The case of the Missing Fountain-Pen

It wasn’t the first time I have had helped someone retrieving a stolen item.

Navodya High School is a treacherous place. If you want to survive here, you have to go back to the basic primal instincts of an animal. Stealing here can be roughly translated to normal. Every here and then, something, belonging to someone goes missing—from hostels, classrooms, laboratories, mess-halls, you name it. Someone liked your belonging; it can go missing within a blink of an eye. You have had a fight with someone, you are sure to lose something precious of yours.

But fear not. I, Jai Kumar, 9^th standard, Roll number–29, Dorm-1, Cabin-5 on the left, lower bed, Neelgiri House, is always available at your service.

And my expertise is—retrieving the loot. There hasn’t been a case till now, I hadn’t cracked. Usually, nowadays, I do this stuff for a fee. Half the value of the missing item, but sometimes, I do stuff pro-bono or for free too. You see, sometimes, payment in kind is worth more than the payment in cash.

This was one such time. My client, Yash a.k.a. Bala was my best friend.

So yes, it was one very fine morning on Wednesday. We had just come from the morning physical training exercise (P.T.), which, if you ask me, is the cruelest thing to do to a kid. They think, the ‘they’ being teachers, morning exercise is good for the health. My question is, why don’t they come too?

Anyway, we were back in our dormitory and I was about to make my way to the common bathroom for a quick wash when I saw Bala furiously searching for something in his dented, rusty steel suitcase—one of the mandatory item, asked to bring with us upon joining the school in the sixth standard.

“What happened?” I asked.

He looked at me. His eyes welling. Without saying anything, he leaped onto his school bag, which was on the concrete shelf adjoining his bed, and shuffled inside.

“Lost something?”

He glanced back at me. “Someone…,” he broke into tears, “Someone stole my Fountain-pen.”

I knew what pen he was referring to. It was an old styled Chinese Fountain-Pen, the kind which has only the tip of its nib visible. The last memory of his late father. My face hardened with disgust. If there was one thing, I couldn’t stand, it was an injustice. And this wasn’t just injustice, it was cruel.

I held Bala by his shoulders. “Don’t worry, mate. I’ll find him.”

Though I never offered my services without being asked but this time, there had to be an exception.

“But I don’t have any money,” Bala said glumly.  

“Oh! Come on,” I hugged him. “Now, ahmm… wait for a sec.,” I leaped back to my cabin, got out my diary from my school bag, and was back in Bala’s cabin a heartbeat later.

I have had invested exclusively in this product as it has a leather cover with a metal combination lock and an inbuilt pocket for a pen. A lot of classified information was in there, hence, the security measures. I put in the combination, and the lock opened with a click.

“Okay,” I got out the shiny silver ballpoint pen from its pocket and clicked its top. “Tell me more about your Fountain-pen.”

“It was Chinese,” Bala said.

“I know that already. What color it was?”

“Cap was golden. The body was black.”

I noted it down.

“Any markings of a special kind? Like engravings or name or something.”

He shook his head. “I…I don’t remember.”

“Brand?”

He shook his head again.

“Last seen?”

“I finished my English homework and secured it in my trunk.”

Something fluttered in my chest when he said English. Grizzly, our English teacher was always onto me. It was said, speaking or even thinking about his name brings bad luck. But I shook the terrible thought aside.

“Where was your suitcase the last night?”

“Under my bed.”

“Did you hear anything? Any noise?”

If someone had opened his trunk and stole his pen, he must have pulled it out. Otherwise, it was impossible to open the lid.

“No.”  

I kneeled down to take a closer look at the crime scene. “Did you found it like that?” I pointed to the mess of clothes and notebooks that were packed inside. Not to forget a geometry box and a packet of Oreo biscuits.

“No,” he said. “I was searching. Otherwise, it was just as I left it the last night.”

I nodded. “Is anything else missing?”

“No.”

“Was it locked when you first looked at it in the morning?” I pointed to the lock that sat beside his trunk.

“Yes.”

“Key?”

He hesitated a bit but finally whispered. “I kept it in my school bag. In-between one of my books.”

I was amazed. By the sheer imagination of this kid here—the place, he found to hide his key. But even that, did not prevent him from losing his pen. “Was it misplaced? The key, I mean. You put it somewhere else and found it somewhere else.”

“No. I found it just where I kept it last night.”

“Do you always keep your keys in between your books?”

“No.”

“Any duplicate key.”

He shook his head sideways.

“When did you find out the pen is missing?”

“Just now.” 

“And when did you go to sleep last night?”

“Ten-thirty.”

I noted everything down.

From what I could tell, the theft happened in-between five-thirty in the morning to six-thirty. The P.T. time, while everyone was in the play-ground, sweating on our coach’s commands, someone got his hands dirty.

