“My back’s breaking,” Willie whispered. “What’s keeping you?”
Just then Miss Easter left the room. The minute the door swung to, Ronald shot over to Freddie Clark’s desk. He reached down under Freddie’s books and pulled something out. I couldn’t see what it was. Then he went to Willie’s desk and lifted the lid. Right at this point Willie’s back gave way. However, we didn’t make any noise because luckily for us I landed on Willie’s head. Willie’s worst fault as a detective is wanting to talk all the time. So while I was still on his head I whispered to him to be still, because Ronald was in Willie’s desk and we had to find out why. It turned out Willie was too stunned to talk anyway.
Pretty soon Ronald went down the walk carrying the brief case which he had brought the comic books to school in. He had this look so strong now you could practically hear him ticking. We waited until he was out of sight, then Willie got on his hands and knees again and I climbed in through the window.
I had just opened Willie’s desk when I heard Miss Easter’s voice in the hall. I wanted to run, but I didn’t. A detective stays cool, even if he’s wrapped up in cement and thrown into the river. So although Willie’s desk had about everything in it and I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking for, and although Miss Easter’s voice was getting louder, I kept on investigating. I had to. There had to be some reason for Ronald running from Freddie’s to Willie’s desk so fast.
Miss Easter had almost reached the door when down in the corner of Willie’s desk, under a cheese sandwich, I saw a glasses case. I grabbed it and just made it through the window as Miss Easter came back into the room. It was a close shave. When Willie saw the expression on my face as I came through the window, he naturally left in a hurry, and we ran until we got to the alley behind my house. Then we opened the case — and there were Miss Easter’s glasses.
Well, we had solved the case and found the glasses and proved Ronald was the thief, but we went to school the next morning feeling pretty depressed. We couldn’t inform even on Ronald, even though he was fixing things so that an innocent person like Willie would get blamed. Besides, who would believe us? So it looked as if all we could do was slip the glasses back to Miss Easter, and no one would ever know what good detectives were or the truth about Ronald.
But it turned out different because of Mr. Barrie hanging around Miss Easter’s desk until after the bell rang. I’d have taken a chance on putting the glasses back if only Miss Easter had been there, but Mr. Barrie’s eyes are too good. So class started with me still stuck with the glasses.
In the excitement the evening before we had forgotten all about Homer XIX. We were reminded of him suddenly when Betsy Miller opened her desk just after Miss Easter called the roll, and Homer jumped out. He hit against Betsy’s neck, then fell into her lap, then hit her neck again. Homer XIX was a good jumper. But Willie said later that Homer XIX turned out to be the most nervous frog he ever had, and he thought it was all a result of Betsy Miller’s yelling the way she did. Willie said Betsy gave Homer a shock he never recovered from.
Anyway, the upshot of all this after Willie got bawled out for ten minutes was that Miss Easter said we would have desk inspection. Ronald, with this certain look on his face, went to get the wastebasket. Ronald always carried the wastebasket when we had desk inspection, as a reward for having the neatest desk in the room.
Planting Homer on Betsy Miller was really a pretty neat way for Ronald to arrange for desk inspection. You got to hand it to Ronald — he may be a creep but he’s not a dumb creep. That’s why I was in such a tight spot. Teachers always put Willie and me in the front of the room, so Willie was sitting in the first seat in the first row and I sat right behind him. Miss Easter always started desk inspection with Willie, and I knew when the glasses didn’t turn up in Willie’s desk, Ronald would be looking and would be sure to see the big bulge in my jeans pocket.
I didn’t know what to do and I had to do something fast. Ronald’s desk was right across from me in the second row, so when he was getting the wastebasket, I slipped the glasses case into his desk. Nobody noticed except Freddie Clark because everybody else was busy trying to get his desk clean before inspection except Freddie, who knew he couldn’t. But Freddie never tells on anybody. You could twist Freddie’s arm clear off up to the socket and he wouldn’t talk. What I intended to do after Miss Easter and Ronald had passed me and were at the back of the first row was to get the glasses again.
But it was funny the way it worked out. I mean, I didn’t have any intention of planting those glasses on Ronald, who was guilty, even though he had planted them on Willie, who was innocent. I mean, there are some things you just don’t do, unless you are a creep. But what happened, Willie was emptying his desk and Ronald was pretending to help him and Miss Easter, who was standing between my desk and Ronald’s, was saying, “For goodness’ sake, what is that?” and then getting excited when it turned out to be a collection of chewed bubble gum or a box of beetles. Miss Easter always got so worked up over Willie’s desk that I couldn’t see why she wanted to look.
But anyway, all of a sudden, while she was bawling Willie out for the cheese sandwich, she said, “I wish, Willie, that you’d try to follow Ronald’s example. Just see how neat Ronald’s desk is.”
She lifted the lid as she said this. I suppose most of the time Miss Easter wouldn’t have paid much attention to a glasses case on top of Ronald’s books, but she couldn’t quite see what it was, so she picked it up. And then, in an absent-minded sort of way, I suppose having glasses on her mind, she opened the case.
I guess it was probably the biggest shock Ronald ever had. His head was down in Willie’s desk, but he sensed something was wrong and he came out looking as if he had swallowed a wooly-worm. It was a shock to Miss Easter, too. She put the glasses on and then just looked at Ronald like Betsy Miller looking at Homer.
Then she gave the rest of us an assignment and led Ronald into a little room where she takes us to improve our character. They were still there when the recess bell rang. Miss Easter came out and dismissed us. She was looking upset. We caught a glimpse of Ronald. He was looking calm. Ronald never sweats. The door wasn’t quite shut when Miss Easter went back into the room, so Willie and I hung around and listened.
“Now let me see whether I have this story straight,” Miss Easter said. “You found the glasses on Mr. Barrie’s desk. But later you were afraid to give them to me because you thought I wouldn’t believe you had found them there, since Mr. Barrie hadn’t returned them. So after putting them into a case to protect them for me, you didn’t know what to do.”
“That’s it,” said Ronald.
The world sure isn’t safe with people like Ronald Pruitt in it.
I grabbed Willie and we went as fast as we could to find Mr. Barrie. There wasn’t anything else to do but warn him so he could be ready to tell the police the truth. With Ronald framing him and Miss Easter hating him the way she did, Mr. Barrie might be arrested any minute. So we found him in his room and told him the whole story.
At first, Mr. Barrie had trouble realizing the danger he was in, and then he had such a bad cold he kept having coughing spells. But finally he understood the whole thing. Under stress, Willie remembered a whole lot more of the conversation he had overheard that day Homer XVIII got loose, and it certainly showed that Miss Easter was Mr. Barrie’s enemy, all about how conceited he was and how indifferent to other people’s feelings and how he took people for granted. Mr. Barrie said he hadn’t realized how much Miss Easter hated him and he hoped that as reliable private eyes we would regard the matter as confidential, which of course we said we would.