Philip and the Case of Mistaken Identity and Philip and the Baby (9781597051095) Read Free

a
white ‘P’ on it.
    “It’s got a letter on it,” said Philip.
“There’s no letter on the hat in the picture.”
    Emery looked at the picture. “We can turn the
hat inside out. Like this.”
    Philip looked inside the cap. No letter. He
nodded.
    Emery’s mother came downstairs.
    “If you want lunch you have to eat it now
while they’re asleep,” she said.
    Emery shrugged. “Want some lunch?”
    Philip shook his head. He’d tried that
before. Emery’s mother was always so busy she made terrible
lunches. Once she’d given Philip a sandwich but had forgotten to
put any meat in it. Philip had been too polite to mention it, and
for the first and only time in his life he had to eat a bread
sandwich.
    “No, I’ll go home. When you finish eating,
call me and I’ll come right back and we can get into disguise.”
    Emery nodded. The boys said good-bye and
Philip left.
    Halfway down the street he remembered he
still hadn’t gotten his twenty cents from Emery.
     

 
     
     
     
Three
    When Philip arrived back at Emery’s house,
Emery had his disguise kit laid out on the dining room table. A
small round mirror, encased in a light blue plastic square, stood
on the table. Emery was holding a mustache under his nose and
looking into the mirror.
    “How do I look?” Emery asked, wiggling his
upper lip to make his mustache dance.
    “You look stupid. Nobody our age has a
mustache. Except that one girl in Mr. Beebers’ class, but she
doesn’t count.”
    Emery threw the mustache back into the box.
“Ready to get into disguise and do something sneaky?”
    “Like what?”
    “I think we should follow somebody and try to
learn all their secrets.”
    “Suppose they haven’t got any secrets?”
    “Everybody has secrets. Remember when you
snuck into Disher’s garage—”
    “All right. All right. Never mind. You didn’t
tell anybody, did you?”
    “No, it’s a secret. But it wouldn’t be a
secret long if we were on our trail.”
    Philip wanted to change the subject. “What
shall we disguise ourselves as?”
    “Here, put this on.” Emery handed Philip the
red baseball cap. It was turned inside out and the brim had been
cut off. Emery put on his double-brimmed Sherlock Holmes cap.
“That’s first.”
    Philip bent over to look into the mirror.
“Let me see the picture.” He compared himself with the man in the
Sherlock Holmes book. “The hat should have a little brim all around
it.”
    “I tried to leave some brim, but it was too
thick. I couldn’t cut it with the scissors.”
    Philip nodded. His hat didn’t look as good as
he thought it would, and Emery’s hat looked better than he first
supposed. Philip studied the four white lines running up and down
the inside of his baseball cap, where the four quarters of the hat
were sewn together. “I don’t like these lines, and the air holes
look dumb.”
    “Nobody’ll notice,” Emery said.
    “What about the wigs?” Philip asked. There
was a bushy black-haired wig and a straight-haired red wig.
    “I tried them. They’re too itchy. This other
stuff is way better.”
    Philip watched Emery glue on a fake nose.
Then Emery took a dark pencil from the kit and colored in his
eyebrows. Finally, he put on a pair of black-rimmed glasses. Emery
stuck his finger through the circle where the glass should be.
“Empty,” he smiled.
    “What can I use?” Philip asked, impressed
with the way Emery had changed his appearance.
    “Here, try this nose.” Philip took the nose
Emery handed him, held it in place, and looked into the mirror. It
was a very large nose. “Isn’t there a smaller one?”
    “Nope. Only two noses in the kit.”
    Philip felt a slight stirring over the fact
that Emery had taken the smaller nose for himself. But all he said
was, “Give me the glue.”
    Philip attached the nose and rechecked
himself in the mirror. It was a shocking change. “Wow.”
    Emery handed Philip a red pencil from the
kit.
    “Color your eyebrows and give yourself