Whispering Poems

Whispering Poems Chapter 563

2021-12-28

Chapter 561 Letters and Passwords
Because tomorrow is Thursday, the fifth day of September , is the date of the arrival of the "letter" that Detective Sparrow referred to before his death. Shade had been speculating about what the letter would contain on the Wednesday night after Galina and Tifa were gone.

As he fancied, the speculation became more and more bizarre, and finally he even thought that maybe it was not a letter but a package that would trigger a steam bomb when opened.

Because of too many things to think about, he had a bizarre dream after falling asleep on Wednesday night. At the end of the dream, he actually met Mr. Sparrow Hamilton. The gentleman in the dream didn't mention the task given to Shade, but blamed Shade for keeping cats in the Sainteland Square and making the house dirty.

"What kind of weird dream is this?"

Shade woke up suspiciously, only to realize that it was only half past five.

He opened his eyes and looked towards the ceiling in the dark. After lying down for ten minutes, he couldn't sleep, and then he sat up from the bed. With the arrival of autumn, the sunrise time is getting later and later, plus the curtains in the bedroom are drawn, so the interior is dark.

However, probably woken up by Shade's movement to get up, the cat huddled beside the pillow opened his eyes alertly, glanced at Shade, and after realizing it was him, he meowed a few times, Then fell asleep again.

It's not yet time for the cat to get up.

Because he couldn't sleep, Shade got up early, changed into clothes he didn't usually wear, and went straight out. But instead of going far, he sat down next to the fountain statue of a young girl holding a water bottle in the center of Saint-de-Land Square and fed the pigeons with some crumbs.

These pigeons always seem to be here.

His appearance was so suspicious that even passing police officers gave him two glances. But as the time came to six o'clock, and there were other people on St. Teresa Square, he didn't look so conspicuous.

Shade wanted to see who was delivering the letter to St. Teresa Square.

Beginning at half past six, the postman delivering the letter and the deliveryman from the milk company arrived one after another. Letters and newspapers were brought into the foyer from the drop-off under the door, and milk and goat's milk were placed in the milk box to the right of the door.

Shade didn't move, which caused Mia, who woke up on time at 6:30, to stand on the window sill and stare at him after seeing Shade in the bedroom window.

Shade waited until seven o'clock, seeing that no one else stopped by his door, and then scattered all the crumbs left in his hand to the pigeons.

After standing up, the pigeons fluttered past Shade's head. Shade walked to the door, took out the milk crate key and unlocked it. After opening the door with a glass milk bottle, I saw the newspaper I ordered and two letters with stamps on the foot pad.

"Could this kind of letter be sent through the post office? Is it so bold?"

Shade thought suspiciously.

He made breakfast for himself and the cat before opening the letter at the dinner table.

One of the two letters is an official letter from the Society of Prophets inviting Shade to attend tomorrow's opening ceremony of the "1853 Ayutthaya Player Lord's Tournament" at the Prophet Society of Silver Cross.

Shade will be there tomorrow, of course, since he's taking someone else's money as a guest player.

The other letter came from a gentleman named Greer Egg. The mailing address says the street of the Northern Part of City, but there is no more specific house number. It should be delivered directly to the mailbox at the corner of the street.

"I have a wonderful premonition that this is the one."

Shade felt a little excited:
"This is a mystery that has lasted for more than two months. Question, what would it be?"

Opening the envelope, there was only one folded page of letter paper. There is no word on the back of the letter, and the Delarion language is neatly written on the front with blue-black ink. But only a short line, not even a greeting or a signature——

[Still the same. ]

"It's rude, but what does it mean?"

Shade was very curious.

[Don't you want to burn this letter? ]

She asked softly in her ear.

"Burning the letter doesn't conflict with me figuring out what the letter is about, it's a two-month puzzle."

Shade responded, holding the letter to the The sun shone through the window, but there was no response. Seeing that Mia came over very curiously, she handed it the letter again.

It sniffed, then turned back to its breakfast.

"It's really interesting."

Shade figured the letter wasn't that simple, and the lack of things to do today and a strong curiosity didn't allow him to give up now.

"I just wanted to know what this was, not trying to get involved in Detective Sparrow's troubles."

So after breakfast, Shade took this The letter came to the church of dawn, where it found Augustus priest. Priest has received the specific departure time, and plans to tell everyone about his travel plan on Saturday.

I saw Shade coming, and I asked him to help me think about what I need to bring. The climate of the southern part of the kingdom and Tobesque are completely different.

"I just wanted to ask if there is a way to make invisible characters visible."

