The Third Pig Detective Agency Part 4

If you are looking for The Third Pig Detective Agency Part 4 you are coming to the right place. The Third Pig Detective Agency is a Webnovel created by Bob Burke. This lightnovel is currently completed.

There was a sudden screech of metal as the object I was investigating came off in my hand. With a loud shout, I fell back off the branch and plummeted to the ground. Fortunately for Jack I missed him when I landed. Unfortunately for me I also managed to miss anything remotely resembling a soft landing and hit the ground with a very unsatisfactory (from my viewpoint, at any rate) thud. As I groaned in pain and checked all extremities for damage for the second time in a day, I swore I could hear the ash tree sn.i.g.g.e.ring in tones so low I could feel my fillings vibrate. He was obviously enjoying a minor victory at my expense. As I'm not a petty pigbut more because there was a small boy in the vicinityI refrained from making an obscene gesture at him, although someone had once pointed out to me that it was very hard to make obscene gestures when you didn't have any fingers.

I was, by now, mastering the art of getting gingerly to my trotters so I managed it much better this time. Once I had dusted off the leaves and other debris, I examined the object, the removal of which had caused me to fall in the first place.

'What is it, Harry?' asked Jack.

'Exactly what I'd expected,' I replied. 'It's a very small but very powerful camera.'

'What was it doing on the front of the car?'

'Well, think of it like this, if you were really small and had to drive a car, how would you be able to see where you were going if you couldn't see over the front dash?'

I had now dismissed the idea of being beaten up by an invisible superhero. All the evidence I'd gathered during the course of the day had led me to a different, less super and far more irritating solution. The camera had now confirmed my suspicions. I now needed to pay a visit to someone very annoying. This someone would not appreciate me visiting him, so, in order to prevent a recurrence of the previous night's unfortunate incident, I needed some additional protection.

'OK Jack, let's head back to the ranch. There's nothing more to see here.'

As we walked back to the car, being very careful to avoid any aggressive branches, I reached for my shiny new phone and made a quick call. For my next trick I would definitely require a very specific type of a.s.sistance, and I knew exactly who could provide it.

6.

The Gift of the Gab.

It was early evening when we got back into town. After dropping Jack at home with a promise I'd call him again if I needed him, I drove back to the office, parked the car and headed back towards the main street. After the previous night's experience I kept a regular look over both shoulders and avoided any dark, or even not that brightly lit, alleyways. If there weren't at least twenty people in the same street as me then it wasn't going to be one I was going to walk down, across or through. Once bittenor once punched, threatened and deposited in garbagehad made me very careful and I was also concerned about the impact that constantly being decorated with rotten vegetables was having on my laundry billnot to mention my personal grooming.

After navigating the side streets of Grimmtown without attracting any undue attention, I turned onto Hans Christian Andersen Street. Dusk had made way for night and the city's bright young things were all out in their vampire-look finery again. On every corner a girl from Little Matchgirls Inc. was hawking hot dogs, burgers and fried chickenthe company had diversified over the years, especially after smoking fell out of favour. The sound of people having a good time (at least, everyone except me) could be heard through the doors as I pa.s.sed the mult.i.tude of bars and restaurants that proliferated both sides of the street. Much as I enjoyed a quiet drink and some intellectual conversation in my local, the bar I was heading to was one where I didn't expect the conversation to be particularly stimulating. It was located about halfway up the street and had a particularly distinctive frontageit was bright green. Outside the Blarney Tone, Grimmtown's only Irish bar ('Come for the Music, You'll Stay for the Craic'), a very small man in a very shiny bright green and white costume was exhorting pa.s.sers-by to come in and enjoy the fun inside. Benny was a gnome and Grimmtown's worst leprechaun impersonator. I stopped behind him to listen to his patter. He had the worst Irish accent I'd ever heard; yes, even worse than Tom Cruise's in Far and Awayand I should know, my grandfather was prime Irish bacon.

'Ah sure now, will ye not come in and try a Guinness. 'Tis only the best in the town, brought in specially, direct from the brewery in Dublin. There's a free plate of crubeens thrown in for good measure. You won't see the like anywhere else.' As he spoke he did a little jig that caused the rather large silver buckles on his black shoes to clang like a set of enormous bells.

The rest of his outfit was just as subtle as his shoes. Bright white socks stretched up to just below the knees, where they were met by bright green plus fours that were kept up by a large black belt. White frills that seemed to explode from a shirt so white it hurt to look at it fronted an equally lurid green jacket. An obviously fake ginger beard and curly wig covered most of his grey-skinned face like a bright orange fungus. On his head he wore a long black hat with yet another shiny buckle. It looked like someone had rammed a bucket upside-down on his head.

He was possibly the least convincing leprechaun in history but he was also just the man I needed to talk to. Despite the ludicrous outfit he was very st.u.r.dily built. In fact, he was the type of guy who could deliver a hefty punch to your midriff while, owing to his size, every attempt you made to hit him back just went over his head.

He still hadn't noticed me as I approached him carefully and tapped him on the shoulder.

'Evening Benny,' I said cheerfully.

He spun around and for a split second his face dropped as he recognised me. Like the true pro he vainly aspired to be, he immediately recovered and began his Irish shtick again but his first reaction had given him away.

'Begorrah Mr Pigg, is it yourself that's in it. And out on a fine night like this too. Sure why not drop in and try a pint of the black stuff. 'Tis the best in town.' As he spoke he made to move towards me. This time I was somewhat better prepared and, as I quickly stepped back, I nodded to two large shapes that had just as quickly, but a lot more silently, moved up behind him. As he tried to land a punch on me a large hand grabbed his neck from behind and suddenly jerked him backwards and upwards. He dangled in midair, legs kicking so fast he looked like he was pedalling an invisible bicycle. The hand held his head level with my eyes and squeezed ever so slightly. Benny's face began to turn an interesting shade of bright red as his neck began to constrict under the pressure.

'Now, Benny,' I said cheerfully, 'perhaps we can discuss your recent forays into robbery and GBH.'

'I...don't...know...what...you...mean,' he managed to choke out. By now his face was turning from red to purple and I watched with fascination (and no small degree of pleasure I must shamefully admit).

'Ah, but how remiss of me,' I said. 'I'm forgetting my manners. Before we start, allow me to introduce my colleagues, Mr Lewis and Mr Carroll. They're ogres.' Considering their size, strength and skin colour it was probably stating the obvious, but I wanted to see Benny sweat and show him that I meant business. My 'colleagues' were each over eight feet tall with skin that almost matched Benny's jacket in hue. Their impressively muscular frames were barely contained by the immaculate evening suits they had squeezed into. They were definitely the type of guys (or creatures) that you needed when there was a possibility of any unpleasantness, as they tended to be a very effective deterrentas they were now proving.

'Now that the introductions are over, perhaps we can get down to business,' I said to Benny. 'Let me put some perspective on this for you, Justin case you're confused.'

As Benny wasn't the sharpest tack in the box I figured I'd better spell it out for him. Before I could start, however, I noticed that his face was now bright blue. Perhaps the ogres were being a trifle too eager.

'Mr Lewis, perhaps a little less pressure.'

Lewis grunted and relaxed his hand slightly. Benny's face returned to its previous shade of purple.

'OK, Benny,' I said, 'let's begin. Once upon a time there was a gnome named Benny. Not too bright but always on the lookout for an opportunity, he made a living as a dodgy leprechaun impersonator trying to get gullible customers into the local Irish bar. And, by the way, you need to work on that accent. Are you with me so far?'

He nodded, his head barely moving.

'Good. Now, our friend Benny probably got an offer from someone to help him acquire a valuable antique from a local businessman. It certainly wasn't Benny's idea, what with him not being too bright and all, but the offer was impressive enough to encourage him. How am I doing so far?'

Benny gave another little nod.

'This is called detecting, Benny. It's what I do. I examine the clues and determine what's going on. This then allows me to follow a specific line of inquiry. This specific line of inquiry has, most fortuitously, brought me to you.

'In this instance, your mysterious client clearly needed someone with some subterranean delving skills and who would also do what he was told, no questions asked, as long as the price was right.

'Unfortunately he picked you,' I continued. 'You may be a great digger, which of course pointed me in the right direction, but you were a trifle careless at the scene of the crime.' I reached into my pocket and removed a small envelope. Inside was the green thread I'd found on the tree outside Aladdin's. 'You appear to have picked up a minor tear on your sleeve and, look, the thread I happen to have here matches almost perfectly. What a coincidence, eh?'

There was another gurgle that could have meant anything from 'What great detective work. You've certainly rumbled me. I confess' to 'I'm slowly choking to death here, could you ask your moron to reduce the pressure on my neck somewhat.'

I chose to interpret it as the latter, although I certainly wouldn't describe Lewis as a moronat least not to his face. Another nod and Lewis eased his grip slightly more.

'Now I know that you aren't working alone, not only because you haven't got the smarts to pull this off on your own, but even you couldn't drive a car into the enchanted forest, crash it rather spectacularly and then get back here to play little green man with the tourists so quickly. Nice trick by the way, getting one of your idiot cronies to use the camera to see where he was going because he was too small to look over the wheel. I take it you didn't come up with that idea either?' The response was another faint shake of the head.

'Now I know that, as a rule, when goblins get together, rather than the total being greater than the sum of the parts, the collective IQ tends drop to well below that of the dumbest membera kind of anti-synergy. I suspect, therefore, that you were the mere executors of this cunning plan that, in all likelihood, was probably written out in very small words and very short sentences so you and your cronies could follow it without s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g upwhich you failed miserably to do. So here's what I'm going to do.' I looked Benny straight in the eye to let him know that I still meant business. 'I'm going to instruct Mr Lewis here to let you go. When he does so you will make no attempt to do anything other than answer whatever questions I may put to you. Should you attempt to a.s.sault either of the ogres (which would be rather foolish) or me or even try to make a break for it, the only break you will experience will be a random a.s.sortment of your limbs. Understood?'

Benny nodded ever so slightly. I looked at Lewis and he dropped the goblin with such force that he lay on the ground groaning pitifully. I nudged him with my shoe.

'C'mon Benny, up you get. If you need some help you only have to ask. Either Mr Lewis or Mr Carroll will be only too delighted to a.s.sist you.'

This suggestion seemed to give Benny some incentive as he struggled to his feet slowly and, I have to add, with a lot less style than I had shown previously. Maybe he just didn't have as much practice at getting up as me.

'OK, Benny, your starter for ten: where's the lamp?'

