I led the group out of the detective agency and onto the street.
“I’ll call a carriage, Ms. Christine.”
“Ahem, ahem!”
A carriage driver, who had parked his carriage by the roadside, cleared his throat loudly as if wanting to be heard.
I only glanced at his carriage briefly before turning my gaze away. Then, I pulled out a carriage-calling whistle from my waist.
‘By modern standards, this is basically a taxi-hailing app.’
It was a daily necessity that every gentleman in this neighborhood carried. Interestingly, the whistle for calling a hansom, a two-wheeled carriage for up to two people, and the whistle for calling a hackney, a four-wheeled carriage for up to four people, produced different sounds.
—*Fweet!*
What I blew was the whistle for a hansom.
“Hmph, no luck today,” the driver who had parked the hackney grumbled in regret.
The sound of the whistle spread far and wide, and before long…
*Click-clack, click-clack, click-clack.*
With the sound of horse hooves, a sleek two-wheeled carriage appeared from around the corner. When I raised my cane high, the carriage stopped in front of us.
“Please, get in,” I said, escorting the woman who was my companion with a polite manner.
A woman dressed in a bright dress, her face wrapped tightly in a shawl, climbed into the carriage.
“Keep this in mind, Ms. Christine,” I said, looking at her after she boarded, giving my final instruction. “You must not let it be known where you are heading. It would be best to circle around other areas for 1 or 2 hours, and once you’ve shaken off any pursuit, head to your original destination.”
She nodded.
“Well then, I shall see you later.”
I took off my hat, bowed politely, and sent her off.
*Click-clack, click-clack, click-clack.*
The hansom left the area with a light sound.
“Tch!”
Turning at the sound of dissatisfaction, I saw the hackney driver, who had missed out on business, grumbling.
“There are no customers at all in this neighborhood. I should move somewhere else!”
The driver, muttering loud enough to be heard, led his carriage away, the sound of hooves fading down the street. I stared at the back of that driver for a long time. Finally, when the carriage disappeared…
“…I think you can come out now.”
“Really?”
From behind me, inside the office, a woman dressed in Lure’s clothes revealed herself. At first glance, she looked like my assistant, Lure. That is, except for the fact that instead of short black hair, wavy hazel hair was cascading down to her waist.
That’s right. The person who had just left in the carriage was my assistant, Lure Poiren, who had swapped clothes with Christine. We had used this trick to shake off the dark shadow disguised as a carriage driver.
“Let’s move quickly while Lure buys us some time.”
It was a stroke of luck that the opponent had brought a four-wheeled carriage. They likely deduced that I, having accepted the request, would move together with Christine and Lure. Thanks to that, a natural scene was created where Lure was sent off alone without having to board the opponent’s carriage.
‘If Lure, disguised as Christine, were in the same carriage as me, they might notice quickly, but when chasing Lure in another carriage, they won’t easily realize the people have been swapped.’
I had asked Lure to keep the carriage circling until she was on the verge of throwing up, so the tracker would probably be sweating for a while.
Laughing inwardly at the dark shadow, I moved with Christine toward her house.
***
“By the way, I’m sorry about earlier,” Christine said suddenly while we were moving in another called hansom.
“Pardon? About what?”
“About doubting you, Mr. Hayes. I didn’t understand what you meant when you asked me to wait just 5 minutes before accepting the request. I never imagined you had identified a person disguised as a driver in that time.”
“…Ah, that.”
Now that I thought about it, it was natural for Christine to think that way. I had looked out the window with a surprised expression, rushed downstairs, come back, and then accepted the request. Then, I had out of nowhere claimed that the driver standing outside was targeting her, so she couldn’t help but connect the two events.
‘Is it better to let her remain mistaken?’
There was no other way to explain my actions, and the client feeling that the detective they hired was competent would provide her with some mental comfort.
“Well… a commercial carriage wasn’t even trying to get customers and was just loitering around the detective agency, so I couldn’t help but notice quickly,” I boasted, and Christine smiled brightly.
“Still, it’s amazing. I really never imagined someone would be disguised as a driver. Besides, the disguise was so perfect that I never would have guessed he wasn’t a real driver if you hadn’t told me, Mr. Hayes.”
I thought so too.
‘His skill in handling horses looked good. To the point where one couldn’t help but think he was a driver through and through.’
In reality, his skill in handling horses likely was good. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to naturally track Christine while playing the role of a driver.
“I don’t think that man is simply an employee of the Grand Duke’s son.”
“I agree. Wilhelm is the type of person to directly rummage through my belongings or my house; he isn’t the type to choose such a secretive and clever method.”
Christine’s opinion seemed to match mine.
“Then, as expected, that man must be the Janus of the East.”
I said this, trying to recall the appearance of the driver I had seen earlier. Even so, what I had seen was the same black mass of a silhouette as always.
‘Dammit, this ability really has a lot of flaws.’
“Ms. Christine, do you remember the appearance of the driver we saw earlier?”
“Yes. He was a very typical driver. His hair was messy, and he had long sideburns. His face was flushed. He was wearing very old, shabby, baggy clothes. His voice was very rough.”
“You remember in great detail.”
“My observation skills are quite good, believe it or not,” Christine replied bashfully. “Oh! Above all, there was one unusual thing.”
“An unusual thing?”
