Baron Filer had suffered one piece of terrible news after another these past few days.
First, several Famous Paintings from his collection had vanished. Wherever a painting had once hung, the signature of Hughes the Phantom Thief had been left behind. Charlotte had not actually taken them. Those fragile Famous Paintings would be ruined within days by Machu Picchu's terrible environment, so he had merely hidden them where Baron Filer could not find them.
Filer absolutely refused to believe that a fellow named Hughes possessed such supernatural abilities.
When all his Gold Ecus and banknotes vanished, he could still say that this Hughes was simply agile and skilled at theft. After all, coins and paper money were easy to hide. But even after he raised the alert level several times, with countless guards maintaining tight security, Hughes still managed to steal things—especially Famous Paintings, which were not easy to transport. This made the baron suspicious that there was an insider in Silver Doveburg.
He no longer trusted any of the old servants from the dove castle. After several rounds of investigation turned up no suspicious individuals, he simply drove all the old staff away and kept only the people he had brought from Strasbourg.
Then some of the things he used daily, such as his tableware and valuable jewelry, began disappearing one after another.
This time, the signature left behind had changed to: Handsome Virgin Hughes.
At first, only small items went missing, but soon even large objects began vanishing. Furniture, for instance, and even his beloved carriage disappeared without explanation.
When the carriage vanished, the signature in the stable had changed again: Fresh and Delicious Handsome Virgin Hughes.
This outrageously bold thief had begun as the relatively respectable temporary leader of the South Seraph Restoration Army, Hughes the Phantom