Nate the Great and the Stolen Base
Page 1
READ ALL THESE
NATE THE GREAT DETECTIVE STORIES
NATE THE GREAT
NATE THE GREAT GOES UNDERCOVER
NATE THE GREAT AND THE LOST LIST
NATE THE GREAT AND THE PHONY CLUE
NATE THE GREAT AND THE STICKY CASE
NATE THE GREAT AND THE MISSING KEY
NATE THE GREAT AND THE SNOWY TRAIL
NATE THE GREAT AND THE FISHY PRIZE
NATE THE GREAT STALKS STUPIDWEED
NATE THE GREAT AND THE BORING BEACH BAG
NATE THE GREAT GOES DOWN IN THE DUMPS
NATE THE GREAT AND THE HALLOWEEN HUNT
NATE THE GREAT AND THE MUSICAL NOTE
NATE THE GREAT AND THE STOLEN BASE
NATE THE GREAT AND THE PILLOWCASE
NATE THE GREAT AND THE MUSHY VALENTINE
NATE THE GREAT AND THE TARDY TORTOISE
NATE THE GREAT AND THE CRUNCHY CHRISTMAS
NATE THE GREAT SAVES THE KING OF SWEDEN
NATE THE GREAT AND ME: THE CASE OF THE FLEEING FANG
NATE THE GREAT AND THE MONSTER MESS
NATE THE GREAT, SAN FRANCISCO DETECTIVE
NATE THE GREAT AND THE BIG SNIFF
NATE THE GREAT ON THE OWL EXPRESS
NATE THE GREAT TALKS TURKEY
NATE THE GREAT AND THE HUNGRY BOOK CLUB
AND CONTINUE THE DETECTIVE FUN WITH
OLIVIA SHARP
by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat and Mitchell Sharmat illustrated by Denise Brunkus
OLIVIA SHARP: THE PIZZA MONSTER
OLIVIA SHARP: THE PRINCESS OF THE FILLMORE STREET SCHOOL
OLIVIA SHARP: THE SLY SPY
OLIVIA SHARP: THE GREEN TOENAILS GANG
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 1992 by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat
Cover art and interior illustrations © 1992 by Marc Simont
Extra Fun Activities copyright © 2006 by Emily Costello
Extra Fun Activities illustrations copyright © 2006 by Laura Hart
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/kids
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
eBook ISBN 978-0-385-37689-1 — Trade paperback ISBN 978-0-440-40932-8
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
For my father, Nathan “nate” Weinman,
and with appreciation to all the Nathans everywhere
who feel a special bond with Nate the Great
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
First Page
Extra Fun Activities
About the Author
I, Nate the Great, am a detective.
Sometimes I’m a baseball player.
This morning I was a detective
and a baseball player.
My dog, Sludge, and I
went to the field.
I had to practice batting
and running and fielding.
I belong to a team.
ROSAMOND’S RANGERS.
Rosamond, Annie, Harry,
Oliver, Esmeralda, Claude,
Finley, and Pip belong too.
They were at the field.
Rosamond’s four cats were there.
They are the team’s mascots.
Annie’s dog Fang was there.
Fang is not on the team.
He is not a mascot.
Fang should have stayed home.
Rosamond came up to me.
“We can’t practice today,” she said.
“Somebody stole second base.”
“We can get another second base,”
I said. I bent down
and picked up a big stone.
“A stone for second base?”
Rosamond said.
“Not while I’m coach.
Everybody uses stones.
Rosamond’s Rangers do not.”
Rosamond is a strange coach.
That was no surprise.
Rosamond is a strange person.
She said, “When we play
baseball, I bring first base.
Oliver brings second base.
And Annie brings third base.”
Rosamond held up a
large tuna fish can.
“Here’s today’s first base.
Nobody stole it.”
Annie held up a large dog bone.
“Here’s today’s third base,” she said.
“Nobody ate it.”
Fang and Sludge sniffed.