Benny looked up at me with an expression that would have made his mother clutch him to her chest and console him with lots of 'there, theres'. Fortunately for both of us I wasn't his mother so he didn't get the sympathy vote from me. He also spared me the 'what lamp?' routine, presumably as even he could figure out exactly how much I already knew and that I wasn't prepared to tolerate being messed around any moreor maybe it was just the large and very obvious presence of my two companions. Despite this, however, his reply was only marginally more helpful (which wasn't saying a lot).

'I don't have it,' he gasped.

'Not a good answer, Benny,' I said. 'I'd have thought that by now you'd realise there is no point in playing dumbor, in your case, even more dumb than usualwith us. We're really not in the mood.'

'No, really, I don't have it. Honest.' From the fearful look on his face I suspected that he was finally telling the truth. Now all I had to do was find out what he had done with the lamp, get it back to Aladdin, pocket a large pay packet and wallow in the satisfaction of a job well done. Smiling with antic.i.p.ation, I asked the obvious question again and received a not-so-obvious answer that wiped the smirk off my face and plummeted me even deeper into the murk that was Grimmtown's underworld.

'One last time, where's the lamp, Benny?'

'Edna has it,' he answered.

I looked at him, dumbfounded. 'Edna?' I repeated.

He nodded his head gingerly. 'Edna,' he said with more conviction.

'Edna, as in Edna?'

He nodded again. 'Yep, that's her.'

'Please tell me you're joking and this is just another idiotic attempt to throw me off the track,' I begged, but I knew Benny was telling the truth, I just didn't want to believe it. I just wanted him to suddenly spring to his feet and yell, 'Gotcha! I had it in me rucksack all the time.' I knew this wouldn't happen. Quite apart from the fact that he could barely stand anyway, his entire demeanour suggested he was being truthfuland without being coerced any further, either.

If Edna was involved, I needed to tread very carefully indeed. In actual fact I needed to run very quickly in the opposite direction if I wished to retain the use of all my limbs. This was more like a Harry Pigg case: lots of different people vying to be the next to hurt me in new and interesting ways while I manfully (or pigfully) tried to represent my client to the best of my ability (and he was one of those people threatening to hurt me). I figured I'd get whatever information Benny hadn't yet imparted and then decide whether it would be more advisable to get the next bus out of town or stay and get beaten up at least one more time.

'OK Benny, let's take it from the topand don't leave anything out.'

7.

In the White Room.

'Emerald Isle of Adventure? Are you serious?' Benny nodded glumly. 'Emerald Isle of Adventure,' he repeated. Repet.i.tion tended to happen a lot when you talked to Benny. It helped him focus.

'You really were going to call the theme park that?' This beggared belief. I knew Benny was as dumb as a bucket of shrimp, I just didn't realise the extent of his stupidity. This master plan of his plumbed new depths of imbecility.

Benny and his 'Brains' Trust' of gnomish friends had decided that, with the proliferation of successful and highly profitable theme parks based on our ill.u.s.trious history that had sprung up all around Grimmtown, it might be a rather splendid idea to develop one based around Ireland and its past, him and his buddies being leprechaun impersonators and all. 'A sure fire hit' was how he'd described it. So far I had been regaled with how it would include Finn McCool's Rollercoaster of Terror, the Lucky Leprechaun Log Flume and the Find the Crock o' Gold Hall of Mirrors. When you eventually grew tired of all the excitement you could then relax in Mother Ireland's Bacon and Cabbage Emporium with a nice Guinness.

Now I like my thrills as much as the next manexcept in this case seeing as the next man was Bennybut I just didn't think this particular wonderland had the necessary pizzazz. In fact, if it managed to draw more than twenty gullible tourists on the day it opened (if it ever did), I'd eat my own head.

To cut a long, very rambling and disjointed story short (and to spare you many tedious digressions, pauses and nonsensical musings, because I know even your patience would wear very thin), Benny had put an ad in the local press describing the concept and seeking investors for this surefire hit. To hisand no one else'ssurprise, the take-up on the proposal was less than stellar but, just as he was about to abandon his plan, he received an email (and yes the address was ) promising him a very large investment in the scheme in return for a very small favour. This favour (and I'm sure you can see what's coming, even if Benny couldn't) involved Benny and the boys using their burrowing skills to recover an artifact that had allegedly been stolen from this mysterious benefactor many years previously. The story was embellished by references to family heirlooms, dastardly thieves, a poor granny pining for her long lost lamp and, of course, the dangling of the incentive of part of the investment up front with the rest to follow upon successful delivery of the lamp. Benny had swallowed it hook, line, sinker, fishing rod and angler.

The down payment had arrived and Benny had acquired the lampwhich considering his track record had to qualify as a spectacular success. All he then had to do was deliver it and the Emerald Isle of Adventure would be a reality. As you can imagine, the delivery hadn't gone according to planhardly surprising when you consider who the delivery boys were.

Benny and his band of idiots had begun making their way to the drop-off point. If the sight of a band of gnomes trying to look furtive while walking through the busiest part of town dressed in lurid green outfits didn't grab attention, the same group babbling on loudly about how they were going to spend their newly-acquired fortune surely would. Unfortunately for them, it grabbed the attention of two of Edna's henchmen.

Now I need to digress slightly here, as I'm sure you're asking, 'Who is Edna?' and 'Why does she want to divest those poor unfortunate gnomes of their one chance of a happy ending?' The answer to the second question is easy once you understand the first. Edna is one of a group of four witches who basically run all of Grimmtown's organised crimea kind of Mezzo-sopranos or Contraltos, if you will. They've unofficially divided the town up into four districts and Edna runs the West Sidehence her t.i.tle: the Wicked Witch of the West Side. Their control of all criminal activity is total. Nothing illegal moves without them knowing about it or profiting from it to some extent. They are a family I had kept well clear of over the years and I had no wish to alter that status any time soon. If, however, Edna did have the lamp, then that was a wish that was evidently about to come true, despite my best efforts to the contrary.

'So,' I said to Benny, 'to summarise the plan: there you were, a band of gnomes heading to a drop-off point in the middle of town, babbling on heedlessly about how you were going to be fabulously rich once you pa.s.sed the lamp over to your mysterious benefactor, a lamp, incidentally, which one of you was actually carrying in a bright red shopping bag. Where in this cunning strategy do you think the obvious flaw was?'

Benny dropped his head in a semblance of shame and chose not to answer.

'So. On your way to the drop-off pointah, where was this place, anyway?' I asked.

'Litter bin on the south corner of Wilde Park,' mumbled Benny.

'Of course it was. Instead of somewhere quiet and secluded, you picked one of the busiest intersections in the city. Could you have been any more obvious?' I laughed. Benny's story was becoming more nonsensical by the minute.

'So, as I say, you were on your way to the drop-off point when someone from Edna's gang grabbed the bag. Now, what I can't figure out is this: you guys are thick but can certainly pack a punch.' I rubbed my stomach at the memory of just how packed the punch was. 'How come they got the lamp so easily?'

Benny mumbled again.

'Speak up, Benny,' I asked. 'I can't make out a word you're saying.'

'Otto took it,' said Benny, a little more articulate this time. 'He just flew down out of nowhere, grabbed the bag in his claws and scrammed again.'

Otto the Owl was one of Edna's henchbirds and I suppose that a bright red bag wasn't too hard to miss if you had spent your formative years flying around a forest hunting tiny rodents in total darkness.

To put it mildly, this new development presented me with a problem: my client's lamp was now in the possession of one of Grimmtown's most ruthless criminal families; a family who would have no compunction about rearranging my anatomy should I even hint that it might be a good idea for them to return it. My client would also, in all likelihood, rearrange my anatomy if I failed to return his lampand probably evict me to boot. Either way it seemed that anatomy rearranging was about to become my newest pastime and one I didn't particularly feel like taking up, especially as we were talking about my anatomy and its capacity to be rearranged. In the faint hope that I might get something else out of him, I turned back to Benny.

'Apart from emails,' I asked, 'I don't suppose you ever got to meet this investor of yours?'

'Not as such, no,' Benny said. 'But I came close one night or, at least, I think I did.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well, the night we were due to receive our down payment my instructions were to go into the men's rest room in the Blarney Tone, make sure I was alone, send a text message to a particular number that I was ready, and wait for further instructions. When I got in there, I waited until it was empty, did as I was asked and stood there. Suddenly there was a loud bang, everything went white and next thing I knew I was in a room with funny walls, lots of rugs and carpets and stuff like that. I couldn't see anyone in the room but a voice told me to pick up a bag that was on a table beside me. As soon as I did, I was suddenly back in the rest room again with my down payment.' He looked at me. 'I know how it sounds, but it's the truth, Mr Pigg. Honest.'

I was just about to tell him how ludicrous his story was and did he really expect me to swallow something so ridiculous when there was a loud bang, everything went white and I was suddenly in a room with funny walls, lots of rugs and carpets and stuff like that.

As you can imagine, it took a few seconds to get my bearings seeing as I had suddenly been transported from Point A to Point B without any knowledge of where Point B actually was, how far it was from Point A, or exactly how precarious my situation now was as a result. At first glance, fortunately, precarious didn't seem to figure high on the agenda. I was in a long oval-shaped room with no windows or obvious doors. Bright white walls curved inwards from an equally white floor to an oval ceiling. Lamps ran along the walls illuminating the room with a soothing white light. It was, in fact, a very white room.

The only sop to an alternative colour scheme were the very expensive-looking rugs (expensive to my unsophisticated eyes at any rate) that were casually flung on the floor in a feng-shui kind of way and the colourful tapestries that hung from the walls. The decor suggested the Orient, which, considering my current a.s.signment, hardly seemed like a coincidence. Whoever had summoned me here was clearly connected to Aladdin in some wayif only by culture. My suspicion, however, based on Benny's tale was that I was in the presence of his mysterious stranger, although the room was currently devoid of any presence other than me. As most of the people I'd encountered in this case so far seemed intent on doing me harm, this was a small mercy for which I was incredibly thankful.

As I stood there I became aware of a faint whirring behind me. I turned aroundever so slowlyto see if some strange mechanical torture device was about to dismember me. To my relief, I found myself gazing at a not-so-sinister, large and very hi-tech-looking computer. There were so many wires, cables and other devices hanging from it, it looked like it was in an intensive care unit. With all the printers, modems, scanners, microphones and a.s.sorted paraphernaliathat even I couldn't figure out the use ofthere seemed to be enough hardware to run a small country and still have enough processing power for a quick game of Half-Life while affairs of state were being mulled over.

It also occurred to me that the computer might shed some light on the ident.i.ty of the thief and maybe even some clue as to their motive. As I surrept.i.tiously reached for the keyboard a voice erupted from the walls around the room.

'Naughty, naughty, Mr Pigg,' it boomed. 'Please step away from my machine.'

