Mysteries According to Humphrey (4 page)

Mr. E. was impressed, too. “He's quite a jumper.”

“That's nothing,” Thomas said. “Once I saw Og leap up out of his tank and land all the way on Mrs. Brisbane's desk!”

Some of my friends laughed.

“That didn't happen,” Simon said.

“You're exaggerating,” Holly said.

Thomas just shook his head. “I know what I saw,” he told them.

I'd seen Og pop the top of his tank a few times, but I'd never seen him leap to Mrs. Brisbane's desk!

Phoebe gave me fresh water, which tasted much better than the old water in my bottle.

“Oh, no!” Phoebe suddenly said. “Mrs. Brisbane always brings fresh veggies for Humphrey.”

Yes, she does, and I look forward to them. I always have Nutri-Nibbles and Mighty Mealworms, but there's nothing as crunchy and munchy as fresh veggies. In fact, I hide them in my cheek pouch and in my bedding. But the cage cleaner always finds them and takes them away.

“You don't have any?” Mr. E. asked.

Phoebe looked WORRIED-WORRIED-WORRIED as she shook her head.

“I do!” a voice called out.

Thomas rummaged through his backpack. “I didn't eat my carrot sticks,” he said. “Humphrey can have them. I don't like them.”

I was extremely grateful to Thomas, though why anyone wouldn't like carrot sticks is a mystery to me.

My friends take very good care of me.

At the end of the day, Helpful-Holly raised her hand again. “We need our homework assignment,” she said.

A lot of the other students tried to shush her, but Holly was determined. “Mrs. Brisbane always gives us homework.”

Mr. E. replied that he had a big surprise for the class: the only homework assignment was to bring in a riddle or joke for the next day.

“You don't even have to write it down,” he said. Then he tapped his finger on the side of his head. “Just remember it up here.”

It was a pretty strange homework assignment. But then, it had been a pretty strange day.

When the bell rang, my friends all looked happy as they left the class.

“Bye, Mr. E.!” Thomas said on his way out of class. “See you tomorrow.”

“Bye, Mo-Momas,” Mr. E. said. I thought he was mixed up until I remembered the name song.

I heard Hurry-Up-Harry tell Slow-Down-Simon, “Pretty sweet—no homework.”

“Mr. E. is a great teacher!” Simon said.

“He's so funny!” Kelsey told Rosie.

After the students had left, Mr. E. sighed a big sigh and said, “That went well.” He strolled over to the table by the window where Og and I live. “I think they liked me.”

“YES-YES-YES,” I shouted. “And they like Mrs. Brisbane, too.”

Of course, all he heard was “SQUEAK-SQUEAK-SQUEAK.”

Mr. Morales came into the room. “I'm glad I caught you, Ed,” he said. “Are you available to teach tomorrow?”

Mr. E. said yes, and then the principal said, “I wasn't able to talk to Mrs. Brisbane, but her husband said her lesson plans are in the desk.”

“Yes, I know,” Mr. E. said.

“Good!” Mr. Morales said. “I'll see you tomorrow.”

The two men shook hands and Mr. Morales left.

When the door closed, Mr. E. chuckled. “That's good news for me.”

Then he opened Mrs. Brisbane's desk drawer and took out the binder with the lesson plans in it.

Whew! He was finally thinking about teaching his students. I watched him as he turned the pages.

“Math problems, vocabulary, art project, science—wow, she really packs a lot in,” he said aloud.

“YES-YES-YES!” I agreed.

“I don't know about all this,” he said. He turned another page. “And that's not going to work.”

Og started splashing around in his tank. I was worried, too. After all, these were Mrs. Brisbane's lesson plans. And Mr. E. didn't seem to like them.

Mr. E. closed the binder. “I'm going to have to make these subjects a lot more fun to make this work,” he said. “A
lot
more fun.”

He was still muttering under his breath when he picked up his big bag and left Room 26.

I had no idea what he was muttering about.

And I still had no idea what had happened to Mrs. Brisbane.

But I had a BAD-BAD-BAD feeling that it wasn't something good.

 

HUMPHREY'S DETECTIONARY:
A detective without any clues is like a classroom without a real teacher!

4

The Case of the Curious Clues

O
nce the room was quiet, I hopped on my wheel and spun as fast as my legs would go. Spinning helps me think, and I had a lot of thinking to do.

