First Adventure, The Case of the Missing Merchant, Session 007
Shadows in Sun
This is an emergent narrative; this story is the retrospective recounting of a TTRPG Session that involved emergent play in an open world.
Opening Narration
There is a common, comforting lie folks tell themselves when the sun finally burns through the damp Louisiana morning. They figure that the daylight washes away the sins of the night before, that a crowded street is a safe street. But in New Orleans, the worst kind of trouble doesn’t wait for the gaslights to hiss to life. The real predators simply dust off their hats, adjust their cravats, and fall right into step beside you on the wooden banquettes. When the thoroughfares of the American Sector are choked shoulder-to-shoulder with sweating clerks, cursing teamsters, and rattling dray carts, a man can get his throat cut or his pockets emptied without anyone noticing until the blood hits the paving stones. The glare of the noonday sun doesn’t banish the shadows; it just gives them a better place to hide right in plain sight.
And if you want to pull a truth out of this city, you have to understand that the heaviest locks aren’t made of iron. They are made of Creole propriety, corporate ledgers, and the polite, icy stare of a majordomo standing behind a set of heavy cypress doors. A fellow trying to separate a fact from a fiction has to navigate a gauntlet of gatekeepers. He has to barter with exhausted insurance men nursing bad backs and cheap rye, or play the eager scholar for an eccentric patriarch hoarding history in a locked study. It is all a grand, exhausting negotiation. You have to sell a lie just to get a foot in the door, hoping the man across the mahogany desk buys your performance before he figures out you are auditing his ghosts.
Of course, some truths require a heavier toll than just a bruised conscience or a dented wallet. There is a brutal, physical cost to handling the leftover debris of ruined men. When you press your fingers to the soot-stained wool of a killer’s cap or the clipped end of a cigar dropped in a panic, that malice seeps right through the skin. It forces a body to reckon with the raw, mechanical decay of the human mind, leaving the doctors to mathematically calculate exactly how much madness a person can endure before their nervous system simply snaps like a dry twig.
It is a quarter past noon on a Saturday. The morning freeze has surrendered to a humid hazy chill that hangs over Carondelet Street like a dirty blanket. The traps have been laid, the bait is walking openly down the street, and the overwatch is waiting quietly in the crowd. All a sensible person can do now is keep a steady pace, watch the reflections in the shop windows, and pray that when the snare finally snaps shut, it catches the wolf instead of the hound.
12:15 PM – 1330 PM, Saturday, February 3, 1866 – A Walk and a Lunch (Lars, Caleb)
The avenue was a loud, crowded artery of American Sector commerce, where drayage carts clatter loudly over the uneven paving stones, threatening to drown out the shouts of cursing teamsters. A thick, humid haze hung over the thoroughfare, as the air carries the sharp scents of roasting chicory, raw river mud, and horse sweat. Everywhere one looked, a shoulder-to-shoulder crush of humanity surged along the wooden banquette, an elbowing current of hurrying clerks, heavy-set merchants, and coarse-clothed stevedores. Women carrying parasols stepped delicately to avoid the muck, while messengers with heavy satchels shoved their way through the unyielding throng. The very air seemed to vibrate with the relentless noise of the place, an overwhelming collision of motion and haggling spilling out from beneath the canvas awnings of the corner exchanges.
The damp, midday heat baked the paving stones of the American Sector as Caleb Grayson pushed through the heavy doors of the St. Charles Hotel. Stepping into the crush of cursing teamsters and rushing clerks, the massive former cavalryman moved to the corner of St. Charles and Carondelet Streets. He claimed a small iron chair at a sidewalk café, ordering a coffee and snapping open a broadsheet newspaper. He settled into the noise, establishing a blind overwatch position exactly fifty yards behind the route Lars Prittwitz was scheduled to take.
Five minutes later, Lars emerged from the hotel, stepping out onto the wooden banquette to act as the bait. He set a measured pace down the thoroughfare, heading toward the Café des Négociants. From his stationary vantage point, Caleb scanned the pedestrian traffic flowing behind Lars. Through the elbowing current of the crowd, Caleb’s gaze locked onto a skeletal, consumptive-looking man in a threadbare black wool suit who was matching Lars’s pace block for block.
The threadbare man was scanning the route ahead for ambushes when his sharp, restless eyes met Caleb’s over the rim of the newspaper. The trap and the tail spotted each other simultaneously. Recognizing the compromised street, Lachaise immediately executed an abort signal, whistling a sharp bar of “Dixie” before breaking off the pursuit and crossing St. Charles Street to vanish into the traffic.
