Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Secret Pitch (8 page)

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Authors: Donald J. Sobol

BOOK: Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Secret Pitch
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Solution to The Case of Excalibur
Bugs’s own words to Mr. Evans proved he had not seen Woody steal the penknife as he claimed.
Bugs had said:
“I saw him put my knife Excalibur into his left pants pocket as he ran from the Tigers’ clubhouse. You saw Brown take it from the same pocket with your own eyes!”
Now Woody had broken his left arm. It was “in a cast from his fingertips to above his elbow.”
Therefore Woody could not have used his left hand to slip the penknife into his pocket. He would have had to use his right hand.
But Excalibur was found in his left pocket.
Try to put a penknife into your left pants pocket with your right hand while running.
It’s impossible.
If Woody had stolen Excalibur, he would have put it in his
right
pants pocket.
Solution to The Case of the Glass of Ginger Ale
The
first
clue was Hans’s remark, “Oh, this ice is cold.”
It was a silly, obvious thing to say. It made sense only if it covered up another sound he didn’t want the blind violinist to hear.
Encyclopedia reasoned that the other sound was Hans tearing open an insulated bag-the kind of bag which keeps ice from melting.
Yes, Hans had brought his own ice. He did not take the four pieces of ice from Mr. de Verona’s ice bucket.
The pieces of ice in the glass which Mr. de Verona put in the safe were not made of water.
Hans had made them by freezing ginger ale!
Hans never did open the safe. He never even entered the room. He simply waited in the hall for an hour.
The
second
clue, the one “no man could have heard,” was the sound of the frozen pieces of ginger ale melting.
When Mr. de Verona opened the safe, the pieces of ice had all melted, filling the glass with ginger ale!
Solution to The Case of the Stomach Puncher
Biff said that the bike had been lying “under the canvas ever since I bought it two months ago.”
Yet when Encyclopedia removed the canvas, the bike lay on grass that was “green.”
Had the canvas been covering the bike and the ground for two months, the grass would have died.
Dead grass is brown, not green.
The green, live grass proved the canvas had just been put over the ground and the bike.

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