It was a beautiful day in downtown Philadelphia, 1856. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and everyone was happy. Well, not everyone. There was a man by the name of Thomas A. Shlack, the police force’s best detective and interrogator. He was accompanied by his trusty partner and student, Jeremy R. Fitzgerald. This was one of his toughest cases yet, but he knew he could pull through. The mayor lost his family heirloom, a rusty old pocket watch. Shlack had looked everywhere he thought it could be, his room, his bathroom, and his kitchen. The mayor said the pocket watch may have been stolen. Tom already had a few people he thought to be suspicious, and decided to interrogate a few of them. The first was the town thief, Sylvester T. Thompson. He said he saw no such watch and didn’t have it either, but Tom was still suspicious and did a full investigation of Sylvester’s house. Sylvester wasn’t lying, he didn’t have the watch, but Tom locked him up anyway, seeing as he had his badge he lost last week. The next suspect was Mrs. Verneski, the wife of the baker. He found her suspicious because she was walking out of the mayor’s house with something and stuffed it in her purse. She then jogged off the property, around a corner and out of sight. She said she hadn’t known the mayor had such a precious watch, and that she thought James T. Barningham, the treasurer, looked suspicious. He thought so too, so he interrogated him last. James said he didn’t have it and that the mayor might have just lost it in a cabinet of his or didn’t look hard enough. Then when he went to open the door to the interrogation room, there stood Jeremy. Jeremy had listened to the whole conversation, and was standing outside, or so they thought. Suddenly, Jeremy whipped out a gun and had them both at gunpoint. Tom grabbed the water from the table and splashed it in Jeremy’s face, momentarily blocking his line of eyesight. This gave time for Tom to grab James and escape, but with Jeremy following close behind. “It was Jeremy this whole time!”, he thought, but at that second, they ran into a maze. “We can lose him in here!” Tom said, but at that moment, they hit a dead end and were trapped. “Jeremy has a tight grip on his pistol,” Tom said “and I have no water, and Jeremy took a wrong turn since he thought we went a different path.” “That gives us time to think of a plan!” James said, so Tom asked James for any ideas, and James said he had one that might work, so they agreed to do it. There were metal scraps in the alleyway, and Tom strapped them to his chest under his shirt and pants. He ran at Jeremy, and he was shot. Tom fell over pretending to be dead. Jeremy was distracted by what he had just done, so James charged at him and tackled him, knocking the pistol out of his hand. James grabbed the pistol, shot Jeremy in the leg so he couldn’t get back up, and helped Tom get up. After that, they hauled Jeremy to the hospital, then to court, and from there to prison. Tom thanked James, and said that he couldn’t have solved the case without him. They then did a full sweep of Jeremy’s house and found the pocket watch, along with many other things that didn’t belong to him. The case was closed, the sun was setting, and Tom had just had the best lobster bisk he ever tasted. Just then, he got a telegram that said “.__. _…_.. _._____.._!”, which translates to “We need you!”. “Not again!” Tom said to himself, getting out of bed.
THE END