England,
County of North Yorkshire
Port town of Whitby, Blue Bird Inn
October 04, 1899, 11:36 a.m.

Kaylee sat there and stared at the young waitress in bewilderment. Could it really be that easy? You could just ask witnesses?

"I was in the café that day too, you know," the young girl murmured. Her voice almost trembled with excitement, and the urge to chat could clearly be heard.

"Really?" asked Dr. Archer, reaching into his coat pocket to pull out his notebook and a pretty quill pen. "What was your name again, Miss...?"

"Kathrin Dougel. Or just Kathy," the young lady replied, pressing the tray flat against her chest and then stroking the white apron with her other hand, visibly excited.

"And you were well acquainted with Miss..." Kaylee faltered deliberately, frowning thoughtfully in the shadow of the cylinder brim.

"Clarence. Miss Millicent Clarence," Kathy added innocently, of course. "We work in the same café, but otherwise, we've had little to do with each other."

"I see. And what exactly happened three days ago? Did Miss Clarence behave differently than usual?" Kaylee asked, and Ben already had his pen ready to take notes.

Kathy's fingers twirled around the end of one of her pigtails while the young woman seemed to be thinking hard. "No, actually, everything was as usual. Milly arrived on time for her shift, and everything was normal until lunchtime. I remember that the church bell just struck at the twelfth hour. That's when the chaos started."

'Noon. Unusual time for a presumed dead man to be walking through a spa town,' Kaylee thought.

"I was wiping the tables. Suddenly, Milly started shrieking horribly. She even dropped the tea of poor Mr. Morris, one of our regulars..." The waitress shook her head energetically and condemningly.

"Milly didn't care about all the mess she made. She even knocked over a table in her tantrum and nearly scared dear old Miss Harris to death with her demeanor."

"Extremely interesting. What happened next?" Kaylee wondered if the young woman had worried more about the elderly customers than her colleague.

"She was screaming like crazy, babbling nonsensical things and pointing at a gentleman in fine clothes. At the same time, she kept shouting out extremely strange things. Something about how the gentleman must be dead."

Crowford and Dr. Archer glanced at each other. The statements matched the newspaper report they had read on their train ride here.

Nothing new. Nothing useful.

"And was there anything strange or unusual about this gentleman? Do you remember what he looked like?" Kaylee asked impatiently. She would have liked to shake the answers out of the young thing.

"The gentleman?" Kathy asked, sounding as if it was the oddest thing ever that the supposed journalists were asking about the unknown gentleman instead of continuing to question the crazy waitress. "No, I don't think so. I guess he didn't even notice," she reflected, tapping her chin.

A little distance away, a seagull screeched and wobbled in clumsy steps under one of the tables.

Crowford's shoulders slumped in disappointment.

Kathy must have noticed this because she continued: "But I remember he was in quite a hurry if I remember correctly. Eddy was loading his luggage onto a carriage. Two dock workers helped stow a heavy crate on the roof, and he got in shortly afterward. However, I didn't look after him any further. After all, Milly had caused quite a stir. Mr. Parker, the café owner, and his son both had to restrain her because she was tugging at the customers and screaming hysterically."
The girl pursed her lips, and both Kaylee and the doctor couldn't help but notice the sly, spiteful little smile at the corner of her mouth. "And then she just passed out." Kathy shook her head again. "Poor thing. I knew it would happen one day."

"You knew it would come to this? In what way?" Dr. Archer asked, lifting his irritated gaze from his hastily written notes.

"She's always been a bit strange. Talked to herself a lot and things like that. I'm sure it's because her parents both died at the same time some time ago. Never really got over that. She's all alone now, poor thing," Kathy babbled on.

Kaylee refrained from rolling her eyes at these words. Heavens, they were Seekers, not guests at a tea party!

As members of the Order, they mostly had to deal with three different types of informants: Those who didn't want to tell them anything at all spat on the floor and were instead looking for trouble or became so frightened that they couldn't get a word past their quivering lips. Then there were the witnesses who would only come forward with information if they saw shiny coins or received some other favor in return. And last but not least, all those people ran their mouths about others or made assumptions themselves, even though they clearly lacked the know-how to do so. Those who spread half-truths started rumors, making the Seekers' job of distinguishing fact from fiction difficult. Ironically, these people also included journalists...

Kaylee hated talking to witnesses and civilians. Most of all, however, she hated the latter kind of informants, with their unrestrained flow of words and entrenched opinions—persons like Kathy.
Nevertheless, Dr. Archer took careful notes of everything the girl said. Until Kathy remembered that her guests were still waiting for their drinks. She hurried off with her skirt billowing.

"Well?" Kaylee asked when the waitress was out of sight and raised an eyebrow while waiting. So what did Dr. Archer conclude from what he had heard?

Archer tapped his pen on the table, tilted his head slowly from right to left, and let out a low humming sound. "We haven't heard anything new. At least the local media haven't gone over the top again this time. But we should talk to this Millicent Clarence."

Kaylee nodded in agreement. "So we have just two leads. The girl and the mysterious gentleman. Where was she taken again?"

