Rain-whetted gusts wooshed through the alleyway behind Trifle City Bank, bringing with them a chill as chilly as Jack Frost astride a very nippy scooter. Bracing himself against such a bone-chilling gust, Detective Pilchard hugged his flapping trench coat ever-more tightly around himself; arm tiring, he switched crumpet-flashlight duties to the other arm, thrusting the illuminating device (and said other arm) upwards toward the twilight heavens in a manner akin to a knight hoisting Excalibur. (Were Excalibur in the shape of a flashlight; a flashlight with a crumpet stuck on the end.)
The detective shivered, cursed under his breath, “Grrr. What's taking him so long? Has my ally not seen this here crumpet-beacon I be projecting into the sky?” Tardiness no excuse, for the umpteenth time the detective checked his watch; only then did he realise that he'd forgotten to bring it. “Ah, so that's the reason for the draft up my wrist...” he said regrettably. Just in case anyone might be watching however, the self-conscious yet ingenious detective continued to stare intently at his naked wrist for several minutes; to bolster the charade he pressed the non-existent timepiece to his ear/eye/other ear/eye for a closer make-believe inspection; it was then that a voice brimming with yeasty gusto rose from behind a stack of empty crates at the rear of the alleyway.
“Time waits for no man, my dear detective, declared the voice with much chuckle. “And no man waits for no time, no?”
There fell an awkward pause. The detective had no idea what that last sentence meant; neither it seemed did the yeasty voice; in a cautious whisper it repeated the line several times to itself as though examining it for coherence. After several minutes it found not a trace.
“Well, you took your time – bwah!” Detective Pilchard barked loudly, his “bwah” on account of his bark having caused himself to jump-scare into the air. “I've been waiting here half the night,” he said upon landing, tucking his crumpet-flashlight into his coat pocket; he missed; much like the detective, said flashlight landed on the ground with a crash. He picked himself up. “What took you so long, anyway?”
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“My time-related retardation cannot be helped, me dear detective,” the voice now revealed as Crumpet-Hands Man said, stepping from the darkness – in the process tripping over the flashlight and blast!ing a curse unsuitable for print. “As you well know, detective,” he said, picking himself up, “when it comes to the vanquishing of evil there is never a moment's rest, and I for one will not rest until every filthy scourge has been wiped clean from this city! Hence the reason for my detainment.”
Kinda... Before revealing himself to the wonky eyes/ears of the awaiting detective in Need, and having vanquished Preface via baby bus, our hero had spent the better part of the night squatting unseen at the end of this alleyway trying to think-up a cinematic entrance befitting of his reputation. Various opening lines had been considered: A Fozzie Bear-style “Hiya!”; a ghostly “Boo!”; a “Good golly gosh I dare say what the Dickens?” better suited to a Jeeves and Wooster novel. Then there was the ambitious idea of back-flipping from the rooftops and landing cross-legged before the detective with a grand “Sup!” Fortunately this idea had been scrapped early on due to a hero's onesie having a tendency to rip in all the wrong places. Alas...
Anyway. “Well now that you are here,” the detective said, all the while continuing to check his watch, the occasional wrist shake and “tick tick tick” thrown in for good measure, “I could do with your help getting inside this here bank – if you think you are up to it? Tick.”
“Up to it? Pah!” the voice/hero did laugh, for some reason addressing the detective as Pah. “When it comes to the honour of providing assistance, Crumpet-Hands Man will never shirk a friend in–!”
At this inopportune moment a belligerent alley cat leapt from a crumpled dustbin and squirted mace in our hero's eyes. “That's for nearly running me over with you bug-splattered car or something!” it meowed, swung a crutch, before limping off into the night. “What the good golly gosh?” our innocent hero with the pink eyes wept. “Cats? Cars? What did I crumpety do? Detective?” our hero asked helplessly, blindly. “Can you enlighten me as to what just happened?”
Ears blushing with guilt (but mace free!) Detective Pilchard shook his head and checked his wrist again (not at the same time.) “Well now...” he gave a guilty ahem, “I guess we should insert ourselves into the bank, post-mace – I mean post-haste!” he said sheepishly, adding “tick-tick meow or something.”
