I followed the idea of matching the numbers with the words in the books, but none of the six possible ways of matching the books with the numbers that I finally listed made sense as sentences.
"Hmm... I guessed wrong. Was my thinking completely wrong, or is it more complicated than I thought?"
Thinking that this matter had nothing to do with him, he decided to give it another try. If it didn't work, he would burn the letter. So Xia De observed the characteristics of the numbers again, and when he saw the last digit of each group of numbers, he thought again:
"Does the last digit not only correspond to the book number, but also to the shift? The number one means that after finding the corresponding word, it will jump to the next word?"
There was no basis for this idea, but it would cost nothing to try it, so he tried twelve more possibilities, following the lines of "move forward one, two, or three words" and "move backward one, two, or three words."
Although the densely packed sentences on the page still had no practical meaning, Xia De saw some clues:
"'Miscellaneous from the Western Front' corresponds to 1, 'The Queen and Her Lovers' corresponds to 2, and 'The Silver Knight' corresponds to 3. After finding the word, move the corresponding digits backwards. Although it is still not an understandable sentence, after skipping the words corresponding to '2', it seems to make some sense... Could it be..."
Xia De widened his eyes slightly:
"Numbers 1 and 3 correspond to moving backwards, and number 2 corresponds to moving forwards?"
Shade seemed to feel a warm current flowing from his back, and then realized that it was the cat's tail that ran to his shoulder and was sweeping his back.
Excited, he couldn't wait to translate again. This time, he only needed to search for the word corresponding to the last digit "2" in the first 10 groups of words. Then, the first ten words formed a sentence and a half:
Grey Eagle, original emergency mission notification
"Oh, it's so easy."
Xia De couldn't help but smile. He looked at the alarm clock on the desk. It was 11 o'clock in the morning.
“What an interesting morning.”
But it's meaningless.
"Yeah, pointless, but very entertaining. I'm pretty smart... and boring after all."
He gained great satisfaction from this puzzle game:
"But Gray Eagle? Yes, I have heard of that code name."
I looked at the misty square outside the window and thought for a while, then narrowed my eyes slightly:
"A month ago, when I went to collect my salary, Mr. Giles Johnson mentioned that this was Carsenrick's ace agent. Two years ago, MI6 received news that Carsenrick secretly sent two ace agents from the Gray Gloves to lurk in Tobesk. One was captured half a year ago, but he committed suicide. The other one is the famous 'Grey Eagle'." (Chapter 368)
Although he was an opponent of the Sixth Division, Mr. Johnson's tone at the time also expressed his admiration for the agent. Grey Eagle has done quite a lot of things, including stealing special alloy records from the steel capital of Gondor, the gold robbery ten years ago, and the accident at the Coldwater Port Shipyard eight years ago... ...
When Xia De overlapped the foreign ace agent who sounded omnipotent but whose identity was unknown with the poor detective who died in a foreign country, he felt inexplicably dislocated that the two people should have been the same person.
"Spyro Hamilton, is that the Carsonrick ace agent Grey Eagle?"
He sat on a chair, holding the cat and looking out the window:
"He was so great, with so many wonderful stories, but he died here for a ridiculous reason. No one knows where he is buried except me."
Thinking about it this way, it’s really sad.
"The first time I heard of the 'Grey Eagle' was at the 'Lucky' dinner at Lakeview Manor. That night I heard a lot of news, which were later proved to be directly related to me. So that's it, it turns out that I had already got the clue at that time. Sparrow... Grey Eagle..." (Chapter 74)
Although the stranger had only spent less than ten minutes with the living Detective Sparrow, he still missed the detective very much. After the detective's death, he pieced together the clues step by step, and now he has finally restored the life of the detective who was also a stranger. Shade can only say that this world is too cruel and dangerous for ordinary people.
The secret letter in his hand was a mission order, requiring Agent Grey Eagle to use the upper-class connections he had gained in Tobesk for three years to make the greatest possible contact with Virgil Cameron, the court jester from the Principality of Set, while ensuring his own safety, before the end of the Big City Players' Rhodes Tournament in the fall of 1853.
The order required Gray Eagle to personally take a secret letter from Virgil Cameron and deliver it to the determined location as required.
"Where is the confirmed location? This is not important. However, Gray Eagle actually risked his identity being exposed and went to retrieve the secret letter in person. It seems that this is really an extraordinary mission."
Xia De sighed in his heart, but then he thought of the order given to him by Director Anlos:
"Director Anros said that the Sixth Department suspected that Virgil Cameron would contact the Kasenrick people during the finals of the Big City Players, and asked me to monitor them as much as possible. And what Kasenrick asked me to do now is to obtain and deliver a secret letter... So, the Sixth Department really got the correct information this time. The Principality of Set is indeed connected with the Kasenrick people."
He seemed to have suddenly become the key figure in this mission. To be more precise, Xia De could already say that he was able to dominate the development of this incident.
"But the Gray Eagle should not be the one that the Sixth Bureau noticed and wanted to contact Cameron, because the order Gray Eagle received was only to do this before the end of the Big City players' game, not to do this during the finals of the Big City players as the Sixth Bureau's intelligence learned. Hmm..."
He looked at the envelope, put the cat on the table, got up and got the brazier, then lit the envelope and letter paper, and watched them burn to ashes with his own eyes.