Usually, a burglary in Navodya only happens because, first, if someone is in dire need of having something and second if someone wanted revenge. And as far as I knew Bala, he had fights with every single one of our dormitory mates. But this wasn’t a revenge thieving, I could say, as Bala did not place his keys in one place. And this heist was very neat and clean. Someone just needed a Fountain-pen and struck an easy target. Whoever the felon was, he belonged to the Neelgiri, and most likely, our own Dorm as he knew what he was looking for. He knew where Bala put the key last night.

I tapped Bala’s shoulders reassuring and made my way to the upper floor. Dorm-3. The den of butchers of Neelgiri House. The dorm housed the whole of the twelfth standard kids. And a couple of tenth class kids too. Only a Navodyan could know what it is to step in the dorm of seniors. You could be bullied, a senior could ask you to mop the floor, wash his cloth, and do his homework, anything.

I gulped and entered.

In the first cabin on the right, a senior was fast asleep. A usual routine, some kids followed after coming back from morning P.T. In the second cabin on left, another senior was writing his homework. He glanced at me momentarily and went back to his work.

I breathed in, straightened my chest, and made my way straight to the cupboard alley in the last, cleverly glancing into the fourth cabin at left. It belonged to Sachin Sharma, our house captain, and was empty for the moment. He had gone to have a bath; I deduced looking at the neatly pressed uniform that he had left on his bed.

I reached out to the shelf, P.T. attendance register. Each house captain had to maintain a couple of registers. In Navodya, attendance is taken every here and then. In the morning P.T., in the morning assembly, in the game period, and lastly, at night in the hostel.

All present for the morning P.T. I shut down the register and replaced it.  

“What are you doing here?” A voice sent a chill down my spine.

I turned. Thank heavens, it was not Sachin but another senior, Rahul. He occupied the cabin in front of Sachin’s.

I put on a most innocent smile. “Sachin sir asked me to bring this,” I waved at the notebook register on the shelf. “He forgot it in the playground.”

He nodded and turned. 

I exited the room as quickly as possible, hoping he won’t have a conversation about it with Sachin or I was in great trouble.  

I took a sigh of relief only after I reached my cabin.

Also, This pen-thief was cunning beyond measure. But he couldn’t hide from me for long, I smiled. There was a saying, even if you could steal yourself somehow, Jai Kumar can track you down and retrieve yourself from you. But right then, I was getting late. Only five minutes were left for the breakfast siren to buzz. Our house was second in the queue in the breakfast timetable that week. 

***

After classes and lunch, I made a comprehensive list of all the kids in my dorm. Apart from me and Bala, there were eight other kids. And all of them were suspects.

But three kids, Surhit, Tenth standard, from the first cabin, Sandeep and Raman, both from the eighth standard, occupying the second and third cabin, ranked top in my list. It was rational. All three of them had a direct line of vision to Bala’s cabin as their cabin was in the opposite lane as the dorms in navodya had an open layout. No shield. No privacy of any kind. They could see what he was doing. Where he had put his pen, where he had placed the key. And more so, whenever something goes missing from home, the first suspects are family members.

In the game period, after attendance, I slipped into the academic complex and reached out to the first floor. The classrooms for the twelfth and tenth were situated in the right-wing together as both were board classes. The left-wing occupied eleventh and ninth.

I turned to the right-wing and approached the last classroom. Tenth-B. I reached out to the first bench in the middle row. My operative, code name: Ponds, sat there.

I wrote some instructions on a piece of paper, attached a crisp ten rupees note, folded it neatly, and then crushed it in my palm before placing it in the open storage drawer of the desk. Next, I got out a whiteboard marker and made an ‘X’ on the seat.

I followed the same procedure in class eighth’s classroom with my operative, Code name: Chugli.

Now all I had to do was waiting.

Chugli’s reply came in the next morning. There was a ‘Y’ etched on my desk in my classroom when I got back from the morning assembly. I peeked into the storage drawer and got out the crushed piece of paper. Sadly, Both, Sandeep and Raman were clean. There was nothing that could implicate them in the theft.

Ponds replied in the evening. I found her note in my desk's drawer in the first prep-class after lunch. 

Apparently, Grizzly taught English to tenth-B too. And he had made it mandatory for every student to use a Fountain-pen. He had always said. And luckily, the day before theft, he had thrashed Surhit for good in the class. For not having a Fountain-pen. As per my operative, his previous pen’s nib broke. But the last day, he had a Fountain-pen.

But there was a catch.

It wasn’t the Chinese Fountain-pen he was using.

There was surely a possibility he had bought a new Fountain pen.

