"You see that, don't you?"
Seeing that the girl stopped talking and was just writing something in the notebook, she leaned forward and wanted to ask more questions.
"This town...if I knew this town was like this, I wouldn't have come here at all!"
"Evil spirits, curses, and such a horrible family! I'm really going crazy because of this place... Please, tell me if you find anything!"
“This is actually quite obvious.”
Hitzfeld closed the book.
"Obviously...what?"
"Is Fister Gold Shop considered a big brand in the capital?"
"It should be counted."
“But you must have a lot of competitors too.”
"Of course! Not only in Wayne, but in many cities in the South, there are brands competing with us."
"Then why are you the only ones who got the news about Blood-Patterned Gold?"
"This……"
This question stunned Fister.
She had never thought about this. She was so happy that she didn't see any competitors around her, so how could she care about them?
"I'll answer for you."
Hitzfeld sighed.
"Because you were specially chosen... and the people who asked questions like 'Are you really Fister?' were the ones who spread the news."
"You mean the letter written by that...red-haired...something Bram?"
Fister stood up in surprise.
Her thoughts came to a standstill.
She also couldn't understand the logic behind it, such as why the other party would do such a thing?
"The key is 'Fester'."
Hitzfeld tapped the table with his pen. "He doesn't care who comes, but it must be Fister. This shows that his goal is to attract Fister's people. Maybe he has some connection with you..."
"Impossible! Absolutely impossible!"
The woman interrupted her with certainty: "There is no one with that hair color in our family, and there are records of the lives and deaths of people in these generations, whether they had accidents or not! He can't possibly have anything to do with us!"
"It doesn't necessarily have to be you." Hitzfeld reminded her, "Does Fister Gold Shop have any partners?"
"Yes..." The woman sat back down in despair, "No, I should say we are one of the companies under their control."
"Oh? Who is so powerful?"
"Eastern Iron and Mining Company."
"what company?"
"Eastern, Steel, Mining Company." The woman repeated again, "You may not have heard of it... but you must have heard of Lefe-Larens. They control more than half of the metal in the entire Sara and are truly the steel kings."
"You wait."
Raising his hand to tell her to stop talking for now, Hitzfeld covered his forehead.
She felt as if she had grasped something.
But it was vague and just lacked the final touch.
Le Fay-Laurence.
The Larrance family.
The Fister Gold Shop was owned by this family, and from what Mrs. Fister said, the whole family was working for Lawrence.
So Bram secretly wrote to inform them in order to attract Lawrence's attention?
why?
The only connection between Lawrence and this town is Paul Lawrence, who rose to prominence because of the discovery of gold here, then returned to investigate his friend and died unexpectedly.
But he has been dead for so many years, and the Lawrence family must have given up investigating the truth long ago.
This lunatic doctor...what does he want to do by calling Lawrence's people over now?
"In the Larence family, is there anyone who has gone missing and has not been heard from since?"
She tried to find clues from Fister.
It's funny... because she just had a moment of suspicion that Bram was not the old doctor's child, but someone he picked up from outside.
“Being missing…is there a time limit?” the woman began to recall.
"No."
"That's too much, miss. The Larences are not like our family. They have a large population, and it's not surprising that someone with the last name of Larence has an accident every year."
"Then 1939—any time before or after 1939."
"Let me think... I vaguely remember a Polo-Laurence..."
"Paul?"
"Yes! Paul Lawrence!"
"If not this, is there anything else?"
"Something else?"
"Please think about it carefully."
“…I might have thought of it.”
This time it was several minutes before Fister looked up.
"There was a girl..."
"Hmm..." Hitzfeld nodded first, then stared suddenly: "Ah? Girl?"
Not a man?
"It's a girl!" Fister confirmed, "I can't be wrong. I remember it completely now... This incident had a huge impact in Wayne at the time!"
"It was the most sensational, most detrimental, and most bizarre and mysterious pirate hostage-taking case in the past half century."
"Pirates..." The girl narrowed her eyes, "Can you tell me more about it?"
"Of course, that happened in about 1936..."
"At that time, um, Baron Larence's beloved daughter, Bectoria, was returning from treasure hunting at sea and was accidentally captured by pirates."
"Not only did those villains kill everyone on the ship and take all the treasure they found for themselves, they also demanded a huge sum of 100 million Sera from Baron Larence before they would release the people!"
"The baron intended to pay the money. He sent someone with the ransom to the vicinity of the ship and sent out fireworks signals, but strangely, there was no response from the other side."
"Those people sent out a small boat to get close to the ship to see what was going on. Then something incomprehensible happened..."
“…What is it?”