I raised my trotters over my head and took three steps back from the hardware. Looking around, I tried to see where the voice was coming from. Best I could figure was that there were speakers hidden behind the wall hangings and, from the quality of the sound, they were clearly very expensive.

'Please forgive both my brusque manner and the somewhat unorthodox kidnapping,' the voice continued. 'I hadn't meant for us to meet in quite these circ.u.mstances. In fact, I hadn't intended for us to meet at all but I suspect that my original choice of miners left much to be desired when it came to not leaving obvious, or indeed any, clues behind. Clearly I should have been more discriminating in my selection.'

'If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys,' I said. I enjoy a cliche every now and again and it was the only thing I could come up with while I tried to figure out what to do next. I'm not always witty and quick with the rapier-like reparteehard, as I'm sure it is, for you to believe.

'Indeed,' said the voice. 'And while you're trying, no doubt, to figure out where you are, who I am and what you should do next, allow me to recommend that you make yourself comfortable while I make some suggestions.'

I slowly sank onto a very ornate and very comfortable ottoman and waited.

As you have probably already deduced, the gnomes were clearly not a good investment. In less than twenty-four hours they stole the lamp but left clues so blatant that a corpse could have followed them. They then managed, with an incredible lack of subtlety, to make Grimmtown's organised crime fraternity aware that they had an object of immense value and then, while bringing it to me, succeeded in handing it over to one of our more ill.u.s.trious criminal masterminds in the process. Do I summarise the situation accurately?'

The Third Pig Detective Agency Part 3

If you are looking for The Third Pig Detective Agency Part 3 you are coming to the right place. The Third Pig Detective Agency is a Webnovel created by Bob Burke. This lightnovel is currently completed.

'Yeah,' he replied. 'The entrance is just up ahead.'

'Stop when you get there. We'll come to meet you.'

'Roger wilco. Over and out.' He'd obviously been watching too many war films.

Guided by Aladdin and Gruff, I walked back through the maze that was the inside of the house and made my way outside. As I walked across the lawn, I heard Jack's voice advising that he had reached the entrance to the tunnel. I told him to stick his head out and describe what he saw.

'It's a hole in the ground, surrounded by trees. I can hear cars so there must be a road nearby but I can't see it from where I'm standing.'

And, by extension, no one could see the hole from the road either.

I turned to Aladdin.

'From the signal, it looks as though the tunnel comes up just outside that wall there.' I pointed to the high wall running along the side of his estate. 'What's on the other side?'

Aladdin thought for a minute, and then for a few more. It was obvious he hadn't the faintest idea. He'd most likely never even noticed what was out there as he went in and out of his house every dayprobably in a large limo with tinted windows.

I turned to Gruff. As chief of security I imagined he should know.

'It's a small open area between this house and the next. It's used occasionally by the local residents for walking their dogs, or at least those residents that, from time to time, actually venture out of their houses by means of their feet,' he said, glancing meaningfully at his boss. 'There are a few clumps of trees there. Most likely that's where your minion will be.'

We made our way out the main gate and along by those very imposing walls around Aladdin's house. It was easy to see why the thieves had gone under. The walls were very high with barbed wire on top and, as Gruff explained while we walked, equipped with more pressure sensors. If anything heavier than a sparrow landed on them, the alarms would go off. Even if an intruder was able to get over the walls without setting off the alarms (maybe he was a good pole-vaulter, I don't know) the grounds were full of heat sensors and more cameras. If he managed to get past those minor inconveniences, Ogre 'Not On Our Watch' Security would probably have fun using him as a volleyball. Your common or garden thief didn't stand a chance. It made me even more curious as to what type of thief I was dealing with.

We arrived at the open ground and could see Jack waving at us from a clump of trees about fifty feet from the wall.

'Over here,' he shouted.

When we got to him he was only too eager to show us where he had come out. We pushed through the trees with difficulty as they were very close together, and examined the tunnel. It looked like a very professional job: perfectly circular, level floor and smooth walls with supports to prevent accidental collapse. From its size, the diggers were also apparently quite small. I would have had problems had I been obliged to navigate it.

As I looked at the area around the tunnel entrance, something hanging off one of the branches caught my eye. Closer inspection revealed a bright green thread blowing gently in the wind. One of the thieves must have snagged an exceedingly loud item of clothing on the tree as he made his escape.

At this stage my brain, which, for obvious reasons, had understandably been functioning below par for most of the day, began to power itself up and began asking key questions (although not aloud). More to the point it also began to answer them. Perhaps my a.s.sailant wasn't quite as mysterious as I had thought. Putting the information about the tunnel together with the thread and my strange encounter of the previous night, a pattern began to emerge. I needed to get an expert opinion about tunnels and the creatures that dug them. It was time for a trip to the enchanted forest.

I turned to my client.

'Mr Aladdin,' I said. 'I believe, based on what we've just seen, that I am beginning to make some progress in the matter of your missing lamp. I need to make some calls and meet some people. I should have an update for you by tonight. May I contact you then?'

He whipped a card out of his inside pocket.

'My direct number; I am always available. Is there anything you'd care to share now?'

Of course there wasn't. All I had were a few ideas and a bizarre theory that was slowly taking shape but I wasn't going to tell him that.

'Not at this time. I will provide a full update later.'

He grunted, which I a.s.sumed was an acknowledgement, and we walked back to the house.

'Until later, then,' he said as Jack and I got into my car.

'Later,' I agreed and drove away. As the huge walls disappeared from view behind us, I told Jack where we were going.

'Are we really going into the enchanted forest?' he asked. 'I've never been.'

It should be pointed out right here that no self-respecting fairy tale town like ours would be without an enchanted forest. It was the location of choice for any laboratory, workshop or secret lair for magicians, wizards, warlocks, witches, alchemists, thaumaturges, vampires and the obligatory mad scientist. There is usually at least one mountain smack in the middle guarded by a horrible monster (usually a dragon) and reputed to be the location of a h.o.a.rd of treasure.

If truth be known, however, most of the mountains were now just tourist attractions, the treasure having been plundered centuries before and the dragon killed in the process (and replaced by a very realistic animatronic duplicate to keep the punters happy). If you were looking for magic trees (of wood as opposed to those car air freshners that smell nice), cottages made of confectionery, any sword embedded in a stone, unofficial spell-casters, illegal potion sellers or two-headed birds, the enchanted forest was the place to go. Grimmtown's forest had an additional attraction for me, however, one that might go a long way towards solving this case.

We made our way back down from the lofty plateau of Frog Prince Heights, drove across town and into the forest. Fortunately, our destination wasn't too far in. There were far too many unpleasant things lying in wait deep in the forest for unsuspecting adventurers or unaccompanied tour parties and I had no urge to encounter any of them again (yes, I've been there before). After a short drive along a dark, tree-lined road, I pulled up to yet another large gate with yet another anonymous security system.

'The Heigh Ho Diamond Mining Company,' said Jack, reading the ornate sign over the gate. 'Why are we coming here?'

'Because if anyone can tell me anything about who built that tunnel,' I said, leaning out of the car to activate the speaker beside the gate, 'it's the chaps who run this place.'

'Name?' crackled a voice from the speaker. If I didn't know better, I'd swear it was the same voice as the one at Aladdin's.

'Just tell the lads it's Harry and I'd appreciate a moment of their time.'

Almost as soon as I'd finished speaking, the gates swung opena lot slower and with a lot more gravitas than those at Aladdin's. There was no drive up to the building though; the offices were right beside the gate. There were seven parking s.p.a.ces marked 'Director', all occupied by very fast, very sleek and very expensive cars. I was almost embarra.s.sed to park my heap of junk beside them. Almost, but not quiteI'm unusually thick-skinned for a pig. We got out of the car and entered the office. As I opened the door, I turned to Jack.

'Not a word, kid,' I warned. 'Just let me do the talking. Some of these guys can be a bit difficult to deal with so stay shtum.'

'Yes sir,' said Jack, giving me a very official-looking salute that I hoped was tongue in cheek.

The reception area consisted of a few garish plastic chairs grouped around a battered coffee table, which was stacked with the inevitable dog-eared three-year-old magazines. Behind a desk and facing the entrance a sour-looking receptionist glowered at me, as if my arrival was a personal affront to him and had somehow ruined his day. Behind him, running the length of the wall, were seven portraitsone for each of the company's directors.

'Take a seat,' he snapped. 'One of the Seven will meet you shortly.'

'Who are "the Seven"?' whispered Jack, as we sat down. 'Are they some kind of secret society with blood oaths, strange pa.s.swords and funny handshakes?'

'Nah,' I replied nonchalantly, picking up a well-thumbed copy of Miner's Monthly. 'Nothing so mysterious. They're seven dwarves, all brothers, who set up a diamond mining company here years ago. It's been very profitable. They've cornered the diamond market locally. If anyone knows about digging tunnels, these guys do; they're experts in their chosen fieldor under their chosen field even.'

Fortunately we weren't kept waiting too long. A door in the wall facing us opened and a large, red, bulbous nose appeared followedit seemed like hours laterby the rest of the dwarf. Unfortunately it was Grumpy, my least favourite.

'Well Pigg, whaddya want?' he growled. His interpersonal skills tended to leave a lot to be desiredmost noticeably anything remotely resembling good manners. As a rule his brothers tended not to let him do press conferences when they announced their yearly results.

I, of course, knew exactly which b.u.t.tons to press.

I'm looking for some a.s.sistance please, Mr...ah...it's Dopey, isn't it?' I replied, knowing full well how much it would aggravate him.

His nose turned even redder and the flush spread to the rest of his face. He glowered at me. 'It's Grumpy,' he said. 'G-R-U-M-P-Y!'

'By name and by nature,' I said under my breath to Jack. He looked down and I could see his cheeks bulge as he tried not to laugh. It's tough being a detective's a.s.sistant; you must maintain a calm demeanour at all times, especially when confronted with stressful situations.

He took up the magazine I'd been reading and developed an intense interest in an article on new methods of extracting metals from abandoned mines.

'Apologies, Mr Grumpy. I tend to confuse you and your brothers,' I lied. 'I'm looking for information about tunnels and those who dig them. As you have an undoubted expertise in this area, I figure that if anyone can help me it will be you.'

Flattery will obviously get you everywhere as Grumpy positively preened when he heard me compliment him. He puffed up his chest and strutted across the room. I could see his face gradually a.s.sume a less aggressive shade of red as he came towards me.

'What kind of information?' he asked.

I gave him the details of the tunnel I'd found without revealing where it had been dug or why. He considered what I'd said.

'Definitely made by experts from the sound of it, which does narrow it down. The best in the business are little People. It's almost genetic with us. We have an affinity with stone; we love being underground and have an innate skill in burrowing, digging and making holes.'

What kind of little People are we talking about?' I asked.

