Sherlock Sam and the Comic Book Caper in New York

by A. J. Low

  “Would you like to unmask her?” the Dark Defender asked, voice distorter in place.

  “I don’t really need to, do I, Doctor?” I asked the impostor.

  “I really dislike children,” she said.

  The Dark Defender pulled off the impostor’s mask, and just as I had deduced, Dr Sheila Loh was revealed.

  “Your inspector is on her way with the NYPD,” the Dark Defender said, “so I’ll take my leave now. If it’s not too much trouble, perhaps you can help me clear my good name?”

  “No trouble at all,” I said.

  “Could-I-trouble-you-for-an-autograph?” Watson asked.

  “Maybe during our next team-up, Watson,” the Dark Defender said. “Until we meet again, Sherlock Sam. I’ll be keeping an eye on you.” She jumped on the Hover Car and through the hole in the ceiling she had just made.

  A few seconds later, a group of police officers ran down the staircase.

  “Everybody, freeze!” one of the officers shouted in a suspiciously French accent. “I am here to protect and serve. Also, to eat donuts!” Inspector Lestrade was dressed up as a New York City police commissioner (the highest rank in the New York City police department), earning her glares from every police officer in the place. I’m sure the remark about the donuts didn’t help.

  They checked the rest of the basement for more people, then started tagging things with evidence markers.

  The inspector came around to the tied up Dr Loh. “This is the impostor?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “How did you know it was Dr Loh, son?” Dad asked.

  “She was clearly not happy at all in her new job, even complaining about her long commute from Queens, and resented the Dark Defender and Dr Yeun both; one for exposing her and the other for taking a creation she thought was hers.”

  “It is mine!” Dr Loh snarled. “I did all the important research! That brat Julie stole my research and took it to that hack Yeun after that superhero stuck her nose in my business!”

  “And when Julie told her that Dr Yeun would be unveiling the Hover Car at the San Diego Comic-Con, she thought she could get back at everybody by stealing the car,” I continued. “Embarrassing Dr Yeun in front of the world, causing her to lose her investors, and making the world think the Dark Defender had turned evil.”

  “But nothing ever appeared in the news,” Dr Loh said. “Everyone thought I had been part of the unveiling!”

  “Which is why you were down here dressed as the Dark Defender again,” I said. “Once we realised there were likely two Dark Defenders running around, the sighting in Long Island City, Queens, was no longer a mistake. But the place where you, the false Dark Defender, might hide, because it is where you lived. And today, you were planning on making sure everyone knew the Hover Car had been stolen by the Dark Defender.”

  “And I would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for all you meddling superheroes!” Dr Loh snapped.

  “That’s because Sherlock is Singapore’s Greatest Kid Detective!” Jimmy shouted.

  “Only-when-he-is-not-distracted-by-giant-sandwiches,” Watson said.

  Dr Yeun was very happy to get her Hover Car back, even if it had been beaten up a little by debris during what we had started calling the Dark Defender Double Duel. Julie and Dr Loughlin were also quite happy, and had immediately started making the upgrades they had been discussing. They all seemed to get along better when they had something to work on together.

  Inspector Lestrade was honoured by the New York City Police Department for her help in catching a dangerous criminal. They were vague about the criminal and the crime as Dr Yeun had requested the details kept under wraps. Inspector Lestrade appeared in her police commissioner costume at the press conference where the real police commissioner was awarding her. That made the whole situation rather awkward.

  We had spent another week in New York, doing all the things we had wanted to. We caught a night movie at the large outdoor screen at Bryant Park, visited the Cloisters museum all the way uptown and shopped at the Strand, the best bookstore in New York. Mom and Dad found so many inexpensive books there, we had to ship four cartons home (which ended up wiping out the savings). We did plenty of other stuff too, but we didn’t see the Dark Defender again that trip, even on the night I had convinced everybody else to have a stakeout at Washington Square Park, just in case she showed up again. We didn’t see her, but we did see a local university band do an amazing cover of Heart’s “Crazy On You”, one of Dad’s favourite songs.