Lars, continuing his route oblivious to the silent exchange behind him, took a right turn and headed down toward the corner of Canal and Carondelet to reach the café. Caleb remained seated just long enough to flag down a passing street runner. He hastily scribbled a precise physical description of the skeletal man in the black suit, handed the boy a coin, and instructed him to deliver the intelligence directly to Lars inside the Café des Négociants.
Minutes later, the runner returned to the corner café with a written response from Lars. The message contained a pragmatic shift in orders: “The street is marked and the surveillance is heavier than anticipated. Dr. Fischer, Schuyler, and Miss Mercier are reconvening at the Canal Street clinic. They are three soft targets, and we are being actively hunted. Sleep can wait. Link up with them at the clinic immediately. Act as their physical security for whatever movements they make tonight. I will manage the café”. Caleb crushed the note into his pocket, abandoned his planned rest, and began the heavy walk toward Dr. Fischer’s clinic.
12:30 PM – 2:30 PM, Saturday, February 3, 1866 – The Labat Estate Follies (Leopold)
“I am Leopold Schuyler, and I request a brief audience with Madame Geneviève,” Leopold stated, standing before the towering cypress doors of Number 417 Royal Street and presenting his calling card.
The aging, immaculately dressed majordomo accepted the card with practiced grace before delivering his flat, cold refusal. “Madame Labat is consumed by the preparations for Wednesday’s masquerade,” Baptiste replied, his tone devoid of any warmth. “The family is not receiving unvouched visitors today. They are only receiving intimate associates of the house. Good day, Monsieur,” he added, pulling the heavy doors firmly shut.
Refusing to accept the dismissal, Leopold immediately reached out and rang the bell a second time. As the heavy door pulled open once more, Leopold frantically began to get out his charcoal sketches, attempting to make a sort of explanation to bridge the gap. “I assure you, I simply need a moment to share these,” Leopold pressed.
“Good Day, Sir,” Baptiste interrupted, cutting the antiquarian off completely. The majordomo shut the door firmly in Leopold’s face for the second time, leaving him alone in the humid air of the porte-cochère.
Forced to seek an alternative route, Leopold made his way stealthily around the back of the property. “There must be another way inside,” he muttered to himself, creeping along the perimeter until he spotted a gardener working in the grounds. Moving carefully, he located the tradesman’s entrance.
Peering into a window to his left, he saw that the interior of the main house adjacent to the tradesman’s entrance was set up as a food staging area. He looked along a walkway to his right, seeing the exterior kitchen building and hearing the muffled voices of the staff drifting from within. “Locked,” Leopold whispered as he checked the handle of the tradesman entrance.
He rapped his knuckles softly on the tradesman entrance door and waited, but no answer came. Thinking the coast clear, he moved to examine the lock more closely. Suddenly, the door opened, revealing Baptiste standing in the threshold, glaring fiercely at the antiquarian.
Thoroughly surprised, Leopold scrambled to recover his polite bearing. “My kind sir, if you’ll note, this matter is of the most extreme—” Leopold began to plead.
“Darius!” Baptiste shouted out clearly and precisely, as he turned toward the groundskeeper hidden behind some foliage. “We have an intruder. Mind your feet and run for the gendarmes this instant. Go!”.
“Yes, suh. I’m gone!” Darius yelled back, nodding instantly with wide, focused eyes. The gardener dropped a watering can into the dirt and bolted out of the tradesman’s gate of 417 Royal Street, turning right and then right again running toward the nearby corner of St. Louis Street where a policeman was stationed at the front of the hotel. “Wait!” Leopold shouted, running after him to stop him, but seeing the man sprinting down the busy street, Leopold quickly changed course, running left and then down an alley to rapidly make his way toward Dr. Fischer’s clinic.
12:30 PM – 2:30 PM, Saturday, February 3, 1866 – Examinations (Dr. Fischer, Madeleine, later Leopold, then, Caleb)
In 1866, the address for Dr. Matthias Fischer and Dr. Stefan von Erlach is No. 128 Canal Street, located on the upper floors of a prestigious limestone building. In the mid-19th century, Canal Street was the widest and most impressive thoroughfare in New Orleans, serving as the “neutral ground” between the French Quarter and the American Sector. The lower blocks near the river were a premier location for professionals who wanted to project authority.
