Mysteries According to Humphrey

by Betty G. Birney

  “Sorry,” Thomas said. He sounded sorry.

  I was sorry that Joey didn’t get to see his dad much, too.

  But Joey wasn’t finished with Thomas. “What about the lost and found?”

  Thomas rolled his eyes. “It was kind of creepy in there. But maybe the severed hand was just a glove.”

  “And the ostrich?” Joey asked.

  Thomas laughed. “I did have an ostrich named Ozzie! But it was a toy I had when I was little.”

  Joey grinned. “I believe that. And the shark teeth?”

  “That’s true,” Thomas said. “I’ll show you.”

  He opened a drawer and handed a box to Joey. “Here they are.”

  Joey’s eyes got really big when he looked inside the box. “Wow. These really are shark teeth.”

  “My uncle gave them to me,” Thomas said. “He’s in the navy. And that’s true.”

  I scrambled to get a peek at the shark teeth. Eeek! They looked unsqueakably sharp!

  Joey stared at the teeth. “Do you know what kind they are?”

  Thomas shook his head.

  “The library has a book on sharks. We could look them up,” Joey said.

  “Together?” Thomas asked.

  Just-Joey grinned. “Yeah, if you don’t make stuff up.”

  Thomas nodded and said, “I just like to make things sound more interesting.”

  “You don’t need to,” Joey answered.

  Thomas seemed surprised. “I don’t?”

  “Just be you. Just-Thomas,” Joey said.

  Thomas thought for a second. “Okay. So, do you want to shoot hoops before we go to the library?” he asked.

  Joey did, which made me feel GREAT-GREAT-GREAT. He went out and talked to his mom. Then Mr. True took Joey and Thomas away for a long time.

  When they came back, they had a new idea. Joey would spend the night at Thomas’s and they would look after me together.

  That meant I wasn’t going to Joey’s house after all. I wasn’t all that disappointed, since he had a dog named Skipper who caught Frisbees in his teeth. I’d seen the tooth marks, so I’m pretty sure he wasn’t exaggerating.

  I’d rather be around shark’s teeth with no shark attached than a dog with teeth still in its mouth.

  And on Sunday, I was thrilled when Thomas and Joey studied for the big math test—together!

  Before class started on Monday, Joey told his friends about Thomas’s amazing shark tooth collection.

  “You mean that was true?” Simon asked.

  “Yes,” Joey said. “It really was.”

  Then Thomas said, “I guess I exaggerated about some other things. Sorry about that. I just like a good story.”

  “Me too,” Do-It-Now-Daniel said. “Especially Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Sherlock Holmes? We’ve got to do well on our test so we can hear the end of that story,” Tall-Paul said.

  “I studied,” Harry said.

  “Me too,” Simon said.

  “Yep, I did, too,” Small-Paul said.

  That was good news!

  After attendance, Mr. E. got right to work and the math test began.

  I watched my friends thinking, writing, erasing, writing some more.

  After the test was over, my friends begged Mr. E. to grade them right away. So while they were at recess, he sat at Mrs. Brisbane’s desk and marked each one. When he was finished, he smiled.

  “Good,” he said. “Very good.”

  “Did you hear that, Og?” I squeaked. I looked over just as my friend did a magnificent dive into his water. I guess he had heard.

  When my classmates came back after recess, all eyes were on Mr. E.

  “Well, class, I’m sorry to tell you . . .” Mr. E. paused. My friends looked VERY-VERY-VERY nervous.

  “. . . that I’m going to have to read you the rest of ‘The Red-Headed League’!”

  Everybody cheered, including me.

  “You all did very well on the test,” he said.

  Naturally, with all that cheering, the door opened and there was Mrs. Wright.

  “I could hear your class all the way down the hall,” she said.

  Still smiling, Mr. E. walked toward her. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Wright. We were celebrating the great job my students did on their math test.”

  Mrs. Wright looked surprised. “Oh. Well, that’s good news.”

  “We’ll cheer a little more quietly next time,” Mr. E. said.