"Everyone who came near the ship died."
Even though so many years had passed, and even though she knew that what she said might just be an exaggerated legend, Ms. Feist still showed great fear.
"Just like the legend says: 'I saw a thick fog floating on the sea...'"
She began to sing.
"'The fog obscured the ship, and only its shadow could be seen in the distance. As part of the rescue team, we took a small boat to the nearby sea and found many escape boats of similar size, but all the people on them were dead.'"
"'All the bodies were facing the ship, and all the eyes were gouged out... In extreme panic and fear, I heard my companions screaming behind me...'"
"'giant!'"
"'They shouted.'"
"'The Shadow of the Giant!'"
"'I looked back and saw what they were talking about.'"
"'It was a huge figure, standing on the big ship, looking down at us.'"
"'My companions went mad after seeing it. They dug out their own eyes and dug into the wounds in their eye sockets, as if they wanted to pull out their brains as well.'"
"'If someone hadn't woken me up in time and dragged me away by boat, I might have become a crazy corpse floating on the sea like them...'"
Chapter 26 The Last Chance
After finishing the meeting with Ms. Fister, Hitzfeld was thinking all the way.
The purpose of this trip was successfully achieved. Not only did they order a fake ring, but they also obtained an additional piece of crucial information - a pirate hostage-taking and disappearance incident that occurred in 1936.
It also has another name: The Case of the Giant Shadow on the Sea.
The Lawrence family is no pushover. Not only did they prepare the ransom, they also contacted the coast guard to send a ship.
As long as the pirates take the money and release the people, or whether they release them or not, it will be difficult for them to break through the encirclement and escape.
But in this background, a huge shadow appeared on the hijacked ship - a huge human shadow. All the passengers and pirates on the ship lost contact, and even those who approached it would go crazy and commit suicide cruelly.
The case of the giant shadow on the sea thus became an unsolved case, and for a long time no one dared to approach the ship. No one in folklore knew what happened next.
So can I connect this case to the anomalies of the Gebrina family?
Hitzfeld felt that they must be related.
From 1936 to 1984, there was a gap of nearly 50 years, half a century.
The fugitive pirates and the unique temperament of Benny as described by Old Bud made Hitzfeld believe that they were involved in the case.
Suppose that Horus and Falcon were among the pirates - and then suppose that the old lady Benny who had just died was Bectoria.
The pirates definitely don't know that an evil spirit has invaded the ship... For the evil spirit to spread, there needs to be a source of pollution, and this source of pollution is definitely not on the pirate ship.
Given how much the Larence family dotes on Bectoria, the ship she takes to go out to sea cannot possibly not be thoroughly inspected, and the source of the pollution cannot be on this ship.
At least not at first.
If the legend is not exaggerated and Bectoria really went out to sea to search for treasure, then Hitzfeld estimated that the source of pollution was most likely the treasure they found.
Maybe it's treasure from a shipwreck.
Perhaps it was treasure hidden in a pirate hideout.
No matter which one it is, it is highly likely that the source of pollution was transferred to the ship because of the treasure brought back.
Then the pirate ship that the Gebrina brothers were on board boarded, killed people, and took hostages.
Just as they were conveying their request to the outside world, the source of pollution was awakened, causing the entire ship and everyone approaching to be cursed, losing their minds and turning into madmen.
They survived for some unknown reason, and survived with Bektoria. Then they began to exile on the land, choosing to live in seclusion in Barvik.
But the curse did not leave them, because they were still carrying treasure, so even if they came to such a desolate place as Barvik, the curse still followed them like a shadow.
After all, a giant on the sea.
The legendary giant shadow.
If you look at it from another angle, isn't it also a human-shaped outline?
Although the symptoms displayed by the contaminated people are different, one is that their eyes are gouged out and their brains are grabbed out, and the other is that their body is fixed and they lose their eyes, brain, and heart.
But there is one thing they all have in common: they have all lost control of themselves.
So Hitzfeld believed that the legendary giant shadow on the sea and the gap man curse they had encountered before were actually the same thing.
After returning, she immediately told Darent about her discovery.
Because this is no longer a simple client case... It involves the most dangerous and mysterious disappearance at sea in half a century, and involves the Larence family, who is vaguely respected as the richest family under the royal family. It is impossible to keep it secret just because she is "too lazy to catch pirates."
"Tomorrow is Friday, and we still have one day." Darent said, "We have an informant in the town. I will ask him to pass the news to Shadow Lion... I think the Larence family will be very happy too."
"I don't think so." Hitzfeld shook his head.
If her guess is true, then there must be a branch of Lawrence's bloodline hidden here.
