Backlund, East District; in a certain two-bedroom rented flat in a certain apartment block.
Forsi was holding a round-bellied ink-feed fountain pen and writing on the spread-out sheet of letter paper.
It was a letter to her mentor, Dorian Gray Abraham, telling him that, pressed by a certain danger, she had been forced to move out of her former residence; that he should not send his next reply there; and that, if he had already sent it, he should as quickly as possible change his own address and, ideally, change identity as well.
After scribbling away at length, Forsi set down the pen, folded the letter, slipped it into an envelope and stuck on the stamp.
Then she changed into outdoor clothes, took the letter to be posted, and left the room.
She had not really wanted to go out, but the new place had not just no alcoholic drinks of any kind, but no coffee beans, no instant coffee, no black tea leaves, no day's newspaper, no latest magazines, no books or novels either.
For all of this she had no choice but to go out and post the letter herself, and at the same time slip beyond the East District to do some shopping.
As for Xio, she had long since gone out, to send a letter back to their original rented house carrying the news that „Viscount Stratford was in truth loyal to the King“, so as to see whether Sherman's watchers could be prompted to take some action.
„Really now, the fear after the fact turned out to be that strong — I nearly forgot to write to my mentor. If I'd finished sooner, Xio could have posted it together with hers…“ Forsi pulled on a soft hat with a hanging fine veil, walked down the somewhat dim staircase all the way to the ground floor, and stepped out of the apartment block.
This was on the more outlying edge of the East District. The residents were mostly skilled workers and lower-rung managers; public order was relatively decent, and there were even newspaper boys about.
Listening to the bells that rang from time to time, Forsi strolled slowly along the side of the street.
Just then a postman halted his bicycle, took a bundle of newspapers out of his bag and stepped into the apartment block next door.
Forsi happened to glance over and saw that the topmost paper of the bundle was the „Sea News“.
„People here actually subscribe to that sort of paper? Their work has something to do with maritime trade?“ Forsi withdrew her eyes and muttered with a touch of surprise.
Still, this was no matter worth attending to. When she caught sight of the pillar box at the end of the street, she quickly walked over.
The postman, meanwhile, went into the building, picked out several targets from the row upon row of letter boxes, and slipped the corresponding newspapers into each.
Not long after he had gone, one of those letter boxes was opened and the newspaper inside taken out.
The one who had taken the paper went, step by step, up to the third floor, opened one of the rooms, sat down on a humble rocking armchair and began, swaying back and forth, to read.
Beside the rocking chair stood a black wooden table on which papers were heaped in disarray.
Some of these papers had been folded neatly, front page up; others were folded out of true so that a particular section showed. All of them carried matching reports:
„Shock! Mad Adventurer Reduced to Wanted Criminal“; „Mad Adventurer Reappears: An Inconceivable Hunt“; „The Man Closest to King of the Seas, the Adventurer Worth 90,000 Pounds“; „The Tales of Gehrman Sparrow and the Three Women Pirate Generals“; „Famed in a Single Battle — Gehrman Sparrow's Night Assassination of 'Lieutenant General Plague'“…
…………
Once Forsi had finished her shopping, not long after she returned to the rented flat, Xio too came back from her errands.
Their timing was so neat because it was already Monday, and three in the afternoon was about to fall.
Bong! Bong! Bong!
As the bells of the nearby church echoed, before Forsi and Xio at once welled up a tide of deep-red radiance.
Within the grand and majestic palace, beside the ancient, mottled long table, figures appeared one after the other, with no precedence in order, and coalesced into shape.
„Justice“ Audrey, as always, was the first to rise. She faced the head of the bronze long table, made a half-pretence of lifting her skirts and curtsied:
„Good afternoon, Mr. Fool.“
Miss „Justice“ still seems rather low in spirits… It seems she is still affected by last night's news… „The Fool“ Klein gave a barely perceptible nod, returning the greetings of the members of the Tarot Club.
At this moment, Audrey, although not in the brightest of moods, by virtue of her keen observation was still the first to notice that on Mr. Fool's right side something new had been placed: a copper-green cross.
Where had this cross come from? Anything Mr. Fool was willing to place on the table had to be at the level of a „Blasphemy Slate“ at the very least… Whom did it come from? What did it do? One question after another sprang up swiftly in „Justice“ Audrey's mind, kindling an irrepressible curiosity in her.
This was the first time, too, that an object other than a „Blasphemy Slate“ kind had been laid before Mr. Fool!