FLASH FICTION CONTEST #6

I am Raghav Goel, an international detective, but I am not like Encyclopedia Brown! He does his detective work in a suburb, but I work around the world.

I got a call from NPA ( National Penguin Agency) they protect penguins from harm. They said that they had a very urgent case that all the penguins were gone from Antarctica and they do not know what happened at all. They said that they were doing a news broadcast and suddenly after they turned around for one second every penguins was gone.

“Ok I will be on my way there” said Raghav.

I flew to Antarctica on the NPA’s account, and saw that there are no penguins as they said.

I went to one of the village’s and knocked on one of the doors a man came and asked me if my name was Raghav so I said yes because that is who I am, but I was a bit shocked he knew.  I asked if he knew when and why the penguins got stolen. He said there was a gigantic roaring sound like a 777 jet was swooping in, and suddenly they all disappeared.

“Thanks for the info” I said.

“No Problem”

I looked at the snowy ground in despair. I was clueless, and this may be the first case I failed to solve. Suddenly I saw something, a piece of a black robe or something like that. My first clue! Now I am somewhere. I looked and saw absolutely nothing there but a ticket. On the ticket it said magic show, and under the time it said 5:30. I checked the Time and it was 5:20 so I had 10 minutes. 10 minutes later it was crowded with people who wanted to see, and the magician, who looked oddly familiar did a trick where he promised to bring the penguins back. There was a loud rumble and stage popped up.

1,2,3 abra kadabra and the penguins were not back and nothing happened. The audience booed and left him standing there. I went up to the magician and asked him what happened and it turned out that the trick was supposed to put a projected image but the cold made it fail. I looked behind the screen and saw a black cloth again. I went to the NPA and asked to see the camera footage and saw a quick picture of a figure in black with magician’s robes. I went to the magician and called the police. The magician was guilty because he knew my name so he was expecting me, he had the torn robes which were found to be torn on the left side,the angle I couldn’t see, and he got caught by camera. The question is where is the penguins. The police asked him to confess and he said they were all in an underground tunnel that he built a few months before as a revenge plan because a penguin broke his mug. 

Another case solved by Raghav.