I investigated further. The school’s tuck-shop’ manager, hired by the school management, also doubled as out Volleyball coach and has this habit of recording every sale for inventorial purposes. In the game period, he usually remained in the playground, while his ten-year-old ki, Umesh, looked after the shop. And he was on my pay-roll since last year. He was always welcoming to make a quick buck.

I reached out to him. He was as usual busy on his father’s mobile phone watching the latest Tik-Tok videos. “Hi, Umesh.”

He was so lost, my voice made him jump out of his seat.

“Come on, I could have had a heart attack.”

“Come on. You are just ten.,” I smiled. “Anyway,” I added and slipped a ten rupees note across the counter. “I need your help.”

He knew the drill already as he got out the sales register from a drawer and slipped it towards me. I glanced through the entries. Surprisingly, there wasn’t any record of any sale of a Fountain-pen. I nodded at Umesh and left. He went back to the Tik-Tok.

***

Later, after dinner, I sat on my bed rethFountaining the facts again. One thing I was sure, Surhit Bhaiya was the culprit. He had the motive. A very strong one. Still, he had somehow covered his tracks. How? I wondered.

My mind raced hard.

For the morning P.T., kids march from the hostel together. But sometimes kids are left behind. Not uncommon. One could be in the toilet attending nature’s call. And it takes time to assemble house wise in the playground. If Surhit was left, he could join well in time before the attendance. And Surhit must know everything beforehand where the pen and keys were. There was more than enough time for the heist. Also, running is followed after attendance. Five rounds. Which roughly takes fifteen minutes. It’s possible to slip away from the herd of kids without being noticed and be back in the playground in fifteen minutes. After all, Neelgiri house was the closest to the playground complex. I had done it. Plenty of times.

But what did he do with it? I wondered.

He could have sold it to some other kid and bought a new one with the money. Still, that would need a bilateral demand. Why would anyone buy a pen from you if you don’t need one?

That left only one possibility. The worm. He ran a business. And regularly dealt in stolen items too. But we have had an understanding. Whatever he bought from the kids, he shared the record with me every day. There was no record of a Fountain-pen, I checked again the note he sent me.

What else then?

You could exchange it. A pen for a pen. A tiny possibility, still, a detective must keep his mind open in all directions.

But whom can you exchange a stolen pen with?

Not with strangers for sure. They would ask questions. Then who? A friend? A brother? No. That would be easy to track.

And then, my eyes lit up. A cousin perhaps, I mused.  

Surhit had a cousin. Nisha. The younger daughter of his paternal uncle. 6th standard. I had seen him with her before. And Grizzly taught her class as well.

The next day, I had breakfast and slipped to the school complex. Usually, kids went in line, along with fellow hostlers. But I had an important job.

Later, in the first prep, I found a note in my desk’s drawer. My operative, code name: Tidda, had replied.

Nisha was seen working with a Chinese Fountain-pen in Grizzly's class. Golden cap, black body. Also, she told my operative, her brother gave the pen to her and in exchange asked for her pen as he was not able to write properly with his and Grizzly had thrashed him. The poor girl trusted Surhit and happily gave him her pen.

    That nasty kid had even made an innocent child an accomplice in a crime. This, couldn't go unpunished, I clenched my teeth.

   I reached out to another operative of mine, code name: Charmis, in junior girls hostel and gave her some precise instructions.

    Also, that night, I made an excuse for copying social science’s homework from Bala’s notebook and remained in his cabin until the lights went off. Surhit also completed his homework, neatly filled up the blue ink in his Fountain-pen, and placed it in his school bag.

Everything was set.

The plan was already in motion.

I got a little late to the morning P.T. next day. Though, I made it to the ground before attendance.

Once again, I skipped to the school complex early and reached out to the Class 6th-B. And placed a package with the title, your Fountain-pen, inside the storage drawer of Nisha’s desk. I hoped for her to see it before Grizly’s class. I turned to leave but stopped. On second thought, I added, From- ‘Your true brother’, on the package with my pen. Though I took extra care of writing with my left hand.

By the prep, there was a package in my drawer, contents of which Charmis had covertly retrieved from Nisha the previous night.  

   Also, I got news of how Grizzly thrashed Surhit that day, for not having a Fountain-pen. Again.

  Later after dinner, I reached out to Bala’s cabin. he was busy writing science assignments.

    “Hey!”            

    He looked up.

“I think this belongs to you,” I said, extending my hand which held a Chinese Fountain-pen with a golden cap.

Bala jumped on his feet. “Really! I mean, how did you…” his eyes welled.

From the corner of my eyes, I glanced at Surhit who sat on his bed dumbfounded. Slowly, his face turned red, teeth clenched and then he let out a ‘lost in the battle breath’ while I couldn’t help but smile.

***