The room was empty.

Douglas glanced at the room with a cursory glance. There were messy footprints on the floor, all the drawers had been pulled open and some even smashed, clothes and other things were thrown everywhere, and even the mattress had been cut a few times, and a thin layer of straw was used as a filler.

This is really thorough...... He calmly waited for nearly a minute with his back against the wall where he could escape, and made sure that there was nothing undeserved before walking in the direction of the closet.

He had to get the money first. From memory, Douglas held on to the closet door that had almost fallen, picked at the decorative pattern with his fingers, opened the hidden mezzanine, and reached in to find a few rolls of bills. This inevitably made him breathe a sigh of relief, and roughly counted at the crimson moonlight.

Combined with Thomson's advance of £15, Douglas's entire net worth was only £32, £14 and 5p. Pinching the crumpled bills and tucking them deep into his trouser pocket, Douglas looked at the ruined contents of the house with a painful heartache: according to the contract, if he wanted to continue renting the house after solving the problem, he would have to pay for the furniture, and he would have to clean up and buy new necessities...... It costs the......

I don't know if Thomson is still alive, and the organization behind him will not give the end money......

Muttering to himself, Douglas walked around the room twice, and in keeping with the principle of making do with it, he picked out a washed yellow white shirt, a loose sweater, and a coat of other colors from the floor, and replaced the old clothes on his body.

While looking for clothes, he suddenly noticed something that didn't fit in with the environment.

A white envelope lay on the desk in the corner, quietly bathed in the faint crimson moonlight.

Douglas didn't pay much attention to the desk at first, because he knew that there was no valuable written material there, and Douglas had already developed the habit of burning it after reading it during the years he had been working under the "mystery man". In addition, the moonlight was limited, and the room was dim and blurry, and if you didn't get closer, you wouldn't be able to find anything on the table.

But after discovering it, the sense of existence and disobedience of this envelope swelled all at once. Douglas's movement as he picked up a cap from the ground became slow and cautious.

Spiritual intuition has no warning...... He silently took the cap into his arms, and before picking up the envelope, he used a coin toss to confirm that it was harmless, and then he came closer, carefully pinched the corner of the envelope with two fingers, and turned to the moonlight to try to spy on what was inside.

It's light, it's thin...... The recipient was not written. Well, the moonlight is not bright enough, and you can only see what it looks like there is a note inside...... Douglas glanced at the gas meter on the wall and the corresponding gas lamp, but the light was still not turned on, but moved to the window with a slightly better light.

"The divination just now did not fail, proving that this envelope should have nothing to do with the extraordinary...... Moreover, it doesn't look like it came from a rough man like Forde, who is most likely illiterate, and if he wants to give an ultimatum, why use any envelopes, how good it would be to paint the skulls on the walls, anyway, he doesn't have to pay for painting the walls......"

"The envelope was of good quality, thick and did not go through the post office...... This, either as an employee of Forde, or as Thomson...... But Thomson didn't know my address, and I used to contact him in one direction......"

He flipped through the envelope several times, but there was no clue about the envelope's appearance, which made him scratch his ears a little irritably. After nearly a minute of making up his mind, Douglas quickly tore open the seal and poured out the note inside.

There was only one short sentence on it: "2nd Floor, 32 Ekborough Street, Joe Wood, Friedman. Mill. ”

32 Ikefort Street, Jowood District...... Douglas went through the address in his head and found that it was the location of the Celestial Observation Enthusiasts Association, which Thomson frequented! In the past, when he collected astrological information, he would write it down to his belongings and mail it to the association, rather than sending it to Thomson's home, which was considered to protect the privacy and security of the other party.

And the back of "Friedman. Mill", Douglas struggled to scan his memories to confirm that it was a completely unfamiliar name.

He doubled the note and even sniffed it. When I read novels in my previous life, there was a saying that writing was done with milk or lemon juice, and when it dried, the handwriting could only be revealed by baking it on a flame. Unfortunately, there were no candles in the room, and the flame that Douglas made with his spirit was not so obedient, and only achieved the effect of burning the paper to ashes.

Patting the ashes on his hands, Douglas already had some thoughts in his heart.

"I had agreed with Thomson to return the items on the evening of November 20th, but I missed that date due to the hunt and recuperation...... This item is what he is going to hand over to the organization, that is, after the 20th, the people of the organization will contact and meet with Thomson, and it is a secret organization with the formula of the potion, and it involves the acceptance of new members, and the person who comes is likely to be extraordinary......"

"In the past two days, whether Thomson is dead or alive, the members of this secret organization can be sure that the item has been lost, and the clue they can find, except for me, is Fude, who is chasing me......"

"A lot of the intelligence traffickers in the East Side know me and Forde. I was recuperating at Harvest Chapel and was not exposed, but Forde's whereabouts were easy to get ......"

"Friedman. It is likely that Mill was a member of the secret organization, who found my residence by following Forde's trail or by occult means, leaving behind information that I could determine the authenticity......"

"If it's the pursuer behind Forde who wants to lure me, there's no need to leave an unfamiliar name. As long as they do a good job of ambushing there, they don't even need to be captured alive, and after killing me, they can know where Dong XZ is, and they can also cut off the other party's clues......"

At the end of the reasoning, Douglas took out the coin for the fourth time, silently saying in his heart, "It is dangerous to go to 32 Ikeburg Street in the Jowood District now", tossed the coin high, and caught it with the palm of his hand.

