The "Detective" in Detective Work

Whether or not the man had seen them, they would slip inside and find out what was going on first. The three of them dashed toward the corner of the wall. Fortunately, the church was nearby, and before long they were crouched beside a window on the other side.

Before they could figure out what was happening, a message arrived from Mycroft. The kidnapper had made a new move: he wanted the ransom transferred in three installments to different crypto wallets, with a topology puzzle accompanying each transfer.

It looked like he was stalling for time too.

"Topology?" Sherlock perked up at the word. Looking at the profile Mycroft had sent him of the person he had previously asked him to investigate, he smiled confidently.

"I know."

Watson and Sitangna looked at him in surprise. Had this guy solved the case again? That quickly today?

"What do we do now? Sneak in and take a look, or wait here?" Watson still couldn't be sure whether this was the kidnappers' hideout. If they found no one and alerted them, that would be disastrous.

"Follow me." Sherlock straightened up and loosened his limbs, then crept through the church's back door. He moved extremely quickly, and Watson managed to keep up, since he often had to move silently on missions.

Sitangna, however, struggled to follow the two of them. The little noises she occasionally couldn't help making left her trembling with fright.

Oh my god, this is even more intense than playing a horror exploration game in VR.

"Relax. He was at university with me. We'll have to go in and say hello in a moment anyway."

"What?" Watson and Sitangna exclaimed in unison.

"Remember, John? Victor, the one who took the test samples that night." Sherlock tapped away on his keyboard, messaging who knew whom. The other two crouched beside him, sorting through their thoughts, and a chain of events gradually became clear in their minds.

"Get up. It's time to say hello. He's been watching us for so long that it would be rude not to have a chat." Sherlock grabbed each of them by the back of the collar and pulled them up, then headed toward the church's front hall.

"Dear Victor, my friend, it really has been a long time."

Sitangna and Watson looked in the direction Sherlock was speaking and only then spotted the man standing facing the church, seemingly praying.

"That's him, the man from that night," Watson whispered to Sitangna. The two of them followed Sherlock, acting furtively.

The man did not respond. Dressed in a black overcoat, black hat and black gloves, he gave off an air that kept people at a distance.

"You won't mind me bringing two friends along to catch up, will you? I remember you being quite fond of making friends."

Sherlock went up and stood beside him, casually offering him a cigarette. He felt around his pockets and found he hadn't brought a light.

"No smoking in church."

Victor Trevor didn't take the cigarette from Sherlock. He turned to look at the two people behind him. "You shouldn't have gotten involved in this, especially you."

He looked back at Sherlock, his amber eyes unreadable. Only then did Sitangna get a clear look at his face. He was about Sherlock's age, tall and thin, with a pair of hawk eyes that made people uneasy.

The hawk and the cat looked each other in the eye, neither saying a word.

"She isn't here. You've come to the wrong place." Victor walked toward the church stairs, paying no further attention to the people behind him.

"Until I get what I want, she won't die easily. But if you can't find her within the time limit, all I can say is that she has bad luck, and heaven wants her dead."

Victor gave Sherlock a cruel smile. Clearly, he knew the great detective's abilities very well and was doing his best not to talk to him.

"What do we do? We didn't get any information." Sitangna helplessly patted the tracker, which had lost its signal. The thing had stopped working as soon as they came in.

It seemed the guy named Victor had installed an electromagnetic jammer here too.

"What if the three of us go up and pin him down? Three against one, we'd have a good chance!"

Watson spoke quietly, looking toward the stairwell where the figure had disappeared. Seeing that the man was alone, he was eager to try.

"Who told you he was alone? There are at least two others upstairs besides him. I heard footsteps while we were talking."

Sherlock tried to bring up the tracking system on his phone, which Mycroft had installed especially for him. He knew full well his older brother had arranged bodyguards for him, but his phone screen was blank too.

This was electromagnetic pulse interference. It didn't just make electronic devices lose their signal; it turned their screens white.

