As soon as those words were spoken, the entire interrogation room fell into a deathly silence.
Charles Brown.
The one responsible for opening the door, the person who knew the password—and a madman.
Well, that's just great.
Just when it seemed like there was a ray of hope, everything was reset back to square one.
Russell turned and looked at Charlotte.
"So, what now? Want to give that lunatic some psychological counseling?"
Charlotte shot him a glare, then averted her gaze, muttering a curse under her breath.
"To come all this way just to rob a bank, and the nerves it takes… Yet here we are, nearly scared insane by a thief pretending to be a ghost."
"I agree," Russell nodded slightly.
"Is there really no one else who knows the password?" Charlotte asked, clearly not wanting to give up.
"The person who received the first letter must have seen the code, right?"
"Bilson…" murmured the man. It was the first time he'd given a name.
"Where is Bilson?"
"He isn't here… we were just hired by him."
The man shook his head, speaking with a hint of frustration.
"Those who live by power have no conscience…" Russell observed Charlotte as he silently jotted down the name in his notebook.
"Lestrade."
Charlotte turned and called to Lestrade, who was standing outside the interrogation room.
"Eh? You found something already?" Lestrade asked, still holding a half-eaten donut.
"There are two things you need to do," Charlotte said, holding up two fingers. "First: get the best psychiatrist to treat this man Charles, the lunatic—make sure he can recover at least his basic language abilities. And during the treatment, record every number he blurts out by accident—whatever he says, don't forget a single digit.
Second: track down this Bilson and bring him in."
Lestrade glanced at Charlotte's determined face, then down at his unfinished donut.
"I'll do my best, but I can't promise quick results."
"If you want to stop the Professor from committing even worse crimes, you'll have to find a way to get results."
"No doubt the next thing he'll try is bombing Buckingham Palace."
"Oh, and contact Lloyds Bank; tell them we need a full customer list for the vault that was opened."
"And if Lloyds refuses? After all, that's a privacy issue."
"Then we'll just have to wait until Moriarty is considerate enough to give it back," Charlotte replied, winking at Russell as she shoved her hands into her pockets. "I'm not in a hurry—let's just hope their clients aren't, either."
"Let's go, Watson."
Russell closed his notebook, shot a look of sympathy at Lestrade—'Good luck'—and hurriedly followed after Charlotte.
They boarded a carriage; as it set off, Russell opened his notebook.
"What did you write down?" Charlotte asked, standing up from across him and sitting beside him, eyes fixed on the notebook.
"I wrote down those keywords from earlier," Russell replied, handing the notebook to her.
"Not that I know what use they'll be."
Charlotte took the notebook and glanced down at the page.
"Face Melting, Demon, Clone… Professor… Cipher, Bilson… This is actually pretty comprehensive."
"But the problem is," Russell said, looking out the window, "there's still no breakthrough. Charles is mad, and Bilson has vanished. We're stuck."
"More worrying still—is this," Charlotte said, pointing at a scribbled drawing in the notebook: a swirling cloud of black smoke with a giant question mark at the center.
"Art," said Russell, concise and to-the-point.
"This is just a waste of paper."
The carriage rolled smoothly homeward, wheels clattering out a steady, rhythmic beat across the wet, slippery cobblestones. Inside was quiet. Russell leaned back against the cushions, gaze fixed on the view outside—not out of genuine interest in the unique London scenery, but to observe the girl's reactions from the corner of his eye.
He could just pick up her scent: a faint trace of rosin and chemical reagents, not at all unpleasant. Certainly better than the gunpowder and blood that had pervaded the bank's basement the previous night.
"Ghosts, monsters, face-melting demons…"
After what felt like an eternity, Charlotte finally spoke; her words cut through the silence, her voice crystalline in the calm interior. She closed the notebook, handed it back to Russell—her expression tinged now with a hint of frustration.
"Just a prank. To scare people."
"The professor?"
"Moriarty."
"You've seen through his tricks?" Russell asked, intrigued.
"Realistic masks and smoke grenades," Charlotte explained. "The alleged face-melting was probably caused by some kind of chemical reagent."
"And what about the clones?"
"It's a reasonable guess that London's infamous thief Moriarty can move quickly and quietly." Charlotte continued, "If you assume he used those smoke bombs to cover his movements, it's easy to imagine how witnesses thought he appeared in several places at once.
But those idiots clearly never considered that—so they panicked."
"One of the more timid cronies nearly lost his mind from fright and set off the gas."
Charlotte seemed especially annoyed at how Russell had frightened Charles into a fury; Russell could feel her annoyance meter tick up by ten points.
It's not my fault, Russell thought to himself, quietly excusing himself in his mind.
"But after all," he said aloud, "Moriarty never actually met these men. And they didn't strike me as the newspaper-reading type."
…
Back on Baker Street, Charlotte climbed out of the carriage and went directly to her room upstairs, leaving Russell to pay the fare himself.
He ascended the stairs slowly, greeted Mrs. Hudson, and then entered Charlotte's room.
Charlotte was busy inside: she'd taken out a pinboard from somewhere, and pinned a map of London to it, colorful post-its with case keywords placed all over. As she glanced at Russell, Charlotte peeled off all the sticky notes and tossed them aside, leaving only the yellowed old map.
"What are you doing?" Russell asked with genuine curiosity.
"Auxiliary tools," Charlotte explained. "I only use these for especially tricky cases."
"The Professor?"
"Yes."
"Alright, I'll leave you to it," Russell said calmly, letting his gaze linger on the map for a few seconds before returning it to her. He turned away and left Charlotte's room, heading back to his own and pulling a file from his bedside table—the one he'd promised to return tonight.
…