Oliver said,
“I was going to bring
the same base I brought yesterday.
But somebody stole it.
It was the best.”
I, Nate the Great, did not think
Oliver’s second base was the best.
It was an octopus
made of gloopy purple plastic.
Oliver collects eels.
He is saving up
for a real octopus.
“We need a detective to find
my second base,” he said.
“Make another octopus,” I said.
Oliver was mad.
“You think it’s easy to make
those long, curling arms?” he said.
“Besides, that was
my good-luck octopus.”
“Very well. I, Nate the Great,
will take the case.”
I knew what Oliver’s
octopus looked like.
It had eight long, curling arms.
It looked oozy and slimy.
“Where do you keep
your octopus?” I asked.
“On my bookcase,” Oliver said.
“But when I went to get it
this morning, it wasn’t there.”
“We must go to your house,” I said.
I wrote a note to my mother.
I left the note at my house.
Then Sludge, Oliver, and I
went to Oliver’s house.
He lives next door.
He took us to his room.
I saw his bookcase.
It was full of books.
So far, so good.
But it was squeezed
in a corner between the wall
and a huge tank of eels.
And the top of it was a mess.
It was covered
with baseball things.
Cards, gloves, balls, and bats.
“I’ve got so much stuff
on my bookcase
that some of it falls
to the floor,”
Oliver said.
“But I pick it right up.”
“This is a real mess,” I said.
“Your octopus must
be hidden under something
on top of your bookcase.”
I, Nate the Great,
moved things,
piled things,
and so
rted things.
Sludge sniffed.
“I have just found
something important,” I said.
“What?” Oliver asked.
“A telephone. It was hidden
under two baseball gloves.
And the cord is still hidden.”
“The cord goes down the back
of the bookcase
and plugs into the wall,”
Oliver said.
“It’s boring.
But the telephone is nice.
I like to call people.”
“I know it,” I said.
Oliver is a pest.
He follows people.
He calls people.
At last I said,
“I do not see the octopus
on your bookcase.”
“So you can’t find it either,”
Oliver said.
“On is only one place to look,”
I said. “In is another.”
I looked in Oliver’s eel tank.
“Your octopus did not fall
in there,” I said.
“Perhaps it fell
down one side
of your bookcase.”
“But my bookcase
is squeezed between
the eel tank on one side
and the wall on the other,”
Oliver said.
“I, Nate the Great,
need a flashlight.”
Oliver gave me a flashlight.
I flashed the light down
both sides of the bookcase.
“The octopus did not slip through,”
I said.
“So you struck out,” Oliver said.
“No. There is one more place
to look. Perhaps your octopus
fell down the back
of the bookcase.”
“But you can’t get
back there,”
Oliver said.
“No problem. I, Nate the Great,
can peer over the top.”
I leaned forward.
“Ouch!”
I bumped my head.
“The wall is in the way,”
I said. “I can’t see down.”
I stretched out flat
on the floor
in front of the bookcase.
“Now what are you doing?”
Oliver asked.
“I am flashing the flashlight
toward the floor at the back
of your bookcase,” I said.
I, Nate the Great,
saw something.
I reached for it
and pulled it out.
It was not the octopus.
It was a baseball card.
“So that’s where my
Babe Ruth card went!”
Oliver said.
“I, Nate the Great, say
that your octopus did not fall
down the back of your bookcase.”
I walked around the room.
I looked hard.
“I do not see the octopus
anywhere in this room,”
I said. “When was the last time
you saw it?”
Oliver shrugged. “I’m not sure.
When I got home
from the game yesterday,
I pulled it out
of my pocket
and dumped it on my bookcase
with my other baseball stuff.”
“Then what?”
“Then I used my telephone.
I called everybody I know.”
“I believe it,” I said.
“Then I went out and
followed people
for the rest of the day.”
“I believe that too,” I said.
“What did you do last night?”
“I slept,” Oliver said.
I, Nate the Great,
was getting nowhere.
