Today just keep getting better and better, Why did he have to go out now that I am actually looking for him?. Not sure if I should wait for him to come here, if he does not plan on coming here for the day again then it would be useless stay here.
"Do you know if he is coming back later?"
I asked this hoping for the best, but as expected the answer I got was not the best one.
"I am sorry, but we were not informed"
The receptionist did not tell me anything useful. I guess I can't expect to hear about that old man schedule from them. He would either made arrangements before for them to not say a thing to unrelated people... or he did not want to inform anyone about it.
"Can you guys call him for me? I need to find him to talk about something important"
I tried asking for another method to communicate with him.
"Unless there is an emergency he told us to not to call him these days. Do you want to communicate with him due an emergency?"
Hmmm, it did not work either.
"Not exactly an emergency..."
"Then I can not call him"
Damn, to push or to not push. If I try to reach him and he finds it bothersome I could be making things difficult for me. On the other hand, I don't know when he is planing to come back so just waiting could take who knows how long.
"I will have to come at another time. Thank you for your help"
"You're welcome"
I can only take my leave for now, I somehow got jinxed at some point. How come I keep failing to find these people? Well, I at least know where I am for now, getting lost would really make it that I don't know where everyone is.
Practically dragging my feet I prepared to go back until I saw something that made me think I hit the jackpot. I could see Mr. White walking this way along with Miss Guard... who seemed to be having troubles keeping an straight posture. If they came by car... then I would feel the same way. That guy's driving skills are absurd, I recall that as soon as my feet were planted on the ground after riding with him on the wheel, I started to appreciate the soil under them much more. The way things look... I would say he took it easy with me, she did not look this bad at that time so he probably went all out this time. My condolences Miss, this is all I can say.
Well, putting that nonsense aside. I am going to be able to talk with the old man now.
"Hi there, I have been waiting for you"
That sounded quite cringy I must say.
********************************************
A few moments later after explaining the reason of my presence here, Mr. White asked me to follow to his office to talk over there which I agreed easily. This is what I wanted so there is no way I would turn down that.
On the way Miss Highlander took her leave for a moment so that left only the old man and me walking in silence. Thankfully we arrive quickly due the closeness of the office so the mood did not turn too awkward.
As we finally arrived in the office, Mr. White just sat behind his desk and started to check a number of files testing on top of his desk. I who did not recieve permission to sit stayed near the door standing. I took the opportunity to take a better look around, although I doubt I could find something just laying around. I just hope to find some clue about where I should look into when I don't have a pair of eyes on me.
Doing my best at looking around I realized that... this is harder than it looks. There is an old poster about safe driving, I almost burst out laughing when I saw it. But even if I found it funny, there was nothing else worth mentioning about this poster so it has nothing to do with my search.
One thing with mentioning was that I felt slight strange about this situation. To be honest, this is like he is giving me time to look around, although I am not sure why is that. I can see a small box placed on top of a table further behind the old man. There are no other stuff placed there so it stands out somewhat. Hmmm, I should pay attention to it but there is the possibility that it is located there to make people purposely pay attention to it.
Hmmm? This is something new. Last time I came here I did not see it so he must've had placed not long ago. This is a map, it cover what I think it's the terraring surrounding the manor. There are a few marks on the map but I can not tell what they are for. The number of marks is not high, it does not even goes beyond three but that does not explain too much. As for the locations of those marks... I can see that one being rather close to what I think it's the stables. The others... well, I can't say I know the locations. In any case I should try to memorize the map's content since I could try to check out the place near the stables when I go there again to ask some questions to that talkative guy. Hopefully it is not to far away, I don't want to wander around a get lost... again. Too bad this map is not that detailed, there is only basic info on it. Since the people who work here have to cover such a large terrarin then they should have a more detailed map somewhere. If I can get my hands on it, I won't we getting lost again. That would save me a good amount of time, not to mention that I won't be embarassing myself infront of others because of it.
