The ring, the stranger, and the spiders
The golden ring was stolen on a Monday. Lewis couldn’t sleep until he had figured out a way to get it back. It was already Wednesday by the time he had devised a plan that might work.
He knew who had stolen it. He remembered a dark, sinister strange, brushing against him as he hastily left the room that day.
It only took a minute. He still did not know how it had happened. But the golden ring with the sapphire-shaped heart in the middle had somehow disappeared along with the stranger that day.
It was an extravagantly dressed, corpulent woman who had noticed it first, as her shrieks even scared the guard dogs outside. It did not seem that the glass surrounding the luxurious and exorbitant ring was cracked at all. So how on earth did they manage to steal it?
Lewis remembered following the stranger into an alley behind the Museum. But there was absolutely nothing there, other than three walls leading to a dead-end. And the stranger was gone.
All day Tuesday Lewis contrived his plan and suitably equipped himself for the mission that lay ahead. Two special policemen accompanied him to the end of the alley, but from there he would continue alone. It was his responsibility and he would be the one to retrieve the ring.
They scanned the area for a whole five minutes before they found it. The stranger’s escape route.
It was a trapdoor at the left side – the darkest part – of the alley. But the minute Lewis shed his torch light on the dark abyss that opened up below, his heart stopped.
A hairy-legged black spider crawled slowly out of the darkness onto the grey-stoned alley road. And then another. And another.
Lewis hated spiders. And most importantly he feared them. He shivered all over with disgust as he dreaded the idea of climbing down there with these awful creatures.
No, he would not. He could not. There must be another way. This would simply be a decoy. The real exit was elsewhere.
Soon the left side of the alley was slowly being taken over by spiders.
Lewis shuddered and jumped up with such a yell that the museum guard dogs ran to his rescue. They had been trained to react with every scream.
Lucky for him that they did not have the same problem with spiders. They quickly forced them all back under the trap door.
But the most fortunate coincidence of all was when one of the dogs chased around one spider which was pretty fast for its genre, crashed out of excitement onto the back wall, and revealed the real exit.
The back wall was simply plaster. Thick layers of plaster.
After that, it all fell into place quite easily.
The wall opened up to a wooden, poorly constructed shed, where apparently the stranger-thief had hidden the priceless jewel in a shoebox until he returned from somewhere. All it took from now on was a hideout until the stranger came. He didn’t take long; only 40 minutes.
The ring was returned to the Museum. And the dogs given a life supply of bones and treats.
What was most surprising though, was that the ring thief was actually the extravagantly-dressed, corpulent woman’s husband, who also happened to be the ex-director of the Museum who had been fired for misconduct and embezzlement a year ago.
Revenge can truly take astonishing turns.
But payback does belong to a dog.
Inspired by Story-ideas-three elements
MC's Whispers 