  “Thank you, Mr. Edonopolous,” Mrs. Wright replied. She actually smiled.

  Humans can be very piewhacking.

  After she left, Mr. E. said, “Mrs. Brisbane would be pleased with you.”

  Mrs. Brisbane would be pleased with us. That was nice to hear.

  But I wasn’t very pleased with Mrs. Brisbane. How could she start reading an exciting story and then run off and go to ballet school without even finishing it? Really, it was a mystery to me.

  And then I remembered what she’d said in her letters: To think, it was all because of Humphrey.

  What had I done? What had I said?

  Maybe Sherlock Holmes, the great detective, would help me understand.

  Mr. E. pulled a tall stool from the corner and moved it to the front of the classroom. He took off his sweater and everyone laughed. He had on a black T-shirt that had Mr. E. is red wavy letters and a cartoon of a man with bright red hair that looked a lot like him.

  He sat on the stool and in a mysterious voice said, “A mystery read by Mr. E.!”

  He opened the big red book and said, “And now, the exciting conclusion of ‘The Adventure of the Red-Headed League.’” He began to read. He was an excellent story reader . . . every bit as good as Mrs. Brisbane!

  It turns out that Mr. Jabez Wilson went to his strange job each evening and was paid well. Then one day when he came to work, the office was locked and a sign read The Red-Headed League Is Dissolved.

  That’s when he visited Sherlock Holmes (which was an unsqueakably good idea).

  I don’t want to give away the whole story, but Sherlock Holmes solved the puzzle and caught the bad guys in the act! And—what a surprise—the Red-Headed League turned out to be a trick!

  Sherlock Holmes showed me that a detective can’t always assume things are what they seem to be. Could I have been wrong about what happened to Mrs. Brisbane? I hoped that, one day, I’d find out.

  “What did you think?” Mr. E. asked. “Did any of you figure it out?”

  Thomas T. True’s hand shot up in the air. “I did!”

  “Really?” Mr. E. asked. “When?”

  I saw Just-Joey turn to watch Thomas. I think he was pretty sure Thomas was going to exaggerate. Maybe Thomas noticed Joey’s look, too.

  Thomas grinned. “When you read us the ending!”

  Everybody laughed, and Joey high-fived Thomas.

  After he was finished with the story, Mr. E. gave us a lesson on Egypt, a lesson on writing sentences, and a new math problem. He even showed us different kinds of clouds with cool pictures on a projector.

  We were BUSY-BUSY-BUSY.

  Near the end of the day, Mr. Morales stopped by Room 26. He was wearing a tie with little gold stars all over it.

  “I don’t want to interrupt your studies,” he said. “I just want to say that I heard this class did a tremendous job on the math test today.”

  Mr. E. nodded. “They really did. Are you proud of yourselves?”

  My classmates cheered and clapped. I hopped up and down and squeaked, “YES-YES-YES!”

  “Congratulations, Mr. E. and class. Keep up the good work,” the principal said.

  I was unsqueakably proud of Mr. E.

  It looked as if he was turning into a good
teacher. And my friends still liked him.

  I guess I liked him, too.

  HUMPHREY’S DETECTIONARY: Sometimes a detective learns something surprising about himself. (He might even learn that someone he didn’t like is really a good human after all.)

  14

  The Case of the Weird, Weird Witch

  Mr. E. worked so hard the next few days that my class caught up with Mrs. Brisbane’s lesson plans. But it wasn’t all hard work. He also read us a fur-raising story about a secret code. And it turned out that the secret code was also a math problem!

  During the day, I was busy trying to keep up with the lessons. At night, I’d make notes in my notebook so I’d remember what we’d learned in class.

  But there was more than just schoolwork going on. Mr. E. talked to Hurry-Up-Harry about getting back to class on time, and suddenly, Harry wasn’t late anymore.

  One day, Phoebe came up to my cage smiling. She held up her wrist with the daisy watch on it.

