As he spoke, Xia De raised his head and looked at the maid's face again.
Although the girl with long black hair didn't know the specific condition of Xia De's eyes at this time, she quickly covered her cheeks:
"Mr. Hamilton, let me try it, too. I have never heard of a potion with such an effect."
Xia De thought about it and nodded:
"Yes, but the potion's effect doesn't last long. I can already feel the effect fading."
He looked at Miss Servet's nose again:
"Do all witches have such good skin? Every witch I've ever seen seems to have good skin. Look, your pores are evenly spaced, and the black on the tip of your nose..."
Seeing her suddenly fierce look, Xia De consciously stopped talking.
So the black-haired girl also dripped a drop of magic potion on herself. Although she had no magic related to the eyes, she could feel the effect of enhancing her eyesight.
The feelings obtained by different ring wizards are basically the same, so in this way, we can roughly infer that Mr. Alfred, the ophthalmologist, is definitely not a ring wizard.
Even if such a rare potion with such an effect was to be tested, it would not be wasted on an ordinary person, and the doctor did not even recycle it afterwards. Although Shade could not directly estimate the price of the potion, the half bottle of potion in his hand, even if it only had the effect that had been explored so far, would most likely be sold on the black market for 1,000 pounds.
The musician who was born blind was cured, probably by using this potion. But Shade guessed that the amount of potion used during the treatment was larger, so after regaining his vision, he could see the truth of the world more "clearly", and thus died in madness.
Knowing more is not necessarily a good thing. In this kind of world, knowing and seeing less is not a bad thing either.
After the effect of the potion on Miss Servet's right eye wore off, the two immediately set out to visit Dr. Alfred.
The ophthalmologist's clinic is on a street on the northern edge of Tobysk. Two blocks north from here, you will officially leave the city and enter the village area in the north.
This is one of the most remote locations in Tobisk, so it is normal that the client, Mr. Mandis, cannot find it. However, this area is not a slum. Although it is located in the northernmost part of Tobisk, due to its unique location and large flow of people, this area is the center of bulk goods trading in the north of Tobisk.
Timber, food, fresh fruits and vegetables, and flowers are usually transported into the city from the plains north of Tobysk, traded and settled nearby, and then distributed to every corner of the city.
So even on a Wednesday afternoon, the area around Dr. Alfred's eye clinic was unusually busy.
But his clinic is not grand at all. On the left is the office building of the Sikh Granary, and a quarter of the people on this street come here for business; on the right is a small private bank opened by a Kasenrick person, which mainly deals in loans and currency exchange, so the facade is unusually grand.
The ophthalmology clinic, sandwiched between them, is a narrow and dilapidated three-story yellow building with peeling walls. In addition, the steam and gas pipes on both sides have to pass through the walls of the clinic, making the ophthalmology clinic look like a child huddled between two giants, or a garbage station between two imposing buildings.
Apart from people living nearby, I'm afraid few outsiders would dare to treat their eyes in such a place.
The door of the clinic was closed. After getting off the carriage, Xia De knocked on the door a few times. Seeing no one answered, he pushed the door open directly:
"Don't people like to close their doors these days? I did the same thing when I went to the musician's apartment yesterday. When did the customs in Tobesk become so good?"
He was joking with Miss Servet, and the maid thought the place was open because it was an eye clinic that was open.
After the detective and the assistant walked in, a tall, thin middle-aged man wearing an apron who seemed to be cooking pushed open the door on the other side of the front hall and looked at the guest in surprise:
"Hello, are you here to see an eye doctor? I'm Dr. Jacob Alfred, and may I ask which patient you are?"
As she spoke, she took off her apron and threw it aside, carefully looking at the two people who came in.
Shad noticed that Dr. Alfred was wearing a beautiful jewel ring on his hand, which was probably a fake, as the doctor didn't seem to be such a wealthy man.
"Do you know Mr. Frank Bundy, the blind musician of the North Mountain Opera Company?"
Xia De asked while standing at the door. The tall and thin ophthalmologist was a little surprised by the name he mentioned, but nodded.
"Yes, did he ask you to get the medicine? I remember that the medicine will run out by the end of this month. Did I calculate it wrong? Oh, I haven't seen him for more than half a month. How is Bundy's eyes? Does he need a larger dose..."
"He's dead."
Shad interrupted him.
"Dead?"
Of all the people who heard about Mr. Bundy's death, Dr. Alfred was the most surprised:
"What? My experiment... Sorry, when did it happen?"
"It was about five days from today, in the middle of last month."
Xia De said, and then asked tentatively:
"Don't you know about this? Or, don't you see that there is something wrong with his mental state?"
"No, every time he came, I just recorded the frequency of his medication and the recovery of his eyes. Bundy never said he had any mental problems."