'Well, apart from my brothers and meand you know it isn't us,' he said, 'you've got other dwarves, who usually dig in rock; Halflings, who are good with earth, and fairies, good for small and very basic holes only and purely for sleeping in.'

I wasn't aware of any of these operating illegally in or around Grimmtown and neither was Mr Grumpy. As his company tended to employ all the expert diggers in the region, he would know of any newcomersparticularly as he would probably end up giving them a job, especially if they showed any kind of talent for tunnelling.

'Anyone else?' I asked.

'There are a few others that have shown tunnelling tendencies in the past. Kobolds, leprechauns, gnomes, the occasional Orc and, on very rare occasions, elves, although they've got soft hands so they tend to lotion a lot afterwards.'

I could tell he didn't hold elves in high esteem. I shared his opinion. They tended to stand around looking mysteriously into the middle distance declaiming loudly and pompously such phrases as 'The saucer is broken; milk will be spilled this night.' They never got invited to parties as they usually drank all the beer and, most annoyingly, never seemed to get drunkapart from a tingling sensation in their fingers.

I figured that this was about as much information as I was going to get. It wasn't a lot but it did give me an inkling of where I should go next. I thanked Grumpy, dragged Jack away from his magazine and headed back to the car.

5.

If You Go Down to the Woods Today.

As I drove back through the forest I kept going over the events of the past two days. Things were starting to make a little sensealthough not much. As I mulled over the case Jack nudged me in the side with a very bony elbow.

'Mr Pigg,' he said, 'don't look now, but I think we're being followed.'

'What makes you say that?' I asked.

'Well, the car behind us doesn't appear to have a driver and it's been tailing us since we left the dwarves' place.'

I looked in the mirror. He was right. Directly behind us was a very large, very black and very battered car with no driver obviously behind the wheel. As I looked it began to speed up. I could see the steering wheel rotate but it seemed to be doing so of its own accord. Maybe the Invisible Man was driving the car but, frankly, I doubted ithe had been advised to take taxis, as, every time he got behind the wheel, he tended to cause a small panic.

This was now getting beyond a joke and I wasn't the one who was laughing. Suddenly, the car accelerated again and rammed us from behind. The impact jolted us forward. Fortunately, apart from being winded, we didn't suffer any injuries, our seatbelts preventing any major harm.

'Wheel' shouted Jack. 'This is just like a roller coaster. Does this always happen when you drive?'

'No,' I said, trying to keep one eye on the road ahead and one on the car behind (not an easy task). 'Only on good days.'

Of course, car chases never take place on straight wide roads that run for miles with no sharp turns or oncoming traffic. Oh no, apparently convention dictates that they must take place through a busy metropolis with lots of hills, a narrow dirt track running along a sheer drop into the ocean or, as in my case, through a dark forest with a twisty road, lots of sharp bends and (being an enchanted forest) trees that might take exception to being woken up and take a swipe at whatever vehicle had done the waking. The bigger the tree, the more likely your car was to suddenly develop the art of flight when one of its branches made contact. Typically it wasn't the flying that one needed to be worried about; usually it was the landingwhich tended to be uncontrolled, totally lacking in technique and, almost inevitably, resulted in your vehicle being embedded up to its rear doors in the ground. Most cars tended never to get back on the road after contact with one of our magic trees.

As I swerved to avoid hitting one of these trees and to try to ensure that my pursuer didn't, I had another of my really bright ideas.

'Hold tight,' I roared at Jack as I pressed hard on the accelerator. 'This could get scary.'

'You mean it gets better?' he shouted back, grinning from ear to ear. 'This is the coolest ride I've ever been on. Go Harry!' He stretched both arms up over his head, as people do just as they get their photograph taken on the scary part of a roller coaster ride, and yelled at the top of his voice. Truly this child had no fear.

The sudden burst of acceleration had, for a few seconds, taken me away from my pursuer. Rather than head towards the forest's edge, however, I took one of the trails deeper into the trees. I had a very specific destination in mind and one that might, if my timing was right, get this particular pursuer permanently off our backs.

As we drove further into the forest, the trees grew closer together and, eventually, their branches became so entwined over the road they formed a natural tunnel, shutting out daylight completely. I flicked on the headlights and they gave just enough illumination to prevent me driving off the road. On either side, gnarled branches were trying to grab at the car as we pa.s.sed but I was going so fast they only sc.r.a.ped off the sides. They might be ruining the bodywork, but at least the bodies inside the car were undamagedfor now.

I recklessly navigated turn after turn (by the skin of my teeth in most cases), the road getting narrower and windier as we drove. I wasn't particularly scared of the forest; being chased by an invisible maniac tended to force all other thoughts of being frightened from one's mind. Our pursuer wasn't quite as reckless though, preferring to drive fast enough to keep us in his sights but not so fast as to spin off the road. We would hardly have been that lucky but that wasn't my main objective. It would, however, have made what I was about to do much less of a riskespecially to Jack and meif he'd managed to hit something other than us in the interim.

A fork in the road came up so fast that, even though I was expecting it, I still nearly ploughed straight into the tree that stood right where the road split in two. I swung the steering wheel in an effort to keep the car on track. It screeched around the right-hand turn, leaving a liberal helping of rubber on the road. I was hoping my pursuer might not be so lucky but as I looked in the mirror I saw him take the fork a little less dramatically than I had and continue his relentless pursuit. We were now driving in total darkness such was the tree cover all around us. Even the car's headlamps didn't do much to light the way.

I was now driving purely on instinct. Bends came and went in a blur and all the while I could see the lights of the other car behind us, never closing the gap but never losing any ground either. Well, if things went according to plan, there would soon be a fair, and somewhat unexpected, distance between us. I turned to Jack.

'Hold on tight. Things might get a little b.u.mpier.'

His face lit up like a searchlight. 'You mean it gets better?'

'Oh yeah, much better,' I replied grimly. 'Just make sure you're well strapped in.'

At last we were arriving at our destination. In front of us the road narrowed and curved around sharply to the left. Right on the bend stood a large and very old ash tree. Its gnarled branches hung down over the road, trailing long green strands of moss. As we approached they began to twitch as if antic.i.p.ating our imminent arrival. I stood on the brakes and the car stopped abruptly just in front of the tree, jerking both of us forward. Moss draped across the windscreen, obscuring our visibility, but I was only interested in what I could see out of my side window. Jack was looking over his shoulder to see where our pursuer was and was finally starting to panic.

'Why have you stopped, Harry? He's getting closer.'

'I know. Just another few seconds.' I began to rev up the car.

'We don't have a few seconds. He's right on us.' Jack was really panicking now.

There was a blurred movement of something grey and gnarled coming towards us from the side and I instantly accelerated. The car shot forward as if it had been fired from a cannon. Our pursuer, who had sped into the s.p.a.ce we'd just vacated, was suddenly swept sideways by a large and very fast moving branch. There was a loud wail from inside the car as it was catapulted across the road and smashed through the undergrowth on the opposite side, leaving a large and impressive vehicle-shaped hole in the bushes. Where the car had been on the road, a few leaves floated gently to the ground.

'Now that's what I call a flying car,' I muttered with satisfaction. 'James Bond, eat your heart out.'

Before I could take too much pleasure in the somewhat premature end to the chase, I had to drive my own car out of reach of the ash tree's branches before it had a second swipe. Better safe than even more damaged, I always say.

'Well, let's take a look at the incredible flying car,' I said, as I opened the door and got out. 'From the noise that it made as it flew through the air with the greatest of ease, I very much doubt that it was driverless.'

As Jack joined me and we began to make our way across to where the other car had landed I turned to the ash tree. 'Thanks Leslie,' I said. 'I can always depend on you to miss me.'

The tree shook its branches violently and sprayed moss in all directions.

'Maybe next time, Pigg,' it said in a voice that made Treebeard sound like a soprano. 'You can't be lucky forever.'

'What's his problem?' asked Jack.

'Some other time,' I replied. 'It's a long story. Suffice to say that, ever since my last encounter with him, he's had a deep longing to play baseball with meusing me as the ball.'

We made our way through the undergrowth. It wasn't too difficult as the flying car had cleared a wide path for us. We found it in a tree, jammed into the junction of two large branches. On the driver's side the door was open. Fortunately for me it was within climbing distance. Very carefully, I climbed up to the car and peered inside. Whoeveror whateverhad been driving had clearly done a runner, leaving nothing in the way of clues behind. Apart from the gla.s.s all over the floor, the inside of the car was spotlessly clean. I was now convinced that, despite initial appearances to the contrary, there had been a driver. Something had been screaming in terror as the car took flight and that same something had managed to open the door and disappear before we got there. All I had to do now was figure out what that something was, and if there's one thing I'm good at (actually, there are lots of things I'm good at) it's figuring things out. I hadn't actually expected to find anything in the carthat was a long shot. I was more interested in what may have been on the front. I swung around to the remains of the hood. Steam hissed from the mangled engine but there was no obvious smell of gasoline so I figured I was safe. I ran my trotters carefully over the front grille and felt something jammed in.

'Let's see what we've got here,' I muttered, pulling at the mysterious object.

The Third Pig Detective Agency Part 2

If you are looking for The Third Pig Detective Agency Part 2 you are coming to the right place. The Third Pig Detective Agency is a Webnovel created by Bob Burke. This lightnovel is currently completed.

'Thanks for the beauty tips,' I replied. 'Maybe you should take it up professionally. You're obviously wasted in this job.'

'Now, now, I'm only trying to help.'

'Well, try harder.' I headed for the door and walked down to where my car was parked. Sliding into the driver's seat I gave myself a last once-over in the mirror.

'Presentable,' I murmured. 'Not at my best, but I should pa.s.s muster. At least they won't know that I spent the night sleeping in an alleyway.'

I started the car and drove uptown to see how the other half lived. Nestling in the foothills on the north side of town, Frog Prince Heightspossibly Grimmtown's most exclusive residential areawas home to the richest, most famous and probably most downright crooked of our citizens. Most of the very large and tasteless mansions had their own security service and enough electronic surveillance to make even the most paranoid of residents comfortable in their beds at night. As was the case with all residential areas of this type, the higher up the hills you went, the bigger the estates got. To my total lack of surprise, my client's home (if a word like home could do justice to the palace I drove up to) was right at the top of the hill overlooking the entire town.

'Master of all he surveys, no doubt,' I said, as I pulled up at the very large, very imposing and very closed gates that were embedded in even larger and more imposing walls. Just to the left of the gates was a small speaker underneath which was a bright red b.u.t.ton. Pressing the b.u.t.ton, I waited for a response. As I sat there, I imagined that very hidden, very small, very expensive and very-high-resolution cameras were even now trained on me, watching my every move. I didn't have to wait too long.

