When Arna charged, the rest of the room erupted into chaos.
“There are ten of us!” yelled the familiar NPC, encouraging his cohorts. “It’s time to pay him back for his behavior!”
Everyone moved like dogs with rabies. Sykes was the first to rush forward with a knife, slashing at Arna’s left shoulder.
But in the next second, a teeth-jarring sound of shattering bone rang out.
Arna swung the steel pipe in her hand, smashing it low and hard onto his kneecap, causing the burly man to let out an inhuman howl.
“Damn it,” the knife in his hand swung wide, but he had been through a lot after all, quickly gripping the knife and continuing to slash. “My leg—”
Arna dodged backwards, easily jumping out of their encirclement after two moves, squatting on a wooden shelf set against the wall, looking down at these people like an owl from a high place.
“To be precise,” Arna stated, not forgetting to toss food into her mouth. “Only ten people. I feel somewhat insulted.”
In barely two seconds, the sandwich in her mouth disappeared at a speed invisible to the naked eye.
The next second, she leaped down from above, her wrist rotating. The steel pipe deftly twirled and, as if it had eyes, whipped one person to the ground, then fell back, and the sharp back end suddenly jabbed into the ribs of another man named Jem.
The guy named Jem slammed into the wall with a bang, and collapsed like a leaking flour sack.
In the chaotic battle, he fell muddle-headedly into the corner, watching the factory owner casually dangle a piece of pie in his mouth and, while the steel pipe was wedged front and back, use an elbow to smash into another attacker’s temple.
A second earlier, Essas had leaped up taking advantage of the posture, tilted his head up, and took a bite of the crispy and soft pie with his teeth. The next moment, his foot kicked fiercely into another’s ribs, causing the man to bend over in pain and spit out bile onto the ground.
And the pie was already gone.
He swore he just saw Essas take the first bite, leaving more than half a piece—but Essas’s hands were now free, and as he turned around, his left hand pulled out the second pastry from his coat pocket, his right hand waving the steel pipe.
Immediately after, during another’s sneak attack, Essas raised his knee, smashing the man’s nose straight into his face, turning it into a horizontally and vertically flat pancake.
Blood sprayed.
Meanwhile, the food in Essas’s mouth disappeared again before chewing.
Jem’s brain short-circuited.
Where did the food go?
A human mouth couldn’t chew that fast!
Could it have been swallowed whole? Or, or, did Essas have another mouthful of teeth hidden in a second place?
Besides this point, the only remaining explanation was that what this young man was eating was definitely not food, but lizard meat or something else with magical power, a potion disguised by a witch’s spell!
“Damn, he’s even eating while fighting!” Jem stumbled to his feet, retreating toward the door, “I, I want to quit…”
“This guy is—is a ghost! A demon!” he cried.
“Bullshit!” Sykes cursed, limping. Less than three minutes had passed since the fight started, and he absolutely would not allow anyone to surrender at this time. “He’s just a human! He’ll get tired too, keep going!”
At the same time, two punks following orders pounced toward Arna from the side.
Bang.
Gunshots rang out, and two bullets embedded themselves in the wall.
The remaining attackers froze, their heads whipping toward that dark corner, hesitating as they stopped their actions.
Behind the crates, Holmes and Watson stood like ghosts. In the dim light, their gun barrels were still smoking.
Where did these two guys come from?
Watson looked quite calm. “Stop, don’t move.”
He raised his revolver, aiming at the guy who looked the burliest.
Arna looked to the left, then to the right, patted her dusty clothes, and took the opportunity to stuff a few more pieces of bread into her mouth.
“I suggest you reconsider your life choices,” Holmes said coldly. “But given your collective lack of fortitude, I doubt if that will ever work.”
Sykes spat on the floor.
“It’s all bullshit!” he yelled. “Just two flashy old men holding toy guns, with a pitifully low hit rate.”
He revealed a grimace. “Charge!”
As three attackers lunged toward Holmes and Watson, Arna couldn’t help but let out a laugh.
“Old men,” she repeated, chewing the rest of the cookies from her bag, dodging the attacks of the others sideways, and deftly kicking the guy guarding the side, making him stagger into his companion’s knife edge. “It seems they are from the same era as you, right, Holmes? Saw through the old heart under your appearance?”