"Then we need to leave. Mycroft already sent over the three topology puzzles. Let's hurry and find somewhere to solve them."

Sitangna was worried about Emily's safety and wanted to find her as soon as possible.

The three of them had barely gone any distance from the church when their electronic devices immediately returned to normal. The Cavendish family's butler called just then, saying that a professor well-versed in topology had solved the first puzzle's code: an unidentified six-digit number.

"Sir has already transferred fifteen million pounds, but for the rest... the Cavendish family doesn't have that much money. So you're our only hope, Mr Holmes. Please save the young miss! I'm willing to give you all my savings..."

The butler was the same one from Emily's villa. He had been at Mr. Cavendish's side since he was young, and had even been there when Emily was born, watching over Sir and his only child all the while.

Even after the young miss grew up and moved away from Sir, he chose to follow her and look after her daily needs, though he should have retired and enjoyed his remaining years.

He was nearly seventy this year. He had never married and had no descendants. He had sworn to share in the Cavendish family's fortunes and misfortunes.

If the young miss were truly gone, he thought, he would have no reason to go on living either.

"Don't worry, butler. We'll find a way to save Emily." Sitangna had spent the whole previous evening listening to the story of Emily's life and understood the special place the butler and Emily held in each other's hearts.

The two of them watched over each other just like Batman Wayne and his butler Alfred, and she could understand that bond very well.

"We've received all three puzzles. The first has been solved, and the second is being worked on. Sherlock, let's look at the third."

Watson took out the little notebook he carried with him, wrote the three puzzles on a sheet of paper and handed it to Sherlock.

The area was desolate and sparsely developed. After searching for a long time, the three of them found only an abandoned café. Luckily, there were still tables and chairs outside, sparing them the indignity of sitting on the ground.

"Mm... my head hurts..."

Emily slowly woke on a sofa. Once she opened her eyes, she quickly realized she had been kidnapped. Nothing was restricting her movements, but she had been dressed in a metal chain-mail vest.

The chain mail was densely packed with wires, each connected to a tiny tube. At the center of the tubes was a countdown display.

Bombs. She was covered in them, front and back. Feeling the countdown ticking against her chest, her legs gave way and she slid to the floor.

Ever since she was born, she had been the brightest yet most secretive star in London society.

Everyone in their circle knew she was the illegitimate daughter whom the famous high-ranking official Mr. Cavendish had never publicly acknowledged, but they also understood her place in his heart.

The worst injury she had ever suffered growing up was a sprained ankle in a riding lesson.

The sight of herself strapped tightly into bombs made her head spin. The kidnappers didn't even need to give her another muscle relaxant.

How did I get captured?

She still remembered that the leading lady's aria had been rising toward its climax at center stage, and her friends from their circle beside her had been enthralled. She had felt her stomach churning and left her seat for the restroom.

After that, she remembered nothing. They had probably drugged her food to make her stomach hurt, then ambushed her in the restroom. But she was curious how they had managed to take her away under the noses of so many bodyguards.

The situation had indeed unfolded just as Sitangna and the others had imagined.

As the lights in the private box dimmed, orchestral music surged through the theater like a tide, drowning out the last trace of static in the bodyguards' earpieces.

In the corner of the box, a device disguised as a standard signal blocker was quietly emitting targeted electronic pulses, precisely cutting off all communications. This was the first step in Victor and his associates' plan: silence.

After the target entered the restroom as planned, a fragrance sprayed out forcefully from behind the mirror, spreading through the air like a lurking venomous snake. Ailimi, who was washing her hands, couldn't dodge in time and was hit.

It was a chemical agent Victor had carefully concocted, and he never missed in this regard. Mixed with the hallucinogenic phenethylamine derivative Emily had previously ingested, the chemicals combined to produce a sedative effect that was quietly eroding her sense of direction.

Her world tilted subtly, and then she lost consciousness completely.

