“He is innocent and I know who the actual thief is”
This utterance was a stop button to the accusation and to all beating and anger oozing around the issue of theft levied against this malnourished looking young boy. People wondered from where the inkling and insight of who was innocent and who was guilty came from. Some reasoned within their mind that she was bluffing, some doubted her knowledge about the real culprit; thinking she only said that and wanted to bail the boy out from his mischievous woes that befell him. Some reasoned may be she must have seen something prior to the incident.
Immediately, a young man in that gathering threw a question at her. He said -
“I know who you are, your excellence and fine judgement to discern that which was from that which is not; are you sure about what you are saying?”
Alice replied him
“Without a doubt, I know he is not the thief, I saw everything, he is wrongly accused”
Immediately she replied to this young trader who was a shop tenant beside the shop where the accusation of theft was going on. At this point, the wrongly accused who was already bleeding from the head, from the side of his lips, who developed swollen eyes and aching pains from his entire body began to shed tears, he began to cry uncontrollably, he began to act strangely because that truth opener in her utterance sent overwhelming signals of shock into his blood streams leading to shortness of breath and sudden blackout.
Immediately he fainted, people began to panic, some began to retrace that footsteps in fear that he might be dead, some quickly took the initiative to pull him together, pour water on him and rush him to the nearest hospital; in a bid to revive him since someone reputable has declared him innocent, to really hear his own part of the story as he wasn't given much chance to speak.
The crowd that gathered began to reduce, Alice insisted few people rush him to the hospital while she unveils who the real culprit was. Like three young men did just that whilst others who were curious wanted to know who the real thief was. So they gathered around her and asked politely that she stripped open the cupboard where the skeleton hid.
She looked into each and everyone's eyes. Some have witnessed her intervene in situations like this in the past and her discernment to shake away wrong conclusions and facts were always spot on, some customers who joined in beating the boy had only heard of her legend of perfection and class and were eager to witness it live.
She began to speak, she knew how curious and confused the scanty crowd was. So she walked closer to the shop owner who was in the middle, the one started the whole fiasco and began to ask questions.
Alice asked — “What was the colour of the phone?”
He replied —“Blue”
“Oh blue?” — Alice said
“In what part of your shop did you keep it before it was stolen?”— Alice asked
“I plugged the lost phone to the socket at the entrance behind the folded burglary to the left as it was the only functional one where I could charge it”— He replied.
“Oh, I see…. Why did you conclude to accuse that little lad of stealing the phone” — Alice said.
“Few customers had come and gone and the position of my stolen phone didn't change. It got missing when he came to buy a packet of salt, two biscuits and after he exited my shop. That was when I couldn't find the phone again. The phone got missing immediately he left” — He replied.
At this point Alice was already getting angry inwardly; she could read between the lines because she witnessed the whole thing from a distance when she was buying an apple from a fruit seller. The place was an open market, it was easy to see through what goes in and out of the market from the middle down to the edge of the market with brick shops and knew this accusation was biased and a set up.
She then challenged his words;
“Can someone here, go into this man's shop, turn to the left and lift up the cracker biscuit carton with a red marker at the edge and bring whatever thing you find beneath it” — Alice said.
Immediately, the man disapproved of the search and said nobody was allowed to enter his shop, that no one has the right to search his shop. That was she trying to say he's a liar? He was so adamant about it and began to rant. He refused the search.
People began to be suspicious that something wasn't right. Here was someone who was in search of his lost phone and here was a girl who knew where the phone could be and was navigating hints in this regard on how to recover the lost phone but suddenly the accuser is now acting strangely.
Alice was enraged and lifted one of her index fingers, pointing it towards the man. She couldn't bear the hypocrisy anymore.
“There was no thief to begin with, he's the actual thief, the phone wasn't missing from the start, he's accused an innocent boy unjustly with an evil motive. I saw everything”
That was how the countenance of the scanty crowd changed, their faces drowned in disappointment and fury.
To be continued…………
This is the second part of this story, you can read the first here.
Photo from Pixabay.