The midnight adventure

It was the start of the summer holidays and John was looking for something interesting and adventurous to do as he was quite bored with his everyday life. After considering several potential options, he opted for a visit to his grandfather’s farmhouse to enjoy the natural beauty and healthy food abundantly available there. The next day when he informed his parents about his plan, they were overjoyed to know that their son wanted to carry out such a healthy activity. Hence they agreed and made arrangements for his trip. When John arrived at the farmhouse in the evening, his grandparents were extremely happy to see him as they had been missing him a lot. Grandpa helped him take his luggage to his room and advised him to rest a little until dinner time. At the dinner table while they were all eating, John noticed that his grandfather was pretty worried. John asked his grandfather, “What is wrong? Is something bothering you?” Grandfather abruptly answered, “Nothing.” But John knew that there was something seriously wrong. After dinner, everybody went to their rooms to sleep. In the middle of the night, John woke up after hearing some noise. It was coming from the stable. When John went there he saw that his grandfather was standing at the main door of the stable and was looking utterly vexed and restless. He asked his grandfather again “What happened?” He got to learn that somebody had been stealing hens from the farm and today a goat was missing as well, but the surprising fact was that no lock had been broken and there was no window in the stable. So how could a thief enter and steal the animals? John suggested that all the locks of the stable be changed so that even if the thief had duplicate keys, he would not be able to enter the stable again. But, to John’s surprise, grandfather replied that he had already done that several times but all in vain. John decided that he would help grandfather guard the farmhouse at night in order to catch the thief red-handed and make his trip highly adventurous and memorable. So from that day on, John guarded and patrolled the farmhouse between 12pm to 5am each night and he continued to do so for the next several days. But he was not able to catch the thief as nothing went missing during those days. Now John was gradually losing hope and was thinking of giving up. Then one night he decided to give the surveillance a last shot. Time passed, slowly the clock struck 4am. John was getting fed up when suddenly he saw someone wearing a black coat and a hat, coming toward the door of the stable. The man pulled out three keys from the pocket of his coat and opened all the lock of the main door. Then he entered the stable and John saw that the thief trying to get one of the sheep in a sack that he had brought with him. John acted swiftly and locked the main door using a strong metal chain so that the thief could not escape. Then, he ran toward the house to call grandfather. Grandfather immediately phoned the police who arrived in less than 25 minutes. The police opened the door, locked with the chain, caught the thief and removed his hat so that grandfather could see his face. Grandfather immediately recognised the thief as Alex, a former employee who been fired from the job for being dishonest. Alex accepted that he was carrying out all the thefts as he wanted to take revenge and make some easy money. He also revealed that despite locks being changed many times, he could easily open them since every time he managed to get new keys from Timon, the man grandfather purchased all his locks from. Furthermore, he disclosed that the money he got by selling the stolen animals was equally shared between Timon and him. Police also arrested Timon after this and they were both jailed. Grandfather rewarded John with an expensive bicycle for this act of bravery and courage, which made him feel like a super hero!