Ding! Dong!
A rope was being tugged, causing the doorbell and the sound it made to constantly tinkle and send its sound echoing through the quiet house.
Arthur stiffened, the pen halting on the paper. He slipped the orange notebook into his desk drawer, grabbed the Webley revolver, and quickly threw on a dry robe before making his way down the wooden staircase. He kept the gun concealed behind the doorframe as he unlatched the front door and pulled it open slightly.
An old, potbellied man stood on the porch, shivering in the freezing rain. He was clutching a soaked bowler hat to his chest, his face pale and lined with panic.
"Mr. Sturridge," the man gasped, his voice trembling. "Thank the heavens you're awake."
As Arthur looked at the man's face, a fragmented memory from his predecessor bubbled to the surface. Mr. Thomas Abernathy. He was a senior clerk—essentially a glorified peon—for a wealthy merchant, over in the affluent Western Borough. Arthur had worked for his employer a few months ago. It hadn't been a grand mystery; he had merely tracked down a misplaced financial ledger that had slipped behind a heavy oak cabinet. It was a mundane task with nothing remotely dangerous or interesting about it. And while the pay was generous, he suspected that it was more of a way to turn black money into white, or something along those lines. Not that it mattered; neither he nor his predecessor were exactly financial experts anyway.
"Mr. Abernathy," Arthur greeted cautiously, keeping his voice level. "It's the middle of the night. What are you doing here?"
"It's my daughter, Mr. Sturridge. She's missing," Abernathy blurted out, tears mixing with the rain on his cheeks. "She didn't come home from her shift, and her friends haven't seen her. I went to the local police station hours ago, but they just told me to wait! They said she likely ran off with a suitor and dismissed me. But I know my girl, she wouldn't do that. Please, I remembered hearing a rumor that you were the only detective in the borough willing to take a case at any hour."
Arthur stood in silence, his mind racing.
Why come to me for this? he wondered, studying the desperate father. I barely found a misplaced book for his boss, though I must admit, the Ratchett guy hid it really well. Still, I don't exactly have a sterling reputation or any major achievements to my name. A missing person case in a city like this is far beyond a simple lost-and-found job.
Misunderstanding Arthur's thoughtful silence as reluctance, the potbellied man took a desperate step forward.
"I'll pay you ten pounds!" Abernathy pleaded, his voice cracking. "Ten pounds, if you can just start looking for her right now. It's all I can give you at the moment, please!"
Ten pounds. From the inherited memories, Arthur knew that was a substantial sum, more than enough to cover his living expenses for a long while.
"Alright," Arthur said softly, stepping aside to let the freezing man into the parlor. "Come inside and dry off. I will take the case."
Abernathy nearly collapsed with relief, thanking him profusely as he stepped out of the heavy rain.
Despite his outward calm, Arthur was drowning in his own internal doubt. Can I actually do this? I'm just a normal guy who transmigrated just a few hours ago. I play video games and read web novels; I don't know the first thing about actual police work or tracking missing persons.
"Wait here for a moment, Mr. Abernathy. I need to change into something more appropriate," Arthur said, gesturing toward the cold fireplace.
He hurried back upstairs to the master bedroom and stripped off his loose robes. He quickly dressed up for the harsh weather, pulling on a crisp shirt, a thick wool vest, and a heavy, dark trench coat. He holstered the Webley Mark VI in his inner coat pocket and grabbed a sturdy wooden walking cane with a silver handle from the stand by the door.
Pausing at his desk, he grabbed a standard, unmarked black leather notebook from the pile to record the details of Abernathy's case.
As he buttoned his coat, his mind unhelpfully began supplying terrifying, morbid scenarios of what usually happened to young, missing women in the dark, rain-slicked alleys of a Victorian metropolis.
Stop it, he scolded himself, shaking his head to dismiss the dark thoughts.
