Because tomorrow, Thursday, the fifth day of September, is the date when the "letter" that Detective Sparrow mentioned before his death will arrive. On Wednesday night after sending Carina and Tifa away, Shad has been wondering what the content of the letter will be.
As his thoughts ran wild, his guesses became more and more bizarre, and finally he even thought that maybe it was not a letter but a package, which would trigger a steam bomb when opened.
Because he had too many things in mind, he had a bizarre dream after falling asleep on Wednesday night. At the end of the dream, he actually met Mr. Sparrow Hamilton. The gentleman in the dream did not mention the task assigned to Shad, but blamed Shad for raising a cat in St. Teresa's Square and making the house dirty.
"What kind of weird dream is this?"
Xia De woke up suspiciously, and then found that it was only half past five.
I opened my eyes and looked at the dark ceiling. After lying there for ten minutes, I couldn't fall asleep, so I sat up from the bed. With the arrival of autumn, the sunrise time is getting later and later. In addition, the curtains in the bedroom are drawn, so the room is dark.
However, perhaps awakened by Xia De's movement of getting up, the cat that was sleeping curled up next to the pillow opened its eyes alertly, looked at Xia De, and after realizing it was him, it meowed a few times and then fell into a deep sleep again.
It's not time for this cat to get up yet.
Because he couldn't sleep, Shade got up early, changed into clothes he didn't usually wear, and went out directly. But he didn't go far, but sat down next to the fountain statue of a girl holding a water bottle in the center of Saint Teresa Square and fed the pigeons with some crumbs.
These pigeons always seem to be here.
He looked so suspicious that even a passing patrolman looked at him twice. But as time approached six o'clock, other people gradually appeared in St. Teresa's Square, and he no longer looked so conspicuous.
Shad wanted to see who had sent the letter to Saint Teresa's Square.
Starting at half past six, the postman and the milk company's deliveryman arrived one after another. Letters and newspapers were delivered to the hallway from the delivery port under the door, while milk and goat milk were placed in the milk box on the right side of the door.
Shad didn't move, which led to Mia, who woke up on time at 6:30. After seeing Shad at the bedroom window, she stood on the windowsill and stared at him with her eyes wide open.
Xia De waited until seven o'clock, and seeing that no one else was stopping at his door, he scattered all the remaining bread crumbs in his hand to the pigeons.
After standing up, pigeons fluttered their wings and flew over Shade's head. Shade walked to the door of his house, took out the key to the milk box and unlocked it. After opening the door with the glass milk bottle, he saw the newspaper he had ordered and two stamped letters on the mat.
"Could such a letter be sent through the post? Is it so bold?"
Xia De thought suspiciously.
I made breakfast for myself and the cat first, and then opened the letter at the dining table.
Of the two letters, one is an official letter from the Prophet Association, inviting Shade to participate in the opening ceremony of the "1853 Big City Players Rhodes Card Competition" to be held at the Prophet Association on Silver Cross Avenue tomorrow.
Since Xia De has taken other people's money to participate as a special guest player, he will of course be there tomorrow.
The other letter was from a man named Greer Ego. The address was a street in the north of the city, but there was no more specific house number. It should have been delivered directly to the mailbox at the street corner.
"I have a strange feeling that this is the one."
Xia De thought to himself, feeling a little excited:
"This has been a mystery for more than two months. What could it be?"
I opened the envelope and found only a folded piece of letter paper. There was no writing on the back of the letter paper, but on the front, the language of Delarion was neatly written in blue-black ink. But there was only a short line, not even a greeting or a signature.
Still the same.
"That's really rude, but what does it mean?"
Xia De was very curious.
Don't you want to burn this letter
She asked softly in his ear.
"Burning the letter does not conflict with my figuring out what the letter was about, which was a two-month puzzle."
Shade responded, holding the letter to the sunlight from the window, but there was no reaction. Seeing Mia approaching curiously, he handed the letter to her again.
It sniffed, then turned back to its breakfast.
“That’s really interesting.”
Xia De guessed that the letter was not that simple, but he had nothing to do today and his strong curiosity did not allow him to give up now.
"I just want to know what this is all about. I don't want to get involved in Detective Sparrow's troubles."
So after breakfast, Shade took the letter to the Dawn Church and found Father Augustus in the church. The priest had received the specific departure time and planned to tell everyone about his travel plans on Saturday.
Seeing Shad coming, he asked him to help think about what else he needed to bring, as the climate in the southeast of the kingdom was completely different from that in Tobesk.
"I want to ask if there is any way to make invisible words visible."
