大象传媒

To read Part 1 of this story please type: Who stole the bread rolls? Part 1 - A picture of the hospital. in the search box above.

To read Part 2 please type: Who stole the bread rolls? Part 2 - Frank arrives. in the search box above.

Although we had no further access to the rolls, we still had the key that opened the medicine cabinet but we had no idea what other doors it would open for us.

One day, two nurses went to the cabinet, one of whom was carrying a largish parcel and, after unlocking the door, placed the parcel on the bottom shelf and locked the door and removed the key. Keeping our ears to the ground, we found that the parcel in the medicine cabinet contained a cake that had been baked for somebody's birthday! This was too good an opportunity to miss and we decided that we would take responsibility of taking the cake and sharing it among the poor and needy - our fellow patients, not forgetting ourselves!

Removing the cake from the cabinet was easy as we still had the key and we had only to wait until the coast was clear between shifts of the staff in the evening, but we now realised that we did not possess a knife to cut the cake into the required number of portions.

Now we had to steal a knife as, for obvious reasons, we were not allowed such potential weapons, and cutting implements of any kind were not left lying about unattended. This problem was solved by simple observation and resorting to our original format of myself as a decoy.

The two Italian medical orderlies allocated to our ward took their meals along the main gangway about twenty yards from the entrance to the ward behind a small partly glazed screen which extended at right angles for about four feet into the gangway.
Here was situated a small table, the leading edge against the screen enabling their orderly who was sitting there to see the entrance to the ward through the glass.

One day we waited until the orderly had collected his lunch from the kitchen and sat down at the table which was the signal for me to perform my poor lost patient, wandering past the seated orderly who promptly left his meal and took me back to the ward.

When the orderly, with me in tow, had disappeared into the ward, Frank, who had been positioned strategically near the screen, whipped the knife which the orderly had been using, and for good measure, pinched the orderly's lunch which consisted of a large portion of processed cheese and some bread rolls. This item was an added bonus and later that evening, we divided the cake and cheese among our fellow patients as best we could and this was very well received and Frank was congratulated on his initiatives in procuring the cheese. Among the staff there was a very puzzled and hungry orderly! As far as we knew, the mystery of the disappearing lunch was never solved, and equally puzzled nurses may be still wondering what happened to their birthday cake!!!

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