'Yes,' crackled a voice from the speaker.

'Harry Pigg. I have an appointment.'

'Just one moment.'

A please would have been nice, but I imagined detectives were as high in the food chain of visitors to the mansion as the mailman and the garbage collector so I figured manners weren't part of standard operating procedure.

The gates swung open very quietly and very quickly. I was a bit disappointed; I had imagined they'd be more imposing and ominous with lots of creaking and rattling.

The intercom crackled again. 'Drive through,' said the voice. 'Follow the road around to the side. You'll be met there.'

I followed the driveway up to the house, past lawns that looked as though they were manicured with nail scissors rather than mown. The house itself was a monument to bad taste or blind architects. Someone had clearly tried to incorporate my client's eastern origins into a gothic pile. It was as if a giant (and we have plenty in the locality) had dropped the Taj Mahal on Dracula's Castle and then cemented bits of Barad-dur on afterwards for effect. Minarets jostled for s.p.a.ce with paG.o.das, battlements and some downright ugly and bored-looking gargoyles. It hurt my eyes just to look at it, and I was wearing shades.

I drove around the side of this tasteless monstrosity to be greeted by another one. Waiting for me at what I presumed was the tradesman's entrance was an ogre, proudly displaying his 'Ogre SecurityNot On Our Watch' badge. He was an imposing figureall muscle and boils. Slowly he checked my ID before letting me out of the car. I could see his lips move as he read the details. The fact that he could actually read impressed me no endmost ogres I knew preferred to eat books rather than read them. Good roughage, apparently.

'So you weren't watching the other night, then?' I asked.

'Huh?' he replied.

I pointed to his badge.

'The other night?' I repeated. 'On your watch? Did you guys take the night off when the lamp was stolen?'

'What lamp?'

'Your boss's lamp. The one that...' Seeing the blank look on his face it was obvious that Ogre Security provided the muscle to keep the grounds free of intruders but didn't have too much input to the more sophisticated security inside the house. 'Never mind. Can I go in now?'

He even held the door open for me as I entered the house. A polite security guard, whatever next?

Inside, my good friend Gruff was waiting for me and, by the look on his face, wasn't relishing the job.

'Ah Mr Gruff, so good of you to meet me. I recognised your foul stench as soon as I came aboard. Showers broken, eh?'

He looked at me and I could tell he was struggling to come back with a witty reply, or indeed any reply. I smiled at his discomfort.

'Never mind,' I said. 'If you practise hard in front of a mirror maybe you'll learn to string more than two words together for the next time we meet. Wouldn't that be nice?'

He glowered as he led me through the house. It was just as tasteless on the inside as on the out. Furniture of various styles, shapes and sizes jostled for position with figurines, sculptures, a.s.sorted suits of exotic armour and a variety of plants. It looked like a storage depot for an antiques store run by a florist rather than a place someone actually lived in.

I was led through so many pa.s.sages and rooms that I soon lost my way and had to depend on my guide to stop me from getting lost.

Eventually we arrived at a steel door that dominated the end of yet another long corridor. It was the kind of door that was more suited to the front of a large castle to keep invading hordes at bay rather than guarding a rich man's trinkets.

'The study,' said Gruff. 'I'll let you in once I've switched off the security system.'

He pressed some numbers on a keypad beside the door. There was a grinding noise and some sequential clunking as locks were deactivated. The door slowly slid into the wall. Lights in the room flickered on as we entered. If the rest of the house had been a monument to clutter, this room was a testament to minimalism. Apart from a large cylindrical black pedestal in the middle of the room, it was completely empty. There were no windows and the only door was the one we had just come through.

I walked towards the pedestal to have a look. It was a column of black marble that came up roughly to my chest. On top was a smaller display stand covered in black velvet, upon which, presumably, the lamp had stood. On closer inspection I could still see the imprint of the lamp's base in the cloth.

'So this is where the lamp was kept,' I said.

'Yes,' said a familiar voice behind me. 'Hi-tech security and surveillance systems and still it disappeared.'

Aladdin strode into the room and shook my trotter. 'Glad you could make it.'

'My pleasure. Exactly how hi-tech was the security here?' I asked.

'If you care to step back to the door, we can show you.'

We all walked back to the entrance and Aladdin turned to the goat.

'Mr Gruff, if you would be so kind.'

Gruff punched some more numbers on the keypad and the lights in the room dimmed again.

'Firstly,' began my employer/landlord, 'the floor is basically one giant pressure pad. Once the security system is switched on anything heavier than a spider running across the room will trigger the alarm. Observe.' Taking a very clean, very expensive and very unused silk handkerchief from his jacket pocket he lobbed it gently into the room. It floated slowly downwards and had hardly touched the floor when strident alarms rang all over the house.

'In addition,' he continued, as Gruff frantically pressed b.u.t.tons to silence the ringing, 'there is a laser grid in the room which will detect anyone that might, for example, try to suspend themselves from the ceiling and lower themselves down to the pedestal.'

Another flourish of the arm, some more b.u.t.ton-punching from Gruff and suddenly a bright red criss-cross of beams filled the room. It looked like a 3-D map of New York. A network of lasers covered every part of the s.p.a.ce, wall to wall and floor to ceiling. Anything that might possibly get into the room certainly wouldn't get very far without breaking one of the beams. I didn't need the alarm to be triggered again to tell me that.

'Cameras?' I enquired.

'On the wall,' came the reply and he pointed to a lens that tracked back and forth across the room. 'It scans the room constantly and the output is monitored from our security centre, which you may visit shortly. The entire system is controlled via this keypad here.' He pointed to the unit on the wall. 'It is activated every night at ten and disabled again at seven each morning. All access is monitored and recorded. On the night of the...ah...disappearance none of the systems were deactivated, the cameras showed nothing else in the room and the lasers weren't triggered. It is most intriguing.'

Intriguing wasn't the word I'd have used; downright baffling was the phrase that came into my head, but I suspected Aladdin was trying to maintain an outward demeanour of cool in keeping with his image.

'Has the camera footage been examined?' I asked.

'Yes,' said Aladdin. 'But it didn't show anything. On one sweep the lamp was there, on the next it was gone.'

'Well, just to be on the safe side, I'd like to have a look. Maybe something was missed.'

From the snort of indignation behind me, I a.s.sumed Gruff didn't agree with my supposition. Good.

Aladdin led me to the security centre. The footage from the previous night was loaded by the guard on duty and the tape forwarded to when the lamp vanished. The camera scanned the room from left to right and the lamp was clearly on its pedestal. When it tracked back on its next sweep the lamp was just as clearly gone, as Aladdin had claimed.

'See,' said Gruff in a very superior tone, as if challenging me to find something he'd missed. 'Now you see it; now you don't. Any ideas?'

Not being one to refuse a challenge, I asked for the footage to be replayed and studied the screen carefully, trying to spot anything out of place. On the fifth or sixth repeat, I saw it.

'Stop,' I exclaimed and the security guard immediately paused the tape. 'Look there, right at the base of the smaller pedestal. See?' I pointed to a tiny flash of light that sparkled briefly and disappeared almost immediately afterwards. 'Any chance of getting that enhanced?'

The guard worked his voodoo and magnified the picture.

'What is it, Mr Pigg?' Aladdin's face was so close to the screen, he blocked everyone else's view. 'I can't seem to make it out.'

I moved him gently aside and examined the camera footage carefully.

'If I didn't know better, I'd say it was a micro camera, the kind they use in hospitals to have a poke around people's insides,' I said when I had the opportunity for a closer look.

'But what the h.e.l.l is it doing inside the display stand? It's solid marble.'

I was obviously putting two and two together and getting four slightly faster than the othersalthough in Gruff's case I suspected that he was only able to get to three with great difficulty and the help of crayons. It seemed to me that if the thieves couldn't drop into the room or walk across it without setting off any alarms, there was only one other method of entry for any creative burglara method that demanded incredible technique and no small amount of nerve.

I looked at Aladdin. 'I think I need to have a closer look at the room,' I said.

'But of course,' replied Aladdin and we walked back to the study.

As Gruff deactivated the alarm system again I noticed something else.

'Hold it,' I said. 'Turn it on again.'

As the red beams criss-crossed the room again, I pointed to the pedestal. 'Notice how the beams don't actually cross the area where the lamp was? If the lamp was taken, it wouldn't set off the alarm.'

'That's a crock,' sneered Gruff. 'No one can actually get to the lamp without breaking a beam or standing on the floor. How do you think they entered the roomthey teleported in?'

'Maybe they didn't,' I said. 'Disable the lasers again so I can have another look.'

Once the alarm was off I walked towards the pedestal. A gla.s.s dome that didn't look as if it had ever been touched, let alone lifted, covered the top of the pedestal and was firmly clamped to the base. I was obviously in top detecting mode today as, when I looked at the surface of the pedestal through the gla.s.s, I could see what looked like a few tiny grains of saltalmost invisible to the human eye; but then again, I'm not human.

'Can you disable the clamps on the gla.s.s and turn the lights on full please?' I asked.

More b.u.t.tons were pressed, and the clamps disengaged loudly. The lights came up to full strength as, very carefully, I lifted the gla.s.s dome off and put it gently on the floor. As I examined the pedestal Aladdin came up behind me.

'What do you see?' he asked.

'I'm not sure,' I replied, as I leaned in towards the pedestal for a more detailed examination. 'It may be nothing but...'

I picked up some of the grains and put them on my tongue. They weren't salt; they were tiny grains of sand. I looked more closely at the pedestal. Ever so gently I pushed the velvet stand. It slid easily to one side, revealing a gaping hole underneath.

'What in the blazes is this?' exclaimed Aladdin.

'Clearly, when your thieves couldn't access the room from above or through the walls, they went under. They used the micro camera to check when the surveillance system on the wall was sweeping the room and stole the lamp when it was off-camera.'

'But who could have done this and where does the hole go?'

'I don't know who, but that's what you've employed me to find out,' I replied. 'As to the where, I don't know that yet, either, but I think I know someone who can help me work it out.'

4.

It's Off to Work We Go!.

'You mean you want me to climb down there to see where it goes? Cool.'

Jack Horner was clearly excited by his new Apprentice Gumshoe role as he gazed into the hole. As Tom Thumb was out of town on a small vacation (sorry!), he was my next and only other choice, seeing as the hole was too small to allow anyone else to climb into it. After a.s.suring an understandably concerned mother that he would come to no harm, she had reluctantly allowed him to come with me.

'No heroics, Jack,' I told him. 'Just follow the tunnel until we can find out where it comes out.' I pointed to the equipment he was wearing. 'The rope is for safety, the torch will light your way and the little gadget on your belt is a tracker. We can follow you wherever you go. You can talk to us with this.' I handed him a walkie-talkie.

