Ben Price

          Ben Price’s alarm announced the new day, when a call interrupted his would-be no-incident morning. You see, he was a detective, and he rarely had a call. When there was one meant that was quite serious business, as Ben was known by all his friends as the junior “Sherlock Holmes” or “Hercule Poirot” or whoever that are mentioned in detective novels. 

O. Henry

He was on the scene punctually. A bank was robbed. A humongous man hyperventilating sighed in relief, and hastily led him into the bank’s safe locks. The space was asphyxiating-ly claustrophobic, and Ben Price could not help but marvel at the thief’s flexibility, tenacity and patience as he scanned the surroundings. He took detailed notes about the situation. Many other bank robberies and safecracking incidents crept up during the week. The authorities could not even guess whether the bank robberies were related. They were done in such different ways and methods, as no safe are similar. Yet their owners, gloating on the amazing security that the safes boast, were now on the verge of madness. No one, but cold logical old Ben, could see that the safe was wheeled out artistically. It would take amazing speed, intelligence, improvisation, superb mathematics, and superior equipment to reproduce such an amazing feat, breaking through ten different safes in just a little bit over two weeks. He could refer to an old case that he worked on, chasing an particularly elusive criminal called James “Jimmy” Valentine. Jimmy Valentine is an artist, a mathematician, an architect, an engineer, a sprinter, a marathon-runner, and a male supermodel all rolled to one. Ben Price happened to check prison papers, and discovered that Jimmy Valentine was released three weeks ago for good rehabilitation. At the beginning of Jimmy’s sentence, he had always frowned at the judge’s decision to have James imprisoned for only four years. Was that clemency or bribery? He smiled to himself, “You are not going to have a good time after I get you Jimmy. I will make sure of that myself.”