not necessarily. It’s pretty likely, but there is no guarantee that only left-handed people take their glasses off with their left hand. He can say beyond all doubt that no right-handed person does that? No, he can’t.

But not that it really matters, because Warren didn’t do anything wrong, aside from being a peeping Tom. As shitty as the “no girls allowed” rule is, it’s not like this whistleblower could get reported for anything. Someone could get in huge trouble for all of this.

Playing in a children’s baseball league isn’t as simple as showing up the first day and hoping you don’t start developing breasts that summer. It involves registration fees and filling out forms. It may even require something from the doctor saying that the child is healthy enough for sports. It seems as if Edwina’s parents falsified documents in order to get their daughter into an all-boys baseball league. They sound like horrible parents, even more so when you consider the fact that they went through all of that and didn’t even bother showing up to any of the games.

I suppose it’s even possible that Edwina forged the forms and fronted the registration fees herself and went to the games without her parents’ knowledge, which would show epic levels of neglect on their part.

Phineas Cole called Encyclopedia and asked him to come to the First Church Summer Carnival as a preventative measure. He was expecting some sort of trouble from the Tigers, though he didn’t know in what form.

First a little background information. Phineas runs the “Be Your Own Dentist” booth. For two tickets, children with a loose tooth try their luck at the game AND have their tooth removed. The child ties a string around the loose tooth on one end and at the other end is a pool cue. The child shoots the cue ball and tries to get the 8-ball into one of the pockets. If the child gets it in, they get a prize. If not, well then they can take solace in the fact that their loose tooth is out, which means a visit from the tooth fairy.

I have a few problems with the “Be Your Own Dentist” game. First off, that just sounds all sorts of unsanitary. Even if it’s a new piece of string each time, no one knows where that string has been. Secondly, there’s no guarantee that the tooth will actually be pulled out. Third, and most important, this booth has a very limited customer base – children (actually, anyone) with a loose tooth. That’s like running a game that can only be played by people name Leroy. The goal for the booth is maximize the number of tickets they get, but this one keeps to a specific market, thereby drastically cutting down on the ticket income.

When Encyclopedia and Sally got to the booth, they watched a girl try for a prize. She concentrated on the ball, but at the last second, she lost her concentration and missed.

Phineas reminded Encyclopedia of what Bugs had done the previous year. Apparently, he stood by the booth and sold fake painkillers for a dime each to the children about to play the game. Though the pills were fake, it made the children not worry about the pain of having the tooth pulled out, which meant that they were more likely to win.

Actually, I’d really have to hand it to Bugs. That’s a pretty smart idea. In fact, I have less of a problem with Bugs selling the fake pills than I do with Phineas. In telling that story, Phineas was admitting how unfair the game was because it plays on the players’ fear of pain. Bugs just took that fear away, made a little money doing so and he did so without stealing. Yes, he was fraudulently selling the children something, but in the end, most of the children who bought the pills walked away with a prize.

Bugs was eventually escorted away from the booth that year, and he wanted revenge the following year. At around the time of the carnival, the Tigers had an opening. The buzz around town was that the boy who did something to Phineas without getting caught would be in the Tigers.

As Phineas was telling this story, a parade of children in costumes walked down the pathway between the lines of booths. All of them were wearing some sort of costume. The parade was to build interest in the amateur talent contest later that day, though some of the children in the parade were expected to lose their nerve and not audition.

All of them seemed to have been sporting some sort of minor injury, as well. Kitty Bly, the ballerina, had a bandaged leg. Hank Ives, the magician, had a cut from his elbow to the bottom of his sleeve. Ted Carter, the hog caller, had his arm in a sling. You get the idea.

Phineas explained that earlier that day, the office tent collapsed unexpectedly when all of the parade participants were meeting there. Tent collapsing plus injured children sounds like a lawsuit to me, but whatever.

As the parade was going by, Mrs. Garcia, the carnival chairwoman, called Phineas. She told him that a roll of tickets was missing and that she had just received a call from someone claiming that they saw him steal the tickets. Phineas denied the accusation, but Garcia found the roll hidden in the pool table.

This was obviously the work of someone trying to get into the Tigers, but who?

Encyclopedia theorized that it was Hank Ives. To him, it was clear that Hank caused the tent to collapse, stole the tickets while everyone was distracted and hid the tickets in the pool table while Phineas was helping with the downed tent. Why Hank? Encyclopedia reasoned that a magician hides things in his sleeves for his act, but Hank was wearing short sleeves. So Hank was going to pose as a magician to get into the tent, but then not audition of the show.

No.

