Chapter 17
Hunt’s silhouette slipped beyond the gate and vanished. For now, it seemed he didn’t suspect me.
“Good.”
I’d failed to hide that I’d come today, but at least I’d avoided arousing suspicion. I scrubbed at my glasses and put them back on.
“……”
Maybe I’d cleaned them too lazily. The world was blurred—hazy smudges like light fog that matched the eerie atmosphere of the crime scene today.
‘Oh… actually, it suits the place.’
I looked up at the mansion. Under its pointy roofs, the house gave the impression that a swarm of bats could take flight at any moment. Around the mansion, high-rises rose like an unbroken city wall stretching to the horizon.
‘No wonder sunlight never gets in.’
In the heavily shaded garden stood only a dead, gnarled old tree. Seeing this ancient house stubbornly holding out on a plot of land where everyone else would tear it down and build skyscrapers brought one technical phrase to mind.
‘Land-banker?’ (squatting in place to block redevelopment)
Right in the middle of Eden City’s wealthy district—land-banking. People would be circling it, prices shooting sky-high.
The reason the house didn’t sell, though, was that it belonged to a cursed family. And the family was cursed because of a diamond they owned.
A fifty-carat red diamond. It had a proper name, but it was better known as the Blood Diamond.
It wasn’t famous merely because it was red. Every owner who’d held it had come to a gruesome or miserable end. Killed by thieves who coveted the gem. Driven mad, committing atrocities, then beheaded. Less savage fates included bankruptcy, alcoholism, or paralysis from an accident.
They said that over a thousand years, as many as a hundred people had died or been ruined by the diamond’s curse. Believe it or not.
Some dismissed it as a contrived story, but when a tale gets famous enough, people start treating it as truth.
“Some say it comes back even if you throw it away.”
There were even those—like Sergeant Smith—who believed the diamond had some sort of mystic power and would zip back to its rightful place if discarded. That version was a garbled retelling of a real incident.
A few years back, someone burglarized this mansion. The thief, clueless, emptied the safe—only later to realize a cursed diamond had been mixed in with the loot.
Eek—why are you here?
The thief freaked out and tossed it into the trash, and a beggar picked it up. The beggar, blissfully unaware, took it to a pawnshop, where its true nature was discovered—panic ensued.
Eek—why are you here?
The beggar ran right back to the mansion and returned the diamond to its original owners. The curse had apparently worked in the species of “returning what was lost.”
Anyway, such stories snowballed into the idea that the diamond had legs of its own; the “cursed diamond” theory became accepted lore.
To make matters worse, it’d been named after its owning family: the Hopeless Diamond. “Hopeless”—meaning no dreams, no hope.
‘The family must be desperate to cut ties with that diamond.’
Still, you can’t just toss a gem bought for astronomical sums into a dumpster or a fountain. They tried to sell the estate, but no one would buy it. The reason the prime land didn’t sell was that the owner insisted on selling the diamond together with the property.
What I intended to steal today was that cursed diamond.
‘Cursed, my foot. Diamonds don’t have curses. I don’t believe in that.’
Those who scoff usually end up cursed, but the reason I could say this confidently was that the head of the Hopless family—the current patriarch—was alive and apparently fine.
I stepped into the gloomy mansion. Unlike the drab exterior, the interior gleamed brilliantly.
‘Living and wealthy, huh.’
Just as I entered the central hall, a young man—who must have been Mr. Hopless—was descending the carpeted staircase.
Dressed in a fine suit and wearing a radiant smile, the young man looked less like someone wary of thieves and more like someone greeting a long-awaited guest.
“Ahhh…”
But then, as he gazed down at the hall crowded with police officers, he suddenly choked up, pressing his fist to his mouth.
“At last… this day has finally come to me!”
His voice trembled with overwhelming emotion. As I expected, he had probably been waiting only for the day he could finally say farewell to the Hopeless Diamond.
“Thank you for coming to me, oh most beautiful thief in the world!”
And according to Wesson, he had even taken out an enormous theft-insurance policy on the diamond. No wonder he was so grateful that I had come so openly to steal it.
‘If the owner himself is this welcoming, then I can steal today without a shred of guilt.’
Now, time for a proper survey of the crime scene.
I glanced down at my feet. The marker indicating the diamond’s location blinked faintly below.
‘So it’s in the basement.’
I descended and followed the marker. After two turns, I found myself facing a guarded door with two officers standing watch.
‘There it is.’
I walked straight toward them. One of the officers barked stiffly:
“What business do you have here?”
“Isn’t Sergeant Smith here? I brought this down for him.”
Once they realized I was from the Bureau, their expressions and tone softened considerably.
“Ah, no, that equipment isn’t for here—it’s needed outside.”
Peeking into my bag, one officer pointed upward apologetically.
“I’d carry it up for you, but we can’t leave our post…”
“Oh, that’s fine. It’s not even heavy.”
I smiled, turned back, and headed up the stairs.
‘Still haven’t gotten a look at what’s behind that door…’
I had hoped that while chatting, the door might open just once—but no such luck.
Loitering around here would only draw suspicion. So I went straight upstairs.
Sergeant Smith was in the first-floor banquet hall, temporarily repurposed as the investigation headquarters.
“Sergeant Smith.”
“Oh, Claire, thank you so much. You saved my life. The Captain gave me hell for forgetting this.”
Never mind that the whole “forgetting” part had been my doing. Hearing that he’d been chewed out badly made me feel a little guilty, so as a kind of apology I took out some chocolate from my bag and handed it to him.
“By the way… what exactly is this used for?”
The bag contained an air pump—the kind of electric pump you’d use to inflate a big tube or air mattress.
Huh… what use was an air pump in catching a thief?
“That, I don’t actually know myself.”
Curious, but asking too much might raise suspicion.
“Well then, I’ll be on my way.”
“Yes, really, thank you!”
Smith waved to me before dashing out through the terrace doors into the garden. Outside, the sky was already burning with sunset.
‘Now, I need to find a hiding spot.’
I left the banquet hall and was heading down the corridor when a service door opened and a maid pushed out a serving cart.
It was stacked with three tiers of trays, loaded with coffee pots and cups.
Rattle.
The maid wheeled the cart past me, then carried off the first tray into the banquet hall.
I picked up another tray, also piled high with pots and cups.
A clever idea had struck me.
“Coffee service!”
A trick to explore the basement without raising suspicion.
When I appeared carrying coffee, the officers guarding the basement door welcomed me with jokes.
“Ah, have you switched jobs and become a maid of the Hopeless family already?”
“Well, they offered me a better salary.”
“Oh dear, Eden City government is losing talent, I see.”
And of course, they couldn’t very well drink coffee while leaving their colleagues inside empty-handed. Just as I had expected, one of the officers opened the tightly sealed basement door.
“Coffee delivery!”
I handed over the tray while quickly stealing a glance inside. The room wasn’t very large. It didn’t seem to have any other exits.
A drop-down net was rigged to the ceiling. A familiar sight.
Inside were four stationed officers—and one civilian.
‘A civilian?’
My puzzlement only deepened when I recognized the man sitting in the lone chair at the center of the otherwise empty room.
