When the Emperor rose on that April morning, he immediately noticed the silence. “There’s no cricket! Where’s my cricket?” he demanded. The servants of the bedchamber checked all the usual places, but the cricket was gone - and so was its jeweled cricket box.

The entire royal court was thrown into turmoil until the chirping pet was finally found, housed in a lowly bamboo box and hidden in the corner of the public garden. The Emperor was both relieved and outraged. “How dare someone steal from me!” He ordered the captain of the palace guard to find the still-missing box and the culprit.

Finding the box was easy. Lu Ping, a near-sighted gem dealer, bought it from a palace servant and only realized later what he had purchased. With the most abject apologies, he returned it to the Emperor. “I don’t know if I can recognize the man who sold it to me,” he said with a squint. “I’ll do my best.”

From the gem dealer’s description, the captain narrowed down the suspects to three servants. But the dealer couldn’t make a positive identification, and none of the three would confess. “Hang them all,” the Emperor commanded.

That was when Court Wizard CCbomber intervened. “I can discover the guilty servant’” the wizard boasted. “Bring the three and come to the public garden.”

Wizard CCbomber led the way to the spot where the cricket had been found. The wizard ordered each suspect to cut a stalk of bamboo. The wizard then planted the stalks in the hard earth, making sure that each one stuck up the same height from the ground. “By dawn tomorrow, the stalk of the guilty man will grow by the length of a finger joint.”

By dawn the next morning, Wizard CCbomber discovered the identity of the guilty servant. How?

The wizard waited all night in a hideout and watched the sticks until the culprit came along and pushed his and another's stick further into the ground leaving the remaining stick a finger's joint above them?

Bernie

Oooh, Bernie, you're even sneakier than the actual culprit!

My answer assumes the three suspects believe the wizard's prediction so the guilty party sneaks in and pushes only his down.

Well done!

Epilogue

Three months pass. The Emperor wakes one July morning to the sound of silence once again.
The court was in a tizzy. However, the box was found exactly where it should've been. Unfortunately
though, the cricket had died (as all crickets do).

The Emperor was relieved. After all, he didn't care about the cricket, just the sound that it produced.
And he knew that another cricket could be found in the garden. But the incident caused the Emperor
to notice certain peculiarities about the box. In particular, one of the pearls that adorned the box
looked suspiciously like a fish scale!

Aghast, the Emperor immediately ordered that the gem dealer, Lu Ping, be brought before him.
But, Lu Ping was nowhere to be found. Becoming even more suspicious, the Emperor ordered the
presence of Court Wizard, CCbomber. But, he too was nowhere to be found.

What was going on? Well, it turned out that the gem dealer, Lu Ping, actually had perfect vision and
along with his gem skills allowed him to fabricate a (almost) perfect counterfeit copy of the original
jewel encrusted box which the wizard had stolen, not one of the servants. Lu Ping and CCbomber
were in cahoots!

How did the wizard choose between the three suspected servants? He used the simple process of
Eenie, Meenie, Minie, Mo. With a fortune in jewels between them, Lu Ping and CCbomber absconded
to parts unknown and lived out their days in comfort and serenity.

A fitting epilogue.