The Building is a four-story Greek Revival structure with granite pillars on the ground floor. While the street level is occupied by a high-end apothecary, the doctors lease the entire second floor for their practice. This address is one of the most visible and respected in the city, situated just steps from the St. Charles Hotel.
Dr. Fischer’s office is at the front, overlooking Canal Street. It is filled with the latest European psychological journals and a collection of “oddities”—skulls, magnets for Mesmerism experiments, and perhaps a brass-fitted Odometer for measuring nervous responses.
Madeleine Mercier sat rigidly in a high-backed leather examination chair, her hands folded. Arranged on a clean, linen-draped table before her were the two items secured during the previous night’s harrowing evasion: the soot-stained newsboy cap worn by the disguised dwarf, and the clipped Havana cigar handled by the threadbare operative with the scalpel.
Dr. Fischer stood nearby, maintaining strict Viennese posture, having prepared his instruments. He rested a silver pocket watch on the table and gently placed two fingers against Madeleine’s wrist to monitor her pulse, treating her paranormal sensitivity as a rare, highly volatile biological instrument requiring exact calibration.
“We shall establish the baseline first, Miss Mercier,” Dr. Fischer murmured smoothly, his eyes on the ticking second hand. “Proceed when you are ready.”
Madeleine nodded once, reaching out to grasp the cleanly severed end of the clipped Havana cigar first. She closed her eyes, allowing the physical sensations of the room to fade as she sought the lingering resonance trapped within the tobacco leaves.
“I see… I see through the eyes of a man who moves with precise intellect,” Madeleine breathed, her brow furrowing in concentration as the fragmented vision took hold. “It is nighttime. A street corner. Doctor, I see you. You and Mr. Schuyler are drunkenly approaching the corner.”
Dr. Fischer’s posture stiffened slightly at the mention of their frantic, alcohol-soaked deception from the night before, but he remained silent, keeping his fingers pressed to her pulse.
“He is watching you both,” Madeleine continued, her voice tightening. “He signals a smaller figure positioned down an alley to the side of L’Agence. Now he is moving… he makes his way across the street, purposefully, but gracefully.”
She grimaced, her eyelids fluttering as the connection began to destabilize under the sheer weight of the psychic static. “The image is failing. It is becoming a blur! I cannot see his face clearly, but I am left with a distinct, overwhelming idea… someone was in that café courtyard that night.”
She released the cigar, shivering violently. Dr. Fischer immediately noted the physical toll. He successfully isolated the physical symptoms of the phenomenon, noting a severe, unnatural drop in her core temperature and a massive caloric drain that perfectly mimicked late-stage hypothermia.
“Fascinating,” Fischer stated, recording the data in his ledger. “This confirms that the ‘Eye’ is not a mere psychological state, but a physical exertion that violently taxes your biological reserves.”
A heavy knock at the door interrupted the clinical silence. Dr. Fischer crossed the room, unlocking the heavy timber door to admit Caleb Grayson. The massive former cavalryman stepped inside, his broad frame carrying the lingering tension of the bustling commercial streets.
“We might have a problem,” Caleb reported immediately, his gravelly voice filling the quiet clinic. “I just came from my overwatch position near the café. We may all be being followed.”
Madeleine took a steadying breath, reaching for her sketching charcoal. “Then we must see what the second item holds. We need every advantage.” She pressed her fingers against the rough, soot-stained wool of the oversized newsboy cap.
“I am behind L’Agence,” Madeleine whispered rapidly, her hand flying across the sketchpad to anchor the images she was perceiving. “It is the point of view of the dwarf. He is providing security in an alley for someone.”
She gasped as the perspective jerked violently. “The view is shifting. He is looking down the alley to the main street as he approaches the café.”
Madeleine dropped the charcoal, leaning back in the leather chair, utterly drained. Caleb and Dr. Fischer leaned over the completed sketches. Fischer immediately identified the man in the image Madeleine had drawn as the operative who had confronted him and Leopold the night before. Caleb nodded grimly, identifying the very same man as the individual who had been shadowing Lars.
“A highly coordinated network,” Fischer deduced, turning his attention back to the medical texts he had pulled from his archives regarding Adrien-Luc’s madness. “I have reviewed the literature. I can confirm the chemical profile of the missing merchant’s degradation.”