Holmes snorted and fired another shot, this time not a warning.
When the bullet pierced through one of the men’s thighs, that man screamed.
Watson’s face was grim. He steadily aimed at another’s shoulder, and the bullet sank deeply into it, spurting a stream of blood that stained the factory wall.
Just as they neatly took down four men and planned to keep up the good work, they found that the remaining six guys had all been knocked to the ground by Arna, leaving only painful whimpers and begging for mercy.
—How was it so fast?
Holmes looked around, found Arna stepping on the leader’s head, and relaxed a bit.
Only then did he slowly answer Arna’s question.
“I, old?” he mused, stepping over a few groaning people at his feet and walking toward her. “Perhaps. After all, compared to the trendy new criminal strategies being utilized here just now, I must look very ancient.”
Watson panted, helplessly putting away his revolver, “Good heavens, Holmes, do you have to show off your sense of humor while standing among a pile of unconscious felons?”
He turned to Arna, who was chewing a piece of jerky, “And you, Essas, for God’s sake, were you seriously eating during that brawl just now?”
“An excellent digestive system,” Holmes commented, his slightly dusty black boots intentionally or unintentionally stepping on a dusty and bloody hand.
Sykes, who was secretly trying to scooch out, shrieked, “No—”
“Leaving so soon, Mr. Sykes?” Holmes said in a gentle voice. “Don’t be in a hurry. I still have dozens of questions.”
He shifted his body, pressing his heel down hard, causing the vicious thief to shriek again, “For instance, about who paid you to harass my friend and his staff. Unlike him, I don’t snack during interrogations.”
Arna went to the kitchen to wash her hands before tearing open a new packet of biscuits and chewing with puffy cheeks.
“You don’t eat it?” she asked, tossing a piece to Holmes.
Without even looking, Holmes accurately raised his hand and caught the biscuit, as proficiently as if he had been preparing to catch sudden UFOs all his life.
He examined it for a moment, then deliberately took a bite.
“Disappointing,” he announced, though he chewed twice and swallowed the biscuit. “In my opinion, this definitely wasn’t freshly baked today.”
Arna ignored him and instead tossed the remaining biscuits to Watson.
After replenishing her last bit of stamina, she found the prepared ropes in the corner and tied these people up one by one to prevent any escape incidents from happening again.
“You two are both unreasonable,” Watson grumbled, but his complaints didn’t stop him from clumsily catching the remaining biscuits. “I’ll hold onto these first, in case you need them later.”
He sighed, having apparently given up trying to control this chaotic situation.
Holmes shrugged. “Now, Sykes, about your employer…”
He paused and turned to the approaching Arna, twitching his nose like a hound. “The smell on you is not right.”
Arna looked at him with full innocence.
Holmes continued to stare at Arna.
Three seconds later, Arna helplessly pulled out three greasy, crumpled banknotes.
“Fine,” she began handing out one to each with a resigned look, “I took them from Number Four.”
“Number Four?” Watson, holding the banknote, looked as if he were choking on a biscuit that hadn’t entered his mouth.
He simply couldn’t believe it. “While you were fighting—you were doing this on the side?”
“No, of course not,” Arna said firmly. “These banknotes ran toward me, they ran three times, very fast, I couldn’t dodge them!”
While Watson was struggling to shake the banknote, Holmes had already skillfully chosen to wallow in the mire with her, stuffing the banknote into his coat pocket.
He crouched down, “Talk about your employer and that bottle of poison?”
Sykes spat out a puddle of blood and a torrent of curses, “There is no damn employer.”
Holmes gave a soft snort, bent down, and got closer to Sykes’s fearful face.
“No need to lie to me, Bill. I already know this wasn’t your idea,” his gray eyes searched Sykes’s expression and movements like a falcon. “Come on, just a name.”
Sykes whose face was distorted, roared, “You two are dead meat! I’m going to rip you open—”
Holmes tilted his head, unmoved.
Then, he deliberately shifted his weight.
Sykes howled again.
“Let’s try that again,” Holmes said cheerfully, “Who sent you? Who instructed you to hand a bottle of poison to Oliver and order him to poison? We’d better hurry up.”
