You can imagine how I felt next morning when there was Miss Easter still bumping into things. Willie and I could hardly believe our own eyes! There was a regular search going on all over the building with even the janitors looking, because Miss Easter said that at first she had thought she laid them on her desk but now the more she tried to remember, the less she was sure where she had taken them off.
“What’s going on anyway?” said Willie when we got together at recess. “Do you suppose Mr. Barrie found out Miss Easter hates him, so he’s paying her back by keeping her glasses?”
“That’s impossible,” I said, “because he’s stuck with driving her home. Somebody took those glasses before he got back in his room.”
“Then there is a thief in school,” said Willie very pleased, “an honest-to-goodness, lowdown thief.”
“And we got a case,” I said. “We’re responsible for those glasses.”
“I don’t feel responsible,” said Willie. “We put them back.”
“I mean because we’re the only private-eye detectives in school,” I said.
“What I mostly feel responsible for,” said Willie, “is Ronald making all that money.”
What he meant, Ronald had brought a bunch of comic books to school and was renting them at two cents a magazine. The day before, when Ronald was looking cross-eyed, he had been checking on just how near-sighted Miss Easter was in case the information would ever come in handy. I mean, most people like to look cross-eyed just for fun. But Ronald is the kind of person who always has a purpose, a deep purpose. And sure enough, he’d been able to pass the comic books around the room and collect all morning, and Miss Easter hadn’t noticed a thing except to compliment us on how quiet we were. I will admit they were good comic books, all pretty gory.
Anyway, Willie and I decided to get together later and work on our theories. That is, Willie already had a theory that the jewels on the male Io were real and that an international gang of jewel thieves had heard about it. I didn’t have any theory yet, but I figured I’d have one by noon.
But I thought all day, and the only person I could think of who would have a reason for taking Miss Easter’s glasses was Willie. Which shows what a tough case this really was. That evening Willie and I were sitting on the curb in front of my house thinking some more, when Miss Easter and Mr. Barrie drove by with Ronald Pruitt. They all waved to us. We watched as they drove up Ronald’s driveway.
“Look at that,” said Willie. “That’s what you get when you wash the blackboard. He wouldn’t be such a teacher’s pet if she knew he made forty-six cents today renting comic books.”
Mr. Barrie turned the car around after letting Ronald out and they drove past and waved again, looking very smiley.
“Look at that,” said Willie. “I don’t get it. Driving to school with him and to lunch and home in the afternoon after everything she said! Somebody ought to tell Mr. Barrie how she hates him. Maybe she stole those glasses herself to save on gas.”
“No,” I said. “You got to admit that even though she doesn’t like Homer and Mr. Barrie, you can’t figure her as a thief. But there are a lot of queer things about this case. I keep having the funny feeling something is going to happen. To us, I mean. It keeps me from concentrating. I don’t like Ronald’s look. Did you notice his expression when he went by just now?”
“Yeah,” said Willie. “He looked that way at Freddie’s birthday party when Homer VII turned up in the bottom of the pitcher of lemonade, and I got spanked just because Homer was my frog.”
“And the time someone let the air out of my uncle’s front tires and left my tool kit by the wheel,” I said.
“He had that same expression that time at Children’s Day Exercises,” said Willie, “when you and Betsy Miller were singing a duet and a garter snake somebody put in your pocket crawled on Betsy right in the middle of a high note.”
Willie and I know Ronald, all right. Whenever he gets a certain look, it means something unpleasant is sure to happen to an innocent bystander, namely Willie or me.
“He would be thinking up something right now when we have to keep our mind on the case,” said Willie. “Do you suppose he is planning to find the glasses himself and muscle us out of the detective business?”
“He doesn’t want them found,” I said. “His comic book business is too good.” And that’s when the idea hit me. “Willie!” I said.
“Don’t bust my eardrum,” said Willie in a sort of depressed way. Ronald is a depressing subject.
“When we go swimming,” I said, “does Ronald ever go in the water first?”
“Of course not,” said Willie. “He waits until someone else sees how cold it is. Everybody knows that.”
“At scout camp when Jackie Carr is cook, does Ronald ever take the first bite?”
“You know he doesn’t,” said Willie. “He never takes a chance. What are you getting at?” he asked me.
“Well, he brought those comic books to school this morning!” I said. “How’d he know Miss Easter wouldn’t find her glasses all of a sudden and catch him in the act?”
This was really funny. I mean, Ronald is real careful. Willie got the point right away, but he didn’t get the answer. He stared at me with his mouth open. This was the time we looked the most like two detectives.
“He was cleaning blackboards yesterday afternoon,” I said. “He probably went snooping around the rooms during teachers’ meeting.”
Willie slapped himself so hard that accidentally, as he discovered later, he killed Homer XVIII. None of Willie’s frogs live very long. “Andy,” he said, “as a detective, you are a natural-born. Boy, what a brain! We got it. Ronald is the thief.”
“But how are we going to prove it?” I said.
“You could wrestle him down tomorrow at recess and go through his pockets. I’ll watch for teachers.”
“Ronald wouldn’t have the evidence on him. He wouldn’t take a chance. What we got to do is get into his mind. He’s planning something.”
“Well, I ain’t getting into no mind like that,” said Willie. “Imagine him stealing those glasses! How lowdown can you get? Besides, I get into James’s mind and now it’s your turn.”
So we agreed that next day in school I would take the dirty job and concentrate on the inside of Ronald’s head and Willie would keep an eye on his hands and feet. But twenty-four hours later we had to admit we were not any closer to figuring out what Ronald had done with the glasses or just what he was planning. All day he had tended to his comic book business and when he wasn’t making change, he was making a good impression. Ronald is the type who likes to wave his hand in the air and recite. But all the time he had this look I mentioned that he gets when something is going to happen to Willie or me. It would have made anybody but us nervous.
We were talking about this on the way home from school that day when suddenly Willie slapped his pockets. “Jeepers,” he said, “I was so busy keeping an eye on Ronald that I forgot and left Homer XIX in my desk. I’ve got to go back for him. He hates school so far.”
As it turned out for us, it was a good thing Willie was absent-minded that day. We decided it would be more interesting to go back through the window. Our classroom was on the ground floor, but when we’d worked our way around to it behind the shrubbery we found that the windows were too high up for Willie. But I could make it easy if Willie got on his back.
I climbed up and looked in the room. There was Ronald Pruitt washing the blackboard and Miss Easter grading papers. Everything was quiet except the sound of Ronald swishing the sponge across the board. It was funny. Ronald kept looking over his shoulder at Miss Easter and washing the same piece of blackboard over and over again.