"Emily Collins."
Russell repeated the name, then gave a nod.
"Very good, sir. I believe you've made a wise choice."
With that, he rose to his feet, pushed the chair back into place, turned, and headed for the door.
Just before leaving, he paused at the threshold, then glanced back at the crowd inside the newspaper office—every face plastered with the look of men who had narrowly escaped death.
"Please remember, gentlemen."
He spoke, and once again dragged everyone's attention and vigilance to its peak.
"Mr. Moriarty is a forgiving man," he said softly, his tone gentle, yet chilling enough to make one's blood run cold.
"He'll forgive your first offense, but you'd best not have a second. After all, everyone's patience has its limits, does it not?"
As the last word fell, Russell lingered no longer. He turned, pushed open the door, and his figure melted into the night beyond.
The office fell into a deathly silence.
It wasn't until Russell had been gone for quite some time that someone finally ventured tentatively:
"Are we... safe?"
It was phrased as a question, yet the moment the words left his mouth, they seemed brimming with certainty.
The editor-in-chief slumped weakly into his chair, his sweat-soaked shirt clinging clammily to his back, leaving him thoroughly uncomfortable.
The other editors wore the same look of survivors pulled back from the brink, gasping in great mouthfuls of air like drowning men who had just broken the surface and drawn their first breath of fresh air.
No one answered the question just posed. As if by silent agreement, everyone turned their gaze toward the door, staring at the darkness sealed off behind the glass.
As though some man-eating monster lurked out there.
·
Russell's silhouette streaked across the skies above the Southwark District.
He looked down upon the floating world beneath his feet, coursing over several streets until he finally arrived above Southwark, then made his way with practiced ease to the place he had last visited.
Hannigan's mansion.
At this moment, this once glamorous and resplendent estate had already been emptied of its occupants.
Hannigan was dead, and in his lifetime he had never taken a wife nor fathered any children.
And so that enormous inheritance—part of it, in accordance with the will he had drawn up in life to cultivate his public persona, was donated entirely to welfare institutions.
The remaining greater portion was carved up and divided until nothing was left but this house.
Whether it was because a man had died here or for some other reason, in any case, it had simply been left to rot.
The public order in Southwark was better than in the other parts of the Southwark District—after all, it was a core district, and those patrolling officers wouldn't let vagrants wander in.
Not to mention that where Hannigan had lived was the very heart of the core district.
The mansion now stood empty, without so much as a single soul.
After Hannigan's death, the servants had all been dismissed, each scattering off to find new employers.
Clearly, Emily Collins was not here either.
A wasted trip.
Russell scratched his head, and in the end decided to spend 50 Malice Points to customize a map to Emily Collins's residence.
This was far simpler than searching building by building himself, or running off to Scotland Yard to dig through their files.
As the Malice Points were deducted in his mind, a three-dimensional map slowly took shape in Russell's head in an instant.
The map's lines were crisp and precise, as though rendered by the hand of the most meticulous draftsman.
It unfolded within Russell's consciousness, rapidly zooming from the macroscopic outline of the city to that tangled, intricate web of streets in the Southwark District.
Finally, it locked completely onto a relatively old apartment building in the Walworth district.
"Found it," Russell murmured softly.
He didn't linger any longer. He rose slowly, swung out his grappling line, and vaulted into the air, vanishing into the night like a night crow, drawing closer toward Walworth.
The apartment building in Walworth was even more dilapidated than Russell had imagined.
The brickwork of the outer walls had already flaked away for the most part under years of wind and rain, exposing the dull gray beneath.
The narrow stairwell was dimly lit, relying only on a flickering gas lamp mounted on the wall to provide what little feeble light there was.
The air was thick with a lingering, complicated stench that gave one the illusion that staying too long might well leave you with consumption.
Russell had changed into a set of shabby rags, treading up the stairs without a sound, and came to the third floor.
An apartment building like this didn't even have a balcony, let alone any hope of climbing in through a window.
It was still simpler to just come in disguise.
Emily Collins's room was at the very end of the third-floor corridor, the paint on the door panel already mottled and peeling, exposing the rough wood beneath.
He stood at the door and listened quietly for a moment. No sound.
Probably asleep.
So he pulled a probe from his pocket and slowly slid it into the keyhole of that rust-covered lock.
For Russell as he was now, an old lock cylinder like this was less trouble than cracking open a can of luncheon meat.
If he couldn't get it open in three seconds, he'd count the job a bust.
"Click—"
Accompanied by a barely audible little sound, the lock sprang open.
Russell reached out and gently pushed the door open, stepping silently into the room and pulling the door shut behind him as he went—the entire process without making the slightest noise.
The room was very small, its furnishings simple as well.
A single bed, a small table, a chair, and a wardrobe that looked to have some years on it—that was basically all this room contained.
Russell swept his eyes around the room and found no trace of Emily on the bed.
She didn't seem to be home.
At the sight of this, Russell couldn't help but knit his brows.
This late, a woman on her own—where could she have run off to?
Had she already found a new employer, or was she afraid he might come knocking for revenge, and so had fled with those fifty pounds?
But if she had moved out, then the map the System provided him shouldn't have been this place.
The System's Map Customization function wasn't actually as useful as one might imagine—it came with no small number of limitations.
First and foremost, one had to first confirm the target's identity.
For instance, Russell had no way of directly using the System to customize a map to The Professor's residence, unless he knew The Professor's true identity.
Second, the result of a customized map was the target's [residence], not their [hideout].
Therefore, trying to use this method to locate Pilsen wouldn't work either.
If this trick had been of any use at all, he'd have long since bundled Pilsen up and delivered him to Lestrade's doorstep.
By comparison, the variety a Blind Box map could offer was far more flexible—but by the same token, the uncertainty was far higher too.
In theory, he could roll the location maps of Pilsen and The Professor out of a Blind Box, but that was, after all, only in theory.
In theory, he could also become a millionaire by buying lottery tickets.
As Russell thought this over, his gaze swept around the apartment, searching for traces of the life Emily Collins had lived here.
When she left, she hadn't deliberately erased the proof that she had lived here.
The clothes were still in the wardrobe, and the cosmetics on the table still sat quietly in their original places.
The feeling the whole room gave was as though its owner had merely stepped out for a short while.
Yet Russell was quite certain that Emily Collins had definitely fled.
There was no other reason—only a single, very simple piece of evidence.
The money in the room was all gone.
____
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