Retch! Retch!
Klein crouched there, vomiting uncontrollably. Since he had not eaten breakfast, he soon emptied his stomach.
Just then, a small, square, tin-colored flask that looked much like a cigarette case appeared before his eyes.
Its uncorked mouth gave off a mingled scent of tobacco, disinfectant, mint leaves, and other things. It suddenly stung Klein's nose, bringing him fully alert.
The intense stench still lingered all around him, but Klein no longer felt nauseated, and his vomiting soon stopped.
Following the tin-colored flask upward, he saw a hand so pale it hardly seemed to belong to a living person, the sleeve of a black trench coat, and Frye, the Corpse Collector with a cold, gloomy air.
"Thank you." Having fully recovered, Klein braced his hands on his knees and stood back up.
Frye nodded expressionlessly.
"You'll be fine once you get used to it."
He corked the tin flask, slipped it into his pocket, and turned toward the elderly woman's badly decomposed corpse. Without putting on gloves, he began examining it directly, while Dunn Smith and Leonard Mitchell wandered around the room, occasionally touching the tabletop and newspapers.
Old Neil stood outside the door, pinching his nose, and complained in a muffled voice,
"This is disgusting. I'm applying for an allowance this month!"
Dunn turned back. As he touched the plaster on the wall beside the fireplace with his black-gloved right hand, he looked at Klein and asked,
"Does this place look familiar?"
Klein held his breath and pictured his silver pocket watch in his mind, calming both his body and mind.
Already using Spirit Vision, he immediately sensed something different. An image from the deepest recesses of his memory suddenly flashed before his eyes.
A fireplace, a rocking chair, a table, newspapers, rusty iron nails in the door, a silver-inlaid tin canister...
The image was dim and gloomy, like a documentary back on Earth, but blurrier and more illusory.
It swiftly overlapped with everything before Klein's eyes. The feeling of familiarity, of having been here before, emerged distinctly, and illusory, elusive cries once again pierced an invisible barrier.
"Hornacis... Flegrea... Hornacis... Flegrea... Hornacis... Flegrea..."
"A little familiar," Klein answered truthfully. His head was prickling with pain, so he hurriedly tapped twice between his eyebrows.
Hornacis... The Hornacis Mountain Range mentioned in the original owner's diary?
That was information deciphered from the Antigonus Family Notebook...
Those whispers just now were much like the ones I heard before. They both involved the name Hornacis... Is this... is this a lure?
Klein shuddered in alarm and dared not think further, afraid of setting himself on the path to losing control.
Dunn nodded slightly, walked over to the cupboard, and suddenly reached out to open its upper wooden door.
The bread inside had grown moldy. Beside it lay seven or eight stiff, dead gray rats with coarse fur.
"Leonard, go downstairs and find a police officer on patrol. Find out what happened here," Dunn instructed his team member.
"All right." Leonard turned and left the room.
Dunn then opened the doors to the two bedrooms and searched them carefully.
Once he had confirmed that he had found neither clues nor the Antigonus Family Notebook, Frye, the Corpse Collector, straightened up and wiped his hands with a white handkerchief he carried.
"She's been dead for over five days. There are no external injuries or obvious effects caused by Beyonder powers. The precise cause will have to wait until further examination."
"Did you find anything?" Dunn turned to Old Neil and Klein.
Both had already stopped using Spirit Vision, and they shook their heads together.
"Everything here is normal apart from the dead person. No, at first, an invisible force had sealed the room. You know, we often do something similar when performing ritualistic magic." Old Neil thought for a few seconds before adding this.
Dunn was about to speak when he suddenly looked outside the door. Only a few seconds later did Klein and Old Neil notice something and turn to look at the bend in the stairs.
A few more seconds passed, and faint footsteps gradually grew louder as Leonard came up with a police officer.
The officer's expression shifted slightly when he smelled the stench. He immediately cooperated with his "colleagues" from the Special Operations Department, knocking on the second-floor residents' doors and getting a general understanding of the situation upstairs.
A moment later, wearing silver epaulets bearing two chevrons, he looked at the corpse in the rocking chair and said,
"Katy Stephana Bieber, between fifty-five and sixty years old. A widow. She and her son, Riel Bieber, have been renting this place for over ten years."
"Her husband was a jeweler when he was alive. Her son is around thirty and unmarried. He inherited his father's trade and earned about one pound and fifteen soli a week. According to their neighbors, they haven't seen either of them in over a week."
By this point in the account, Klein already knew where their attention would turn next.
The missing Riel Bieber-or, more precisely, Riel Bieber, whose whereabouts were unknown!
That ancient notebook was very likely in his possession!
"Do you have a photograph of Riel Bieber?" Dunn asked the officer. He was playing the role of a senior inspector.
However, it could not really be called pretending, since the police department's records did list him as a senior inspector. His salary and allowances followed that rank as well, not including, of course, the portion from the Church.
The officer shook his head, looking slightly nervous.
"I don't know... We'll have to return to the precinct and look. Normally, we couldn't possibly keep a photograph of every fellow."
"I understand. Continue questioning the residents on the first floor. Ask them in detail," Dunn ordered.