Oliver said, “This morning
when I went to get my octopus,
I couldn’t find it.”
“Has anyone else
been in this room?”
I asked.
“Only my eels,” Oliver said.
“Then I, Nate the Great,
must go out and
look for clues.”
“I will follow you,”
Oliver said.
“Stay by your telephone,” I said.
Sludge and I went back
to the baseball field.
“The octopus was second base
in yesterday’s game,”
I said to Sludge.
“Perhaps there’s a clue here.”
I saw Rosamond standing
under a tree with her cats.
“I just tossed my baseball mitt
into the air,” she said.
“But it came down
on a branch of this tree
and it’s stuck there.”
I looked up.
I saw the mitt
on a branch.
“My cats can go up
and shake it down,”
Rosamond said.
“My cats are smart.
If Oliver’s octopus
wasn’t made of plastic,
they could find it.
An octopus is something
like a tuna fish, isn’t it?”
I, Nate the Great,
did not want
to think about that.
I walked over
to where second base
had been.
I kicked the dirt around.
I saw something long
and curling
and oozy and slimy-looking.
It was one arm of Oliver’s
octopus.
Oliver’s octopus had eight arms.
I had found one.
I had solved one eighth
of this case.
“Look for more octopus arms,”
I said to Sludge.
Sludge and I walked
around the field.
The Sludge ran ahead.
He sniffed.
He stopped.
He brought me another octopus arm.
“Good work, Sludge,” I said.
We kept looking.
But we could not find
any more octopus arms.
Sludge and I went home.
We had to think about the case.
I made pancakes for myself.
I gave Sludge a bone.
“We are looking for
a purple plastic octopus
with six arms,”
I said. “Or maybe less.
When Oliver took
the octopus home
from the last game,
he dumped everything
on his bookcase.
He did not notice that
two arms were missing.
What else didn’t he notice?”
I went to the telephone.
I called Oliver.
He answered right away.
“Who did you follow
before you went home
from yesterday’s game?” I asked.
“Annie,” he said.
“And your octopus was in
your pocket, right?”
“Right,” Oliver said.
“Thank you,” I said.
I hung up.
“We must go to Annie’s house,”
I said to Sludge.
Annie was sitting in front
with Fang.
“I am looking for
octopus arms,” I said.
I looked at Fang.
I did not want to do that.
“Your dog will eat almost anything,”
I said. “Like second base.”
“Why would he eat
gloopy purple plastic?” Annie said.
She held up a dog bone.
“This is third base
and Fang di
dn’t eat it.
I’m very proud of him.”
Fang wagged his tail.
“But Fang isn’t perfect,”
Annie said.
That was no surprise to me,
Nate the Great.
Fang stopped wagging.
Annie said, “When Oliver
followed me after the last game,
Fang followed Oliver.
I think Fang snatched
some of the octopus
from Oliver’s pocket.”
“Aha!” I said. “So second base
was stolen after all.”
“Fang only took
one octopus arm,”
Annie said. “And here it is.”
Annie handed a very dirty
octopus arm to me.
“I just found this
in my yard,” she said.
“Fang buried it there.”
“Did Oliver see the snatch?”
I asked.
“No,” Annie said.
“He was too busy following me.”
“So Oliver’s octopus
is missing three arms
and maybe more,
and Oliver doesn’t know it,”
I said.
I said good-bye to Annie.
“This case is as good as solved,”
I said to Sludge.
“All we need to find
are a few more octopus arms.”
We went to Oliver’s house.
Oliver was talking
on the telephone.
Oliver kept talking.
I knew what I must do:
Get down on the floor.
Reach under the bookcase.
And unplug the telephone
from the wall.
But when I had looked
under there for the octopus,
I did not see the plug
or the cord.
They must have been
too high up.
I had to think of something else.
“HANG UP!” I shouted.
It worked.
Oliver hung up.
I held up the three octopus arms.
“I, Nate the Great, found these.
The case is in good shape.