The Boy Detective Fails Read Free

amateur artiste. When she was not busy in her lab, inventive with her rows and rows of Bunsen burners and powdery silver chemicals, she would paint portraits of famous world leaders. When they were not occupied with their own work, both parents gladly encouraged their son’s determined sense of justice and unyielding curiosity.
    Through all of Billy Argo’s trials and tribulations stood his charming sister Caroline, who was always darling and a real ace with the fingerprint set, and their loyal sidekick and friend Fenton, whose belief in the decency of man and certainty concerning the triumph of good over evil was unshakable. The three of them had all pledged to the three cardinal rules of detection, which young Billy had, of course, invented, and were later recorded in Caroline’s diary with perfect penmanship:
    Cardinal rule #1: the boy detective must solve any inexplicable mystery
    Cardinal rule #2: the boy detective must foil any criminal caper he can
    Cardinal rule #3: the boy detective must always be true to his friends
    Between them, soon enough, all foul riddles, all wild hoaxes, all staged problems were solved quickly, with joy, fondness, and surrender.

    THREE
    The boy detective’s most memorable case: The Haunted Candy Factory (but we may be getting ahead of ourselves already).

    FOUR
    Trouble began the following year when Caroline, bored with always being the boy detective’s assistant, requested a magic set for Christmas. That wonderful morning, the silver Christmas tree blooming with false white light, Caroline tore through the boxes and boxes of other gifts to find the crinkly silver gift-wrapping that held a True-Life Junior Magician Set. In her small, starchy white nightgown, Caroline pulled apart the box, her fingers working ferociously against the paper. Billy looked on with dismay and fear. From within the box, Caroline yanked out a black top hat, and immediately a white dove took flight, fluttering and flitting above the family members’ heads. Gleeful, the girl clapped, chasing the bird wherever it landed, ignoring the gift Billy had bought for her: a brand new magnifying glass, decorated with a gold ribbon around its handle.
    “What will you name your bird?” Mrs. Argo asked.
    “Margaret Thatcher,” Caroline replied, without giving it a second thought. Billy turned, pouting, opening a gift from his father: a taxidermy kit and set of torque wrenches. For him, it was the worst Christmas ever.
    For several months, then, Caroline was completely disinterested in her older brother’s adventures.
    BOY DETECTIVE EASILY BUSTS SILVER SMUGGLERS ON HIS OWN
    WONDER BOY DETECTIVE UNMASKS TAROT CARD FAKE WITHOUT ANY KIND OF ASSISTANCE AT ALL
    The boy detective took his sister’s absence very badly. The two children were often found in the small white hallway between their bedrooms shouting, cursing each other with ferocity: “You simple-minded dwarf !” or “You hopeless barbarian!”—enigmatic insults neither understood fully. In their disagreements, Caroline simply stated that magic was more fun because it worked on the notion of wonder and mystery. Upon hearing this, Billy threw her magic set on the floor, arguing magic was fun only for irrational, childish babies.
    Most of these contests ended the same way: Caroline, alone in bed, crying.
    A strange, important, event occurred one day: Caroline’s magic-set dove, Margaret Thatcher, born with a silent and inoperable heart defect, quite naturally passed away, falling on its side, dead in its shiny silver cage. It was a true shock, seeing the puffy white bird lying there dead, staring strangely back at her from beyond the world of the living. Caroline, at once, lost all interest in magic of any kind. Quite sure the ghost of the bird would return to haunt her unless it was given a proper interment, Caroline begged her brother Billy for his help. Together, the two children made amends and gave the beloved pet an appropriate burial, hiding the remains