Watching the officer, he closed the front door, then turned to Old Neil.
"I'll leave the next part to you. Otherwise, we'll have to put the residents here to sleep and search their dreams for Riel Bieber's appearance. Hmm, I don't particularly trust drawings based on verbal descriptions."
Old Neil nodded and took several thumb-sized bottles from a concealed pocket at the waist of his classical black robe. He sprinkled their contents around him in a particular order.
Then he took a pinch of powder and scattered it in a circle around himself.
A strange, pungent smell rose, unaffected by the stench in the room. Klein suddenly sensed a ring of invisible power around Old Neil, separating him from his surroundings and from the rest of them, just as the room had been sealed earlier.
Old Neil half closed his eyes. His lips moved as he began reciting a low, indistinct incantation. Caught unprepared, Klein only vaguely heard, "I pray for the Goddess's power," and, "I await the favor of the night"...
Whoosh! A sudden gust blew through the window, stirring up the powder.
Klein's heart suddenly jolted, and goose bumps rose all over his skin. He felt an indescribable, utterly terrifying "scent" that made one afraid to look directly at it rapidly spread.
His thoughts grew somewhat muddled, yet remained taut and unable to relax, as if he had just worked through a set of difficult mathematics problems.
Suddenly, Old Neil opened his eyes. They were pitch-black.
He took a fountain pen from his pocket and began sketching rapidly on a piece of scrap paper on the table, moving so quickly that his entire body trembled.
Klein focused his gaze and saw a face with deep-set eyes and a high nose bridge rapidly take shape.
After finishing the short, naturally curly hair, Old Neil wrote a line beneath the portrait.
"Black hair, dark-blue eyes, an all-porcelain false tooth on the left side of his mouth."
Clack! The fountain pen in Old Neil's hand fell onto the paper, and his body twitched several times.
"This is the image of Riel Bieber that remained in the room," Old Neil said quietly, his eyes quickly returning to their normal color.
Then he returned to his previous spot and slowly turned in place. The invisible, separating force immediately dissipated, dispersing as a light breeze.
"Praise the Goddess." Old Neil tapped four points on his chest, tracing the shape of a crimson moon.
Klein's mind relaxed. Looking more closely, he noticed that Riel Bieber's features were unremarkable and his bearing quite placid, except for the pronounced downward creases on either side of his nose.
"I'll try using dowsing to find him." He picked up the portrait, searched out some men's clothing in the bedroom, and spread everything on the floor.
Dunn, Leonard, and Old Neil did not stop him, watching as he planted his silver-inlaid black cane on the clothing and portrait. Frye, the Corpse Collector, remained as silent as ever.
His brown eyes darkened to black. With a deep gaze, Klein finished his silent recitation and released his hand.
The black cane stood quietly upright, as though embedded in the floor.
Riel Bieber's location, Klein repeated silently.
Amid the whistling wind, the cane toppled, but as it fell, it kept changing direction until it was revolving in small circles around its point of contact.
Without any external assistance, the silver-inlaid black cane stood firmly upright again.
Klein tried several times, all with the same result. He could only shake his head at Dunn and Old Neil.
Some strange power has interfered with my divination...
Dunn removed his black gloves and said to Leonard and Klein,
"Take Riel Bieber's portrait and question the residents here for final confirmation. Then have him put on the wanted list for murdering his mother."
"All right." Holding his cane, Klein bent down to pick up the portrait.
Once the neighbors had all confirmed that the man in the portrait was indeed Riel Bieber, Dunn sent Leonard and the officer to the police station to complete the paperwork. He went with Frye to several bars in Tingen City to find the man through underground channels.
Klein and Old Neil took a public carriage back to the Blackthorn Security Company. It was not yet eight, and Rozanne had not arrived.
After closing the front door, Klein turned to Old Neil and asked, partly in puzzlement and partly seeking guidance,
"Why would I... why would I have taken the Antigonus Family Notebook to Riel Bieber's home?"
It was in a completely different direction from the route between Welch's residence and Iron Cross Street.
Old Neil walked over to the sofa and chuckled.
"Isn't it obvious? Either you triggered the power within the notebook, or you performed some of the rituals it described out of curiosity and provoked a strange existence you shouldn't have. And the purpose of that power, that existence, was to deliver the notebook to Riel Bieber and cut off every lead so no one could discover it."
"So, apart from you, the chosen one, Welch and Naya both killed themselves on the spot. As for you, frankly, I still don't understand how you survived."
"I don't know either..." Klein sat down after him and deliberately answered with a bitter smile. "I thought of your explanation of what happened too. I just don't understand why the notebook had to be given to Riel Bieber."
Old Neil spread his hands.
"Perhaps his birth number met the requirements, or perhaps he's the last surviving descendant of the Antigonus Family. In any case, there are too many possibilities... There should be a similar reason why that notebook was sold here in Tingen City."
"I think he's a descendant." Understanding suddenly dawned on Klein, and he sighed. "Unfortunately, I didn't realize it immediately. Riel Bieber and the notebook are both gone."
Old Neil smiled.
"That's Dunn's problem to worry about. For you, it's a good thing."
"Why do you say that?" Klein frowned in puzzlement.