Because tomorrow Thursday, the fifth day of September, is the date that the "letter" that Detective Sparrow mentioned before his death will arrive. On Wednesday night after sending off Carina and Tifa, Shade
I have been guessing what the content of that letter will be.
As his thoughts grew wilder, his guesses became more and more bizarre. Finally, he even thought that maybe it was not a letter but a package that would trigger a steam bomb when opened.
Because he had too many things on his 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 giving it to Xia Xia.
Instead, he blamed Chard for raising cats in Saint Teresa Square and making the house dirty.
"What kind of weird dream is this?"
Shade woke up suspiciously and found that it was only half past five.
I stared at the ceiling in the darkness with my eyes open. After lying there for ten minutes, I really couldn't sleep, so I sat up from the bed. With the arrival of autumn, the sunrise time is getting later and later, and the curtains in the bedroom are closed.
, so the room was dark.
However, probably awakened by Shade's motion to get up, the cat huddled up next to the pillow opened its eyes alertly, glanced at Shade, and after realizing it was him, it meowed a few times before falling into a deep sleep again.
go.
It's not time for the 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.
Feed the pigeons some crumbs.
These pigeons always seem to be here.
His appearance was very suspicious, and even the patrol police passing by looked at him twice. But as the time came to six o'clock, other people gradually appeared in Saint Teresa Square, and he no longer looked so conspicuous.
Shade wanted to see who was delivering the letter to Saint Teresa Square.
Starting at 6:30, the postman delivering letters and the delivery man from the milk company began to arrive one after another. Letters and newspapers were delivered into the hall through the delivery port under the door, and milk and goat milk were placed in the milk box on the right side of the door.
Shade never moved, which caused Mia, who woke up on time at 6:30, to stand on the window sill and stare at him with piercing eyes after seeing Shade at the bedroom window.
Shade waited until seven o'clock and saw that no one else was stopping at the door of his house, then he scattered all the remaining bread crumbs to the pigeons.
After standing up, the pigeons flapped their wings and passed over Shade's head. Shade walked to the door of his house, took out the key to the milk box and opened the lock. After opening the door with the glass milk bottle, he saw the newspaper he ordered and two letters on the floor mat.
Letters with stamps.
"Could this kind of letter be sent through the post office? Is it so bold?"
Shade thought suspiciously.
I made breakfast for myself and the cat first, and then opened the letter at the dining table.
Among the two letters, one is an official letter from the Prophet's Association, inviting Shade to participate in the opening ceremony of the "1853 Great City Players Rhodes Tournament" held tomorrow at the Silver Cross Avenue Prophet's Association.
Since Shade took other people's money to participate as a special guest player, of course he will be there tomorrow.
The other letter was from a gentleman named Greer Ego. The mailing 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 entrance of the street.
"I have a wonderful premonition that this is the letter."
Xia De thought in his heart and felt a little excited:
"This has been a mystery for more than two months. What could it be?"
Opening the envelope, there was only a folded page of letter paper inside. There was no writing on the back of the letter paper, and the Delarian language was neatly written on the front with blue-black ink. But there was only a short line, not even a greeting or signature.
【Still the same.】
"It's really rude, but what does it mean?"
Shade was very curious.
【Don't you want to burn this letter?】
she asked softly in her ear.
"Burning the letter does not conflict with me figuring out the contents of the letter. This was a mystery that lasted two months."
Shade responded, holding the letter and shining it into the sunlight of the window, but there was no reaction. Seeing Mia coming over very curiously, he handed the letter to it again.
It sniffed, then turned back to its breakfast.
"It's really interesting."
Shade expected that this letter was not that simple, and there was nothing to do today and his strong curiosity did not allow him to give up now.
"I just want to know what this is, and I don't want to get involved in Detective Sparrow's troubles."
So after breakfast, Shade took this letter to Dawn Church and found Priest Augustus in the church. The priest had received the specific departure time and planned to tell everyone about his travel plan on Saturday.
Seeing Shade coming, he asked him to help him think about what else he needed to bring. The climate in the southeastern part of the kingdom was completely different from Tobesk.
"I just wanted to ask if there is a way to make invisible characters visible."
Xia De shook the letter in his hand: Gu
"It may be written with special ink, but I don't know what it is."