'Will there be monsters down there?' he asked.

'I doubt that very much,' I said, as I checked the rope one more time and lifted him up onto the pedestal. He seemed disappointed at my response.

'Ready?' I asked. He nodded in reply.

'OK then, here we go.'

He stood on the pedestal, looked into the hole again and prepared for his descent. Slowly, he made his way down until he was holding on to the edge by his fingertips. He glanced at me, nodded that he was ready and then let go. I took the strain and lowered him down carefully, as much to avoid any back injury on my part as for his own safety. It didn't take long for him to reach the bottom.

'There's a pa.s.sage leading away but I don't see any daylight.' His voice came through clearly on my walkie-talkie. 'I'm walking along it now.'

'OK Jack,' I said. 'Follow it slowly but be careful.'

After a few minutes I could hear a strange noise on the walkie-talkie.

'Jack? Are you OK?'

'Yeah, why?'

'I'm hearing some odd noises on the walkie-talkie.'

'Oh, that's just me singing,' Jack replied. 'I do it sometimes to pa.s.s the time when I'm walking.'

'Uh, right.' Was this kid afraid of anything?

'I've come to a turn in the tunnel,' he said after a few more minutes. 'It bends to the left.'

From the signal on the tracker screen, he looked to be outside the house now.

'OK Jack,' I said. 'Keep going. Can you see daylight now?'

The Third Pig Detective Agency Part 1

If you are looking for The Third Pig Detective Agency Part 1 you are coming to the right place. The Third Pig Detective Agency is a Webnovel created by Bob Burke. This lightnovel is currently completed.

The Third Pig Detective Agency.

Bob Burke.

To Gem, for believing.

1.

A New Client.

It was another slow day in the office. Actually, it had been a slow week in the office. No, if the truth be known, it had been a lousy month for the Third Pig Detective Agency. That's me by the way: Harry Pigg, the Third Pig.

Where did the name come from? Well, I was the pig that built the house out of bricks while my idiot brothers took the easy route and went for cowboy builders and cheap materials. Let me tell you, wood and straw ain't much use when Mr Wolf comes calling. Those guys were pork-chops as soon as he drew in his first breath and filled those giant lungs of his. Blow your house down, indeed.

And while we're on the subject, don't believe what you read in those heavily edited stories you find in children's books of fairy tales saying how the wolf fell down the chimney into the pot, scalded his tail, ran out of the house and was never seen again. When that wolf came down my chimney and into that boiling saucepan, I screwed the lid on and made sure it stayed on by weighing it down with a few spare bricks (never throw anything away, you never know when it could come in useful). He didn't do too much huffing and puffing then.

'Little pig, little pig, let me come out,' he'd begged in a scared whimper.

'Not by the hair on my...' I began, but then gave up. I just couldn't come up with something clever to rhyme with 'I won't let you out' so I just left it. Hey, I can't come up with a witty reply every time.

By the time the pot went quiet and I opened it again all that was left was some sc.u.mmy hair floating on the surface and boneslots of bones. The little dog sure laughed a lot that day. He hadn't seen that many broken bones since the cow's first attempt to jump over the moon, and they'd kept him in three square meals a day for over a week.

After that I was kind of a cult hero. Apart from that Red Riding Hood dame, no one else had ever come out on top in a skirmish with the Wolf family sol became a local celebrity. After the usual civic receptions and TV appearances, I decided to capitalise on my new-found fame and become a detective. Well, why not? Someone needs to do it and there's always an opening for a good one.

At first business was booming. I was the one who not only found those two missing kids, Hansel and Gretel, but I also fingered them for the murder of that sweet old woman in the gingerbread house. Their story was too pat: wicked old lady plans to eat the kids, only way out was to kill her; you know the drill. In my book their story stank. Two kids, a house made of gingerbread and an old dear whose only crime was to get in the way. It was always going to end in tearsprimarily hers.

As I said, I was on the pig's back (excuse the pun) for a while but then things kind of dried up. No one seemed to want the services of a good detective agency and, with the exception of the kids in Hamelin (which wasn't even one of my cases), there didn't even seem to be too many missing persons any more. The bills were mounting up. Gloria, my bovine receptionist, hadn't been paid in a month. Even her legendary patience was wearing thin. And no, before all you politically correct fairy tale readers get on my case, I'm not casting any aspersions on her looks; she really is a cow and the meanest typist in Grimmtown (even with the hoofs). Unless I got a big caseand soonI was going be neck-deep in apple sauce and Gloria would be back to cheerleading for the Lunar Leapers Bovine Acrobatics Team. Things were most definitely not looking good.

But I digress (a little). On this particular slow day I was sitting in my office (cheap furniture, lousy decor, creaky wooden flooryou know the type) with my rear trotters on my desk, trying to work out 5 down. 'Sounds like fierce brothers in the fairy tale world. Five letters ending in 'm'. Hmmm.' I mulled this over while nibbling the end of my pen. Crosswords really weren't my strong suit.

As my creative juices attempted to flow I became aware of voices in the outer office. Voices meant more than one person, so Gloria either had a debt-collector or a potential customer on her handsand there was no one in town more adept at evading debt-collectors than me. Once I heard her say, 'Mr Pigg is quite busy at present, but I'll see if he can squeeze you in', it meant an obviously discerning client wished to utilise my services. I swung my trotters off the desk, smoothed down my jacket as best I could and tried to look busy while squashing the newspaper into the wastebasket with my left trotter.

The intercom buzzed.

'Mr Pigg,' crackled Gloria's deep, husky voice. 'There is a gentleman here to see you. Should I get him to make an appointment?'

As my diary was conspicuously blank for the foreseeable future I figured that my need for hard cash far outweighed any need to impress a potential punter. I pressed the intercom b.u.t.ton.

'I can see the gentleman now, Gloria,' I said. 'Please send him in.' I stood up to meet my potential cash cow.

Through the opaque gla.s.s in the connecting door, I could see a large shape making its way through reception and towards my office. The door slowly opened and an oriental gentleman the size and shape of a zeppelin entered. He was wearing a silk suit, the amount of cloth of which would have made easily the most expensive marquee tent in history, and he was weighed down with enough gold to pay off all of my debts for the next twenty years. His shiny black hair was pulled back from his forehead and tied in a long plait that stretched all the way down his back to a voluminous rear end. The guy exuded wealthand I hadn't failed to notice it. If this were a cartoon, dollar signs would be going 'ka-ching' in my eyes.

It was time to be ultra-smooth, ultra-polite and ultra-I'm-the-best-detective-you're-ever-likely-to-meet-and-you-will-be-eternally-grateful-for-employing-me.

I extended my trotter, 'Mr?'

'Aladdin,' he replied, grasping my trotter in a grip like a clam's. 'Just call me Mr Aladdin.'

Although I didn't recognise him, of course I had heard of Aladdin. Everyone in Grimmtown had. He was probably the most famous and most reclusive of our many eccentric citizensand quite possibly the richest. Rumour had it he owned half of the town but very few people had seen him in recent years, as he preferred to live behind closed doors in a huge mansion in the hills.

His story was the stuff dreams (at least other people's dreams) were made of. He had started off working in a local laundry. After a few years he bought out the owner although no one knew, despite much speculation and rumour, where the money had come from. Over the years his business had expanded (as had he) and he had begun to diversify. Apart from the chain of laundries he had built up, he owned bars, restaurants, department stores, gas stations and most local politicians. The key word in the above description is, of course, 'richest'. If Mr 'Just call me' Aladdin wanted to employ my services, it would be most churlish of me to turn him downespecially if he was prepared to throw large wads of cash in my direction.

Ka-ching! Ka-ching!

I took a deep breath and prepared to tell my new best friend how wonderful I was and how he had showed exceptional judgement in availing himself of my services.

'Mr Aladdin, how may I be of service?'

That's me: cool and straight to the point. Inside, my mind was screaming, 'Show me the money', and I was trying not to dance on the table with joy.

Mr Aladdin looked carefully at me, raised his left hand and snapped his fingers.

'Gruff,' he said. 'My bag, please.'

Someone, hidden up to now by his employer's large ma.s.s, walked out from behind him carrying a large leather, and undoubtedly very expensive, briefcase. My heart sank. Things had just started taking a turn for the worse. It always happens to me. Just when I think things can't get any better, they inevitably don't and take another downward slide into even more unpleasantness. Aladdin's employee was a st.u.r.dy white goat. Not just any goat however, this was a Gruff. And, unless I was very much mistaken, he was the eldest Gruff.

The Gruffs were three brothers who had come to town a few years ago. After sorting out a little (well big, actually) troll problem we were having at a local bridge (a trollbridge, if you will), they had decided to stay and give the town the benefit of their 'unique' skill setwhich usually involved threats, intimidation and the carrying of blunt instruments. Starting out as bouncers at 'Cinders', one of Grimmtown's least reputable clubs, they had subsequently branched out into more profitable (and much less legal) operations. Whether it was smuggling live gingerbread men across the border or evicting the old lady in the shoe for not paying the rent, the three billy goats Gruff were usually involved in some capacity.

Eventually the eldest brother had distanced himself from the day-to-day operations of the family business. I'd heard he'd gone into consultancy of a sort usually described as 'security', but not much had been seen of him recently. Now I knew why. If he was employed by this particular client, I suspected he worked for him to the exclusion of any others. Mr Aladdin was that kind of employer; apart from total commitment, it was rumoured he also demanded total secrecy from his staff. If Gruff was involved, it stood to reason that there were some less than legal factors of which I was yet to be made aware.

Wonderful!

Gruff handed the briefcase to his boss and looked me up and down.

'I don't like you,' he sneered.

I shrugged my shoulders. 'You don't like most people.'

'But I especially don't like pigs.'

'Well then, perhaps you'd be more comfortable somewhere elsean empty shoe, a prison cell, maybe propping up abridge somewhere?'

Snarling, he made to move towards me but his employer restrained him with a large and heavily bejewelled hand. With that amount of rings on his fingers it was a wonder he actually had the strength to lift it.

'Gentlemen, please. Enough of this petty squabbling! Gruff, keep an eye on the door, will you? There's a good goat.'

Reluctantly the goat backed towards the door, never taking his eyes off me. I met his gaze all the way. No goat was going to outstare me.

Happy that his employee was a safe (or at least a less-threatening) distance away, Aladdin turned towards me.

'Might we continue?' he said.

'Of course,' I replied, returning to my chair while, at the same time, ensuring that a large and heavy desk was strategically placed between a highly unstable goat and me. Picking up a letter opener in as non-intimidating a fashion as possible, I began to clean my front trotters and looked expectantly at Aladdin.