There was also a shelf with a simple structure filed with books for the most part. But there is one thing that stood up from those, three picture frames were located on the upper part of the shelf. In the first picture you could see one young man a with rather lavish clean clothing and two children with their clothing covered in mud, the young man had a wry smile while the children had big grins, in the back you could see the manor, although the building seemed to be still under construction. Icould not find more about the it since the picture was rather old and the colors were fading. The second picture was in much better state despite still looking worn out. These pictures were not always in frames since they were not well maintained or at some point they were kept somewhere that damaged them this much, although now days people can figure out the reason for that... it still requires some tests which need certain a equipments. I have none of that so I can only make suppositions based on my sight. This second picture.... is about two young graduates, which I assume were the children from the last picture, one middle aged man who seems to be the young man in his later years and lastly two childrens that are around the same age as the kids had in that other picture. I can tell the guys are graduating due their clothing, the appearence of everyone this time has a slightly different. The middle aged man seems to carry the same wry smile but it looks somewhat forced, in the case of the graduates... they carry different expressions from each other, one has a slightly smile while the other is rather expressionlessly staring to the front. The two children could be said to be similar to the young graduates since they also have different expressions, one of the them can be seen laughing for some reason while pointing somewhere outside the picture, while the other tries to keep a serious face but his mouth is slightly raised, in this one the background seem to be inside some sort of church of chaptel. The last picture is... oh, I can see Mr. White looking this way, I better focus on the content of the picture later.
"Take a seat"
I followed what he said and took a seat in front of him.
"I assume you came here with a clear answer of what I asked before?"
"Yes, I would like to accept"
The old man did not seem particulary happy about or bothered about it, in fact he did not say anything back as he heard my answer.
He kept staring for sometime, I was beginning to wonder what did he mean with his gaze but he stopped staring and said.
"Very well, I am sure that your help will come in handy, for now we are not particulary doing anything about it. Since it happens at night we are expecting something to happen tonight too, but there is no way to know if that guy will appear or what will he be after. This is were you will help us out. You see, we are certain that the number of 'victims' is higher than what have been recorded, only... not everyone reported the theft. Although the reason may vary from those people, the point is that we can only speculate what has happened. Since they seem afraid to talk to my guards, I thought that you would be different. Your status makes it easier for others to talk you and you seem pretty good at sweet talking the female employees here, while the male ones don't show parculary jeaulosy and even find you easy to talk to in comparison to other guests. With that said... that is why I want your help, I will prepare a list of people for you to start working in immediately"
That seems rather reasonable and it works perfectly for me since I can go around asking a bunch of questions a make it look like it's for the cooperation. Still, Will he let me do this alone or will he have someone following me? There are already people keeping an eye on me, but they are not nearby so it would be hard to know all I hear.
Although working alone would give me freedom, it would also make easier for someone to act against me if I annoy them enough. I'd like to work alone to be honest, putting the danger of people acting against me aside, What if that included the people how comes with me? That would be bad. Argh, I am not sure if coming alone for this job was lucky or not. On one side I only need to worry about myself, but on the other side that means I have no one to trust. Trust huh... I have the feeling that such a think is hard to find in this property.
While I remained lost in thought, Mr. White gave a call to have someone to prepare and then later hand me the list. He said some other stuff but I was more or less distracted thinking so I could not heard that much.
"The list will arrive soon, in the mean time... let's see, Would you like some coffee?"
Said Mr. White while he stood up from his seat.
"Yes, since you offered"
"Black? With milk?"
"Black is good"
"Sugar? No, never mind I will let you do that part by yourself"
*******************************************
I was kinda tricked, What fast? What in a moment? It took a whole 20 minutes until a guard came with file in hand a left it on top of Mr. White desk. The old man surely did not look happy... or not, he is hard to read. But after the guard got close to him and whispered a few things, he just waved at him to leave.
