The Antigonus Family's notebook was in the room opposite the kidnappers'!
Although this was quite a coincidence, Klein believed his feeling was not wrong.
He immediately rolled out of bed and stripped off his worn sleeping clothes in a few quick movements.
He grabbed the white shirt beside him, slipped it on, and swiftly fastened its buttons from top to bottom.
One, two, three... He suddenly noticed that a button was "missing," and the two sides did not seem quite symmetrical.
Only after taking a closer look did Klein realize that he had mismatched the buttons from the very beginning, leaving the shirt twisted.
He shook his head helplessly, took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled, using a little meditation technique to regain some composure.
After putting on his white shirt and black trousers, he managed to strap on his shoulder holster with something approaching calm, then took the revolver hidden beneath his soft pillow and placed it inside.
Without bothering with a bow tie, he threw on his suit jacket and walked to the door with his hat in one hand and his cane in the other.
After putting on his silk half top hat, Klein gently turned the handle, opened the door, and entered the hallway.
Carefully closing the wooden bedroom door, he went downstairs almost as silently as a thief. Using the pen and paper in the living room, he left two lines saying that he had forgotten to mention last night that something at the company required him to arrive early today.
As he stepped outside, Klein immediately felt a cool, refreshing breeze, and his whole being grew calm.
The street before him was dim and silent, devoid of pedestrians, with only the gas streetlamps shining quietly.
Klein took his pocket watch from an inside pocket and clicked it open. It was only just six. The crimson moonlight had not yet completely faded, but a streak of brightness had already appeared on the horizon.
He was about to look for an expensive hired carriage when he suddenly saw a horse-drawn omnibus approaching, with two horses and four wheels.
"There are omnibuses this early?" Slightly surprised, Klein approached and waved it down.
"Good morning, sir." The driver expertly brought the horses to a halt.
Beside him, the conductor covered his mouth and yawned.
"To Zouteland Street," Klein said, taking two one-penny coins and four halfpennies from his trouser pocket.
"Four pence," the conductor replied without hesitation.
After handing over the fare, Klein boarded the carriage and found it completely empty. There were no other passengers, and it felt distinctly deserted in the gloom.
"You're the first," the driver said with a smile.
The two brown horses began moving forward at a relatively brisk pace.
"To be honest, I didn't expect there to be omnibuses this early." Klein sat near the driver and made a casual remark to distract himself and ease the tension within.
The driver said self-mockingly:
"Six in the morning to nine at night, every day, and yet I only earn a pound a week."
"Don't you get any time off?" Klein asked in surprise.
"We take turns having one day off a week." The driver's tone grew heavy.
The conductor beside him added:
"We work from six in the morning until eleven, then have lunch and an afternoon rest. After dinner, at six, we take over from our colleagues again... Even if we didn't need rest, the two horses would."
"It wasn't like this before. These shifts only started after some drivers got so tired that they made mistakes they shouldn't have, causing the horses to run out of control and overturn their carriages... As if those bloodsuckers would suddenly turn kind!" The driver scoffed.
In the light of dawn, the omnibus headed toward Zouteland Street, picking up only seven or eight passengers along the way.
Once his tension had eased a little, Klein stopped talking and closed his eyes, going back over yesterday's experiences frame by frame to see if he had missed anything else.
By the time the blazing sun had fully risen and the sky was truly bright, the omnibus arrived at Zouteland Street.
Holding his hat down with his left hand, Klein half stepped, half hopped out of the carriage.
He hurried into 36 Zouteland Street and climbed the stairs to the Blackthorn Security Company.
At this hour, the entrance was still closed.
Klein took the key ring from his waist, found the corresponding brass-colored key, inserted it into the keyhole, and turned it with a click.
He pushed forward, slowly swinging the door inward, and saw the black-haired, green-eyed Leonard Mitchell sniffing a recently fashionable cigarette.
"Actually, I prefer cigars... You seem to be in a hurry?" the poet-like Nighthawk asked leisurely.
"Where's the captain?" Klein asked instead of answering.
Leonard pointed toward the partition:
"In his office. As a Beyonder who advanced from Sleepless, he only needs two hours of rest during the day. I imagine factory owners and bankers must love that potion most."
Klein nodded and hurried past the partition, where he saw that Dunn Smith had already opened his office door and was standing in the doorway.
"What happened?" Dressed in a black trench coat and holding a gold-inlaid cane, he looked composed and serious.
"I had that feeling of 'having seen it somewhere before.' It should be that notebook, the Antigonus Family's notebook." Klein did his utmost to control himself and make his answer sound clear and organized.