Sykes gritted his teeth, still resisting.
Arna brushed the biscuit crumbs off her sleeves, quite amazed, “Such a tough mouth?”
She looked around, from the tattered hacked table to the wall with two holes in it, and finally to the pile of trampled messy newspapers, “…Much harder than my stuff.”
Thinking of this, grief welled up within her, “My wall! My crates! I rummaged through the trash cans for so long to find those newspapers, I was planning to give them away! The table I made with my own hands—”
Arna grew angrier the more she thought about it.
No, she couldn’t just get vaguely angry and hand these people over to Scotland Yard just like that!
Glancing at Sykes, who was stubbornly biting down and refusing to let go, Arna started rummaging through her inventory.
After searching for a long time, she had a flash of inspiration and pulled out a failed product she had casually thrown together earlier. “Good thing I saved it and didn’t throw it away. I knew nothing is useless!”
Saying that, Arna rushed to the kitchen grinning viciously, grabbed a vegetable-washing basin, mixed the leftover alcohol, the bottle of poison substituted earlier, and a pile of sticky, thick gooey substance together, and rushed back holding the basin.
[New Recipe Created Successfully!]
[Recipe Name: ■■■■]
[Is this for human consumption? It seems so. It can be eaten, but has no good effect, and no bad effect either, apart from being terrible—is terrible a part of the effect? It’s better not to feed this kind of thing to people. Of course, don’t feed it to pigs either, pigs are innocent!]
Sure enough, I am a cooking genius!
Arna proudly pried open the mouths of these tied-up criminals and stuffed a lump into each one.
The face of the first person stuffed instantly twisted, his eyes widening.
The texture was like gravel mixed with some unknown gooey substance. He didn’t know why, but apart from the pungent stench, his tongue felt like it was burning wildly, accompanied by a needle-pricking numbness unique to certain fruits after eating them.
This food even stuck firmly to his tongue. He struggled, whimpering and retching, shaking his head madly, trying to spit it out, “What is this—bleurgh—”
“Damn it,” the second guy wriggled backwards desperately as soon as Arna crouched down, trying to avoid her, but Arna easily pinned him down and stuffed the freshly baked food in.
The effect was remarkable—his face turned green and his throat convulsed, “No… please… don’t…”
After feeding them sequentially, even Sykes’s writhing movements became larger. He was like a fish that began thrashing violently after taking the hook, his face screwed up like a crumpled paper bag.
“No need to thank me,” Arna was very satisfied with these people’s tearful gratitude. “You deserve it.”
“You’re welcome,” Watson echoed dryly, pointing at the heap of semi-conscious criminals, “I believe, this is the first time anyone has used that phrase after forcing these people to finish that lump of… whatever it is.”
He examined the basin, saying suspiciously, “You must have stolen this stuff from Satan’s laundry basket. They’re acting crazy now like cats vomiting hairballs.”
Smelling it, it was like a mix of overnight food and mud from the sewer, plus some fish scales; even rats would flee from such an atrocious smell.
“I didn’t steal it, I made it,” Arna said, looking around. “Look, they must want more after eating it.”
“Yeah,” Holmes nodded gravely, standing up. “That must be it.”
One of the guys instinctively retched again, tears streaming down his cheeks, washing out two paths on his dusty face.
“No, no, no, please, don’t,” he gasped, “I’ll talk, I’ll—I’ll talk! Just, good heavens, don’t make me eat that stuff anymore!”
“Yeah!” another chimed in, “Just ask what you want!”
Looking at the food that was more than half left, based on the principle of absolutely no food waste, Arna pretended not to hear, “Don’t rush, it will be done soon, there is some for everyone. After a fight, you really need to eat something to replenish stamina.”
What to ask? Let her ask after feeding all this stuff!
The criminals shuddered and cast looks of distress to the other two.
Before they could spout words begging for mercy, the room’s door was pushed open.
Following close behind was a series of panicked gasps.
Mrs. Hudson stood stiffly at the doorway. Behind her were the parents of the apprentices living nearby.
As soon as these people heard Mrs. Hudson say that the factory owner, Mr. Essas, needed help and the homeless orphan apprentices needed protection, they bravely rushed over grabbing wooden sticks and kitchen knives.