Xia De could understand this. The blind musician was worried that the doctor would stop supplying medicine because of his mental state. Judging from the last suicide note left by the musician, he was also afraid of returning to his original state.
"In that case... I'm Detective Shad Hamilton, investigating Mr. Bundy's death. This lady is my assistant. Excuse me, is there a place here where we can talk?"
As he spoke, he held out his hand to the doctor, who quickly wiped his hands on his clothes and then shook it.
Ordinary people.
"Oh, yes, detective, please follow me. But I swear, I had nothing to do with Bundy's death!"
He led the way and brought the two to the narrow study on the second floor. Dr. Alfred seemed to have no idea what the consequences of the medicine he gave would be. He just thought he had found a special medicine to treat eye diseases, so he couldn't help but feel sorry for Mr. Bundy's death when he went upstairs.
Arriving at the study, Shad sat on the sofa and told Dr. Alfred the information he had collected from the landlord, the Noshan Opera Company, the Three Cats Inn, and Miss Mary. Today, Miss Servet followed Shad and was mainly responsible for record keeping, so whenever Shad mentioned something, she would show the corresponding records.
Of course, the record omits the scene of playing Rhodes.
The doctor lowered his head to check the records. The tall, thin, middle-aged man in a plaid shirt had more and more sweat on his face. When Xia De finished his message, he immediately said loudly:
"No, I can guarantee that there is absolutely no problem with my potion!"
"What is your relationship with Mr. Bundy, the musician?"
"I asked him to test the medicine! I came up with a potion formula myself! If I succeed, I will change the history of ophthalmology!"
"This is a sample I got from Miss Mary."
Shade took the flat bottle from his pocket:
"There's still half of the liquid in it. I think it's enough for Redwich Field to conduct tests."
He observed the other person's expression, then lowered his voice, as if they were doing some kind of illegal transaction, which made Dr. Alfred even more nervous.
"Doctor, the evidence I have so far is very unfavorable to you. Although I am not a policeman, I can imagine how they will handle this case for convenience."
In fact, Shade had never dealt with the police of this era, but Dr. Alfred's face was sweating more. He opened his eyes wide and emphasized again:
"There is absolutely no hallucinogenic ingredient in this! Detective, my medicine will not cause madness! I believe in my medicine."
"If you can convince me that I have enough information to report to my client, I will believe you and will not call the police. But the first step is to know..."
Xia De put the bottle on the coffee table in front of him:
"What are the ingredients of this potion?"
Miss Servet looked at Shad. She thought Shad would tell the truth and persuade the other party to reveal the information, but she didn't expect that he would use half-true and half-false threats instead.
Following Xia De all the way here today, she has seen how Xia De uses different methods to obtain information from different people. This has given the maid a more comprehensive understanding of Xia De.
This kind of person doesn't look like the fool he was two months ago.
“Ingredients, yes, there is absolutely no problem with the ingredients.”
The doctor wanted to stand up and get his notebook, but Shade asked him to sit down and let Miss Servet take the documents instead of the doctor.
The documents were all in this study, including not only the formula of the medicine, but also the medical records of the blind musician and the three-month recovery record. The documents piled up and written with dense letters could fully illustrate the long-term effect of the medicine and prove its medicinal effect.
He asked his "assistant" to check the recovery records, while Xia De looked through the formula of the medicine under the doctor's somewhat nervous gaze.
This formula was invented by Dr. Alfred himself, and the treatment used on the blind musician Bundy was also an experimental treatment.
This kind of unregistered drug experiment is of course illegal, and because the specific efficacy and side effects are unknown, even though Dr. Alfred almost miraculously succeeded in restoring the sight of a blind man, he did not publicize his medicine. Instead, he thought about confirming that there were no side effects after half a year before winning honor for himself.
This is why Detective Hamilton's real client, the blind Mr. Mandis, was unable to get the doctor's information from his friend Mr. Bundy. When Mr. Bundy participated in the experiment, he promised to keep it confidential.
The ingredients in the recipe were very complicated, and the list of materials alone filled up an entire notebook page. But when Shade looked closely, he found that most of them were cheap herbs, and did not contain chemical synthesis that had appeared in the steam age, which made this recipe more like a wrong recipe written down by a poor witch doctor.
Moreover, among those herbs, only two were common ingredients for ring warlock potions. Even the second-year student Shade, who had little knowledge, knew that these two ingredients would not work in this potion.
"So what exactly is the active ingredient? It can't be that the ineffective ingredients reacted together to produce the active ingredient, right?"
Xia De held a skeptical attitude and carefully checked the specific synthesis process behind it. Then he frowned slightly and looked up at the nervous doctor:
"Excuse me, what is this 'red potion'?" (To be continued)