Mole

[Venem 615]

Mole

 

We had been prepared. We had already received an anonymous call regarding the burglaries and were on the lookout. Finally, we got some credible information.

“Robinson Manor, sir. The blue diamonds that Mr. Robinson bought last year,” reported Assistant Junior Detective Carl Smith.

“Time?” asked Special Agent-in-Charge Mike Holly, our boss.

“Mostly midnight, sir. But surely on the twenty-fifth.”

“Positive?”

“Absolutely, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

Then the boss turned to me.

“Agent Cattermole, check that intel.”

“Sure, sir," I replied coolly.

 

I soon found out that Smith had got the correct information.

“A mole amongst them, sir,” I said to my boss.

“Indeed. Nice to have found a mole in their burglary club,” said the boss, chuckling to himself.

I gave a small grin, and the boss seemed satisfied.

“Good work, Cattermole. You’re in charge of security of Robinson Manor,” said the boss, and dismissed me.

*

“Good evening, Mr. Robinson! We shall be patrolling the periphery of your estate today as well. No need to fret. Only the best agents have made it to this security team,” I said to Mr. Robinson on the third and (hopefully) the final day of our mission. It was the twenty-fourth. The burglars were due any time soon. We couldn’t take risks and had intensified the security a day in advance.

“Oh, of course I won’t fret, Agent Cattermole! After all, you are here!” laughed Mr. Robinson, rather nervously, showing every sign of distress.

"Haha, you flatter me, Mr. Robinson. Did Mr. Holly say something to you about my achievements?”

But Mr. Robinson wasn’t listening.

“Agent Cattermole, I trust you completely," said Mr. Robinson gravely. "Mike Holly is my childhood friend, and if he sent you, you must be excellent. So in case anything bad happens, I want you to keep the blue diamonds in your custody. Here’s the passcode to my vault-" 

“Oh no. Absolutely not. Mr. Robinson, that passcode must never be revealed. I won’t need the passcode at all. We’ll never get to that stage,” I said firmly.

*

At eleven that night, I was prowling in the second-floor corridor. I swiftly went in the direction of the vault.

“Who- who’s that?" came a squeaky voice.

I nearly laughed at Mr. Robinson’s attempt at being brave.

“It is I, Special Agent Cattermole, Mr. Robinson,” I replied in a clear voice.

“Oh- oh, th- thank God,” he stammered.

“You are required to attend a call from Special Agent-in-charge Holly,” I told Mr. Robinson. “Kent, escort Mr. Robinson to the communication room,” I told the agent guarding the vault. “I’ll take over now.”

Assistant Agent Kent looked a bit confused, but complied when I gave him a reassuring look. “That’s the Concert Hall for you, sir,” he said soothingly to Mr. Robinson, and away they went. I smiled.

Mr. Robinson was relieved; he didn’t have to go all the way down to the Concert Hall alone. What if the burglars were waiting to pounce on him?

*

The engine of my electric car purred to life.

“All of them?” asked Jerry Joker.

“Yes boss, all seven of them,” I replied, as I swiftly drove away from Robinson Manor. The black private jet was waiting for me, my boss, and of course, the blue diamonds.

*

“You beast, you liar, you- you absolute rat-" shouted Jerry, for he was very enraged and had lost all sense. I merely laughed at “you rat”. Jerry was famous in the Underworld for the most piercing insults. Yet he was now a broken man, for his most trusted aide had just betrayed him. He struggled to free himself from the policemen.

“I’m surprised you didn’t smell a rat, Jerry, when you boarded the jet. Don’t you remember me telling you that the jet we were supposed to board was called ‘Aurora’?" I said to my ‘boss’.

At this, Jerry’s eyes opened wide. “The name on that black jet was Aurara… oh no, aaaaargh, I’ll never forgive myself!” he shouted, slowly being swallowed by disgust and despair.

Edited October 1, 2020 by SHREYA88
Replaced full stops with commas in certain dialogues. Thanks Tankicola!

