The Case of the Vanishing Coin

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The Case of the Vanishing Coin

A short story by Ryan Cartwright - CC:By-SA

By Ryan Cartwright

Roboteers

Published: Oct 2025

Publisher: Crimperbooks (crimperbooks.co.uk)

Categories: Roboteers, Short-stories, Ages-6-and-up

Original URL: https://www.crimperbooks.co.uk/roboteers/the-case-of-the-disappearing-coin/

License: Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC-BY-SA 4.0).

You are free to share, copy, distribute and adapt this material under the same license terms.

The Case of the Vanishing Coin

This short story is one of the adventures of the Roboteers. It is written in the style of a blog post by one of the gang. You can read more of their adventures on the Roboteers page.

Sugar the Robot helps us on a lot of our cases. We often have to use him to secretly gather information or we use his intelligence. Sometimes we don’t involve him very much at all and we solve a case without him. The case of the vanishing coin was one of those times.

This one involved one of Tim’s neighbours, Felix, who we found standing outside his gate staring at his hand.

“Hey Felix,” Tim said as we walked past, “How are you?”

“What?” said Felix as if he had snapped out of a trance. “Oh, yes fine thanks.” He closed his hand quickly as he saw us.

We walked on but Martin stopped after a while and turned back to look at Felix.

“What’s he doing?” he asked, “He’s just sort of standing there. Why doesn’t he go in?”

“Something’s got him worried I’d say,” I said, “and I think it’s whatever’s in his hand.”

Tim walked to Felix and we both followed.

“Felix,” Tim said gently, “what’s going on mate? You seem, well, worried.” He nodded towards Felix’s hand. “What’s that?”

Felix must have realised it was no good hiding whatever it was so he opened his hand. It was a clear plastic case with a coin inside. The case was only a little taller than the coin, which was lying flat, but extended around the coin so it was about 8cm across.

“It’s my coin.” Felix said holding it out for us to see. “I got it for my birthday a few weeks back but,” he looked shifty as he said the next bit, “I think it’s haunted.”

We all knew better than to laugh at him so Tim just asked “What kind of coin is it?”

“It’s an old coin called a shilling from the year my Grandad was… wait didn’t you hear what I said? It’s haunted!”

I nodded, “Uh-huh, you said.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?” Felix said.

“Should it?” Martin said, smiling.

“Oh, I get it.” Felix folded his arms, “You lot don’t believe me!”

“Listen Felix,” Tim said calmly, “you’d be surprised what we believe. If you say it’s haunted then something make your believe that and we believe that you believe it.” Felix still looked suspicious “Really.” Tim said and Martin and I nodded. Felix seemed to relax a bit and Tim went on, “But, out of interest, why do you think it’s haunted?”

“It keeps vanishing. At night.”

“You mean somebody takes it?” Martin asked.

“No it disappears from the case. The case stays where it is but the coin vanishes.”

“And how often does that happen?” I asked. I could see Felix still thought we didn’t believe him. It was like he thought any minute we were going to burst out laughing at him. “We really do believe you, you know.”

“Well I wouldn’t.” Felix sighed, “I’m not even sure if I’m just imagining it.”

“Tim gestured to a bench by the bus stop up the road. “Why don’t you tell us about it?”

“Why?” Felix shrugged.

I smiled, “Oh you’d be surprised how we might be able to help. We’re pretty good at helping people with mysteries. We’re the Roboteers!”

I kind of expected Felix to know what I meant by that, but he just looked blankly at me. We all wandered over and sat on the bench while I explained. “We are detectives. People come to us with mysteries and we solve them.”

“Like haunted coins?” Felix chuckled.

“Well, we solved a case with a haunted computer.” said Martin.

“Really?” Felix gasped

“Yeah. It wasn’t really haunted though.” Martin smiled, “It just seemed that way. This might be the same sort of thing. So, tell us, why do you think the coin vanishes?”

“Well,” Felix shifted uncomfortably, “I use this,” He held up the plastic case, “as a coaster on my bedside. Every night. About two weeks ago I looked at it as I turned my light off and the coin was missing.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I turned the light back on and started to look for it. I thought it had fallen out of the case. But it hadn’t.”

“So where was it?” Tim asked.

“Still in the case.”

“Felix, “ I said carefully, “we do believe you but is it possible it hadn’t really vanished and you just didn’t see it properly?”

“No.” Felix sighed, “I did think that but a few nights later it happened again. I told my parents but they thought I was imagining it. It happened again the next night and then a few nights later and then again last night.”

“Are there any noises when it disappears?” Tim asked. I suspect he was thinking it might be a trick being played on Felix by someone.

Felix shook his head.

“Who else lives with you?” Martin asked. Obviously thinking along the same lines as Tim.

“Nobody, just me and my parents.” Felix said looking nervous.

“This has you really worried, doesn’t it?” I said. Felix nodded. “Would you like us to look a bit more at the coin, to see if it is falling out or something?”

“No, I best not.” said Felix, “It was a gift and I don’t want to lose it.”

“Why don’t you bring it to school tomorrow?” Tim said. Felix was in the year below us at school. “We can look at it at break time.”

“If you are sure?” Felix said.

“Of course we are!” I said cheerfully.

With that Felix went in his house and we went to Tim’s room to pick up some stuff before heading to our clubhouse in Martin’s garden. When we got there I said. “So that’s weird isn’t it?”

“What the coin?” Tim said. “Yeah but I bet there’s a simple explanation.

“You think it’s not vanishing?” Martin asked.