If it was what Shade thought, then Detective Sparrow should have destroyed the potion that made the ink appear. There was no reason for the dying spy to keep anything that might reveal his identity.
"A letter from a ring wizard? The writing was hidden using thaumaturgy?"
asked the priest Augustus.
"No, it's just a letter from an ordinary person. I guess it's special ink."
"It's easier for ordinary people."
The priest didn't even take Shad to his potion workshop. Instead, he found a small glass bottle covered with dust in his room in the church. There was a black liquid in the bottle, which looked particularly strange.
Thick:
"Try this, the visible potion is generally used to detect objects that can be touched but cannot be observed with the naked eye or other methods. My bottle has expired, but it is still very useful for ink. This is not through a chemical reaction
Appearance is the concept of making visible something that exists but cannot be seen."
Invisible ink is also ink, and there must be traces of ink on the paper.
This potion with a simple formula requires a specific ritual to work, and using it to crack a secret message is like using a steam bomb to blow up mosquitoes.
Priest August did not bring the ritual materials into the church, so he asked Shade to go home with the revealing potion and get it.
Shade immediately proposed that he would pay for the bottle of potion, but the old priest waved his hand and asked him to leave directly:
"It may still be worth some money if it's not expired, but this bottle has expired, so you can just throw it out in 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 saying goodbye to the priest, Shade first went to Old John's pawn shop and bought the ceremony materials for 3 shillings and 9 pence. Because the price was cheap, Shade didn't even bargain, which made Father John look forward to him saying "cane".
Very disappointed:
"Sometimes I feel that the pleasure of doing business with you is greater than the pleasure of earning a few coins in your pocket."
After returning home, Shade simply arranged the ceremony on the blank letter paper, and then put the letter from this morning on it. After pouring the potion given by Priest August, there was no reaction on the letter paper.
"Well, you guessed it wrong?"
Shade, who was at the desk, thought for a while, took down the letter paper with the small words written on it, and put the envelope on it. After pouring Priest August's potion on it again, dense numbers appeared on the inside of the envelope.
"very good."
There was an excited smile on his face, but these numbers had no meaning at all.
"Sheet music? Not like a code, Detective Sparrow's code."
Shade turned to look at the bookshelf and took down the detective's relics "The Queen and Her Lovers", "The Silver Knight" and "Collections from the Western Front".
These three novels are the only novels that Detective Sparrow wrote during his lifetime, and there are many signs of flipping in them. Shade once speculated that these were spy code books, and now he finally has the opportunity to verify them.
"But why didn't he destroy these three books before he died?"
He thought suspiciously while flipping through the books, and then realized that compared to the strange ink, these three novels were ordinary. Anyone who doubted his identity, even if he destroyed three books, would sooner or later notice the missing books in the study.
; People who do not doubt his identity will not care that these three books appear on the bookshelf.
"But how do you compare those numbers with these three books?"
Looking at the things on the desk, Shade fell into deep thought.
The numbers visible on the envelope are not completely coherent, and there will be an obvious space every few numbers. The spaces are grouped before and after the spaces, and each group is 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 set of numbers corresponds to a letter, but should correspond to a word, and the number of lines of words on each page and
The number of columns is only two digits. In other words, if you want to point to a word in a certain row or column of a certain page, you only need 3+2+2=7 numbers. But now there are eight numbers in each group, and there is one more point.
what"
Mia jumped from the ground onto Shade's lap, and then jumped from Shade's lap to the desk table. When she saw three books on the table, she immediately stretched out her paws, and was then picked up by Shade.
"Could it be pointing to a book? The codebook 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 "12" or "3", and no other numbers appeared.
"That's easy, the last digit in each group refers to the book."
Shade smiled.
But this brings up a new problem. Even if this guess is correct, he doesn't know the corresponding numbers of the three novels.
"But it doesn't matter. You can try them one by one. First translate the first 10 groups of numbers. If you can connect them into meaningful sentences, it means my idea is correct."
[Three numbers correspond to three books, you have to guess many times.]
A voice came to my ears.
"It doesn't matter, there are only six possible arrangements."
Shade thought in his mind, took the notebook and started recording the letters corresponding to the numbers. There were ten groups of numbers and ten words, and although there were six possible arrangements, each group of numbers actually only needed to be searched three times.
