Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Treasure Hunt Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 boyssearched 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.)

The Case of the Leaking Tent
    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.”
    Benny’s father had bought him a special pup tent. It was heavily lined and supposedly soundproof.
    “It’ll work, wait and see,” Encyclopedia said.
    “What has
seeing
got to do with it?” Charlie protested. “Benny can’t snore anyone blind, just deaf.”
    The two boys were biking to Benny’s house. Encyclopedia had a pup tent strapped on his back. Charlie had the fishing poles and a knapsack