Whispering Verse

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 kept guessing what the content of the letter would be.

As his thoughts became more and more bizarre, his guesses became more and more bizarre. Finally, he even thought that maybe it was not a letter but a package, which would trigger a steam bomb when opened.

Because there were so 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 the task given to Shade, but blamed Shade for raising cats in Saint Teresa Square and making the house dirty.

"What kind of weird dream is this?"

Shade woke up suspiciously, and then realized that it was only half past five.

He opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling in the darkness. After lying there for ten minutes and feeling no sleepiness, he sat up from the bed. As autumn approaches, the sun rises later and later, and the bedroom curtains are drawn, so it's dark inside.

However, probably awakened by Shade's movement, 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 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 did not 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 some crumbs.

These pigeons always seem to be here.

He looked very suspicious, and even the patrol police passing by gave him a double look. 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 half past six, the postman delivering the letter and the delivery man from the milk company began to arrive. Letters and newspapers were delivered into the hall through the mail slot under the door, and milk and goat's milk were placed in the milk box to the right of the door.

Shade never moved, which led to Mia, who woke up at 6:30 on time. After seeing Shade at the bedroom window, she kept standing on the window sill and staring at him with piercing eyes.

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 a glass milk bottle, I saw the newspaper I ordered and two letters with stamps on the floor mat.

"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 Competition" 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 came from a gentleman named Greer Ego. The mailing address stated 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 feeling 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, and the Delarian language was neatly written on the front in blue-black ink. But there is 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 from the window, but there was no reaction. Seeing Mia coming over very curiously, she handed the letter to it again.

It sniffed, then turned back to its breakfast.

"It's really fun."

Shade expected that this letter was not that simple, and having 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 August in the church. The priest has received the specific departure time and plans 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."

Shade shook the letter in his hand: Gu

"It's possible it was 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 visible long ago. The dying spy had no reason to leave anything that might reveal his identity.

"A letter from a ring wizard? The writing was hidden using thaumaturgy?"

asked the priest Augustus.

"No, just a letter from an ordinary person, with special ink I guess."

"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 is a black liquid in the bottle, which looks extremely thick:

"Try this. Appearance potion. It 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 simple formula of potion requires specific rituals to work, and using it to decipher secret messages 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 to 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 might 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 want to throw it out one day, but I'm always too lazy to get it out from under the bed."

After bidding farewell 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, leaving Father John who was expecting him to say "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 applying the potion given by Priest August, there was no reaction on the letter.

"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 applying Priest August's potion again, densely packed 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.

"Music score? 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 Detective Sparrow wrote during his lifetime, and there are many traces of turning over them. Shade once speculated that this was the spy's codebook, and now he finally had a chance to verify it.

"But why didn't he destroy these three books before he died?"

I thought about it suspiciously while flipping through the books, and then realized that compared to the strange ink, these three novels were ordinary. People who doubt his identity will notice the missing books in the study sooner or later even if he destroys three books; people who don't 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, with an obvious space appearing every few numbers. The spaces before and after form a group, 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. That is to say, 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 each group has eight numbers, and there is one more point to what"

Mia jumped from the ground onto Shade's lap, and then jumped from Shade's lap to the desk table. When he saw three books on the table, he immediately stretched out his paw, and then Shade hugged him down.

"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 makes it simple, 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 one by one. First translate the first 10 sets 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, it's just six possible arrangements."

Shade thought in his mind, took the notebook and started recording the letters corresponding to the numbers. There are ten groups of numbers and ten words, and although there are six possible arrangements, each group of numbers actually only needs to be searched three times.