But now, they were all staring slack-jawed in shock at the scene before them.
Ten brawny men, a full ten, lay paralyzed on the floor like poisoned rats, the surroundings in a total mess; clearly, a fierce battle had taken place here.
These East End parents even sharp-eyed recognized a few familiar faces—the most notorious sort of neighbors normally, no good.
The moment Mrs. Hudson entered, Arna shoved the remaining stuff into her inventory.
The next second, she shrank behind Holmes, like she had just turned into a cat that knocked over Mrs. Hudson’s expensive vase on the shelf to catch a butterfly.
“…Oh, dear Lord,” Mrs. Hudson said dryly, breaking the silence.
Her tone was exactly like discovering a murder in the living room early in the morning.
To his credit, facing this large crowd, Holmes showed no sign of fear.
Instead, he straightened his cuffs, calmly walked two steps, and gave an explanation without changing his expression, “As you can see, the situation is… clear. Obviously. Pretty much resolved.”
Arna, exposed to everyone’s sight: …Damn you, Holmes!
She had to brace herself and echo, “Right, that’s it.”
The father of one of the apprentices pointed a trembling finger silently at the person closest to him. “Is he… crying?”
Arna cleared her throat and started spouting nonsense, “That, that is an allergy.”
She swept a threatening glare over, scaring the criminal into nodding repeatedly.
Mrs. Hudson, who saw through the essence, pressed her lips tightly together and called her by her full name, “Arna Essas.”
As everyone knows, nothing good ever happens when called by full name.
Arna shrank a little more.
Feeling the impending storm, Holmes smoothly interjected, “Ah, Mrs. Hudson! You’re just in time. We were planning to talk to these guys about their employer.”
He looked behind these people, “Is Miss Nancy taking care of the children?”
Mrs. Hudson nodded with a straight face, “Someone went to notify Scotland Yard.”
The parents from the East End looked at each other.
“Is there anything else you need our help with?” one of the mothers whispered, still holding a rolling pin. “Mrs. Hudson, gentlemen, please don’t hesitate if you need anything.”
She frequently heard her son at home say Mr. Essas was a good-tempered eccentric. Thinking about it now, the good-tempered part was probably false, but the eccentric part was definitely true.
—But thank God, having a good temper towards the kids was truly a stroke of luck for her little rascal at home!
Look at these people, their legs were broken!
How lucky she was to see his two energetic legs hopping around every weekend when her child came home. You know, this child caused a lot of trouble at home and certainly wouldn’t be well-behaved at the factory.
Mrs. Hudson sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.
“Sorry to trouble you today,” she said, seeing off the families together with Arna, maintaining an amiable smile, not forgetting to chat with them despite her blockhead nephew’s silence. “Watch your step—yes, it’s a mess here, so sorry. No, no, no trouble at all, we have it under control—”
When the large iron gate squeaked shut again, her cheerful expression instantly fell away. “For heaven’s sake, open the windows!”
She pointed at the gangsters still groaning on the floor, as if they were all misbehaving servants, “And you lot! Stop leaking fluids on the floor!”
Arna rushed to open all the windows, then attentively poured a cup of tea for Mrs. Hudson.
“Auntie, drink some to moisten your throat,” she blinked her eyes.
She slowly took the teacup, her eyes fixed entirely on Arna.
Arna said honestly, “I was wrong.”
She didn’t know what was wrong, but admitting her fault first should be okay.
Mrs. Hudson sighed and took a sip of tea.
Resigned to her fate, she muttered, “…At least you didn’t burn the place down.”
Holmes’s gaze drifted eerily for a moment.
On the side, Watson was checking the condition of these criminals, ensuring they would survive until Scotland Yard arrived, lest it turn into a tragedy.
Thank God, those assorted concoctions seemed to have made the poison lose most of its toxicity. None of them showed signs of poisoning, and he hadn’t brought either his portable leather bag or his medical kit out today.
Hearing the words about arson, he immediately recalled Holmes’s initial plan and subconsciously looked at his friend.
Holmes was intently looking at the ceiling, as if a particular stain there fascinated him greatly, having even forgotten about the fallen criminals on the floor.
Arna narrowed her eyes.
