At that moment, Dick’s wristwatch radio beeped. He put his watch up to his ear as if he was checking to see if it was still ticking.”
“All Points Bulletin! All Points Bulletin! Sam the Shadow has broken out of jail. The jailbreak happened last week but was not discovered until today due to incompetence on the part of the jail management or perhaps it was collusion. You have his description. Sam the Shadow is six feet six inches tall and so skinny that he casts a knife-edge shadow. End of transmission!”
Dick the gas station owner forgot all about his twenty-seven gas stations and the three gas stations that he was going to buy just as soon as he got home from the Olympics in Whistler. His mission in life was to find Sam the Shadow.
Dick the detective felt like a real dick. He had just been talking to a guy who was six feet six inches tall and who cast a shadow that was so dangerously knife-edged that it could slice a person open. What had happened to Sam the Shadow. If that was Sam who he had been talking to, where could he have gone? It's not like the cowboy films where guys get thrown off of trains and do a quick roll or two and then are on their feet and lo and behold there is a horse standing conveniently by, saddled and all and belonging to the sherrif, who had to take a leak badly and eventually felt himself walking twenty five miles back to town because the likes of Sam the Shadow had stolen his steed.