What he saw was the reverse of the engraved number, which represented negation.

Putting away the coin, Douglas suddenly laughed uncontrollably, feeling that he was very much like the students in the examination room who did multiple-choice questions by throwing dice, with his eyes closed, all relying on metaphysics......

Well, in addition to tossing a coin, I did reason...... Believe in yourself, believe in the occult...... He smiled and checked the room for any omissions, then put on his cap and left, hiding along the way, avoiding the patrols, opening doors through walls and taking shortcuts, and it took him more than an hour to walk on two legs from the East End to Akberg Street in the Jowood district.

Halfway through, when I passed through other people's houses, I also fiercely restrained the desire to take the sheep by the hand.

I am a person with a moral bottom line, and I am a person with a moral bottom line...... Douglas rested for a while under 32 Ikeburg Street, once again divined the good fortune with a coin, and walked up the stairs with a familiar ride, through the locked door, into the second-floor lobby.

At this time, there is naturally no half of the people here. Douglas surveyed his surroundings while wrapping the soles of his shoes in old clothes to avoid shoe prints, checked the layout of the rooms on this floor, and then went straight to the office and began to rummage through the membership register.

After successfully finding Thomson's form and noting down the street where the other party's family was located, Douglas quickly went through all the members' profiles and found that "Friedman. Mir".

"Well, it's not an accident...... But I thought that the so-called preservation of items for a few days was just a test of whether Thomson would resell or embezzle the items because of greed, but in fact, the real members of the organization were close to him, and they were members of this association, so they would leave me this address......"

Putting all the information back where it was, Douglas had to look elsewhere for clues. He swipped through several rooms, including a conference room with long tables and benches, a lounge with upholstered chairs, a library with a variety of materials, and a stargazing room with several astronomical telescopes.

Douglas, who was a member of the astronomical club in junior high school, was no stranger to astronomical telescopes, and at that time he had completely mastered the assembly of astronomical telescopes, and he also had some knowledge of seasonal constellations and various astronomical landscapes. It's just that with the high school entrance examination and college entrance examination, the increasingly heavy studies made him no longer have time to memorize these trivial knowledge, and he has long forgotten them.

Compared to the equipment in my memory, the astronomical telescope in front of me is large and bulky, and the whole seems to be made of brass, with many exposed parts and bearings at the base to adjust the angle and focus.

Douglas patted the telescope with some emotion, which was very characteristic of the steam age, and turned his head to look at the red moon and ...... outside the convex belly window and Beckland's grey, starless nights in autumn and winter.

“…… Such a big haze, stargazing is lonely. The corners of his mouth twitched, and he didn't believe that this primitive telescope, which relied on lens refraction, could break through the blockade of Beckland's bad weather and see the real starry sky.

Leaving the stargazing room, he searched everywhere and finally found a clue at the front desk: there was a drawer containing letters addressed to the staff and members of the association. Mill sent it to Thomson!

Douglas sat down on the couch in the lobby and first checked the envelope outside, which still had no stamps or postmarks, probably delivered by the coachman. With the previous example of an envelope, this time Douglas did not hesitate to open the envelope, pull out the letter and read it.

Omitting all kinds of rhetoric that he saw as heavily translated, the letter was roughly in the voice of a friend, telling some of the things he had seen and heard during his travels, but the account recorded what he ate in the morning, how many gold medals he won in the casino, and what kind of beautiful women he admired the moon with in the evening......

Douglas read it several times, and first caught the only building with an explicit name written out of it: the Calpensa Inn!

The other buildings or locations are all referred to as "famous local restaurants" and "the most luxurious casino I've ever been to", without naming specific names.

Then, from the letter, he found a few numbers that were completely unnecessary, such as a few particularly delicious desserts for lunch, and what time he went to the theater...... Combined with the narrative in the letter, it is roughly interpreted that Friedman. The message Mill wanted to convey.

"The Pension Calpensa, room number 226, specifically emphasized the time period from nine to eleven in the morning, probably asking me to go to him during this time...... Well, the rest of the time he's probably out there actively looking for clues to the items......"

After deciphering the above information, Douglas let out a long breath, inexplicably having the illusion that he was playing a puzzle game.

Well, it's not a puzzle game with a lot of difficulty, but maybe a high mortality rate......

He thought about it, borrowed the pen at the front desk and brushed down a line on the back of the letterhead, then folded it in half and put it back in the envelope, making sure that the handwriting was the first thing he could see when he opened the envelope and took out the paper.

Putting the envelope away, Douglas looked at the wall clock in the hall, and found that there was still plenty of time, so he simply lay down on the sofa in the hall and rested for a while, only to feel that the plan went very smoothly.

"In this way, there is no need to pick up the entrusted items for the time being, and if you carry it with you, you will take it until you have negotiated with the other party...... Well, the follow-up trouble has to make this Friedman. Mir and the organization behind him to solve it, lest because of information asymmetry, things are handed over, and Forde is still chasing me, then I will lose a lot. ”

"Uh, the final payment...... How much do you have to pay for the medical expenses and rent...... Douglas can make money by being a bounty hunter, I may not be able to, and I can't fight, track, and my future income is worrying......"

"Why don't you wash your hands after this ticket and join the Harvest Church?"

"Alas, I always feel that the future is bleak......"

He yawned, and gradually began to feel sleepy, but he did not dare to fall asleep here, so he turned over and went to the bathroom to wash his face, and collected his traces and walked back into the night.