With Crumpet-Hands Man at his side (the only angle by which he could see him) Detective Pilchard's ingressing-ing of the bank's vault had been as easy as something very easy; and yet, upon side-stepping into said vault the scene which greeted the detective boggled his usually unboggleable mind.
“Well boggle me,” he boggled-ed, looking around the vault with inquisitive ears. “I don't get this. The constable outside who did the sick on me said that a robbery had taken place; but best I can hear there's nothing out of place on these here shelves, not a dollar or a dime missing, everything just as it should be. Like no robbery I've ever seen/heard.”
The detective's eyes/ears were indeed not deceiving him; from floor to ceiling and back again the immaculate vault was laden with heaps of sparkling worth: coins, currency, gemstones, gold bars, bonds, artefacts, just about every type of rare and valuable commodity one could ever wish to hear – and all of it untouched and accounted for. Such a peculiar 'robbery' left the detective scratching his head. “There's clearly been some form of breaking and entering, as all the vault's silent alarms have been triggered,” he with the scratched head noted, “but why would someone go to the trouble of breaking into a bank, only to steal nothing?”
“Not quite nothing,” Crumpet-Hands Man corrected, bringing an inquisitive crumpet to his (his) chin. “If I am not very much mistaken,” – he wasn't; he was Crumpet-Hands Man, as the name tags stapled into his onesie and the title of this adventure clearly state – “from the look of those filing cabinets over there I'd deduce that this vault has been unburdened of several important forms.”
“Forms?” the detective scratched, boggled, whatever. “Forms of what?”
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Our hero narrowed his gaze dramatically. “Logs.”
Our detective narrowed his ears dramatically. “Like wooden logs?”
“No, not wooden logs, detective. Files.”
“Files?” went on the scratching, none the wiser. “Why would a bank be storing woodworking equipment such as files but no actual wood?”
Crumpet-Hands Man rolled his eyes – he scored seven and was awarded $20,000 in chips at the Trifle City Casino Craps table; alas, due to being a superhero of the very highest order (or at least halfway up) he had no want for financial incentives, nor inedible chips. Bluh!
Our hero instead wisely invested the entirety of his winnings in sending Detective Pilchard on a two-term bookkeeping course at Trifle City College; the detective graduated with first degree honours and second degree burns, and was now educated enough to continue the story. “Ah-ha! Now I see what you mean,” the smouldering detective twigged having spotted at the back of the vault a suspiciously empty filing cabinet with a suspiciously empty open drawer. “Look,” he said, diving head-first inside said drawer. “Ten years of the city's tax records have been misplaced!”
“Misplaced?” Crumpet-Hands Man remarked dubiously, hoisting his partner out from the cabinet by the ankles. “Misplaced...or stolen?”
“Stolen?” Detective Pilchard gasped, dramatically etc. “What has a Germanic sweetbread rich with candied fruits got to do with–”
“Not so fast!” interrupted the abruptly arriving Mayor Sperkins.
“St...O...Len,”
Unaware that he was cracking a gag from an earlier chapter the detective's valiant attempt at appeasing the mayor with witticisms was, alas, folly; with a hoist of her high-heeled heel the witchy little woman hoicked the detective's bot-bot from the vault. “See me in my office first thing tomorrow morning,” she called after the wincing detective. “And as for you!” she screeched, turning towards our crumpet-bearing hero–
But Crumpet-Hands Man was already gone, vanished into the night, leaving not a trace aside a hero-sized hole in the ceiling, some cape, and a pile of inedible craps. Bluh!