'Mr Pigg,' he began. 'You have a reputation as a manI apologise, of course I mean pigwho not only gets results but knows when to be discreet.'

I nodded politely at the compliment.

'In my experience, an indiscreet detective doesn't stay in business too long,' I pointed out.

'Nevertheless,' he continued, 'in this particular instance, discretion is of paramount importance. I must insist that you do not discuss what I am about to reveal with anyone other than my a.s.sociate Mr Gruff, and me.'

I nodded, wondering what was going to come next.

Opening the briefcase, Aladdin took out a large sheet of paper. 'I have recently mislaid an item of immense personal value and I wish you to locate it for me.'

He handed the sheet of paper to me. I looked at it with interest. It was a photograph of a very old and very battered lamp.

'It's a lamp,' I said, stating the blindingly obvious.

'Not just any lamp,' said Aladdin. 'This is a family heirloom and one which I am most anxious to have located as soon as possible.'

'Where was it mislaid?' I asked.

'It was last seen in a display cabinet in my study. Last night it was most definitely there; this morning it was gone.'

'Lost? Stolen? Melted down and sold for sc.r.a.p? Can you be a little more specific?' I looked at the picture again. The lamp didn't look up to much. It was about the size of a gravy boat, coloured an off-shade of gold and had more dents than the Tin Man. I clearly needed more information.

'I...ah...suspect it may have been stolen but I am unable to prove this at present.'

'Have you spoken to the police?'

Again, rumour had it that local law enforcement was more akin to Aladdin's private security force than public servants. If anyone could locate an artifact of this nature quickly and with a minimum of fuss, it was them. In all likelihood, their jobs would depend on it.

Aladdin looked at me carefully. 'The police have been more than helpful but, at this time, they have neither a suspect nor a specific line of inquiry. It is my firm belief that someone of your talents might be of more use in this particular instance.'

'Because?' I enquired.

'Because, as I have already mentioned, you can be discreet. I think that perhaps you can exploit particular avenues of inquiry that may be outside the scope of the law and you have your snout in all the right information troughsforgive the a.n.a.logy, I mean no offence.'

'None taken,' I replied. Offended or not, I wasn't going to abandon this client just yet, certainly not on the basis of a less than politically correct a.n.a.logy. 'However, I don't normally take on cases that are still under investigation by the police.'

'Trust me,' came the very smooth reply. 'The police have exhausted all avenues and will not bother you during the course of your investigation.'

In other words they'd come up with nothingor at least n.o.body they could pin the theft on. Either that or this lamp was something that Aladdin would prefer not having the police involved with. This case stank higher than an abattoir in a heatwaveand I should know, my office looks out on one and it wasn't a nice place to be in the summer.

My only question now was should I take this particular case on? If the lamp had been stolen, chances were that someone with more than a pa.s.sing grudge towards Aladdin had taken it. By extension, they were probably not nice people. Not nice people didn't normally worry mein my line of work I come across quite a fewbut I suspected this particular category of not nice people probably wouldn't have too many qualms about serving me up for breakfast along with some scrambled eggs. I decided cowardice was the better part of valour in this instance.

'Mr Aladdin, I'm flattered that you saw fit to choose the Third Pig Detective Agency but I don't think I'm in a position to take you on at the moment. My caseload is somewhat heavy.'

He looked at me extremely carefully. 'I think, perhaps, you might reconsider,' he said, very quietly but very ominously.

'No, really. It's just not possible right now. I am sorry.'

Aladdin turned to his henchgoat. 'Mr Gruff?'

Gruff opened the briefcase again and took out a large folder which he handed to his employer. He was smiling at me as he did so.

Aladdin opened the folder and began to flick through the pages. 'Mr Pigg, what I have here, among other things, are your last six bank statements, a number of bills from certain of your suppliersmost of which are, apparently, very overdueand a number of demands for rent, which seems considerably in arrears. Your former landlord seems particularly unhappy with you.'

I was about to launch into a robust defence of my financial situation, which would include claims of invasion of privacy, how unjust certain of my suppliers were in their demands and how things weren't actually as bad as they looked, when the last part of his statement suddenly sunk in.

'Former landlord?' I said.

'Oh yes, didn't I mention? As of...' he glanced at his watch, 'forty-five or so minutes ago, I now own this building. You appear to owe me quite an amount of rent.' He handed the folder back to Gruff. 'Shall I have Mr Gruff here organise for collection? I do believe he is a most effective debt-collector. I certainly haven't had any complaints about his methods.'

That sealed it for me. I could have lived with owing half of Grimmtown money and having Aladdin as my new landlord, but I wasn't going to give the goat the satisfaction of coming around with a large baseball bat to collect any outstanding rent.

With as much dignity as I could muster, I caved in.

'Mr Aladdin, you are a most persuasive client. I a.s.sume you would like me to start immediately?'

Aladdin smiled at me. It was the kind of smile that suggested one of his grandparents was a shark.

'Delighted to hear it. If you need anything, Mr Gruff will be more than happy to accommodate you.'

I decided to make Gruff suffer a bit. 'I'd like to see where you kept the lamp. Can your goat make himself available to show me around?'

The expression on Gruff's face at this comment suggested that he'd sooner play catch with dynamite. Hey, it was a small victory but I had to take 'em where I got 'em. Aladdin was heading for the door. Barely looking over his shoulder he askedno, toldme to call at the house at twelve the next day and Gruff would show me around.

As the door closed behind him I sank back down into my chair and exhaled loudly. My client was now my landlord. He was missing something that he wanted to get back badly. He wanted little or no involvement with the law and, for reasons known only to himself, he had chosen me rather than any of the other detectives operating in town to do the recovery. Sometimes I just got all the breaks.

'Oh Harry, Harry, Harry,' I breathed. 'What kind of mess have you gotten yourself into now?'

2.

Come Blow Your Horn.

If television is to be believed, we detectives have contacts everywhere. All it takes is a quick phone call to Izzy or Sammy or Buddy and, hey presto, there it isinformation at your fingertips. Barmen, bouncers, paperboys, waitresses; you name them, your average detective has them in his little black book. They have their ears to the ground and are always willing to give exactly the information you're looking for exactly when you need it, in return for a small fee.

Wrong!

Forget what you see on TV. Most detectives I know, myself included, can muster up one informant if we're really lucky; usually unreliable, rarely cheap and never around when you want them. My particular source of 'useful' information was a lazy former shepherd. He had got himself into a spot of bother whenafter falling asleep on the job one dayhis flock had disappeared. Blacklisted and unable to hold down any other kind of agricultural employment, he eked out a living playing the trumpet in some of the town's cheaper bars. He usually then spent the money drinking in the same bars. When people talked of someone with his ear to the ground they meant literally in his case. He did get around, however, and if something was going on in town, there was always the remote possibility he might have heard about it. More than likely, however, he hadn't.

The Teesdale Angler Part 8

If you are looking for The Teesdale Angler Part 8 you are coming to the right place. The Teesdale Angler is a Webnovel created by R. Lakeland. This lightnovel is currently completed.

ON EARLY RISING IN CONNECTION WITH ANGLING PURSUITS.

Thousands of the dwellers in "the modern Babylon," and indeed in all large cities and towns, never saw the splendour of a rising sun. Tens of thousands never heard the sylvan choristers performing their morning's concert, filling with their melody, nature's own, the woods and groves wherein these feathered songsters "sport, live, and have their being." Whilst millions of men are sunk in the arms of "the drowsy G.o.d." What is the angler about, has he slept soundly, and then awoke in the very nick of time? Or have his slumbers been somewhat broken and disturbed by dreams of crafty old Trout? No matter, he is astir, he has pocketed his tackle, and not neglected something for the inner man; rod and net in hand, he is off and away frequently before, but seldom later, than the rising lark proclaims with joyous notes the coming day; full well, he knows the advantages of an early move during the Summer months; the morning is all in all, the best part of the day to him; so, buoyant with hope he progresses at an easy rate towards the scene of his triumphs, or disappointments, as the case may be. An angler of early habits during the Summer months sees a great deal of animated nature, and ought to know as much of the habits of birds, animals, insects, &c., as any man. At early morn the great volume of nature lies open for his inspection, if he be intelligent and curious, he will soon become a naturalist, whether his path leads through the woods, the lowlands, or over the uplands, he is pretty sure to meet with something to gratify, instruct and amuse. Independent of the varied attractions of nature, the early rising angler always has the best Summer sport. Large fish invariably feed more freely in the morning than during any other portion of the day, evenings occasionally excepted; he also avoids the greater heat by getting home a.m., indeed after twelve o'clock on a Summer's day your shadow falls more or less upon the water, and scares the fish. Independent of that, they usually cease to feed by that time.

OVER PRESERVATION, AND OTHER CAUSES THAT TEND TO MAKE TROUT SMALL AND SCARCE.

In streams where piscatorial rights are cherished, and protected to their fullest extent, Trout are frequently found to be much smaller, than might naturally be supposed; the fact is, that in good breeding waters strictly preserved, Trout soon become so numerous that the supply of food is inadequate to their wants; a state of things which in rural parlance is termed, as having more stock than the pasture will carry; a numerical reduction, to some extent in such streams is therefore extremely beneficial. Better fish are sometimes met with in free waters than in preserves, solely because they have had abundance, and variety of food. In all moor becks, plenty of small Trout are found; such waters are excellent for breeding, but as very little nutriment comes from peat or waste lands, they are generally dwarfish in size, and moderate in flavour. On the contrary, in small streams running through a fertile soil, fish are frequently killed of a most satisfactory size and weight. In rapid rivers the beds of which are formed of limestone rock, Trout are upon an average, not of a size acceptable to an angler who scouts the idea of a 1/4 lb fish. In such rivers they get knocked about very much during heavy floods, and the rapidity with which the streams carry away the feed, either at top or bottom, is against them.

In North Yorkshire and Durham, where many Trouting streams are recipients of the washing of the refuse ore of the lead mines, commonly called hush, fish are not either so plentiful, or near the average size they used to be, when the hush was not so prevalent as it is at present. The hush must certainly be injurious to all kinds of fish, and I think it very probable that the young fry suffer very much from it, even to the extent of being in some instances completely destroyed by it. But there are other causes, independent of hush, &c., why fish are generally smaller in size and number than they used to be in "the days of old." An increasing population has visibly increased the number of anglers, and also of parties making use of most destructive wholesale methods of taking fish, to which any amount of angling is indeed comparatively harmless. Angling clubs conducted with energy and liberality have in some places repressed nefarious practices, and some rivers are coming round again, that previous to the protective system were nearly cleaned out.

The artificial production of Trout and Salmon, has of late years been tried with success. Those who are curious and interested in pisciculture may obtain a pamphlet on the artificial production of fish by Piscarius, published by Reeve & Co., Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London.