  When we got to back to Singapore, I decided to do an Internet search for all the news stories about me and the Supper Club. What Dr Yeun had showed us in her office had only been a fraction of what was out there. I really had no idea our cases had been reported around the region, let alone the world. And now there were new stories featuring us, as Inspector Lestrade had said we had actually solved the crime during the press conference, making everything even more awkward.

  I also did a search on the Dark Defender, and saw that she was being spotted again, and saving people. I was glad. She was a force for good, and the world could always use more forces for good. I was pretty sure I had figured out her true identity, but I would never tell anyone. Her secret was safe with me.

  We originally wrote this story in 2013 for one of the winners of the Sherlock Sam Treasure Hunt that was held during the Singapore Writers Festival 2013. The winner’s name is Ian Tang, and he stars in this short story. He loves to eat dan dan rice with fried egg and his favourite kopitiam is right across the street from Punggol Park. We used both of these facts to write this mystery especially for him. The story first appeared in a different form on our website at sherlocksam. wordpress.com. It now contains an image by the amazing artist Drewscape. This story takes place some time before the Fiendish Mastermind trilogy.

  “Just-admit-that-you-ate-it,” Watson said.

  “I didn’t!” I replied.

  We were at a kopitiam across the street from Punggol Park with our new friend Ian, a nine year-old boy who lived at Upper Serangoon Road. We had been eating our lunch, and when no one was looking, the fried egg from Ian’s dan dan rice went missing! The Supper Club was blaming me for taking it, but I had been happily eating my own food.

  “Samuel, your face is all greasy,” Eliza said, wrinkling her nose. “You’re clearly not telling the truth.”

  “That’s from my chicken wing!” I said. “And it’s not that greasy,” I added, as I wiped my face.

  “Sam, are you sure?” Wendy asked, wiping her own face just in case. “Sometimes you eat something and later you don’t remember you ate it.”

  “That only happened once!” I said.

  Wendy lifted an eyebrow.

  “Okay, maybe more than once.”

  “My-memory-banks-say-this-has-happened-a-total-of-389-times,” Watson said. “And-this-has-only-been-in-the-past-few-months-since-you-built-me. If-we-multiply-that-by-the-number-of-four-month-intervals-before-you-built-me—”

  “All right, all right! We get the picture,” I said.

  “Maybe it fell down?” Jimmy asked, looking underneath the table. “I drop things all the time, and then I can’t find them.”

  “In your hurry to eat your food, perhaps you didn’t realise the dan dan rice was Ian’s?” Nazhar said, poking at his mee rebus with his fork. “Then you didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “For the last time, I didn’t eat the egg!”

  “I believe you,” Ian said.

  Eliza scoffed.

  “If Sherlock says he didn’t eat my egg, then he didn’t eat my egg,” Ian insisted.

  “Thanks, Ian, but the question remains, who did?” I asked.

  I looked at all of the members of the Supper Club in turn, but quickly ruled them out as suspects. I believed they wouldn’t do such a thing, even if they apparently didn’t think the same of me.

  “Look!” Ian shouted. “Over here!”

  I rushed over to his side of the table and noticed some ri
ce grains.

  “Ian, since you’re new to the detective business,” I said, “let me tell you what that is—”

  “It’s a clue,” Ian said. “I know what clues are, Sherlock. I read a lot of Geronimo Stilton.”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  “We should follow it!” Jimmy said.

  “Why? It’ll just lead back to Sherlock’s mouth,” Eliza said. “Plus, it’s very hot out. I would like to move as little as possible.”

  “Eliza, Sherlock didn’t take my egg,” Ian said.

  “Okay, how about this?” I said. “If you still believe I ate the egg, then you can sit here. If you don’t, then you can join Ian and me hunt down the true culprit.”

  Almost everybody got up, leaving only Eliza seated.

  She sighed. “Fine, you didn’t take the stupid egg,” she said, getting up. “But it’s still really hot.”