The Austrian alienist tapped a heavy, leather-bound volume. “The manic behavior, the intense paranoia, and the ‘tiny eyes’ described by the clerks are the absolute hallmarks of unregulated, heavy cocaine ingestion. This establishes a solid medical baseline for his physical state in his final days.”
“But what drove a meticulous aristocrat to such extremes?” Caleb asked.
“That is what puzzles me,” Fischer admitted, adjusting his spectacles. “There is absolutely no evidence of such a sudden break into such behavior without some prior catalytic life event or experience. Based on the related patient history from the Countess and Beaufort, something drastic must have happened to Adrien-Luc to cause such behavior.”
The heavy oak door swung open in a rush, revealing Leopold Schuyler. The antiquarian looked entirely flustered, his usual polished composure thoroughly wrecked.
“A complete and utter disaster,” Leopold announced, launching into a tale of woe. “I had a major misunderstanding at the Labat Estate. I need some help to make them aware of an amazing opportunity the master of the house would be interested in!”
Dr. Fischer stiffened, secretly mortified by the antiquarian’s blatant breach of Vieux Carré etiquette. While he deeply doubted aspects of Leopold’s story, the doctor greatly valued his own personal relationship with the Labat family and knew the damage must be contained.
“We cannot leave such a slight unanswered,” Fischer declared, grabbing his hat and cane. “I suggest we make haste there immediately to clear up any misunderstandings. Caleb, I ask that you accompany us and check the premises when we are inside premises to see if anyone is following us.”
Leopold nodded eagerly, straightening his coat. Fischer turned to the door, instructing the antiquarian that they would walk up the street, buy a bottle of Champagne as a peace offering, and all head back to the Labat Estate together.
2:30 PM – 4:00 PM, Saturday, February 3, 1866 – Atlantic Mutual (Lars)
You lean into a warped wooden door that scrapes a harsh protest across mud-stained pine boards, stepping into a cramped box of an office that stinks of cheap cigars and river silt. Hovering by a row of mismatched filing cabinets is a diminutive, balding clerk. A tarnished, pre-war Marine Corps officer’s sword leans carelessly in the corner like a forgotten umbrella, the only lingering hint of military discipline in the chaotic room.
Lars pushed through the warped wooden door of the Atlantic Mutual office, finding a man,, hovering anxiously beside a row of mismatched filing cabinets. “Can I help you, my name is Lidell Sloane?” The clerk was a diminutive, balding man with a perfectly round, flushed face and wire-rimmed spectacles perched precariously on his nose. He possessed the high, reedy voice and perpetual nervous flutter of a man terrified of his own shadow, clutching a stack of shipping manifests to his chest as if they were a physical shield against the harsh realities of the waterfront.
Approaching the battered oak desk, Lars requested a moment with the senior agent. Sloane flinched, adjusting his spectacles with trembling, ink-stained fingers before offering a stammering apology. The clerk informed Lars that the agent was not in, noting that he might return later that evening but would certainly be there in the morning. Lars nodded, offering a polite acknowledgment of the delay, and calculated his next immediate move without the Agent’s input.
Rather than returning to the street and exposing his route to the surveillance he had spotted earlier, Lars opted for a quiet exit through the rear of the building. He slipped out the back door, executing a deliberate path through the muddy cuts to shake any tail .After several blocks, he paused behind a stack of rotting cargo crates to confirm his isolation. Satisfied that he was completely clear of pursuit, he adjusted his sack coat and made his way back to his office.
2:30 PM – 5:30 PM, Saturday, February 3, 1866 – The Labat Collection Consultation (Leopold, Madeleine, Dr, Fischer, Caleb)
Elaborate wrap-around balconies of black wrought-iron lacework cast cage-like shadows across the narrow street. Dr. Matthias Fischer, Leopold Schuyler, Madeleine Mercier, and Caleb Grayson stepped out of the blinding glare and into the dark, echoing brick tunnel of the porte-cochère.
The heavy cypress doors swung open with a hollow groan. Waiting beside the sputtering hiss of a brass-caged gas jet stood Baptiste, the aging but immaculately dressed majordomo.
Before the servant could speak, Dr. Fischer stepped smoothly to the forefront, his silver-tipped cane resting lightly on the damp brick. “Good afternoon, Baptiste,” Fischer announced, his Austrian accent clipping the English syllables with precise, polite authority. “I trust the household is well. We have come to pay our respects to Madame Geneviève and Monsieur Augustin Labat.”
