the culprit

Hearing the murder case, the tavern owner raised his glass and took another sip.

"Yeah, homicide—you reporters are interested in this, right? In a small town like ours, what happened at nine o'clock in the morning will spread throughout the city by 10:30!" Root shook his fingers from side to side and said mysteriously, "It's strange to say that a murder case happened in our city last month. I heard that people died in the hotel too. They are all foreigners..." said At this point, the boss suddenly stopped, looked worriedly at the two young handsome gentlemen in front of him, and said worriedly, "Two be careful..."

"Was the body also found in the Green Hotel?"

"Oh, let me think about it... yes, yes, it seems to be that hotel too!" The boss slapped his thigh in surprise, took a breath, and he couldn't help guessing, "Could it be that there is a weird person who likes to kill people living in that hotel? Or it's—oh, my God, or that murderer is old Green!"

Old Green was the owner of the hotel. He was almost 60 years old now. He had seen both Cyril and Felix when he checked in last night, so he could tell if he was a vampire at a glance.The unreliable guess of the mustache boss made Cyril secretly sigh, exchanged a look with Felix, he took out a few copper coins and threw them to the boss, and the two returned to the hotel at noon.

The room full of blood was finally tidied up. While thinking about what makes this hotel different, Cyril wanted to put the cane and the suitcase together. After he searched the room, he realized that the cane was still in Felix. in his room.When I went upstairs, I knocked on the door several times but no one answered.Even though it was time for Felix to rest, he was not so deep asleep that he could not hear the knock on the door.Cyril knocked a few more times, but there was still no answer. He hurriedly went downstairs to ask the boss for a spare key to the room, and opened the door, only to find that Felix was not in the room at all.

The windows of the room were wide open, and the wind lifted the curtains like silk handkerchiefs in the hands of ladies.The bed was made neat and tidy, as if Felix had slipped through the window without taking off his cloak upon his return.

Having lived with Felix for so many years, Cyril was very familiar with his temperament, but there must be an important reason for leaving so quietly without saying a word.Before he had time to think about it, Cyril grabbed his cane and rushed downstairs. When he walked out of the hotel, the dazzling sunlight hit him like a beast, and he realized that he knew nothing about Felix's life in recent years. no idea.

Hired a carriage, went to Wei Ya's house, rushed to the branch office, and even went to Fengyue Street where he never wanted to set foot again, but there was no sign of Felix anywhere.Now is the moment when the sun is the most violent, Felix only has a cloak on his body, if someone accidentally takes it off... Cyril frowned fiercely, anxious and angry at the same time.

The groom sat on the carriage and pulled the rein to ask for urging. He silently took out a few copper coins and handed them over, walked into the shadow of the roadside buildings, and walked along the street thinking all the way.

Suddenly, he remembered the few scratches he found when he checked the wound of the female corpse last night. At that time, because his emotions were too impetuous, some intuitive thoughts just passed by, and he didn't grasp them seriously. Think those scratches combined like two letters.

coincidence?Or illusion?

The murder a month ago was also done by a vampire. If the same vampire was responsible for the two murders, there might be some clues on the corpse—if the corpse also had scratches similar to letters, it can be concluded that That was indeed what the murderer did on purpose.

Cyril sighed dejectedly.

Wei Ya guessed that the body had already been buried, and she knew she was right after seeing the police's reaction.Even if he could secretly dig up the grave and drag out the corpse, at the current temperature, the corpse would have rotted almost, and probably there would be no scratch marks.

Cyril decided to go back to the branch again.

All materials are shared between chapters, and orphaned copies and manuscripts are mailed in handcopied form to ensure that each fraternity member has access to the same materials and information.If the vampire was on the fraternity's hunt list, maybe the archivist would have an impression of the scratch mark.

He rushed back as fast as he could, trotted through the stone path and the empty first building, ran non-stop along the corridor into the main building with a high dome, went upstairs, panting in the aisle He craned his neck to read the category labels that rested on each shelf.

Fortunately, there happened to be an archivist who was sorting out the newly arrived materials. Cyril walked over, and a middle-aged woman wearing gloves sat on a ladder and looked down at him condescendingly. While speaking very fast, he asked him what information he was looking for.

