benjw1: The foreman of the fencing crew looked down the line of metal posts and nodded with satisfaction. "Good job, boys," he announced. "Looks like we're all done here, so let's knock off and go get a pint." He nodded to the newest member of the team, a twenty-something young man who had come from the temping agency for a week's work. "Coming, Jason?"
"Nah, guv," Jason answered, "I'll walk 'ome from 'ere." The foreman nodded again and collected his things.
After the others had left, Jason quickly looked up and down the path and sidled over to the figure waiting in the shadows of a large laurel bush, as arranged. "I got it," he announced.
"Good," the figure replied. "Here's your money. And now forget you ever saw anything." A wodge of banknotes tied with a rubber band was exchanged for a Sainsbury's carrier bag containing a square, boxy object. The figure vanished. Jason decided to heed the advice he'd been given, and headed quickly off in the other direction. Alongside the allotments, he passed two figures, one in a battered brown fedora, the other clutching a bright yellow GPS, hurrying along the path in the opposite direction.
Fifteen minutes later, Sam Spade was cursing fluently. He and Effie had arrived at the appointed spot more-or-less simultaneously, he'd read her the decoded note and she'd pressed buttons on her GPS while he shifted impatiently, until "that way!" she'd announced, and they'd hurried off down the path. The GPS had taken them over a new-looking metal fence and into a wood, and was now pointing resolutely at a tree just off the path, but there was nothing there except leaves. They'd searched not only that tree but also every other tree within a fifty-foot radius, and Spade was slowly coming round to the realization that the famed Lock'n'Lock, if it had ever been hidden here, was now gone.
They drove back to the office in silence. Effie went to make coffee, and Sam flung himself into his swivel chair, kicked off his shoes and lit a cigarette. He fished the creased note out of his jacked pocket, crumpled it into a ball and threw it at the wall. He snarled. Fifty years that Lock'n'Lock had remained hidden, then finally it surfaces on his patch and what happened? He was too late, that was what happened.
Effie brought in the coffee and gave Spade a meaningful look. He sighed. Perhaps it wasn't the end of the world. There was no way Thursby could sell on an item that famous. The fabled Maltese Lock'n'Lock would resurface somewhere in the Cambridge area, and this time he would be there to find it. It was just a question of waiting, and finding out when and where...