Archie is a cat burglar and has a way with animals. In a London flat he steals a jewel case containing a diamond necklace, but this is snatched from him by a pet chimpanzee kept in the flat, and he is obliged to follow the animal to try and get back the booty. He entices it into his car, which it damages, and takes it to his girlfriend's flat, where it does some further damage. What can he do with the animal?
This is very much in the idiom of the Minerva Club stories, comic accounts of criminal ventures going wrong, which Canning excelled at.
Evening News, 8 January 1962
Included in the now discontinued collection Crime and Detection, edited by John Higgins, Lulu.com, 2010.
Included in the collection The Aberdyll Onion and other mysteries, Farrago Books, 2020.