He had heightened senses now. He had a gun. And hopefully, whatever sparse details Mr. Abernathy would give him, would be enough of a starting point to intervene before anything truly horrific happened. Taking a deep breath to steady his nerves, Arthur pulled his hat down low over his pale, grey-blue eyes and descended the stairs to begin his very first case.
■■■
The sparse details Mr. Abernathy provided were barely enough to fill half a page in Arthur's black notebook. His daughter, Clara—short brown hair, dark brown eyes, green coat—worked as a seamstress at a high-end dressmaker's shop on the border of the Western Borough. She usually walked home along a specific route, oftentimes stopping by the Dodge bakery. That was it. No known enemies, no suspicious suitors. One thing was certain though: the man was terrible at giving useful descriptions.
Stepping out into the freezing deluge, Arthur pulled his collar up against the cold wind. The streets of the city were a labyrinth of slick cobblestones and gas lamps that cast long, distorted shadows along the path. Given that it was well past one in the morning, the district was virtually abandoned; there were so few people out that he could count them on one hand by the time he reached his destination.
He stared at the dressmaker's shop. The elegant storefront featured a classic, traditional façade of dark slate-blue painted wood, framing large plate-glass windows and a central pair of glass double doors with wooden framing. Gold lettering spelled "HEBERT CHRISTIE & CO" across the fascia, while the windows themselves featured "COUNTRY OUTFITTERS" on the left and "BESPOKE TAILORS" on the right respectively. The shop was locked tight, its unlit displays facing blindly into the stormy night. A normal investigation would have stalled here, but Arthur, for all intents and purposes, was no longer normal. He activated his Heightened Senses, wincing slightly as the world sharpened violently.
The immediate sensory overload was atrocious. The smell of industrial runoff, stale beer, and rotting garbage assaulted his heightened senses, making his stomach churn. But beneath the filth, his mind picked up the subtle disturbances that had transpired here: a scuffed brick, a discarded ribbon, the faint scent of fear being washed away by the rain, and the slight traces of a heavy carriage carrying something away.
To anyone else, those deep tracks might have suggested one of two things: a commercial wagon hauling a massive cast-iron locomotive part, or a standard carriage overstuffed with passengers. But Arthur's modern mind quickly dismantled both theories.
First, there was the scuffed brickwork on the ground. The slight grooves scraped into the stone weren't from normal foot traffic; they were the frantic, digging marks of someone actively struggling against an attacker. Second, there was the wet ribbon lying abandoned just inches from the scuffle. It had almost certainly fallen from Clara's neck tie thingy while she fought back. Is that what it's called? Whatever.
Now onto the final clue: the wheel tracks themselves. By studying the way the grime and water were displaced inside the grooves, I could roughly calculate and estimate their trajectory. The carriage while it had indeed stood here for a few seconds at most, it had also accelerated away at a high speed, tearing eastward, causing the markings on the ground. A simple passenger cab wouldn't flee a scene and wouldn't surely create marks like that, and a massive locomotive hauler physically couldn't either.
This was a kidnapping.
Arthur felt quite accomplished and proud of himself for actually thinking like a detective, or at least, how he imagined a detective would think like. But then suddenly he heard a sound that broke his train of thoughts.
His gaze immediately snapped toward the recessed doorway of the adjacent building. There, huddled in the gloom behind a discarded stack of wooden crates, a small, ragged shape was shivering in the shadows.
It was a street urchin, a boy no older than twelve, hugging his body against the biting cold.
Arthur approached slowly, leaning on his silver-handled cane. The boy scrambled to run, but Arthur reached into his coat and took out a slim long wallet that oddly looked like a notebook, it was something that Arthur recognized from the Tintin movie. The sudden appearance of the dark green paper bill made the kid freeze in place.
Arthur felt a sharp pang at parting with the one soli bill. Still, there was no better option.
"I can give you this," he said, holding the note out, "if you answer me truthfully."
The boy's eyes locked on the note. "Yes, kind sir. Please ask whatever you want."
