It was past midnight, but Alex could not sleep. He kept thinking about the annual swimming competition that was going to take place on Sunday. This was the most prestigious interschool competition of the city and Alex was excited that a player of his school was taking part in it. Finally Alex decided that he had to stop thinking about the competition and sleep.
On the morning of the competition, Alex and his family headed to the sports club and the competition started after some time.
The length of the swimming pool was about 35 metres and its depth was two metres. Every swimmer was trying hard to get ahead of the other swimmers. When the two leading swimmers reached the 25 metres mark, something unexpected happened.
A boy of almost 11 suddenly came running toward the swimming pool and jumped into it! The boy seemed to vanish in the pool. Everyone was shocked to see this. The referee of the competition blew the whistle to stop the competition and asked one of the swimmers to go into the bottom of the pool to save the boy. However, to the referee’s surprise, the swimmers refused saying, “The water is too deep!”
But then abruptly a man who was wearing some sort of sophisticated swimming equipment on his face appeared from nowhere and swiftly jumped into the water. The heroic man surfaced carrying the unconscious boy in his arms. To the poeple’s surprise, the boy, Ted, was alive and soon regained consciousness. Ted along with his father thanked Jimmy, the rescuer, who said, “All this was possible due to the ‘Life-Saver’, the swimming equipment I was wearing, as it allows any amateur swimmer to go into deep water.”
Jimmy also said that he was the manager of the company Safe Swimming which was producing the equipment. The mayor was enormously impressed and announced that the city council would purchase 500 Life-Savers and distribute them in different schools to save precious lives.
When the competition restarted, an extremely hard battle took place and Ellison, a boy from Alex’s school, won the competition. But Alex was more concerned about the boy Ted rather than the winner as Ted’s face appeared familiar to Alex. After coming back to home he started checking old sport magazines. Having gone through about ten of them, he found an article about Ted, whose original name was Andrew Wilson.
According to the article Andrew was a swimming champion and an expert in holding breath under deep water. Furthermore, the article stated that Andrew had won more than 12 swimming competitions and could swim into the bottom of three metres deep water in just twenty-two seconds.
‘How can this boy drown and why would he use a fake name?’ Alex thought, trying to unravel the story. Suddenly he understood the whole plan of which Jimmy seemed as the mastermind and Ted A.K.A, Andrew Wilson, the executor.
Alex immediately decided to go to the Safe Swimming office. There he told the receptionist that he had come to meet Mr Jimmy and wanted to purchase 100 Life-Savers. The receptionist happily gave him the direction to Jimmy’s cabin. Once outside Jimmy’s cabin, Alex peeped into it and was stunned to see Andrew Wilson sitting with an older man and talking with Jimmy, who was laughing and saying, “Our plan has been successful and now thousands of Life-Savers will be sold!”
Jimmy also added that Life-Savers was just a fancy device which only saved the head from injuries! Alex was shocked to see Jimmy hand over a packet to the older man and say, “These are $2000 as prize for your swimming champion son!”
Quietly Alex left the office and went to the mayor and told him the whole story. Jimmy, Andrew Wilson and his father were arrested and the mayor called a press conference and disclosed the conspiracy of Jimmy. He also praised Alex for unearth the fraud and saving him and the city council from embarrassment. The next day, at the breakfast table Alex’s father was surprised when he read the headline “Sherlock Holmes of our city: Alex” and his son’s photo underneath it. He informed the rest of the family about it and said, “Our son is not just a fortuneteller but a famous detective too!”
Turning to Alex, he remarked, “So this was the adventurous event you had predicted about!”
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