  “See, Humphrey, I still have it,” she said. “And guess what? Yesterday after school, I went to a meeting of this new club. It’s only for kids whose parents are in the military. We talked about our parents and we played a game and we’re having a Halloween party, too!”

  “That’s pawsitively great!” I squeaked. I could tell Phoebe was feeling better already. And she remembered her homework all week, too.

  Joey and Thomas were together all the time. I even heard them whispering about their Halloween costumes. They said something about “hats,” or maybe it was “bats.” And they also mentioned “grasses.” Maybe they meant “glasses.” Were they going to dress up as bats with glasses? Or wear hats made of grasses? You can never guess what humans will wear for Halloween.

  There was so much talk about Halloween, I couldn’t help thinking about last year’s party. I didn’t know much about Halloween then. All I knew was that humans wore costumes and that the class would have a party.

  But last year we had a different class. We had a different teacher. And I was a different hamster.

  Oh, I was still Humphrey. But I was just starting to learn about school.

  Now, I knew a LOT-LOT-LOT more.

  I just didn’t know what my costume would be.

  The night before Halloween, Aldo came into Room 26 and stopped. He looked around and said, “Will you look at that? It’s almost as clean as when Mrs. Brisbane was here.”

  “And where is she now?” I squeaked loudly.

  I guess Aldo didn’t understand me.

  “How do you like my costume?” Aldo twirled around.

  He looked the same as usual. He had on a blue shirt and black pants and he was pushing his cleaning trolley.

  “This is my costume! Get it?” Aldo roared with laughter, and I realized that he was joking.

  I like jokes. I think most hamsters do.

  “I need a costume, too,” I squeaked.

  “BOING-BOING!” Og agreed.

  “I know you’re excited,” Aldo said. “I talked to Richie today. He’s excited, too.”

  Richie was his nephew, and he’d been in Room 26 last year.

  “He’s going to be a monster,” Aldo explained.

  It was hard to imagine Richie as a monster. He was a very nice human. Maybe there are nice monsters, too. I’ll bet there are.

  When Aldo sat down to have his dinner, I was hoping for a pumpkin treat, and I wasn’t disappointed.

  “Trick or treat, buddy,” he said.

  “Thanks, Aldo. Trick or squeak!” I called after him.

  Later, when Aldo was gone, I told Og, “Tomorrow is Halloween.”

  “BOING-BOING!” he replied.

  “I need a costume,” I said, walking toward the edge of our table. “Don’t you?”

  “BOING-BOING-BOING-BOING!” He didn’t seem to like the idea of wearing a costume.

  “You don’t have to wear a costume, Og. But I want one,” I said. “I had an idea today when I was thinking about the Sherlock Holmes story. And I have a Plan.”

  Og dived into his water with a giant splash. I dashed away to keep from getting wet.

  I slid down the table leg and scurried across the room to the shelves where the art supplies were stored.

  Luckily, they were low to the ground, so I could easily scramble up the side of a bin and slip over the edge. Once I was inside, I found what I wanted. I gnawed and gnawed until I had exactly what I needed for my costume.

  Holding my treasure in my mouth, I climbed up a stack of glue sticks, hopped on a tall jar of glitter and slid back over the edge.

  I swung back up to the table and went straight to my cage. I hid my costume in my bedding and closed the cage door behind me.

  “BOING-BOING!” Og twanged.

  “My costume is a surprise, Og. You’ll find out what it is tomorrow,” I squeaked back at him. “Everybody will find out tomorrow.”

  There were no costumes on Halloween morning. There were just the usual lessons. But after lunch, Mr. E. sent everyone out of the room to change into their costumes. Simon’s mom and Small-Paul’s dad were there to help.

  When the room was empty, Mr. E. turned toward Og and me and said, “You’re about to have a big surprise.”

  “So are you!” I squeaked.

  Then he left the room, too.

  While the room was empty, I made sure my costume was still under my bedding.

  It seemed like a LONG-LONG-LONG time before the door finally opened again.