ANGLING IMPEDIMENTS.

The weather may be propitious, the humour of the fish charming, two capital items, that can only now and then be inserted in an angler's diary; but some things may occur to spoil a day's diversion, commenced even under the most favourable auspices; for instance, let us suppose that a man (who whilst "realizing the charms of solitude") is nevertheless carefully and cautiously fishing with success in a clear low water; how great then must be his vexation, and disappointment, when he sees looming in the distance a rod, and net, the owner of which is soon distinctly visible. It does not require a moment's consideration as to what he must now do; he must either give up fishing for that day, or seek some fresh ground, because any person coming fishing down a low water, or even walking close to the banks of it, scares the fish to such an extent, that making for their holds, they will probably remain there for some hours. My object in reference to the above suppositious statement (which many anglers will find too often a reality) is to demonstrate to the inexperienced, what very meagre sport any one must have in a clear, low water, previously fished on the same day.

Reversing the case, that is to say, a day or two after a flood, and when of course there is plenty of water, and also, when fish are not so soon alarmed and disturbed; I hold even then, first come first served, to be the order of the day; for when fish are inclined to feed, any person in advance of you has a decided advantage, and particularly so, should he be either trolling, or worm fishing. In wide rivers however, you may (owing perhaps to a feed coming on) have excellent diversion where a person who has preceded you half an hour, or so, has had but indifferent success. If there is only plenty of water, companionship is admissable, though I am inclined to suppose that (under all circ.u.mstances) a solitaire has a decided advantage; for this reason, that two or more persons, get over the ground far too quickly, and do not fish in that true, steady, and careful way, they perhaps would do if alone; just whipping the stream here and there, hurrying over the ground, and so spending probably half their time in walking, instead of fishing; but in free waters, where anglers are sometimes as thick as blackberries, and a man cannot do as he likes, the "go ahead" system often proves the best. Some way or other there is generally some sport to be had in streams, free from hush, but many rivers are daily subject to it, causing great interruption, to say nothing of total stoppage to angling pursuits for many successive days. Slight hushes, when the water is low, are so far serviceable, that by partially discolouring the water, fish take the artificial fly, especially the Black Midge, more boldly than they would do if the water remained clear. Taken altogether, the hush undoubtedly levies a considerable tax on the patience of those anglers who fish in its vicinity.

BARNARD CASTLE AS AN ANGLING STATION.

I beg to offer a few observations to strangers in reference to Barnard Castle as an angling station. The facilities offered by a railway, the beautiful local scenery, the fishing, and the excellent accommodations to be had at reasonable charges, are all attractive considerations for Tourists and Anglers, who will find Barnard Castle a central, pleasant, and convenient place of abode, during any length of time they may please to devote to angling or other recreations. Barnard Castle is particularly well adapted for an angling station; the river Tees is in close proximity to the town, the river Greta distant only about three miles, and there are several other good streams within easy distances.

Gentlemen who obtain leave from W. S. Morritt, Esq., to fish in that portion of the Greta which is strictly preserved, abounding in Trout, and encompa.s.sed by those woods and banks alluded to in _Scott's Rokeby_, will find the Inn kept by Mr. Ward, Greta Bridge, very comfortable and convenient. A good day's sport may be had above Bowes; when there happens to be too much water for angling purposes, some few miles lower down.

WEATHER SIGNS AND CHANGES.

_Mists._--A white Mist in the evening over a meadow with a river, will be drawn up by the sun next morning, and the day will be bright; five or six Fogs successively drawn up portend rain; when there are lofty hills, and the mist which hangs over the lower lands draws towards the hills in the morning, and rolls up to the top, then it will be fair, but if the mist hangs upon the hills, and drags along the woods, there will be rain.

_Clouds._--Against much rain the clouds grow bigger and increase very fast, especially before thunder. When the clouds are formed like fleeces, but dense in the middle and bright towards the edges, with a bright sky, they are signs of frost, with hail, snow or rain. If clouds breed high in the air, with white trains like locks of wool, they portend wind, probably rain. When a generally cloudiness covers the sky, and small black fragments of clouds fly underneath, they are sure signs of rain, and probably it may last some time. Two currents of air always portend rain, and in Summer, thunder.

_Dew._--If the dew lies plentifully upon the gra.s.s after a fair day, it is a sign of another; if not, and there is no wind, rain must follow. A red evening shews fine weather, but if it spread too far upwards from the horizon in the evening, and especially in the morning, it fortells wind or rain, or both. When the sky in rainy weather is tinged with sea green, the rain will increase; if with blue, it will be showery.

_Heavenly Bodies._--A haziness in the air which fades the sun light and makes the orb appear whiteish or ill defined, or at night if the moon and stars grow dim and a ring encircles the former, rain will follow.

If the Sun's rays appear like Moses' horn, white at setting or shorn of his rays, or goes down into a bank of clouds in the horizon, bad weather may be expected. If the moon looks pale and dim, rain may be expected; if red, wind; and if her natural colour, with a fair clear sky, fine weather; if the moon is rainy throughout, it will clear at the change, and perhaps the rain return a few days after. If fair throughout, and rain at the change, the fair weather will probably return at the fourth or fifth day.

_Wind._--If the wind veers much about, rain is certain; in changing, if it follows the course of the sun, it brings fair weather; the contrary, foul; whistling of the wind is a sure sign of rain.

_Meteors._--The Aurora Borealis after warm days is generally succeeded by cooler air; shooting stars are supposed to indicate rain.

_Animals._--Before rain, swallows fly low; dogs grow sleepy and eat gra.s.s; waterfowl dive much; fish will not bite; flies are more than ordinary troublesome; toads crawl about; moles, ants, bees and insects are very busy; birds fly low for insects; swine, sheep and cattle are uneasy; and it is not without its effect on the human frame.

_Weather Table._--The following table, ascribed to Dr. Herschel, and revised by Dr. Adam Clark, constructed upon philosophical consideration of the sun and moon, in their several positions respecting the earth, and confirmed by experience of many years actual observation, furnishes the observer without further trouble, with the knowledge of what kind of weather may be expected to succeed, and that so near the truth, that in a very few instances will it be found to fail.

_Observation by Dr. Kirwan._--When there has been no particular storm about the time of the Spring Equinox (March 21st); if a storm arises from the east on or before that day, or if a storm from any point of the compa.s.s arise near a week after the Equinox, then in either of these cases the succeeding Summer is generally dry four times in five, but if the storm arises from the S.W. or W.S.W. on or just before the Spring Equinox, then the Summer following is generally wet five times in six.

WEATHER TABLE.

+----------------------------------------------------------+ NEW & FULL MOON. IN SUMMER. +----------------------------+-----------------------------+ If it be New or Full Moon, or the Moon entering into the first or last quarter at 12 at noon or between 12 and 2 Very Rainy 2 and 4 in the Afternoon Changeable 4 and 6 Evening Fair 6 and 8 Fair if wind at N West, Rainy if S, or S. West 8 and 10 Ditto 10 and 12 Night Fair 12 and 2 Morning Ditto 2 and 4 Morning Cold with frequent showers 4 and 6 Morning Rain 6 and 8 Morning Wind and Rain 8 and 10 Morning Changeable 10 and 12 Morning Frequent Showers +----------------------------+-----------------------------+

+----------------------------------------------------------+ NEW & FULL MOON. IN WINTER. +----------------------------+-----------------------------+ If it be New or Full Moon, or the Moon entering into the first or last quarter at 12 at noon or between 12 and 2 Snow and rain 2 and 4 in the Afternoon Fair and Mild 4 and 6 Evening Fair 6 and 8 Fair and Frosty, if wind at North or N. East, Rain or Snow, if South or S. West 8 and 10 Ditto 10 and 12 Night Fair and Frosty 12 and 2 Morning Hard frost unless wind South or S. West 2 and 4 Morning Snow and Storm 4 and 6 Morning Ditto 6 and 8 Morning Stormy Weather 8 and 10 Morning Cold Rain, if wind be West, Snow if East 10 and 12 Morning Cold with high wind +----------------------------+-----------------------------+

NOTICES OF RARE AND CURIOUS ANGLING BOOKS.

There exists a very rare and remarkable work, "_A Book of Angling or Fishing, wherein is shewed by conference with Scriptures, the agreement between the Fisherman, Fishes, and Fishing of both natures, spirituall and temporall, by Samuel Gardner, Doctor of Divinitie._"--"I will make you fishers of men."--Matt. IV. 19. London, printed for Thomas Pinfoot, 1606.

Walton tells the honest angler that the writing of his book was the recreation of a recreation; his motto on the t.i.tle page of his book was, "Simon Peter said let us go a fishing, and they said we also will go with thee"--John XXI. 3. This pa.s.sage is not in all the editions of the _Complete Angler_, but was engraven on the t.i.tle page of the first edition, printed in 1653.

Advertis.e.m.e.nt of Walton's angler, 1653. There is published a book of eighteenpence price, called "_The Compleat Angler, or Contemplative Man's Recreation, being a Discourse of Fish and Fishing, not unworthy the perusal._"

These works may now be considered as great bibliomaniacal curiosities.

ADDENDA.

It is altogether a mistake to suppose that large flies are required for large rivers; on the contrary, with the exception of the Palmers, small hackle flies will be found to answer best, these, together with the Black, Blue and Dun Midges, (Spring and Autumn excepted), have a decided advantage in general over dubbed or hackle winged flies. In small brooks after a flood, winged flies often kill well, those with Orange, Black, Crimson, and Yellow bodies are the best. Gra.s.s Hoppers, the Cabbage Caterpillar, the Breccan or Fern Clock, will all take Trout; but as there are other natural baits to be had at the time these are in season, which I have noted, and which are more to be depended upon, I have not given any special instructions as to the use of the above. The Gra.s.s Hopper and Caterpillar are tiresome baits to fish with, and more a matter of fancy than utility; the Breccan Clock found amongst fern, fished like the May-fly is the best of the lot, and at times kills pretty well. Having made no allusion in my work to Lake or Pond Fishing, I may now observe, that four flies upon a stretcher, one yard apart from each other, are sufficient for Ponds. On Lakes, fishing from a boat, you may have six or eight, or even more flies upon a stretcher. In Lake and Pond fishing, the Palmers and large winged flies are the best, particularly when there is a good curl upon the water; but when there is no wind stirring, the small hackle or very small winged flies will, as regards Ponds, be frequently found to kill much better than larger flies, particularly in mornings and evenings during Summer. As fly fishing and trolling are the only reliable angling means and devices for taking Trout in Lakes and Ponds, I have nothing further to add, than that a good rod and sound tackle are essential requisites.

FINIS.