"Beep... beep... beep..."
The busy signal echoed in the receiver, then faded away. Li Wei held the handset, frowning.
In movies, he hated scenes where a call suddenly cut off halfway through a conversation. But the problem now wasn't the unfinished conversation. It was... why had the line gone dead?
Telephones in this era needed wires to carry calls. Had something happened to the line?
At a thought from Li Wei, the Doll bird perched on the Baskerville roof spread its wings and soared into the sky. Then he quickly activated [Soul Sight] to scout the surroundings.
And then Li Wei saw some... well, rather troublesome things.
Very troublesome indeed.
"Miss Gladys."
Li Wei lowered the handset and turned to the maid who had remained beside him.
"Fetch Lady Baskerville immediately. It's urgent."
"Huh? But the young lady is currently..."
"Hurry. Tell her I have something extremely important to discuss!"
"All right."
Although Gladys didn't know why Li Wei was so desperate to see Ovelia, she nodded and hurried away.
A short while later, Ovelia came rushing over.
"What happened, Mr. Detective? Have you discovered something else?"
"How many people are on the estate right now?"
"Huh?"
Li Wei's question certainly caught Ovelia off guard. She considered it for a moment before answering.
"Twenty."
"So few?"
That was rather unexpected, and Gladys quickly offered an explanation.
"With the change of ownership, many things need reorganizing, and some people have resigned. We only have the butler, the cook, the gardener, the coachman, six maids..."
"What about the officers the police sent?"
"Eight."
"Tsk... can you gather everyone?"
"What's wrong? What happened?"
"We're under attack."
"Under attack?"
The answer genuinely shocked everyone. That was only natural. Delicat was an inland district; even if the Empire went to war with another country, they