“You planned to burn down my factory?” she said in disbelief.
“Strategic diversion of attention,” Holmes replied, and immediately started changing the topic. “Alright, we are still missing one name.”
Before Holmes could say anything else, Sykes on the floor dry-heaved weakly again.
“Monks, is that enough? That guy’s name, it was that guy who instructed me to make that brat—what was his name again, Oliver? To have him put the poison in,” he muttered. “I’ll tell you whatever you want, just, Scotland Yard… when are they arriving… damn it!”
This sentence seemed to trigger a switch, and other criminals also started complaining continuously.
“I can’t take it anymore, take me to prison!”
“Even those coppers arriving would be good! I’ve always said, we shouldn’t rob capable guys! Stick to honest stealing!”
“…I’ve never resented their response time so much.”
During the ensuing interrogation, Arna made the criminals keep their voices down, and contentedly gleaned loads of interesting clues all by herself, turning a blind eye to Holmes’s disapproving looks.
You gotta be kidding, can ransacking the BOSS’s lair be counted as ransacking?
That’s called justice striking out, just to take back the things temporarily stored there!
As time passed, carriage wheels rolled and finally stopped at the factory’s door.
Watson, having listened to far too much howling, rubbed his temples, feeling greatly relieved by the belatedly arriving police. “Well, at least we don’t have to drag them to prison, right?”
Arna perked up her ears listening to the fast-approaching footsteps outside, “Then I’ll go meet the police first?”
The corners of Holmes’s mouth curled slightly upward.
“After you made them finish all their work for them?” he said lazily. “How cruel.”
In such an environment, Mrs. Hudson took another sip of tea and murmured, “God give me strength.”
She put down the teacup. “You lot mess around. When the inspectors arrive, I will go upstairs to check on Nancy and the children.”
For Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard, today should have been a peaceful evening.
Although he was to be on duty at the London Police Office at night, London recently was relatively peaceful with fewer accidents, so few people came to report crimes. He was even in the mood to pull a beef pie out of his bag and warm it by the fireplace.
Just as he took a bite of the warmed pie, savoring the scorched aroma of fat and the just-right saltiness, urgent footsteps sounded outside, and then the door was violently pushed open.
A sweating, wild-eyed cabbie crashed into the room, his hat skewed to one side, breathing rapidly, apparently having run a fair distance after stopping the horse carriage.
He propped his hands onto the table to steady himself, shouting without waiting to catch his breath, “Inspector—someone needs help! You need to hurry! It’s, it’s out there at Old Essas’s textile factory!”
Great, a mess.
Lestrade, nearly choking, set the pie aside.
“What happened?” He stood up abruptly, his mind filled with all sorts of cases. “Murder? Robbery?”
The cabbie waved his hands frantically. “I don’t know the details, but it’s right over in Whitechapel—there are a lot of people! Mr. Essas, the factory owner’s aunt, asked me to fetch you, Inspector! Seems they even have guns!”
He was clearly an unreliable relater, wildly summarizing the scenes he’d heard about. “Seems it also involves children and poison, honestly, I can’t remember clearly!”
Lestrade muttered a curse and didn’t bother listening to the rest.
He swiftly snatched his coat and bowler hat from the coat rack, roaring at the nearby constables, “Everybody out, I’m afraid a major incident has occurred in London tonight!”
Three young constables followed neatly behind him. The group squeezed into a carriage and hurried towards Whitechapel.
As Lestrade cautiously led his men into this old textile factory, he caught an indescribably odd smell.
The air was permeated with blood, sweat, and some indescribably strange odor, which made his already poor mood even worse.
Something must have happened. He only hoped that under such a massacre, there were still survivors.
He lifted up the kerosene lamp in his hand, and while other companions lingered, he took the lead to muster courage and stepped into the small room that was the only one lit.
Under the dim light, at the first glance, Lestrade saw his old acquaintance, old friend, and frequent subject of his visits: the consulting detective living at 221B Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes.
Why was his information so swift?
To actually arrive earlier than Lestrade got the news.
The next moment, what he saw was a floor full of people. Or rather, a floor full of victims’ corpses.