  Ian took the lead and followed the rice grain trail. It went out of the kopitiam and across the street. Nazhar waited while the rest of us crossed at the nearby zebra crossing. When we got to the other side, Ian picked up the trail again. He was directly opposite Nazhar. We waited for Nazhar to cross the street safely as well, then continued following the trail into Punggol Park.

  Once we got to the really grassy areas, it got harder to follow the trail. And then we lost it completely.

  “The trail stops here,” Jimmy said. “Did the grass eat the egg?”

  “Doubtful, Jimmy,” I said. “There are only 13 kinds of carnivorous plants native to Singapore, and two of them are extinct. The plants still in existence are mostly bladderworts and tropical pitcher plants, neither of which are very interested in eggs. Also, they are stationary.”

  “Like pencils and rulers?” Jimmy asked.

  “No, Jimmy, he means they stay in place,” Wendy explained.

  “Found a rice grain!” Ian shouted.

  Sure enough, he had picked up the trail again. We followed it all the way to the pond in the middle of Punggol Park, where it suddenly disappeared near the edge, in an area surrounded by trees.

  “Did we lose it again?” Nazhar asked.

  “Maybe a fishy took it?” Jimmy asked.

  “Or a frog, which makes a lot more sense,” Eliza said.

  “No, a frog wouldn’t have been able to get to the kopitiam and back so fast,” I said.

  “Maybe a squirrel?” Wendy asked. “Maybe it went up one of these trees instead of into the pond?”

  “Anything walking would likely have been run over while crossing the street,” Ian said.

  “Unless it was a human,” Nazhar said. “A human would use the zebra crossing.”

  “No,” I said. “Whatever took the egg didn’t use the zebra crossing, or else it would have left a rice trail leading us to it, and directly away from it.”

  “What if the human jaywalked?” Eliza asked.

  “Mama says that’s dangerous,” Jimmy said.

  “Of course it is, but people still do it,” Nazhar said.

  Ian suddenly looked up. “I don’t think it was a human.” Then he pointed at a branch. “There.”

  I looked where he was pointing and saw a bird’s nest.

  “Watson,” I said, “go take a look up there, but try not to disturb the bird.”

  Watson grumbled but extended his legs and peered into the nest. Then he came back down.

  “There-are-three-baby-birds-eating-a-fried-egg,” Watson said.

  “Of course!” I shouted. “A bird is the only animal that would be both fast enough to grab the egg without our noticing and get across the street without getting hit by a car! Ian, you’re a genius!”

  “Does this mean Ian is now Singapore’s Greatest Kid Detective?” Jimmy asked.

  “For today he is,” I said.

  “Until-Sherlock’s-own-food-goes-missing-anyway,” Watson said.

  GLOSSARY

  826 National—A non-profit organisation that helps children across the US improve their creative writing skills. They have many locations, each with its own quirky frontage, like the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Store in New York, The Wicker Park Secret Agent Supply Co. in Chicago, The Liberty Street Robot Supply and Repair in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and The Echo Park Time Travel Mart in Los Angeles, among others.

  Bagels—A type of bread originally from Poland. Bagels are made from yeasted wheat dough and shaped into rings by hand. These are first boiled then baked. The word “bagel” comes from the Yiddish “beygl”. Bagels can be eaten with cream cheese.

  Baker Street Irregulars—The original Baker Street Irregulars were a group of street children that Sherlock Holmes used as intelligence agents to discover clues. In more recent adaptations, the Irregulars have come to mean any acquaintance of Sherlock Holmes’ whose particular area of expertise helps him solve a case. Sherlock Sam’s Irregulars are more like the modern interpretation than the original.

  Boroughs of New York—What we normally term “New York City” actually encompasses five boroughs (large pieces of land that contain many neighbourhoods and towns): the island of Manhattan in the center, the Bronx in the north, Queens and Brooklyn to the east and Staten Island to the south.