"Where?" Dunn Smith's expression did not change noticeably.
But Klein's Spirit Intuition told him that the man seemed to have given off a distinct, invisible fluctuation. Perhaps it was a flare of his spirit, or perhaps a change in his emotions.
"Where Leonard and I rescued the hostage yesterday, opposite the kidnappers' room. I didn't notice it at the time. Only after having a dream did I receive the revelation." Klein concealed nothing.
"It seems I missed out on a very substantial achievement yesterday." Leonard, who had come over to the partition at some point, chuckled.
Dunn nodded slightly and instructed solemnly:
"Have Kenley relieve Old Neil at the armory. Get Old Neil and Frye to come with us."
Leonard stopped acting frivolous and immediately notified Kenley and Frye in the Nighthawks' recreation room. One was a Sleepless, the other a Corpse Collector.
Five minutes later, the Nighthawks team's two-wheeled carriage was speeding through the early morning, when there were still relatively few pedestrians.
Wearing a felt hat, shirt, and vest, Leonard acted as their temporary driver, occasionally flicking the whip through the air with a sharp crack.
Inside the carriage, Klein and Old Neil sat on one side, opposite Dunn Smith and Frye.
The Corpse Collector's skin was so pale that he looked as though he had not seen sunlight in a long time, or was severely anemic. He was around thirty, with black hair, blue eyes, a high nose bridge, and very thin lips. His demeanor was cold and gloomy, and he seemed to carry a faint odor left by years of handling corpses.
"Tell us what happened again, in detail." Dunn adjusted the collar of his black trench coat.
Rubbing the citrine pendant concealed beneath his sleeve, Klein began with accepting the commission and continued through to his dream. Old Neil chuckled beside him:
"You seem to share some sort of fated bond with that Antigonus Family notebook, running into it even like this."
Yes, this is far too much of a coincidence! If Leonard hadn't mentioned just now that the preliminary interrogation results in Elliott's kidnapping showed no hidden organization or mystical power pulling the strings, that it was simply a case of people taking risks for money, I would have suspected someone had deliberately arranged it... Klein also found this quite strange.
Far too much of a coincidence!
Dunn offered no opinion, as though pondering something. Frye, the Corpse Collector, who was also wearing a black trench coat, maintained his unchanging silence.
Only when the carriage stopped and the building Klein had described appeared outside the window was that heavy silence broken.
"Let's go up. Klein, you and Old Neil stay at the back. Be careful. You must be careful." Dunn stepped out of the carriage, drew a strange revolver with a noticeably longer and thicker barrel from inside his coat, and slipped it into his right pocket.
"All right." Klein would never have dared recklessly charge ahead.
Once Leonard had found someone to watch the carriage, the five Beyonders entered the stairwell in an orderly line and made their way quietly to the third floor.
"This one?" Leonard pointed to the room opposite the kidnappers'.
Klein tapped his glabella twice, activating his Spirit Vision.
In this state, his Spirit Intuition grew stronger still. He felt that the door looked familiar, as though he had been inside before.
"Yes." He nodded affirmatively.
Old Neil also activated his Spirit Vision and, after a careful inspection, said:
"There's no one inside, and no magical aura."
Frye, the Corpse Collector, added hoarsely:
"No evil spirits."
Even without activating Spirit Vision, he could see many spirit entities, including evil spirits and wraiths.
Leonard stepped forward and punched the lock, just as he had yesterday.
This time, not only did the surrounding wood splinter, but the lock itself flew off with a snap and clattered to the floor.
Klein felt some sort of invisible seal instantly disappear. Immediately afterward, he smelled a powerful stench.
"A corpse. A rotting corpse," Frye, the Corpse Collector, stated coldly.
He showed no sign of nausea at all.
Dunn extended his black-gloved right hand and slowly pushed open the door. The first thing they saw was a fireplace, from which an abnormal, stifling heat spread despite the early July weather.
In front of the fireplace stood a rocking chair, with an old woman in a black-and-white dress sitting in it, her head drooping.
Her entire body had swollen abnormally. Her skin was blackish-green all over, bloated until it shone, as though the slightest poke would burst it and release a foul, rotten stench. Maggots or parasites crawled in and out of her flesh and putrid fluids, her clothing and its folds-in Spirit Vision, they looked like points of light clustered around an extinguished patch of "gloom."
Plop. Plop.
The old woman's two eyeballs fell from their sockets, dropped to the floor, and rolled several times, leaving yellowish-brown trails.
A wave of nausea swept over Klein. Unable to resist the stench any longer, he bent over and vomited.