Baptiste’s eyes swept over the doctor’s immaculate tailored suit, betraying nothing, before sliding to the figures standing behind him. The majordomo’s gaze locked instantly onto Leopold. A cold, uncompromising glare settled over Baptiste’s features, a silent but unmistakable recognition of the antiquarian’s previous, disastrous attempt to breach the townhouse.
Leopold visibly withered under the heavy Creole scrutiny. He took a swift, unnatural half-step backward, practically hiding himself behind the doctor’s broadcloth shoulder to break the servant’s line of sight.
“We bring a token of our profound esteem,” Fischer continued, seamlessly ignoring the tension as he produced a fine bottle of champagne. “And we hope the Madame might grant us a brief audience.”
Baptiste accepted the silver receiving tray, but his eyes shifted to Caleb. He took in the massive former cavalryman’s sweat-stained canvas trousers and heavy iron-shod boots.
“The doctor and his associates are welcome to ascend to the piano nobile,” Baptiste stated, his voice a heavy, unyielding rumble. He pointed a white-gloved finger at Caleb. “The driver will not wait in the courtyard. He will remain outside by the tradesman’s entrance at the rear.”
“Wait by the rear entrance, Mr. Grayson,” Fischer instructed, maintaining his command of the situation. “Ensure the perimeter remains undisturbed.”
Caleb grunted his assent, stepping back out of the brick tunnel and making his way around the heavy exterior to the tradesman’s alleyway at the rear. The air here was choked with the smell of damp brick and the suffocating heat bleeding outward from the estate’s coal-fired kitchens. He leaned against the masonry, his eyes meticulously scanning the narrow passage.
Carefully checking to see if the carriage or the house was being watched by anyone trying to conduct surveillance, Caleb confirmed the perimeter was entirely clear of hostile operators or street-level tails. While securing this perimeter, his vigilance paid off; he uncovered the specific layout of the tradesman’s entrance to the estate, noting a window adjacent to an internal food staging area and a walkway leading directly to an exterior kitchen building where voices drifted into the alley.
He then turned his attention to the delivery hands and scullery maids rushing past the rear door.
“Quiet morning for a Wednesday?” Caleb asked casually, pitching his deep voice to a genial rumble as a stable hand hauled a sack of feed past him.
The staff offered nothing but a cold shoulder. He attempted to draw them out, but they were fiercely loyal to the household and terrified of the head cook’s discipline. Recognizing the hulking man as an outsider, they clamped up completely and hurried past the tradesman’s entrance without a word.
Upstairs, Dr. Fischer, Leopold, and Madeleine stepped off the curving mahogany staircase onto the polished cypress floors of the second floor. The heavy velvet curtains insulated the withdrawing room from the noise of the city. Madame Geneviève Labat stood waiting for them, impeccably tailored in dark-hued French silk, projecting an aura of severe, uncompromising authority.
“Madame Labat,” Dr. Fischer bowed deeply. “I am deeply honored that you would receive us. I have traveled from Vienna, and the reputation of your family’s hospitality is known even across the Atlantic.”
Geneviève’s rigid posture softened fractionally as she accepted the champagne, a genuine warmth replacing her initial guard.
“Dr. Fischer. Your presence is always welcome in this house,” she said, her voice dropping to a discreet, respectful murmur. “We have not forgotten the discretion and surgical expertise you provided during Roland’s… difficulties last winter. Your clinical assessment and treatment were invaluable to this family’s honor.”
“It was my professional duty, Madame,” Fischer replied smoothly. “I trust Roland’s recovery continues well?”
“He is mending, thanks to your interventions,” she answered, before her sharp eyes shifted to his companions. “But who might your associates be?”
“My esteemed colleague, Mr. Schuyler,” Fischer gestured to Leopold, “and Mademoiselle Mercier.”
Geneviève’s sharp eyes locked onto the silver shield pinned to Madeleine’s structured silk dress. “The Serviam pin,” the matriarch noted, a genuine smile finally touching her lips. “You were educated by the sisters at the Ursuline Academy, child?”
“I was, Madame,” Madeleine replied smoothly, returning a flawless curtsy. “They taught me well.”
“Indeed they do,” Geneviève agreed warmly. “The gentlemen may proceed upstairs to disturb my husband. You, Mademoiselle, shall remain here with me for coffee.”