Corpses lay everywhere, limbs twisted, faces scrunched up from pain like newspapers left for years; some bodies perhaps weren’t cold yet, still twitching like freshly dead fish.
This was a long-premeditated massacre.
Lestrade’s heart sank right to the bottom. He almost dared not rummage through the corpses to find out which one belonged to the young factory owner who had recently inherited the factory.
That should have been a young man with a bright future, yet now could only collapse on the cold floor, accompanied by earth and ants.
“Good heavens—” he said angrily, “This must be a terrible conspiracy! Holmes, do you have any leads as to how these poor folks lying on the ground were murdered? Any clues regarding this matter, or the monster who should be responsible for this?”
Yes, he had seen many cases, many of which had methods and cruelty levels far exceeding this one.
But there had been none like this, escaping without a trace after committing a crime right under his and Holmes’s noses, perhaps even just a few minutes ago! This was undoubtedly a provocation, an awful disregard for life, and a heinous viciousness!
He only hoped his old friend had some leads regarding this.
Under the dim light, Lestrade saw the corner of Holmes’s mouth twitching, revealing a strange look.
Holmes’s mouth curled up for a moment, then drooped, then finally flattened out, and said in a monotone, “Actually, my friend, the person responsible for this is right here in this room with us.”
Wrapped in the shroud of night, his expression was utterly subtle, somewhat weird and inscrutable.
This sentence hit Lestrade’s heart like a heavy hammer, causing his heart to tremble violently.
He widened his eyes, locked eyes with his colleagues behind him, and felt his hair stand on end.
In this room? Who? This murderer actually had a habit of staying at the scene to observe after committing a crime?
What was scarier, why hadn’t Holmes apprehended him immediately? No, something must be wrong.
A chill ran down his spine, warily looking around, only noticing that there were actually other people in the room besides Holmes and Watson.
One was someone Lestrade recognized, Holmes’s landlady, Mrs. Hudson—although he was quite unclear why the landlady would appear here so late, the old lady was aged and normally amiable, clearly unlikley to be the killer Holmes spoke of.
This respectable old lady nodded toward him, then bypassed them to walk upstairs.
The other young gentleman in the room stood with his back to the light, his true face hidden in the shadows, indifferent to Holmes’s words, showing a kind of arrogance and coldness.
Lestrade steadied himself.
“Then, this is—”
The next second, Lestrade perceived that something was wrong.
Something suddenly lunged at his leg, hugging his leg and clutching his ankle forcefully, like a drowning person clutching driftwood as a life-saving straw.
He slowly lowered his head.
A pitch-black head was desperately sticking to his leg, and the other corpses not far away were also wriggling and approaching him, scraping across the floor, as if a headless maggot suddenly sprang out as a zombie.
Was he dreaming? Why were the corpses moving? Were these ghouls?
Satan arriving personally would just be a scene like this, right? Or was this the remains of a weird cult depicted in third-rate novels, finishing a sacrifice and just waiting to summon scary creatures to harvest his soul?
This experienced, battle-tested detective’s mind went completely blank.
Immediately following, he let out a scream into the night, springing up with an amazing agility, as if attacked by Cerberus. “Ah—There’s a ghost! Get it off! Get it away quickly! Holmes!”
He babbled incoherently, “Christ, it’s alive!”
“What ghost! No!” The head on his leg also shrieked, hugging his leg even tighter while Lestrade kicked off trying to shake him loose. “Help! Inspector, help! Save me!”
The voice wept bitterly, “I am an honest thief! Save me!”
The scene instantly transformed into a ball of chaos.
To “rescue” their inspector, the other police frantically tried to pry the guy off. The remaining thugs, still tied up but now utterly inspired, began to thrash and howl.
Holmes was laughing silently, shoulders trembling, observing this scene as happily as a child watching a puppet show from beneath the stage.
Watson, torn between professionalism and complete disbelief, finally chose to cover his face with one hand.
In the end, Arna, whose conscience was not completely gone, casually picked up a broom and patted the crying burly man on the shoulder with it.
“Let go,” she didn’t forget to push her leftover food. “Or I’ll have to grab a little more to feed you…”
The guy shivered and released Lestrade’s boot, from which he was being pried.
Lestrade was now panting like he’d just finished a marathon.