I waited and waited for Aldo to come in and clean. Maybe he would tell me what had happened.

Suddenly, I was blinded and Aldo's voice boomed, “Hey, buddies, how's it going?”

“Things are unsqueakably bad!” I told him as my eyes adjusted to the lights.

Aldo wheeled his cleaning cart into Room 26 and toward our table. “I guess you heard about Mrs. Brisbane,” he said, leaning down to look in my cage.

“WHAT-WHAT-WHAT happened?” I screeched.

Aldo shook his head. “Who'd have thought? I don't have to tell you what I think of Mrs. Brisbane. She inspired me to want to be a teacher.”

Aldo goes to school in the daytime so he can teach school someday. He's an excellent cleaner, but I think he'll be a great teacher, too.

“Like I said to Maria, boy, you never know what's going to happen next.”

Maria was Aldo's wife and a special human to me.

“I don't even know what happened today,” I tried to tell him.

“I know, I know,” he said. “You miss her.”

Then Aldo went to work. Usually, I love to watch him clean. He sweeps and swoops. He dusts and polishes. He hums and sings and sometimes does a dance.

But he was quieter that night. Oh, he did get the room very clean, but there was no humming, singing or dancing. Every once in a while he'd stop, shake and mumble, “What a thing to happen,” or, “You just never know.”

I certainly didn't know what was going on and I wished someone would tell me.

When he was finished, Aldo took out a sandwich and his thermos of coffee and sat in front of Og and me. He usually had his dinner break with us, and he always remembered to bring me veggies.

“Here you go, Humphrey, old pal,” he said as he pushed a sweet, crunchy celery stick into my cage.

“THANKS-THANKS-THANKS,” I squeaked.

Then he dropped a fishy frog stick into Og's tank. My neighbor splashed happily.

“Hey, I was thinking about that Sherlock Holmes book,” Aldo said. “I think I'm going to read that story about the redhead again.”

“Read it now!” I begged him. “Please!”

But Aldo just ate and packed up his cleaning supplies and wheeled his cart out of Room 26.

“You two have a good night,” he said as he switched off the lights.

I was disappointed to see him go. It might be a long time before I had the chance to hear the end of that story.

But after I thought about it some more, I decided to take things into my own paws.

When I saw the lights of Aldo's car leave the parking lot near my window, I jiggled the lock-that-doesn't-lock and opened my cage.

First, I needed to talk to Og. “I was thinking, if we knew how Sherlock Holmes solved a mystery, maybe we could solve our mystery,” I squeaked.

“BOING-BOING?” Og twanged.

“I mean, the mystery of what happened to Mrs. Brisbane,” I explained patiently.

I try hard to be patient with Og because frogs don't always think like hamsters. I guess they wouldn't, since we're different species.

“Don't worry, Og,” I said. “I have a Plan.”

Aldo had very kindly left the blinds open so the streetlight outside lit up the room inside.

I moved to the edge of the table and grabbed on to the leg. Taking a deep breath, I glided down. I've done it many times before. It's thrilling and slightly scary and definitely dangerous. Once I hit the floor, I scurried over to Mrs. Brisbane's desk.

That desk is extremely tall from a hamster's-eye view.

I had another lucky break. Mrs. Brisbane's chair was pushed close to the drawers of her desk, so getting to the big red book on top wouldn't be too difficult. I stood on my tippy toes and reached up to grab the bar between the chair legs. I used every ounce of strength I could gather to pull myself up. Then I grabbed the next-highest bar and—
OOOF
—pulled myself up again.

All the exercise I get spinning my wheel and rolling in my hamster ball has made me a super-strong hamster! (Those veggies help, too.)

Next I grabbed on to the arm of the chair and inched my way up to the seat.

Whew! I was so tired, my whiskers were wilting, but I was only halfway to my goal!

Og sent me some encouraging BOING-BOINGs.

I rested for a few seconds, then reached up again, grabbed the edge of the desk, pulled myself UP-UP-UP and threw myself onto the desktop. Whew!

Og splashed excitedly.

After I caught my breath, I hurried over to the big book with the thick red cover.

Along the side, in big black letters it read:
The Adventures of
Sherlock Holmes
.

I felt a little shiver as I looked at the picture of the great man with his deerstalker hat.

“BOING-BOING-BOING!” Og called impatiently.