Unnoticed by anyone, a preinstalled holographic projector was activated silently among the intricate beams of the dome.

A beam of cold light fell precisely on the mirror behind Emily's empty seat, and a "phantom" appeared, reproduced from 3D scans of her at countless past performances.

Advanced technology made her projection lifelike, down to her habitual, subtle gesture of brushing back the hair at her temples.

On the surveillance footage, Miss Cavendish remained "present," elegantly immersed in the art. Only after the team withdrew and the projector ran out of power did her beautiful figure disappear from view.

Deep in the theater's basement, an abandoned Victorian-era subway tunnel led away. Dressed entirely in black, Victor carried the unconscious Emily in his arms, walking at a steady pace along the dust- and cobweb-covered tracks. Behind him, two international mercenaries with rifles brought up the rear.

As they walked, the mercenaries sprayed something into the air, seemingly to cover their tracks. An almost imperceptible, slightly cloying scent spread through the tunnel.

There was no need to worry about the scent lingering. Before they noticed it, everything would be gone without a trace.

And that was indeed what happened. The synthetic beeswax they sprayed was ideally suited to confusing police dogs' sense of smell. Like an invisible barrier, it erased every trace of the kidnappers and their captive along the route.

Fortunately, Sherlock and the others' scents still lingered, and the brave dogs led the security team straight to them as they sat by the roadside, deep in thought.

"I've solved the puzzles, but what do these numbers mean?" Sherlock and his companions were taken back to the police station. Riding in a police car again, Sitangna remarked that coming here was like coming home.

Sherlock frowned deeply, staring at the three strings of meaningless numbers on the note as he pondered.

"Sherlock, Watson, what are you doing here? Oh! And Nana too." Lestrade had just returned from official business and was surprised to see his three old friends.

"Uh, a little something. Someone asked us to help solve a case." The matter couldn't be made public yet, so Watson brushed it off.

"All right, I'll let you get on with it. I have to go sort out today's work report too. I just got back from an incredibly remote place. If I hadn't had a navigator, I'd have gotten lost..."

Cars generally had built-in navigation these days, but the police station had more sophisticated navigators, professional tools specifically for finding locations during investigations.

Navigation... Something flashed through Watson's mind. At the mention of it, Sherlock spotted the navigator and promptly took it.

"Let me borrow this."

Sherlock took the navigator and slipped straight into the office of the special investigative team Cavendish had set up. The investigators inside were controlling surveillance feeds from regions across the country, trying to find Miss Emily and the kidnappers.

"Nana, pull up a large map of London on the computer and print it out for me. John, get me a permanent whiteboard marker."

Sherlock tapped something into the navigator. Once Sitangna and Watson had the things ready, he took the marker and drew a few lines directly on the computer screen.

"Hey! What are you doing? That's our office's shared computer! You're damaging public property, kid."

The head of the investigative team had heard of Sherlock before, but now that they were temporarily working together, he found that the famous great detective was nothing special.

The newspapers and blogs had praised him to the skies, but in the end he was just like the team leader, racking his brains over the case without making any progress.

"I know you're anxious. Everyone's anxious and wants to solve the case and save Miss Emily quickly, but taking it out on public property won't help..."

"Shut up," Sherlock said softly. Then, before the man could get angry, he nailed the printed map of London to the wooden felt board.

"The codes calculated from the three topology puzzles aren't just transfer codes. They also correspond to the latitude and longitude coordinates of buildings in London." Sherlock marked the locations of those numbers on the map.

"I was a little surprised when I saw the first code. It was exactly the latitude and longitude shown on the tracker Nana had. I instinctively assumed it was just a coincidence."

"Of course it couldn't have been a coincidence. Clever as Victor is, every piece of information he gives us is worth thinking over. He loves games like this. He did before, and he still does now."

Sherlock's animated manner surprised everyone in the office except Sitangna and Watson.

The two of them had grown immune to Sherlock's incessant chatter while working on the case, though they still thought he was unbelievably brilliant.