The Phantom (aka "The Case of the Missing Boots")

After my long day trip to the Orkneys, I arrived back in Inverness just after 9 pm. I stopped to pick up a few groceries on my way back to the hostel so I didn't return there until about 9:45. When I went into the room, I was horrified to realize that some of my stuff was gone!! My $350 hiking boots, my towel, a fleece jacket, and a few things that I had left on the bed. Typically, you return to the hostel each day with a bit of anxiety about whether your stuff will still be there. It's amazing the faith that you have to put in fellow travellers. I immediately started to panic... where had my stuff gone? Who would take a dirty, wet towel? I asked the two girls who were in the room if they had any idea of what had happened. They had just arrived so had no idea. The only person who might know... who had been there the night before.. was in bed asleep. Not for long though.. I think the panicky tone in my voice must have woken her up. She asked me in a shaky voice, "That was YOUR stuff?" When I told her that it was, she became all apologetic. She thought that it had belonged to the German girl who had spent the previous night in that bed and headed up to Kirkwall (the Orkney Islands) that morning. Makes perfect sense if you think about it. What she didn't realize was that I had claimed the bed that morning (after the German girl left) because I had spent the previous night on a top bunk and wanted a bottom bunk. This woman had packed up all my stuff and brought it to the reception. I rushed down to reception to try to locate my stuff and they told me that they had been trying to locate this girl in Kirkwall to arrange to return her stuff. Crazy!! The next day, after chatting with a Kiwi man about his missing litre of milk, I told him about my missing boots. He laughed and said that he had heard about it - I was the Phantom... the mystery girl who belonged to the boots.