He really is not the one to talk unless he feels the need to. Those 20 minutes taught me that pretty well. After he gave me the cup of black coffee he offered to me, he sat again and continued reading his files without caring about anything else. Then after 5 minutes, he just stood up to walk in circles inside the office. The process repeated a few time in which he did say a single thing to me. I, of course tried to look around some more but with him walking around me I did not dare to spend much time paying attention to a particular place. I could only drink my coffee in silence during the whole time. Well, the coffee was pretty good though.
Somehow I felt that he was messing with me since when I took to much time focusing in something in particular he would just turn around. If that is true then... he has one hell of personality.
After getting the file I asked for a place to take a look at the content where I could be... at peace. Thankfully, the old man seemed to not care and made a guard take me to an empty office and left me there alone. On my own again I felt like I could relax a little more, well... I still find my situation quite uncomfortable so there is a limit to how much I can relax.
Honestly, besides the file I have to check, I also wanted to think back at something I had seen in Mr. White office. Although the poster about safe driving keep appearing on my mind due how hillarious I found it, I was more interested in those pictures. Who were those people in there? Looking from the first one I can see it was taken quite some time ago, not sure who the young man was but the two children I had the idea that they had something to do with Mr. White, as for that young man just from the clothing alone he seemed rather wealthy so maybe he was related to the Kingwood family. Going to the second picture I assumed the graduates were the previous two children having grown up, the same goes for the middle aged man... just that there are two new children there, considering the ages of everyone in the picture then the kids should belong to the middle aged man. I don't know, I feel like I am missing something. I seem to recall that the third picture which I had no time to fully pay attention too but there were six people these time. There were a couple of people dressed in uniforms standing behind everyone while the other four were divided in pairs each one taking one side of the uniformed men. The ones in the left I seemed to recognized them as the two children from the last picture but the other two I have no idea. Maybe later I can take a better look since I did not have the opportunity this time. Still... I am not sure how much useful that information will be, but knowing more about the people here does not seem like a bad idea.
Despite my wishes of finding out were that key is, I had no luck. Since I had no choice there then I could only focus in the content of this files.
Lightly reading around I could tell that the information was really lacking when it came to the stolen object. They had information about the person but no clue in regards to the what was stolen, meaning that the people never really announced the theft. That being the case, they knowing about it is mustly speculation. This makes things tricky even if they caught the thief. The number of victims seems quite high... I am not sure why these people shut their mouth about it but there must be a reason. Hmmm, that leaves a good number of questions but then, there is one I find the hardest to understand. If no one said a thing... How did the guards find out about it?. That is a question I not sure how to answer... unless the thief tried to steal or stole something from one of them? Hmmm, I doubt it's that simple, few of the 'victims' include guards too so the victim making the accusation had to be amount the guests which can be considered distinguished people or people like Mr. White and Ms. Highlander that take their job seriously. Too many possibilities but not enough clues to find out the right one. Maybe this is the reason why people who are hired for this particular job and have experience doing it find it hard to make progress, they are out of leads.
To rely on an outsider like me must mean that they are having quite the headache with this guy.
Hehe, you guys are causing a headache to me, so this must me karma.
Oh, I guess I let my true thoughts were leaking out a bit there. Get yourself together.
Now then, for the first person on the list I could talk to... well, quite a funny situation. I have met the person before a couple of times. To be precise, he is the first person I met when I got here, the guard Anthony. Quite lucky for me, he is someone I will find easier to talk to when I find him.
As for the others... I will worry about it when their turn comes.
Carrying this file with me all the time seems tiring. I guess I will have to leave it here for the time being. The rest of the people I should talk to I will write down the names in my notepad. A few pictures do not seem like a bad idea but somehow I don't feel like my phone is that safe since that thief got his hands on it. So to be safe I will use the least as possible, better to be safe than sorry as they say. It feels like I am being paranoid here but the fact that so many were victims of theft and did not made accusations is strange. I must not forget that after mine was stolen I started to recieve those messages.