Shad didn't intend to do this, because he had no reason to do it, and Detective Sparrow just asked him to burn the letter. He didn't intend to tell MI6 what he had learned, which would cause him to have to explain more things.
"I haven't read the letter. I don't know what Sparrow Hamilton's identity is. I just took over Uncle Sparrow's job to run the detective agency. I know the orange cat Mia, but I don't know the gray-headed owl."
Xia De whispered to himself in his heart.
He already had enough trouble because of the Whispering Poems and the Chosen One, but he must not get involved in foreign espionage.
After burning the envelopes and letter papers, he planned to take the cat out for dinner to celebrate the fact that he had finally settled all his contacts with Detective Sparrow. This mission that lasted for two and a half months was over, and he could be said to have truly inherited all the detective's legacy.
But thinking of the burned envelope, he felt that the eight-digit code seemed familiar. Then he remembered that on the weekend when Leicia returned to Tobesk, Shad was bumped by someone while waiting for the carriage to pick him up at the alley of Silver Cross Avenue. Then he picked up a newspaper with a similar code written on it.
"Is there such a thing?"
He sat in the chair in front of his desk and recalled that day.
Dorothy told him that the way to connect to the carriage was to wear gray gloves on both hands and an animal brooch on the chest. The brooch was a brass brooch in the shape of an eagle's head that Shad had found in the desk of the late Detective Sparrow's bedroom.
"Um... ... "
Later, he met President Stan of the Prophet Association on Silver Cross Avenue. Of course, Shad would not say that he was waiting for Princess Leia, so he made up a lie that he was on a detective mission and preparing for the meeting.
So President Stan performed a divination for Shad on the spot and gave him the advice to "wear the gray gloves backwards, change the newspaper in your hand to the Threepenny Newspaper, and then buy a red rose and hold it in your hand."
"Is this true?"
President Stan was the best fortune teller in the Tobesk region, and the fortune telling he had done for Shade about "knight" was very accurate. If President Stan was really fortune-telling about "how to make Shade's connection smoother" that day, then the suggestions he gave might really be helpful for the "connection".
Thinking of this, Xia De dug out the newspaper he had brought back that day from the bookshelf behind him. After copying down the digital code on the edge of the newspaper, he cracked it according to the rules he had just obtained, and then he actually got a complete sentence:
Confirming that the Grey Eagle has made a single-line contact request, a dynamically changing intelligence network is now provided—
This is the sentence on the top edge of the first page, which means that the person who threw the newspaper actually didn't know the true identity of "Grey Eagle" because he didn't see through Shade. And Detective Sparrow seemed to be able to only receive information but not actively make contact, so he couldn't report that he was going to die.
There is no information change for the special mission that will be carried out in September. If you give up the mission, please go to the old place tomorrow night and write the Delarian language - Eternal Loyalty. If you do not carry out the mission and do not give any response, it will be considered that your identity has been exposed, please evacuate on your own.
This is the sentence at the bottom edge of the first page, and "tomorrow night" has long passed.
Shade finally understood why he was asked to burn the letter. Of course, if Detective Sparrow didn't look for anyone and just died, it would be fine, but the detective was probably worried that the sudden closure of the detective agency in the city center, or the strange change of ownership of this "haunted house", would attract the attention of MI6.
Judging from the location and the identities of the neighbors, this was almost inevitable. Therefore, they found Xia De, a man with "some brain problems", to run the business temporarily for three months. When everything was gone, the Gray Gloves also gave up the "Gray Eagle" that had not responded for a long time, and everything was over.
"It really is 'eternal loyalty'."
Xia De was quite impressed.
Please deliver the intelligence you have obtained to No. 1 Vick Street before the harvest month and collect this year's £2,000 action fund.
"2000?"
Now Shad understood why the detective agency in Sparrow's era, which was only engaged in pet searches and mistress investigations, could still support his consumption of high-end black tea.
Will you go and collect the £2,000
"Of course not. I am now playing the role of a loyal Delarion. How can I pass information to the enemy country?"
What about the truth
"I'm not short of money right now, so there's no need to get involved in trouble for 2,000 pounds. However, the address is not written on the order. Detective Sparrow must know the address, but for others, except for me who happened to run into President Stan and got this secret information, even if I got Mr. Cameron's secret letter, I couldn't get involved in this matter."
Then came the last line of ciphertext in the newspaper:
If there is no special need, please do not enable the information network frequently.
This sentence was written in the gap between the second page advertising area.
Xia De sighed and threw the pen in his hand onto the desk.
He was very sure that what he had seen so far was only a small corner of the complex intelligence system of Carsonrick's "Gray Glove" organization. Detective Sparrow was dead, and no one could know how that complex system actually worked.
However, it is certain that Sparrow Hamilton's mission is to lurk for a long time. He cannot actively provide any intelligence to his superiors, and even his superiors may not know his true identity. His only role is to remain silent, accept the mission, and then complete the mission.
"This spy is really amazing. If I hadn't gotten some information, I wouldn't have thought that this ordinary detective would have such an amazing identity background."
Thinking in his mind, he threw the newspaper and the translated text in his hand into the brazier and burned them to ashes.
In the firelight, the paper burned up bit by bit. Looking at the bright brazier, Shade suddenly realized that the last trace of the former detective had also disappeared in this house.
He sighed softly:
"Goodbye, Detective Sparrow Hamilton."