"I found a body that was attacked to death by a vampire today. There are several scratch marks under the wound. When combined, they look like two letters. I want to know..."

"Letter? Are you sure?"

After getting an affirmative answer, the woman swiftly stuffed the tome between the two tomes, then jumped off the ladder and pushed it to another bookshelf, and quickly climbed up to the top shelf of the bookshelf. Pulled out an old hand-bound book.The pages of the book were made of parchment, and the edges were severely worn out. Each page contained text and pictures, obviously not printed matter.

The woman got off the ladder with the book in her arms, flipping it quickly regardless of the flying dust.

"Is that the scratch?" She stopped at a page, raised her hand to Cyril, "Don't touch the book without gloves, just stand there and read."

There is not enough light in the building, and the books are old, and the content on them is blurry. Cyril squinted his eyes for a while to identify.

"This is it."

"Vampire EG, who has hunted for 150 years, is cunning and cruel, and is still at large...it has appeared again." The manager is already familiar with this name. When she was an apprentice, her master told her that the fraternity is today. scale, it is difficult to have a human or monster that cannot be hunted down, and EG is one of them. It’s not clear whether it’s a man or a woman, but EG is the letter made up of scratches, so we used this as its code name.”

Vampire EG, a nightmare living in the parchment.

The archivist's expression made the already anxious Cyril's face darken, and a sense of ominousness emerged spontaneously.

"Does Felix know about this vampire?" Cyril continued to ask, maintaining his composure.

"Felix?" The manager thought about it, "I... don't think so. Although he is also a vampire, just like you can't know all human beings as a human being, he doesn't necessarily know this EG, and he came late , EG has disappeared for many years, and we haven’t mentioned it for many years. In fact, our executors basically don’t touch any books or booklets on these bookshelves. We all have specific portraits when we give orders, and the other party hides We will also investigate the lair in advance, they really don't need to spend time looking at this."

Having said that, Cyril had an intuition that Felix must know this EG, at least he had heard about it.He recalled Felix's various behaviors after the murder, and always felt that Felix, who was frustrated after failing to succeed, was very abnormal.

"Aside from these, is there any other information about EG?"

"Then there is only a record of where it appears every time."

As the manager spoke, he climbed up the ladder and took another dusty notebook from the shelf.Cyril asked for a pair of gloves to put on, eagerly but carefully flipped through the handwritten time and place records, and found that EG had appeared in a small village near the Doma River many times.

"Has no one ever gone to that village to investigate?"

"I went, but they all returned without success. I said that I didn't find anything unusual."

If you take the train from here, it will take a day and a half at the fastest to go to that village - the train can't go to such a small village, you can only go to the nearby station, and then hire a horse-drawn carriage to go there.

Cyril decided to wait.After tonight, if Felix came back before then, he wouldn't have to go, but if Felix didn't come back——

The young man thanked the manager. It was already dark when he returned to the hotel. He ate something hastily, took out a pen and paper and wrote two notes with the same content, one in his room and one in Felix on the bed.He waited in Felix's room until midnight, accidentally fell asleep, and woke up at dawn, and Felix hadn't come back yet.

After changing his clothes, he stuffed all kinds of medicines, emergency chemicals, and various supplies from Wei Ya into his pockets to the maximum. He put on his morning coat and top hat, grabbed his walking stick and went downstairs.Another week's rent was paid in advance, and the boss didn't need to clean his and Felix's room. Cyril hired a carriage and urged the driver to the train station as quickly as possible.

There were two trains going to the small town on the banks of the Doma River every day. Cyril waited in anxiety for two hours, his gums almost bleeding from clenching his teeth for a long time.The train was surprisingly crowded, every chair was full of people, he took the hat in his hand and sat casually on a chair near the door, and then the empty seat beside him was quickly occupied by another man.Strangers chatted without saying a word during the long journey. He held the hat in his hand and said nothing. The men beside him came up to talk to him from time to time, asking where he was going. He cast a gloomy glance at the man, and the awkward conversation finally came to an end.

The train was late, and it was already late at night when he arrived at the station. He immediately hired a carriage and drove on without stopping. When he arrived at the destination, there was already a ray of light in the sky.The morning star was twinkling in the eastern sky. He got off the carriage and stepped into this quiet and peaceful village that was still sleeping.