He took a few deep breaths, smoothed out his disheveled coat, and having recognized this as an unfortunate farce, “… I hate you all.”
After Holmes clarified the sequence of events, Lestrade still found it quite unbelievable.
“… So, you’re telling me that these ten people were all meant to rob—Little Mr. Essas, for his property of two thousand pounds?” He glanced at Arna, who wasn’t much sturdier. “… They even planned poison, anesthetics, sent undercover spies, so many methods, but all failed?”
Holmes gave an affirmative grunt. “Yes. The locations, Essas.”
Taking advantage of Lestrade sending other police out to hail more carriages, he signaled Arna with his eyes.
Arna crossed her arms, refusing to budge like a grumpy child. “No.”
The player’s! They’re all the player’s!
Holmes called her again, “Essas.”
“They’re mine now,” Arna acted like an evil dragon guarding its treasure. “Finders keepers!”
She threw an accusing look at the pocket where Holmes placed that banknote. Her meaning was obvious.
You already took a bribe, won’t you wallow in the mire with me?
Lestrade felt a bit baffled by their charades.
He blinked his eyes. “… What locations?”
Watson sighed and pinched his nasal bridge, feeling that he had sighed too many times lately, more than the sum of the first half of his life.
“Probably these guys’ stashes,” he said as tactfully as possible. “Essas got these locations from them through some… negotiation skills.”
But evidently, Arna was unwilling to spill them now.
Lestrade’s mustache bristled, “That’s evidence! Stolen goods!”
Arna glanced at her deeply scarred wall, persisting, “It’s compensation! Mine!”
“Perhaps, some reward allowances for public-spirited citizens,” Holmes blinked, suggesting. “I know you can apply upward.”
He drawled, “Maybe, even a little honorific title. Nothing too formal, verbal praise.”
Arna’s eyes lit up.
Lestrade looked like he’d rather swallow his police whistle.
Holmes patted his shoulder, intended as comfort, “Think of the paperwork you’re avoiding, my friend.”
He leaned in close to his ear and lowered his voice, “Ten arrested, and you didn’t even fire a single shot! If you really want to claim some of the credit for yourself, at least I won’t mention how you screamed like a child.”
Lestrade’s eye twitched, and he looked at Watson.
Watson: “… I will not submit an article about this case to the newspaper.”
“Fine,” Lestrade compromised at last, “Where the hell are those locations?”
After surrendering all the locations of the stolen goods, while grieving the loss of her treasure hunting spots, Arna somehow felt she had forgotten something.
She glanced at Holmes, whose brow was furrowed, feeling he should have a similar sentiment.
By the time the police returned to the factory with several carriages large enough to hold these numerous criminals, it was already late into the night.
Arna cheerfully walked outwards, not forgetting to chase after Lestrade, who was commanding the scene, to ask, “What kind of verbal praise will it be?”
She threw out guesses, “Public-Spirited Citizen? Brawl Expert? London’s Good Samaritan?”
Lestrade silently stood a bit farther away. “I don’t know yet, it depends on my superiors’ reply.”
He couldn’t help but look toward Holmes, “For some reason, if Little Mr. Essas has always been like this, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
Holmes stifled a laugh, “It can be considered a gratifying progress, isn’t it?”
The room was nearly cleared out, Arna likewise stepped outside with everyone else, still muttering terrible things like “What’s the harm in issuing a few more titles?”, “It wouldn’t cost a single penny”.
Lestrade gave perfunctory replies, feeling he’d received enough frights for the night.
Right at that moment, in the middle of the factory, down those astoundingly large stairs, something tumbled down with a clatter, finally stopping steadily on the floor half a meter away from Lestrade, revealing a bruised and battered old face.
“Oh, Fagin!” Arna finally remembered what she’d forgotten. “Almost forgot!”
She knew why those workers went downstairs to find her; they probably intended for her to take a look at the chief culprit.
Forgotten by everyone, Jewish old thief Fagin, who had dragged himself under his own power all the way from the office to the stairs, managed a weak smile.
How was this any different from delivering himself right into the net? This wasn’t the outcome he wanted!
He looked around awkwardly, “… Good evening, everyone. The weather tonight is quite nice, isn’t it?”