Shortly after Russell's departure.
In the bedroom, Hansen Boule suddenly snapped his eyes open.
His sleep had been dreadful these past two days — he'd almost grown accustomed to it.
At this hour, his usual ritual was to shuffle to the study, confirm that his precious ledger was still where he'd left it, swallow a couple of sleeping pills, and sleep soundly until morning.
So he climbed out of bed, cinched the sash of his dressing gown a little tighter, and made his way to the study.
"Click."
Amber lamplight flooded the dark study. Everything was exactly as he'd left it.
The balcony door was shut. The books on the shelf, the pen on the desk — all in their proper places.
Hansen Boule exhaled with mild relief. And yet, for reasons he couldn't name, a sense of dread settled over him — vague, sourceless, and utterly insistent.
It was strong enough to quicken his breathing and send his heart hammering against his ribs.
Frowning, he walked behind the desk and instinctively reached out, letting his fingers trail along the row of spines.
When his fingertips touched the heavy Bible, the unease peaked.
He yanked it free and, in the lamplight, began flipping through it rapidly.
Frontispiece, contents page, the Old Testament — everything looked perfectly normal.
Until he reached that page. The page where all his secrets were meant to be hidden.
Empty.
Hansen Boule's mind went blank.
He turned the pages stiffly, one by one — his movements starting out careful, then devolving into something frantic, something that was already beginning to crack.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
The evidence that could have ruined him — the proof capable of destroying everything he'd built — had vanished without a trace, as though wiped clean by the hand of God.
"No... that's impossible..."
He muttered to himself and upended the entire book, shaking it madly, praying that the pages had simply slipped somewhere else.
But nothing fell out — only a few old flecks of tobacco dust.
Just as the full weight of that panic was about to swallow him whole, his gaze snagged on a single line of writing on one of the blank pages.
A line he had never seen before and never wished to see — and beneath it, a signature that nearly stopped his heart.
His worst fear had come to pass.
"Thud!"
The heavy Bible slipped from his trembling fingers and struck the carpet with a dull, leaden thump.
Moonlight spilled through the window and fell, with perfect cruelty, directly onto that single line of text.
[The path to salvation lies herein — Moriarty]
·
[Fear and despair received from Hansen Boule. Malice Points +80]
Russell heard the chime ring in his mind and gave a satisfied nod.
This was only the beginning.
Let the bullet fly a little longer.
Russell changed his mind — he wouldn't hand over what he had to the papers just yet.
Instead, he planned to send an advance notice letter to each of the newspapers along Fleet Street first.
He would simply tell them he had a grand gift coming for them in a few days.
The papers would splash it everywhere, make it public, stir up enough anticipation across the city.
As the countdown drew closer, so too would the expectations of London's citizens — and in equal measure, the panic of every wretch he'd paid a visit to would quietly ferment and swell.
For them, it was a death knell counting down to their ruin — and they were the only ones who knew what it meant.
When a man knows the exact moment, the exact place, and the exact manner of his doom, the waiting itself becomes a form of unbearable torture.
To truly destroy a man, you had to break his spirit as well as his body. A clean death was mercy. A slow death — now that was real suffering.
And it wouldn't stop at just the targets Russell had personally visited.
Every other scoundrel with a guilty conscience in this city would be feeding him a tidy sum of Malice Points over the course of that countdown.
"Time to deliver a letter to Fleet Street," Russell said, stifling a yawn. "And pick up a little extra income while I'm at it."
He yawned and then vanished into the Kensington night.
Late at night, unlike other districts that had long since gone dark, Fleet Street blazed with light.
Russell, in a baseball jacket and a cap pulled low, hands tucked in his pockets, pushed open the doors of The Times at an unhurried stroll.
The receptionist, who had been mid-yawn, straightened up the moment he saw someone come in.
Anyone who'd worked this beat long enough knew exactly what it meant when a stranger turned up at this hour.
"How can I help you, sir?" he asked, his tone politely perfunctory.
"I'm delivering a letter," Russell said. "From Mr. Moriarty."
As he spoke, he reached into his pocket and produced an envelope.
"One moment, please!" The receptionist practically threw himself at the intercom, all hands and elbows.
"Hello?! Mr. Henry, Editor-in-Chief! Father Christmas is back! That's right! With presents!"
In under three minutes, a familiar figure came sprinting down from upstairs.
Henry Scott's eyes were bloodshot, but the feverish elation in them blazed brighter than ever.
"The letter — where is it?" he demanded.
Russell pointed to the desk. But just as Henry reached for it, a hand came down over the envelope.
"That'll be one hundred pounds, sir," Russell said pleasantly, extending his palm.
Henry's brow furrowed — not at the fact that Russell was asking for money, but at the amount.
"One hundred pounds?"
It struck him as somewhat low. The last time — the Ethan Roy scandal — he'd been charged a full five hundred.
At a fifth of that price, could the contents possibly be worth anything...?
Oh, to hell with that.
This was Moriarty.
"Take it."
Without a moment's hesitation, Henry counted out a hundred pounds from his billfold and pressed them into Russell's hand, then snatched the envelope away.
He tore it open with barely restrained urgency — but the photographs or incriminating evidence he'd been imagining were nowhere to be found.
Instead, there was a single sheet of letter paper.
This time, what Moriarty had sent was, quite literally, a letter.
An advance notice.
"What is this?" Henry's frown deepened.
"I haven't the faintest idea, sir," Russell said, with a shrug. "You paid, I delivered. I'd say our transaction is complete, wouldn't you?"
Henry didn't answer.
The editor-in-chief of The Times simply stared at the sheet of paper in his hands, unblinking.
The initial confusion in those bloodshot eyes was being steadily consumed by a feverish, uncontrollable excitement.
"Good God..." he finally breathed, forcing the words through his teeth in a murmur.
His gaze swept back and forth across the letter again and again, as though he were trying to engrave every word into his skull.
[To my dear Times, and to the equally dear citizens of London:
Five days hence, a grand performance shall begin.
Do look forward to it.
— Your good neighbour, Moriarty]
The letter was brief — some might even say terse.
But the information packed within it detonated like a stick of dynamite in the mind of Henry Scott, seasoned newsman that he was.
"Gabriel's trumpet..." he whispered at last. "...is about to sound."
____
________________________________________
If you want more chapters, please consider supporting my page on (P). with 50 advanced chapters available on (P)
👻 Join the crew by searching Leanzin on (P). You know the spot! 😉