I do not think there is enough evidence to accuse Hank, just because he’s a magician who wears short sleeves. There are plenty of tricks a magician can perform without pulling things out of their sleeves. I think there would be a terrible injustice in Idaville if this got pinned on Hank based on that alone. Encyclopedia should be ashamed of himself.

Encyclopedia Brown Shows the Way (1971) book cover.
Encyclopedia Brown did such a lousy job showing the way that Peter Frampton wrote a song in which he asked you to show the way four years later.
Or at least that’s the theory I’m cooking up. 

Encyclopedia and Charlie Stewart had just gotten off the bus after seeing a horror movie triple feature. Adding to their jumpiness was the fact that a thunderstorm was brewing.

The two boys noted the recent string of acts of vandalism where several neighborhood porch lights had been broken. Charlie feared that this was the work of two floating severed hands – like in one of the movies they had just seen – that turn off the lights right before it attacks its victim. Encyclopedia reasoned that that was impossible, but he let his imagination get away from him and began to think that that was a possibility.

Luckily, they had gone past the affected area, and had gotten to a block that was better lit. Then, like something out of a horror movie, there was a crash of lightning and some thunder, followed by the sound of glass breaking. Halfway down the block, they saw that one of the porch lights got knocked out. Before they knew it, they saw some figure running towards them. They thought it was the main villain from another one of the movies they just saw, The Headless Vampire.

That doesn’t really sound like much of a villain to me. Without a head, a vampire doesn’t have its fangs, which means it can’t attack you. A headless person up and around is scary enough, but the fact that it’s a vampire doesn’t add any terror to the mix. I don’t know, maybe the movie was done well enough that explained why a headless vampire would be scary. Again, Charlie is just a kid, so he probably wasn’t considering such logistics, and as a result, the more reasonable Encyclopedia was getting swept up in the fear.

It turned out that the headless figure wasn’t a vampire; it was Duke Kelly who was running while putting on a shirt. He told some story about how he had fallen asleep after reading by the window when the thunder woke him up. In the flash of the lightning, he saw the two of them throwing rocks at Mrs. Taft’s porch light, and that’s when he came out to chase after them.

In order to believe this story, you have to believe that the thunder woke him quickly enough for him to be cognizant enough to see Encyclopedia and Charlie throwing rocks in the tiny fraction of a second of light that the lightning provided. You also have to believe that Duke – the Tiger member who once shot Charlie for hanging around his secret target practice area near the ancient burial grounds – decided to play vigilante and catch the two supposed vandals. According to him, he was in such a hurry that he ran out of his house while putting his shirt on.

No, this is all bullshit. What had actually happened was that Duke broke the light and saw the two boys coming. Since he figured they would see him running home, Duke decided to pretend as if he was running towards the two who he said had broken the light. He even went so far as to pull his shirt half-off so that it could appear that he was putting his shirt on. That shirt detail seems totally unnecessary.

The problem with Duke’s story, aside from what I had already pointed out, is that the lightning comes before the thunder. If the thunder woke him up, he wouldn’t have seen them in the lightning flash.

Did any adult talk to Duke about his vandalism? No, of course not.

Gus Elkins came to the Brown Detective Agency excited about a money-making opportunity, even though said opportunity was coming from Wilford Wiggins. Wilford, as we’ve seen in the past, is always trying to pull schemes on the children of Idaville. Though dishonest, I can’t really fault the guy for trying to make some money. It’s the idiot children of Idaville who keep going back and listening to this proven con artist I worry about.

To give Wilford credit, his story has gotten slightly better, in a way. In the past, his stories involved an adult depending on a faraway teenager – Wilford – to handle the financing end of whatever major projects were supposedly going on.

Wilford’s friend, Jim Baker, was taking the bus from Glenn City to Idaville the previous day. While at the station, an announcement came over the loud speaker that the suspect in the recent armored truck robbery in Detroit was believed to be around Idaville. The announcement was to look out for any redheaded men, because they may be the suspect.

According to the story, a redheaded man spoke to another man about the announcement. We are supposed to believe that this was the robber. He told his friend that he was going to get off at the next stop to avoid getting noticed. The friend was told to go to Detroit – by avoiding airports – to get the money at a certain address. The robber handed his friend a piece of paper. He told him to remember the address and to throw it away. He studied the address and ripped up the slip of paper, which Jim collected and gave to Wilford.

Here are some things in the story that don’t make sense. Why would the bus station make that announcement over the loud speaker? “Hey, so this guy who they think robbed an armored truck might be in Idaville, so be careful of any redheaded guys.” No. That makes no sense. They’d put posters up. But they wouldn’t tell the public to suspect all men with red hair. With no other descriptors, that would turn into a witch hunt real quick. Also, why would the suspect explain everything to his friend and hand him the address? It would probably make a lot more sense for the suspect to write that entire message on the paper with the address that he was already going to give him in the first place. That way he could quietly slip the paper to his friend and get off the bus at the next stop and avoid the risk of someone overhearing him.