Paper rustled like leaves in fall as Ben turned the pages of his notebook. "St. Hilda's Asylum."

"Then we should find out where this Asylum is next," Kaylee suggested, casually flicking a crumb of cake off the table for the seagull to feast on.

"But we should not ignore the unknown gentleman. However, it might be difficult to find where the carriage with the stranger was heading..." the doctor conceded.
"Hah!" The flash of genius hit Kaylee, and she almost jumped up excitedly. With a slight smirk at the corner of her mouth, she slapped her thigh with the flat of her hand. "Maybe there's another way to get the information about who this man might have been."

" Sounds like you have an idea." Interested, Dr. Archer straightened up a little.

"Wait here, I'll be back soon." Before the doctor could protest, Crowford had stood up and hurried off briskly. They hadn't paid yet, so he couldn't just get up and follow her, so the good doctor had no choice but to remain uncertain, looking anxiously after Kaylee.

The clock in a nearby church struck a quarter past twelve.

It took Crowford twenty-seven minutes to return to the chair opposite Ben. With a broad grin on her lips and a sparkle in her blue eyes, she placed a rolled-up bundle of papers on the table.

"May I politely ask what exactly this is?" Dr. Archer reached for it and rolled up the documents. He frowned, and his eyebrows drew closer together questioningly. On the faded, stained papers were lists of ship names next to dates, ports of destination and origin, loaded goods, and customs duties paid. " Freight papers?"

"Exactly." Kaylee leaned forward and tapped one of the lists. "Kathy said it hit the noon hour when the man got into the carriage and that the longshoremen helped load a large crate. Three ships came in that morning. But only the Havørnen had cargo that was being unloaded. I spoke to one of the dockers who was helping. There was only one passenger on the ship," Kaylee's grin widened. "And now, guess what? That passenger is not on those lists!"

Ben pursed his lips, and the euphoria faded as quickly as it had risen.
"That means we've got nothing."

"I beg to differ," Kaylee said, looking around briefly, almost as if to make sure no one was listening. Then she leaned closer to the doctor and whispered conspiratorially, "Maybe the passenger isn't listed anywhere because he was anxious to remain anonymous. Or maybe because he wasn't a passenger but part of the freight... Or maybe he owned the ship or the transportation company."

Crowford tapped the papers meaningfully. "There's clearly something up. Whether it's something supernatural or not remains to be seen. But it all seems strange. Normally, larger trading companies use ports like The Hull or Middlesbrough, not a provincial port like Whitby. Onward transportation from here is far too difficult, at least for industrial goods. Loading and transportation by land make no sense either, as the rail network is inadequately developed. The freight would have to be reloaded twice."

Dr. Archer lifted his eyes from the papers to stare at Kaylee with some irritation. "Is that so?" he asked sarcastically. "And how do you know that?"

Neither Kaylee nor her alter ego seemed like someone who knew anything about the transportation of raw materials and British trade routes. Archer knew Kaylee didn't like to get her hands dirty, and when an order took them to industrial districts, they were always highly reluctant to go there. Only now did it occur to Ben that he had never asked himself what his partner actually did to earn her money.

"I have an extensive range of knowledge, Doctor. The export and import of goods to and from the Empire is only a small part." Kaylee snorted indignantly, jutted her narrow chin, and pointed emphatically at the papers, gesturing with her index finger. According to the papers, the ship carried iron ore from Norway and earth."

"Earth?" Doctor Archer repeated, confused. 

"It would appear so. Several tons of iron ore and a large crate of earth. A big part of the cargo is still in Whitby - according to the papers, it couldn't be shipped any further because of the broken bridge and the interrupted rail connection." She reached into the bundle of papers the doctor was holding and fished out one in particular, which she smoothed out briefly on the small table and pushed toward him. "According to the port register, only one crate of the entire cargo was not stored. And you can guess which one that was."

"The box of earth?" guessed Ben, still confused. "Why would anyone take a box of goddamn dirt?"

"I haven't the faintest idea." Kaylee shrugged his shoulders. That was only a partial lie. Kaylee did have some ideas. However, she didn't want to panic the doctor until they had more evidence pointing in that direction. "What's much more interesting, though, is this: these are the shipping documents and customs duties for goods leaving the country." Kaylee pulled on another piece of paper. "This one is from last week. A ship left here for Norway. And three guesses what cargo that ship was transporting..."

Ben stared at the document, completely dumbfounded. There it was in black and white: a crate full of earth was first shipped from England to Norway, only to return a week later?

"Do you think the unknown gentleman might have been smuggling something?"

"We can ask him that once we've found out who he is. And from my little research here, that might not take too long." Kaylee bent over the papers with Ben and turned to the last page. "For once, we seem to be in luck." She pointed to the list of company names that had chartered both ships. "The Havørnen was only carrying freight from one single company. A trading corporation called 'Weather Industries.' And it also says where the shipment was going."

Benjamin's gaze fell on the scrawled writing and he didn't know whether to laugh or cry at this irony of fate. Because there, on the yellowed paper, the destination of the delivery was written in capital letters:

Weather Industries.

LONDON.