"I'm looking for a girl," Arthur said smoothly. "She came out of this shop a few hours ago like four five. Brown hair, green coat. Did you see her?"
The boy snatched the 1-soli note from Arthur's fingers and looked up at him with wide, suspicious eyes as he examined the bill under the lamplight.
"Didn't just see her, mister. Saw the men who took 'er. Two blokes in heavy coats. Grabbed her right off the pavement and threw her in a black carriage. Smashed her on the head, they did."
Arthur's grip tightened on his cane. "Which way did the carriage go?"
"East, over there in that direction," the boy pointed with a grimy finger.
Just as I thought.
The Eastern Borough, the original Arthur memory supplied. Even with his fragmented memories, Arthur knew what that meant. It was the festering wound of the city, a sprawling slum of poverty, despair, gangs, and factories.
Arthur looked down at the shivering child. His modern sensibilities, still bleeding through his newly acquired Victorian persona, couldn't stomach leaving a twelve-year-old child out in such bad weather, especially not after the kid had just provided the only viable lead that was not just a theory. Besides, if the constables needed a witness later, this street urchin was the only one who had actually seen the kidnappers.
"Come with me," Arthur ordered smoothly, tapping his silver-handled cane against the cobblestones.
The boy shrank back, clutching the note close to his heart. "I ain't going to no workhouse, mister!"
"You're not going to a workhouse. You're going to get a warm bed," Arthur replied, turning on his heel and gesturing for the boy to follow.
He led the reluctant child through the rain-slick streets, heading east. The shops and orderly façades gradually gave way to quieter and more worn out buildings until they stopped a few blocks short of the true edge of the Eastern Borough, in front of an establishment whose weathered wooden sign read Silvertongue Tavern.
From the light and noise that spilled from inside it looked like the tavern was still open. Inside, the ground floor hummed with a few late-night patrons seeking refuge from the sudden heavy storm that had started tonight.
Arthur paused for a moment. Then again, he thought, it's not like I know when normal people go to sleep in this world, right? But still, isn't it way too late? Or maybe I should say it's too early.
Beyond that minor oddity, the air was also thick with the scent of alcohol and hot food, evidenced by the savory Desi Pie that the old gentleman in the corner was eating.
Arthur allowed his gaze drift across the room, taking in the details of the patrons. He couldn't exactly put it into words, but he felt like there was something off here. Not Wrong with a capital W, he mused. More like less powerful lowercase wrong. Does that even make sense? Hah, maybe it's just me thinking strictly from a modern perspective that makes me feel like that.
Arthur shook his head to clear it.
The barman, who was wiping down the front counter, gave the dripping, mud-caked street urchin a look of profound disgust before his gaze shifted to Arthur's sharp, slightly aristocratic features and heavy trench coat.
"I need a single room for the boy," Arthur said, stepping up to the bar. He reached into his coat pocket, his inherited memories seamlessly doing the mental math for the local currency. "Two soli and eight pence for the day, correct?"
He placed his last three 1-soli bills on the scarred wooden counter. Before the innkeeper could protest the filthy state of his new guest, Arthur slapped down a handful of extra copper coins and a five soli bill right beside them.
"This should be enough for your trouble right?" Arthur continued, his pale, piercing grey-blue eyes fixing the man with a cold, unyielding stare. "You will draw him a hot bath, find him a set of clean, dry clothes, and feed him a proper hot meal. If I return and find he's been thrown back out onto the street, you and I will have a very unpleasant conversation. Are we clear?"
The innkeeper glanced at the money, then caught a brief glimpse of the heavy Webley revolver resting in Arthur's inner pocket. He nodded quickly, sweeping the coins off the bar. "Yes, sir. Right away, sir. We'll take good care of him."
Arthur looked down at the boy, who was staring at the exchange in absolute shock. "Stay here. Eat. Keep your mouth shut about the carriage and those men until I come back for you."
Without waiting for a response, Arthur turned and walked right back out into the relentless downpour once more.