“Okay, okay, I'm going to open the book,” I squeaked back. “We'll find out how to be detectives soon!”

I reached up to touch the edge of the top cover.

“Umph!” I pushed hard with both paws.

Nothing happened.

I pushed again—harder.

Nothing happened.
Again!

“It's very heavy, Og!” I squeaked, but I was so out of breath, I'm not sure he could hear me. “I wish there weren't quite so many stories about Sherlock Holmes!”

When I failed to budge the cover the third time, I decided to try something else. I looked around the desktop and saw a pencil. Maybe I could use that to push the cover open.

I rolled it over to the book, propped it up under the cover and gave it a mighty push.

It pushed right back, I guess, and I fell backward. The pencil rolled off the edge of the desk. (I hate to think what would have happened if
I'd
rolled off the edge.)

As I tried to catch my breath, I heard Og splashing wildly.

“BOING-BOING-BOING-BOING-BOING!”

“I'm all right, Og,” I called to him. “But I can't get the book open.”

I'm not one to give up easily, but I was exhausted and I knew it wouldn't be long before school began. It hadn't been a successful night, but it would be even worse if I got caught outside my cage.

So I slid down the side of the desk (much faster than when I'd climbed up). I raced across the floor and grabbed on to the long cord that hangs down from the blinds.

Then came that hard part where I had to swing back and forth, higher and higher, until I was level with the top of the table. I let go and slid across the table, past Og's tank, right up to the door of my cage.

“I made it, Og!” I told my friend.

“BOING!” He sounded relieved.

I was planning on a nice doze when I got back in my cage. But when I closed my eyes and was about to drift off, I remembered Mrs. Brisbane saying, “A clue is information that helps you solve a mystery. Sherlock Holmes is very good at finding clues.”

I didn't just remember her words; I could hear them in my tiny ears.

I jumped up and raced to the side of my cage. “Og! Mrs. Brisbane said to look for clues. Let's see if we have any clues to what happened to her.”

I grabbed the tiny notebook Ms. Mac gave me long ago and the teeny pencil that goes with it. I keep it well hidden behind the mirror in my cage.

I opened it and began to write.

 

Clue 1: Mrs. Brisbane didn't plan to be absent. The day before, she said, “See you in the morning.”

Clue 2: Mr. Morales didn't know Mrs. Brisbane would be absent. He said they were trying to reach her. That's why he took over the class until they could get a substitute. Whatever happened was unexpected.

Clue 3: Mrs. Wright said she was sure Mrs. Brisbane would be back tomorrow. But later in the day, Ms. Mac and Mr. Morales both said she might be out for a while. So the story changed as the day went on.

Clue 4: Aldo seems worried that something happened to Mrs. Brisbane. And that makes me unsqueakably worried, too.

 

My paw started shaking, so I quit writing.

I wondered if Sherlock Holmes was ever as worried as I was that morning.

Miss Swift unlocked the door to let Mr. E. in. He had on a button with a big smiley face, and his big cloth bag looked even fuller than it had the day before.

Once my fellow classmates arrived, Mr. Morales came in. His tie for the day had little red birds on it.

“Class, your families were all notified last night about Mrs. Brisbane,” he said. “As you know, Mr. E. will be taking over.”

My friends all looked perfectly happy, but I was not!

Principal Morales might have told all the families about Mrs. Brisbane last night, but nobody told me! Would Mr. E. be taking over just for now . . . or would it be forever?

I was so worried, I could hardly concentrate on our classwork that morning. Not that there was much. Mr. E. started off the day by having all the students share their jokes. That was their homework, after all.

My friends' jokes were pretty funny.

Hurry-Up-Harry had a good one. “Why does a stork stand on one leg?” he asked. His answer: “Because if it raised both legs, it would fall down.”

And Rolling-Rosie made everyone groan when she asked, “What's brown and sticky? A stick!”

Phoebe forgot to bring a joke. “But I know one,” she said. “What do you say to a crying whale? Quit your blubbering!”

Everyone seemed so happy, I began to think maybe nothing bad had happened to Mrs. Brisbane at all. Maybe she'd just gone on vacation.

But then I remembered her saying, “See you in the morning.”

I've learned enough about humans to know that they don't leave on vacations without planning ahead.

Especially a human like Mrs. Brisbane.

 

HUMPHREY'S DETECTIONARY:
Clues can make you WORRY-WORRY-WORRY.