“The driver’s seat is on the right, isn’t it? But that driver was sitting in the passenger seat on the left.”
“That is… certainly unusual.”
‘Is it because he’s not a real driver?’
Since carriages aren’t equipped with steering wheels like modern cars, I thought I might get confused about where the driver’s seat was if I were to drive one, but…
“I think there’s a possibility he’s left-handed,” Christine said.
“Left-handed?”
“Yes. The reason drivers sit on the right is because they’re worried about hitting the passengers when they swing the whip with their right hand, right? So a left-handed driver would sit on the left. Of course, that’s also a bit strange.”
“In what way?”
Christine looked at me as if I were being odd.
“I mean, who would want to ride in a carriage led by a left-handed driver? It’s ominous.”
An ominous left-handed driver…
‘External characteristics can be faked to some extent with a disguise, but things like this can’t be fabricated.’
I decided to keep this fact in mind.
***
30 minutes later, we reached our destination.
“Let me introduce you. This is Everton Villa, where I’m staying.”
Christine’s house was a mansion built in a quiet, wealthy suburban area.
“Because of my work as a singer, I wanted to rest comfortably in a place without people when I’m off, so I got a house here. I think I made the right choice.”
“It truly seems so.”
The house looked spacious and sturdy at a glance. There was likely a hidden secret safe or something similar inside. The photo would be stored in such a place. It would be difficult for a thief to find the target all at once even if they broke in, and since it was a quiet neighborhood, any suspicious person approaching would be immediately noticeable.
Committing a major crime that would catch people’s eyes in such a wealthy area would be difficult, even for the Grand Duke’s son. No, rather, it would be difficult to cause a stir precisely because he was the Grand Duke’s son. To him, the photo would be his greatest weakness, and he would want to remove it quietly without drawing attention.
“Then, can I hear your plan for what you intend to do from now on, Ms. Christine?”
“I plan to stay in this house as much as possible. If I go outside with the photo, the risk of it being stolen increases, so I think it’s best to hold out so that no outsiders can break into the house until the ship arrives.”
I thought it was a good plan. They wouldn’t be able to send a swarm of attackers to a place like this. I could simply watch for and repel one or two people trying to sneak into the house.
“The key will be when you take the photo and leave the house.”
“Yes. Getting onto the steamship will probably be the most dangerous moment.”
That was something to worry about when the 10 days were nearly up. What needed to be done now was to safely guard this mansion.
“I’ll have to check the entry points where an intruder might come in.”
Perhaps I should call it a relief, but for a mansion, the house wasn’t that large. There were a total of two entrances, a front door and a back door, and the back door had been completely blocked off with planks. The problem was that there were several luxurious glass windows across the first and second floors…
“It would be better to leave these windows as they are for now.”
At first, I thought about boarding up the windows too, but that would leave us completely isolated. The windows were necessary even just to keep an eye on the situation outside. Instead, I brought thin strings and tied them tightly around the latches of the windows to physically prevent them from being opened. Now, even if an intruder had some clever trick, the only way to open these windows from the outside would be to apply force and break the glass.
‘There’s no way I won’t hear the sound of glass breaking.’
“Surely, there aren’t any secret passages in this house that I don’t know about?”
“Of course not! Our house isn’t some mysterious old castle. It’s a mansion I personally commissioned and had built a few years ago. I guarantee that no secrets are hidden here.”
I felt much more at ease thanks to that. Around the time everything was finished, Lure entered the house with a weary look.
“You came back sooner than I expected.”
At my words, Lure gave me a resentful look as if asking how I could say such a thing.
“I really almost threw up. Do you know how much the carriage shook?”
The hansom, being a two-wheeled carriage, was light and fast, but it had the disadvantage of being unstable. It would have been much more shaky and uncomfortable compared to the four-wheeled carriage we used to ride.
“I know you suffered. You did a great job, Lure. I only asked because I was worried about the tracker.”
Lure spoke with a much softer expression, as if deciding to let it slide.
“If the tracker had continued to follow me, I would have endured longer even if I vomited inside the carriage. But around the point where 1.5 hours had passed, the hackney that had been behind us the whole time suddenly overtook us. I made eye contact with the driver. Even though I had my face tightly wrapped in a shawl, it seemed he realized something was wrong. He clicked his tongue once and then sped past us and disappeared.”
“Oh, dear.”
The hansom’s body was very low, and the sides were wide open. There was almost nothing covering it, so passersby could recognize the passenger’s face as much as they wanted, and the hem of the lower garments they were wearing would even get soaked by the mud on the road. In such a state, if the hackney had passed by the side of the hansom, Lure, who was riding in it, would have been clearly visible.
‘On the other hand, the passenger can also see the other side well, so I thought the tracker wouldn’t overtake us to avoid looking suspicious.’
He must have felt some sense of wrongness after seeing the back of the hansom before that. Likely after seeing Lure’s hand gestured out the window or hearing her voice as she gave directions.
‘I thought that even as a detective active in the East, he wouldn’t realize it wasn’t Christine just from that, but was I mistaken?’
Is the Janus of the East actually some huge fan of the opera singer Christine? To the point where he can tell it’s not her just by seeing one finger or hearing her voice once?
‘It makes me feel a bit sick just imagining it…’
At that level, isn’t he a stalker rather than a fan?