[Person_Random 4,991]

Approved.

Awesome first work! I'm thoroughly impressed with the quality of this work - the plot was very well developed in this short story. There could have been room more a tad more description as you had quite a lot of dialogue, which I hope to see in the future. Other than that, great piece and welcome to the AWS!

Edits: removed some commas, changed "pass-code" to "passcode"

[Lose 881]

Absolutely great read, and welcome to the AWS! I hope you write more soon, as you seem to have a lot of skill and potential.

[Venem 615]

8 hours ago, Person_Random said:

Approved.

Awesome first work! I'm thoroughly impressed with the quality of this work - the plot was very well developed in this short story. There could have been room more a tad more description as you had quite a lot of dialogue, which I hope to see in the future. Other than that, great piece and welcome to the AWS!

Edits: removed some commas, changed "pass-code" to "passcode"

You have been thanked. XD

Thanks a lot, Random! I'm used to using the word "password" more than "passcode" (I'm an Android user, and I believe "passcode" is used in iOS), and hence had put that hyphen.  But thanks for the correction!

Ah yes, I do feel that the story could've been more descriptive... it would've been easier to understand. But, I also wanted to make the reader think! So I'll have to find the right balance, I guess!

The commas after the dialogues were underlined in blue on MS Word (lol), indicating a grammatical error, but somehow it was fixed in my mind that a comma must be put after a dialogue... Thanks again!

7 hours ago, At_Shin said:

So wait, did Cattermole take off with the diamonds or did he use them to frame his crime boss? 

Nice story! It felt a bit thrilling like that story - "Evan learns O level German". 

Jerry got caught, thanks to Cattermole. That's all I'm going to say.  

6 hours ago, Lose said:

Absolutely great read, and welcome to the AWS! I hope you write more soon, as you seem to have a lot of skill and potential.

Truly honored, Master Lose!

[tankicola 111]

 

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that you can't end speech with a full stop if you say who was saying the speech. 

E.g: you can't write "Positive, sir." I said.  

But other than that, this is a very enjoyable read!

Edited July 26, 2020 by tankicola

[Venem 615]

11 minutes ago, tankicola said:

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that you can't end speech with a full stop if you say who was saying the speech. 

E.g: you can't write "Positive, sir." I said.  

I'm really not sure about the rule... I tried searching the internet, but it's all too confusing!

There are, of course, ways to restructure the sentence to avoid such a situation, but I really don't want to edit this story further! (It was originally around 390 words, then I made plenty of edits & additions and brought it up to around 620 words... that involved changing the plot a bit)

17 minutes ago, tankicola said:

But other than that, this is a very enjoyable read!

Thank you very much! 

 

[Gauss-Hornet 489]

Ah, the good old 6.022×10²³ entities

On a more serious note, nicely written piece!

[E_polypterus 2,374]

Great piece of writing: ) was very interesting 

[Venerable 2,970]

On 7/26/2020 at 3:11 PM, tankicola said:

 

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that you can't end speech with a full stop if you say who was saying the speech. 

E.g: you can't write "Positive, sir." I said.  

Yo.

I read quite a few books afterwards, and realised that authors never put full stops at the end of the dialogue within the quotation marks, if the sentence is continued after the dialogue.

So you're right, the full stops shouldn't be there. (Other punctuation marks within quotation marks are not an issue)...

I'll edit it sometime later when I log in on SHREYA88. I don't wanna trouble the Reporters...

I'm the owner of both SHREYA88 and Venerable, by the way. I wish to greatly limit the usage of SHREYA88 on the Forum coz it's not that great a nickname imo... xD Venerable's a lot better...

Edited September 29, 2020 by Venerable

[E_polypterus 2,374]

On September 28, 2020 at 10:18 PM, Venerable said:

I'm the owner of both SHREYA88 and Venerable, by the way. I wish to greatly limit the usage of SHREYA88 on the Forum coz it's not that great a nickname imo... xD

Tbh I'm quite used to "SHREYA88". lol