Whispering Verse

"Of course not, Detective, you can't just be suspicious of people. But that damn cat..."

The man inside the door gritted his teeth and said, as if the cat had eaten all his belongings, his expression was distorted:

"Get that cat away now, I will never help take care of any orange cats again."

"Okay, where's the cat?"

Shade asked. He didn't like cats very much, but for the generous commission fee, he wouldn't object even if he walked through the streets with a cat in his arms.

"On the roof."

The man pointed upward, his expression of gritted teeth became more intense:

"Since the detective came to foster the cat, this cat has not been allowed to be touched easily by anyone. It has scratched my wife and Miss Cindy at least twice. It won't eat cheap cat food and keeps bullying other pets here. I have been running this place for so many years, and I have never seen such an aggressive half-year-old kitten... At this time, it must be basking in the sun! Get it away quickly, I can't stand it anymore."

Shade pretended not to hear the man's complaint, backed away from the door slightly, then looked up at the three-story building:

"How do you want me to climb to the top of the building?"

"In the yard of this house, there is an escalator that can be climbed from the first floor to the roof. I will not go there. I never want to see that cat again!"

Of course Shade didn't want to climb so high, and he took safety issues very seriously. Just as he was trying to persuade the big-nosed middle-aged man, the latter directly handed him a 1-shilling note:

"Detective Hamilton gave me a shilling and tenpence to take care of it for two months. Now I'll give you the shilling back, and get rid of it! Never let that cat appear in this lane again!"

The sound was so hysterical that the children chasing him in the street and the woman leaning out to hang clothes in the building opposite looked over.

It’s hard to imagine how much psychological damage that orange cat caused to him.

Following the middle-aged man through the house, he came to the backyard filled with empty pet cages. The middle-aged man was holding on to the long metal ladder, and Shade carefully climbed up to the top of the building.

The roof of the building was filled with all kinds of garbage and debris. I don’t know how these things were transported up when the only way up was through ladders. And in the southeast corner of the roof, the only piece of ground that was considered clean, Shade saw the cat lying lazily on a metal bar facing the summer morning sun.

It was indeed a young-looking kitten. Its body was as soft as a puddle of water lying on a pipe. Its body is not big, and can even be said to be a little thin. The color of the fur shines slightly in the sunlight through the mist, which is a sign of health.

However, this is not so much an orange cat, but more like a white cat wrapped in a warm orange blanket. Only when the cat stood up did Shade realize that the even dazzling orange layer was really the color of cat fur.

The cat was standing on a metal pipe that had been discarded on the roof of the building. One end of the pipe was resting on a broken sofa cushion, making the cat's position slightly higher than other surrounding objects.

It stood up and turned its back to the morning sun. Its amber eyes looked at Shade, eyeing the stranger warily. Shade had no experience in dealing with such animals, and because of the words of the big-nosed middle-aged man, he was a little worried that the orange cat would pounce.

But this orange cat, named "Mia" like its owner, doesn't look very fierce. It was observing Shade, and Shade also knew that he was being observed, so he tried his best to be friendly, constantly reminding himself of the value of this cat:

"I will take you to meet your master, Miss Mia San Gold."

He found a place to stay among the waste, squatted down slightly and clapped his hands, with a deliberate smile on his face. As expected, the cat didn't respond to this suspicious look.

"Miss Mia Gold."

Just now was the most standard "Human Common Language of the Northern Kingdom", which is Delarian language. This time, it was a sentence with some Tobesk local accent. This is the skill that Shade learned in the past two days:

"I will take you to your master, Miss Mia Gold."

The orange cat's small ears swayed, and he raised his right front paw to lick it. After putting it down, he continued to look at Shade with bright eyes.

Shade pursed his lips, looked around, made sure there was no taller building nearby, and then stretched out the index finger of his right hand:

"look."

The silver light lit up on the index finger, and the orange cat's amber eyes immediately widened. It opened its mouth slightly, stood on the rusty metal pipe, its beard trembled and stretched its head slightly to look at the light:

"Miss Mia Gold."

Shade continued, then slowly approached the orange cat. He slowly stretched out his left hand, suppressed his worries about the "wild animal", and gently picked it up with one hand.

Orange cats are not heavy, at least not yet.

The cat still tilted its head and looked at the fingers of Shade's right hand, but after the light on the fingers went out, it did not escape from Shade's arms. It leaned back against Shade's chest, waving its two small paws with appropriate force, picking at Shade's glowing fingers just now, and seemed to be very interested in the "new toy".

"very good."

The detective breathed a long sigh of relief, stood up and prepared to leave. The young orange cat Xiao Mia only squirmed uneasily, but did not struggle excessively.

"Not ferocious at all, even very well-behaved. It seems that I am also a person who can make other animals like me very well."

Shade thought happily, and then he saw something lying under the pipe where the orange cat was lying just now. So he held the cat in one hand, bent down and picked up the thing with his right hand, and then saw that it was a box of old Rhodes cards.

When using Rhodes cards, you must collect a full set of 54 cards before they can be used. If there are special cards, they can be replaced according to the suit and card number, because the pattern on the back of all Rhodes cards is the same.

The box of Rhodes cards in front of him was not a special one. It was similar to the one used by the three men Shade saw in the tavern. The patterns on the cards were extremely simple, and you could buy a box for about tens of pennies.

Seeing that it was not an important thing, he put it into his pocket. Then he held the cat in one hand and carefully climbed back to the yard along the ladder.

When the big-nosed middle-aged man saw that Sha De was really going to take the cat away, he almost cried in front of Sha De.

After leaving Purple Iris Lane, Shade did not walk around holding someone else's cat, but went straight to Miss Gothe's house. During this period, the orange cat Mia, apart from making a "purring" sound at the beginning, only kept using her claws to pick off Shade's sleeves and chest clothes, but did not try to escape from his arms.

Since Miss Gold is willing to pay such a high price to find her cat, she must not be a poor person. She lives in Sandro Street, a quiet residential neighborhood in the south of the city. Every household here has its own small garden, and its gates are marked with their own name tags.