  In walked a tall pirate and a short ninja. I guessed they were Tall-Paul and Small-Paul.

  Then a princess with a sparkling crown on her head came in. That was Holly.

  More kids came into the classroom in amazing costumes. Phoebe wore a camouflage military uniform. Kelsey was a ballerina in a pink tutu. Her eye was back to normal, and she looked very graceful.

  Then a very surprising pair came in. They were dressed alike in long coats and those deerstalker hats like Sherlock Holmes wore, and they carried huge magnifying glasses.

  Thomas and Joey were both dressed like Sherlock Holmes. So they had been talking about hats and glasses, not bats and grasses!

  Right behind them was Simon in a superhero costume with a blue cape, along with Harry, who was all wrapped in white like a mummy.

  Then something amazing happened. A table rolled through the door. There was a plate on the table with a knife and fork next to it. And on the plate was Rosie’s head!

  “Eeek!” I squeaked.

  Rosie smiled and everybody laughed. Someone had put a box over her shoulders with a hole for her head. She had painted a tablecloth, and the plate, knife and fork were glued on.

  It was the best costume I’d seen so far!

  My friends sat at their tables and waited. Or in their tables, in Rosie’s case.

  We all waited quite a while before the door opened again.

  I figured I’d see Mr. E., but that’s not what I saw at all.

  In came a grinning pumpkin head on a skinny skeleton body and a truly horrible old witch. She was all hunched over and leaned on a crooked wooden cane. Her face was hideous, with huge warts and a pointed nose and green skin.

  The room was silent as they walked to the front of the room and faced us.

  “How do witches tell time?” the pumpkin skeleton asked in a strange, high-pitched voice.

  “With a witch-watch!” the witch answered. And then she cackled wildly. The sound made my fur stand on end.

  “What do you call a nervous witch?” the pumpkin skeleton asked.

  “A twitch!” the weird witch answered, and cackled loudly again.

  I was about to go hide in my sleeping hut when the pumpkin skeleton asked another question.

  “And which witch are you
?” the pumpkin skeleton asked.

  This time, the witch didn’t answer.

  “Class, who knows which witch this is?” the skeleton asked us.

  For a few seconds, no one spoke. Or squeaked.

  And then Small-Paul shouted, “Mrs. Brisbane!”

  Mrs. Brisbane was a witch? And all this time, I thought she was a ballerina!

  The witch reached up and took off her witchy face, which was just a mask.

  And there was Mrs. Brisbane, smiling happily at us.

  Everyone in the class cheered and clapped.

  Og splashed loudly. “BOING-BOING-BOING-BOING!”

  I climbed up to the top of my cage and shouted, “Welcome back!”

  Mr. E. took off his pumpkin head and grinned.

  “I’m so happy to see all of you,” Mrs. Brisbane said in her regular voice. “Mr. E. came to visit me, and we planned this surprise for you. I’m so proud of how well you did on your math test.”

  The door opened and a mad scientist with wild white hair and a white coat came in, along with a clown with a round red nose and a pink-, blue- and green-striped wig.

  “Happy Halloween!” The clown sounded just like Mrs. Wright. In fact, I was sure it was Mrs. Wright when I saw that the clown had a whistle around her neck.

  “Welcome back!” The mad scientist sounded just like Mr. Morales.

  “It’s good to be back,” Mrs. Brisbane said.

  Still leaning on her stick, Mrs. Brisbane hobbled over to see Og and me.

  “Of course, I missed my friends Humphrey and Og,” she said.

  “I’m so glad to see you!” I squeaked.

  Og jumped for joy. “BOING!”

  “Hi, Og. Hello, Humphrey,” Mrs. Brisbane said. “You know, Humphrey, you’re the cause of this.”

  My heart sank to my toes. “What did I do!?” I squeaked.

  Our teacher turned to the class. “You see, I was running a little late for school that morning. I was already in my car when I realized I’d forgotten Humphrey’s fresh vegetable treat. As I ran back to the house, my heel caught on the front step and I tumbled down and broke my ankle.”