  CGI—Acronym for “computer generated images”. CGI is used in many films to portray things that would otherwise be too expensive, too unrealistic, or simply impossible to do. For example, superhero battles in the middle of New York, spaceships in flight, and some aliens, monsters and robots.

  Chope—A Singaporean term meaning to hold or reserve a place.

  Cosplay—Short for ‘costume play’, cosplay is when people dress up as their favourite pop culture characters with often elaborate costumes and accessories. Cosplay has become a fixture in pop culture conventions around the world.

  D20—A 20-sided die used in many pen-and-paper roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons, Cyberpunk and Deadlands.

  GMT—Acronym for “Greenwich Mean Time”. This is the time at which the sun is at its highest point over the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, or 0° longitude (give or take a few nanoseconds). Time zones are counted from GMT; for example, Singapore’s time zone is GMT +8 (eight hours ahead of GMT) and New York’s time zone is GMT -5 (five hours behind GMT).

  Hantu—A Malay word meaning “ghost”.

  The High Line—A set of old elevated railroad tracks that have been converted into a public park with historical markers, art installations and public gardens. The park runs from Gansevoort Street in the West Village in the south, to 34th Street and 11th Avenue, near the Jacob K. Javitz Convention Center, in the north.

  Interpol—Interpol is the short form of the International Criminal Police Organisation and was formed to facilitate international police cooperation. Singapore has been an official member of Interpol since 1 October 1968.

  John Halson—This is the second mention of fictional author John Halson in the Sherlock Samiverse. He is based on a real-life author and close friend of A.J Low, Hal Johnson. Hal is based in New York and is the author of Immortal Lycanthropes and Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods.

  Mantoo—A steamed Afghani dumpling filled with beef, onion and spices, and topped with yogurt and meat sauce.

  Midtown Comics—The largest comic book store in New York (and possibly the entire US) that Adan used to work for. There are now three locations there, and they ship orders around the world.

  NASA—Acronym for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Responsible for the United States’ entire space program since 1958, NASA is responsible for the Apollo 11 moon landings, the Voyager 1 probe (which is the first manmade object to enter interstellar space) and the Mars Pathfinder and Curiosity rovers.

  New York Public Library—The main branch of the New York Public Library, which itself is known as the New York Public Library, is located on Fifth Avenue next to Bryant Park. It’s a non-lending library where you can read books in the famous Rose Reading Room. There’s also the Map Room with a bunch of really old and cool maps!

  New York U
niversity—A private and prestigious American university, considered one of the best in the world. It has campuses internationally, including Abu Dhabi, Shanghai, Buenos Aires, and London. There used to be a campus in Singapore until recently.

  Quantum computing—The study of theoretical computation systems using quantum physics.

  Quantum pairs—Two subatomic particles that have been paired so that when one particle is changed, the other makes the same change instantaneously, no matter how far away it may be (this is called quantum entanglement). Quantum pairs may hold the secret to science fiction concepts like faster-than-light travel and teleportation.

  Real-Life Superheroes—The Dark Defender is a real-life super hero (or RLSH) that we made up, but there are actually RLSHs all over the world who help their communities! Some of the better known heroes include Entomo the Insect-Man in Italy, Lion Heart in Liberia, and Phoenix Jones in the US. Readers should note that you do not have to be physically strong to be a RLSH as there are many different ways of helping people.

  San Diego Comic-Con and Hall H—The largest pop-culture convention in the world, the San Diego Comic-Con boasts 130,000 visitors a year and features appearances by famous people in the comic book, toy, TV, video game and film industries. Hall H typically features panels with movie and TV stars, and is therefore the hardest place to get into.

  Soft robotics—A new field where all of the components in the robot are soft and flexible. These approaches are particularly good for bio-inspired robots, which mimic or draw from nature.

  Stunt glass—A type of glass made out of sugar or synthetic resins used in movies, also called breakaway glass. It can still be sharp, but it’s not usually strong enough to hurt the actors and stuntmen using it.