Shade shook the letter in his hand:
"It might be possible to use It's written in special ink, but I don't know what it is."

If it's what Shade thinks, then Detective Sparrow should have destroyed the ink-revealing potion long ago, dying There is absolutely no reason for spies to keep things that could reveal their identity.

"A letter from the ring warlock? Hidden text with Mystic Art?"

Augus priest asked.

"No, it's just a letter from the ordinary person, I guess it's special ink."

"The ordinary person is easy to handle."

The priest didn't even bring Taking Shade to his potion workshop, but in his room in the church, he found a small glass bottle full of dust. The liquid in the bottle is black, which looks extra thick:
"Try this, revealing potion, generally used to detect objects that can be touched, but cannot be observed with naked eye and other methods. I The bottle has expired, but it's still useful for ink. It's not a chemical reaction, it's a concept that 'exists but can't see'."

Invisible ink is also ink, paper sheet There must be traces of ink on it.

This simple potion requires a certain ceremony to work, and cracking secret letters is like blowing up mosquitoes with a steam bomb.

Auguspriest didn't bring the ceremony material into the church, so let Shade go home with the manifesting potion himself.

Shade immediately offered to pay for the bottle of potion, but the old priest waved his hand and let him leave:

"It may be worth some money if it hasn't expired, but this bottle It's expired, so you should help me take out the trash. I always think about throwing it out someday, but I'm always too lazy to get it out from under the bed."

Farewell to the priest, Shade First go to Old John's pawn shop and spend 3 shillings and 9p to buy the ceremony material. Because the price is cheap, Shade didn't even bargain, which disappointed Father John who was expecting him to say "cane":

"Sometimes I feel that the pleasure of doing business with you is greater than the pleasure of earning those few coins in your pocket."

After returning home, Shade simply sat in the blank put the ceremony on the stationery, and put the letter from this morning on it. After pouring the potion from Augustus priest, there was no response on the stationery.

"Huh guessed wrong?"

Shade in front of the desk thought for a while, took down the letter with the small lines written on it, and put the envelope on it. After pouring the potion of Augustus Priest again, the number of densely packed appeared on the inside of the envelope.

"Very good."

There is an excited smile on his face, but the numbers don't make any sense at all.

"Music? Not like a code, Detective Sparrow's code."

Shade turned his head and looked towards the bookshelf, placing the detective's relic "The Queen and Her Lovers" "Silver's Knight" and "Western Front Supplements" took down.

These three novels are the only novels of Detective Sparrow during his lifetime, and there are many traces of flipping in them. Shade had speculated that this was the spy's Code Book, and now it's finally a chance to verify.

"But why didn't he destroy these three books before he died?"

I thought suspiciously when I flipped through the book, and then realized that compared to strange ink, these three books This novel is unremarkable. People who doubt his identity, even if he destroys these three books, will notice the books lost in the study sooner or later; people who do not doubt his identity will not care that these three books appear on the bookshelf.

"But how do you compare those numbers with these three books."

Looking at the things on the desk, Shade was lost in thought.

The numbers displayed on the envelope are not completely coherent, with a noticeable space appearing every few numbers. The spaces before and after are grouped together, and each group is eight numbers.

"These three books are all three-digit page numbers, and the binding specifications are similar. Judging from the number of numbers on the envelope, it is impossible that each group of numbers corresponds to a letter, which should be a corresponding word, and each set of numbers corresponds to a letter. The number of rows and columns of words on a page is only two digits. That is, if you want to point to a word in a row or column of a page, you only need 3+2+2=7 numbers. But now each group has eight Number, what does one more point to?"

Mia jumped from the ground onto Shade's knee, and then jumped from Shade's knee to the desk. Seeing three books on the table, he immediately stretched out his paws, and was held down by Shade.

"Does it point to the book? The Code Book is not made up of one book, but made up of multiple books?"

He checked all the numbers on the envelope again and found that each The last digit of a group of numbers is "1", "2" or "3", and no other numbers appear.

"That's easy, the last digit in each group refers to the book."

Shade smiled.

But then there is a new problem. Even if this guess is correct, he does not know the corresponding numbers of the three novels.

"But it doesn't matter, you can try one by one. Translate the first 10 groups of numbers first, if they can be coherent into meaningful sentences, it means my idea is correct."

[Three numbers correspond to three books, you have to guess many times. ]

A voice came from my ear.

"It doesn't matter, it's just the six permutations of probability."

Shade thought to himself, took the notebook and started to record the letters corresponding to the numbers. Ten groups of numbers and ten words, and although there are six permutation possibilities, in fact, each group of numbers only needs to be searched three times.

(end of this chapter)