Xia De shook the letter in his hand:
"It's possible that it was written in a special ink, but I don't know what it was."
If it was really as Shad thought, then Detective Sparrow should have destroyed the potion that made the ink visible long ago. There was no reason for a dying spy to leave behind anything that might expose his identity.
"A letter from a ringmaster? With words hidden by magic?"
asked Father Augustus.
"No, just a normal person's letter, special ink I guess."
"It's easier for ordinary people."
The priest did not even take Shade to his potion workshop, but found a dusty small glass bottle in his room in the church. The bottle contained a black liquid that looked particularly thick:
"Try this, a revealing potion. It's usually used to detect objects that can be touched but cannot be observed with the naked eye or other methods. My bottle is expired, but it's still very useful for ink. This is not a chemical reaction that makes things appear, but conceptually makes things that 'exist but cannot be seen' appear."
Invisible ink is also ink, and there will definitely be traces of ink on the paper.
This simple potion requires a specific ritual to work, and using it to decipher secret messages is like using a steam bomb to fry a mosquito.
Father Augustus did not bring the ritual materials into the church, so he asked Shad to take the manifestation potion home and get it himself.
Shade immediately offered to pay for the potion, but the old priest waved him away:
"It might be worth some money if it wasn't expired, but this bottle is expired, so just consider it as taking out the trash for me. I always think about throwing it out someday, but I'm always too lazy to get it out from under the bed."
After bidding farewell to the priest, Shad first went to Old John's pawnshop and spent 3 shillings and 9 pence to buy the ritual materials. Because the price was cheap, Shad did not even bargain, which disappointed Old John, who was expecting him to say "cane":
"Sometimes I feel that the pleasure of doing business with you is greater than the pleasure of earning those few coins in your pocket."
After returning home, Shade simply set up a ritual on a blank piece of letter paper and placed the letter from this morning on it. After pouring the magic potion given by Priest Augustus on it, there was no reaction on the letter paper.
"Hmm... guessed wrong?"
Shade, who was sitting at the desk, thought for a moment, took down the letter paper with the small words, and put the envelope back on. After pouring priest Augustus's magic potion on it again, dense numbers appeared on the inside of the envelope.
"very good."
There was an excited smile on his face, but the numbers together made absolutely no sense.
"Music? It doesn't look like... a code, Detective Sparrow's code..."
Shad turned to the bookshelf and took down the detective's relics, "The Queen and Her Lovers", "The Silver Knight" and "Miscellaneous Works on the Western Front".
These three novels were the only ones that Detective Sparrow had read during his lifetime, and there were many signs of flipping through them. Shade had once speculated that these were the spy's code books, and now he finally had a chance to verify it.
"But why didn't he destroy these three books before he died?"
I thought suspiciously while flipping through the books, and then realized that compared to the strange ink, these three novels were nothing special. Those who doubted his identity would sooner or later notice the missing books in the study even if he destroyed the three books; those who did not doubt his identity would not care about the appearance of these three books on the bookshelf.
"But how do you compare those numbers with these three books..."
Looking at the things on the desk, Xia De fell into deep thought.
The numbers on the envelope were not completely continuous, with an obvious space appearing every few numbers. The space before and after each group contained eight numbers.
"These three books all have three-digit page numbers, and the binding specifications are similar. Judging from the number of numbers on the envelope, it is impossible that each group of numbers corresponds to a letter. They should correspond to words, and the number of rows and columns of words on each page is only two digits. In other words, if you want to point to a word in a certain page, row, and column, you only need 3+2+2=7 numbers. But now there are eight numbers in each group, and what does the extra one point to..."
Mia jumped from the ground to Shade's knees, and then jumped from Shade's knees to the desk. When she saw three books on the desk, she immediately stretched out her paws, and was then picked up by Shade.
"Could it be pointing to a book? The code book is not made up of one book, but multiple books?"
He compared all the numbers on the envelope again and found that the last digit of each group of numbers was "1", "2" or "3", and no other numbers appeared.
"That's easy. The last digit in each group refers to the book."
Shade smiled.
But this brought up a new problem. Even if his guess was correct, he didn't know the numerical numbers corresponding to the three novels.
"But it doesn't matter. I can try one by one. I will translate the first 10 groups of numbers first. If they can be connected into meaningful sentences, it means that my idea is correct."
There are three numbers corresponding to three books, and you have to guess many times.
There was a voice in my ear.
"It doesn't matter. It's just six possible permutations."
Xia De thought to himself, took out his notebook and began to record the letters corresponding to the numbers. Ten groups of numbers and ten words, and although there are six possible arrangements, in fact, each group of numbers only needs to be searched three times.