Leaving Madeleine in the parlor, Baptiste escorted Fischer and Leopold to the restricted third floor. The heat pooled suffocatingly beneath the slate roof, the air thick with the smell of camphor and old paper. Augustin Labat, the eccentric Creole patriarch, sat in his private study amidst locked, glass-fronted mahogany cabinets housing brass astrolabes and Aztec obsidian mirrors.
“Monsieur Labat,” Leopold began, stepping out from behind the doctor and deploying his polished Columbia University bearing. “I am an antiquarian of some small renown in New York. I have come seeking your unparalleled expertise regarding pre-Columbian astronomy.”
Leopold withdrew the charcoal rubbings secured from Étienne Boudreaux, unrolling the paper upon the table. “I have encountered these Mesoamerican glyphs, but the juxtaposition with 18th-century Spanish gold confounds me.”
Augustin’s eyes lit up with obsessive intrigue. Thrilled to converse with a verified academic peer who appreciated his genius, the patriarch enthusiastically unlocked his cabinets. For an hour, Leopold meticulously guided the paranoid collector’s ego, steering the conversation through the chaotic arrangement of Mayan codex fragments until Augustin eagerly produced a single, folded sheet of heavy colonial parchment.
“This,” Augustin declared triumphantly, “is the Epístola de Don Ignacio de Villalobos, penned in 1811. Read it yourself, Mr. Schuyler.”
Leopold handled the fragile parchment, his eyes scanning the fading sepia ink. “To my esteemed colleague in Havana,” Leopold read aloud, his voice steady. “I entrust these fragmented transcripts, salvaged from the flooded cellars of the Holy Office. As Hidalgo’s insurgency threatens to consume New Spain in fire, I find myself plagued by the sins of our own grandfathers, documented in these rotting folios.”
He traced the text with a gloved finger. “I have uncovered a suppressed missive from a Franciscan friar dated 1720, detailing the aftermath of the great indigenous uprisings in the southern highlands. The rebellion was violently crushed by His Excellency, Toribio José Miguel de la Campa y Cossío, 1st Marquis of Torre Campo. Yet, the friar’s writings do not celebrate a Christian victory; they tremble with accusations of blasphemy. The Marquis, it seems, did not put the heathen idols to the torch as mandated by the Church. Instead, he claimed the high priest’s regalia as his personal spoils of war.”
Fischer leaned in closer as Leopold continued. “The inventory of the seized blasphemies is chillingly precise. They were artifacts dedicated to Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror, the lord of the night sky and sorcery. The friar lists a flawless, heavy slab of starless obsidian used for dark communion; a high priest’s scepter carved entirely from the femur of a jaguar; and three sacrificial gems of unrefined gold and dark, meteoric iron, still stained with the blood of the altar.”
Leopold’s breath hitched slightly as he read the final damning paragraph. “Worse still are the rumors confirmed by a ledger from the Calle de los Plateros in 1722. The Marquis commissioned master silversmiths to secretly break down these abominations. He ordered the obsidian slab framed in gunmetal silver, the jaguar bone carved into a pendant, and the meteoric iron and gold melted and poured into the molds of European signet rings. He took the very instruments of a heathen god and wrapped them in Spanish Baroque finery. I fear that by adorning his lineage in the gold of the Smoking Mirror, the Marquis did not conquer the demon, but rather invited it into the Spanish Court.”
The immense historical reality settled over the antiquarian. The text confirmed the exact provenance of the ring held by the underworld fence, entirely stripping away the illusion of mere Spanish Baroque gold to reveal valuable Aztec artifacts.
Leopold carefully set the parchment down and abruptly pivoted the dynamic of the room. “Monsieur Labat,” he said softly, letting a heavy pause hang in the sweltering air. “What if I told you an associate of mine currently possesses a ring perfectly matching this exact provenance?”
Augustin’s baseline Creole suspicion flared instantly, but it was violently overridden by an intense interest. The patriarch gripped the edge of his desk. “If you can bring this artifact to my estate for an independent appraisal,” Augustin breathed, “I will authorize ten thousand dollars.”
With the staggering offer secured, the endeavor drew to a close. Leopold and Fischer descended the mahogany staircase, collecting Madeleine from the parlor and reuniting with Caleb outside the estate. As they departed the massive brick facade, Caleb confirmed he would establish a perimeter at the Mississippi docks by half-past seven the following morning to watch for the scarred predator, while Madeleine quietly resolved to observe the steamship’s arrival from the safety of a hired carriage