Now that Wilford had the location of the loot, all he needed was a plane ticket to Detroit so that he could beat the suspect’s accomplice to Detroit and somehow break into the house/apartment/safe where the money was being kept. For every ten dollars he received, he promised to return $100.

Bugs was skeptical. If the Jim heard the suspect talking, how are they sure that Jim was the only one hearing them?

Well, because Jim is deaf, which means he was able to read their lips. Oh right. There’s that notion that all deaf people and only deaf people are the only ones who can read lips.

Encyclopedia put an end to this nonsense. He asked Wilford how Jim was able to hear the loudspeaker if he was deaf. That shut Wilford up and made the kids realize that he was full of shit.

I’m curious to know how soon it will be before the children forget about this and every other scam Wilford tried to pull.

Bugs only has a few “plays.” One of them is the “I’m going to challenge you to a contest, cheat to win, take possession of something that’s yours and deny any of that happened when questioned by someone else” scam. This time it involved Northcliff Hicks’ red harmonica.

Northcliff was playing his harmonica when Bugs walked up to him and challenged him to a “soft-music contest.” Instead of walking away, he asked for more information. The challenge was to play a song so soft that the other person wouldn’t be able to hear it, yet it would be wake the dog across the creek. Northcliff would play on his harmonica, Bugs on his whistle.

It should be obvious by now that Bugs had a dog whistle, which people can’t hear but dogs can. Bugs won and he took the harmonica.

Encyclopedia went to the Tigers clubhouse and saw Bugs playing his new harmonica. Bugs lobbed a lame insult Encyclopedia’s way and Encyclopedia responded with the accusation of harmonica thievery.

Of course, Bugs denied the whole “soft-music” contest and said that he had found the harmonica the previous night in a trash pile outside of Northcliff’s house. He was passing Northcliff’s house something in the trash pile caught Bugs’ eye. Under the blue lights, he noticed a bright red harmonica, so he took it. By the way, the blue lights were from a recent party Northcliff’s parents held. It’s not explained if his parents held a party in their yard despite the large trash pile in it, or if the trash pile was a result of the party. Either way, these people had a trash pile in their yard that no one seemed to mind.

Encyclopedia pointed out that when you shine blue lights under red object, the object doesn’t get brighter; it appears darker. So it wouldn’t have caught his attention. How pathetic is Bugs’ lie? Instead of admitting that he stole the harmonica, he came up with a story where he’s totally fine with playing a harmonica that he found in a trash pile. That thing would have been swimming with disease.

Chief Brown was explaining that Mr. Dale’s power drill had been stolen. The prime suspect was Ed Baker, a teenager who had recently stolen a car and wrecked it in Glenn City. I’m going to cut to the chase here; Ed did it. The problem was that there was no way for Chief Brown to prove it.

There was a footprint in Dale’s backyard, but it was a half-size too small for Ed. There was also some ripped fabric caught on a branch in the backyard.

It seemed that Ed crawled at some point, which is how his shirt got caught in the branch, but one thing didn’t make sense. Dale had a dog named Rover, who is trained to bark at strangers and bite any intruder by the sleeves or trousers. How did Ed get past Rover? Did he give some food to Rover to distract him? No, apparently Rover is only trained to take food from Dale himself. (Then what happens when Dale goes on vacation? Does he take Rover with him or does Rover just starve?)

Rover was acting weird the morning after the drill was stolen. Not injured, just shaken about something. But what?

Encyclopedia figured it all out. First off, that footprint was Ed’s. It was left while the ground was still wet. The size changed slightly when it dried. As for how it got past Rover? Apparently, Ed took all of his clothes off – yes, he burglarized Dale’s house naked – so that Rover wouldn’t have any sleeves of pant legs to grab. The theory here is that Rover would have been so heartbroken that he had been unable to do what he was trained to do that would be mopey the following day.

I know little about dogs. Do they do this? Or wouldn’t Rover have just bit the naked guy’s arms or legs? If Rover was trained to bark, why wasn’t he barking at the naked stranger in the backyard?

And how nice was this power drill that Ed decided to go to such lengths to steal it? We’d have to assume that Ed knew that Rover was going to be there, and that Rover was so specially trained that Ed’s only way of getting in would be to be completely naked. Ed also had to decide if this power drill was worth being naked in someone’s backyard.

Apparently so.