some disturbing evidence.

I have spent a few days now hunting around Babbage and beyond, to Nemo Beach, formerly Sunrise Island and to Caledon. This entry briefly summarises my encounters. Most of my sleuthing has been alone but a fair proportion with Mr Dagger. At the very least we meet on a regular basis and share what information we have normally over a few beverages in Loki's. I will be heading there this evening once again as Loki himself has arranged a party to launch his new gallery and to help lift people's minds from the subject of murder. I fear however that though the motive is pure the portent is ill. I hope that nothing bad comes of this.

We spent some early time exploring the hidden parts of Babbage, the underground rooms beneath the mayor's own town hall where Mr. Dagger had seen at least 3 people congregating the night before. These people were, if I recall his notes correctly, Prof Nishi, Ms Paine and one other perhaps more, Mr. Dagger is not blessed with a good memory for names, nor with a notepad indeed! Whether relevent or not to the mystery the mayor has some fine machinery hidden below the ground, the largest analytical engine I have ever seen and a smaller but no less fine version alongside the babbage files and a map of the town plans, present and future. However, whatever the gathering of the previous night had been about there was no apparent evidence of foul play, indeed were we any less supicious ourselves as we searched the deep places?

My investigations later took me to the children's "safe house", the words seem so inappropriate, an attic room hidden high above the old theatre, it is accessed by edging across a precarious board walk high above the streets from the attic room murder scene, though the room may also be accessed through a small hall above the projector and a few other places. In this room behind a cobweb curtain I found a number of disturbing scenes, the images can be found in a special folder in my album. I link but a few here.





These images do not do justice to the ghastly nature of the room, but when later the next day I presented them to Mr Sprockett he was once more both dismissive and disinterested. He had seen it all before, indeed it had predated the murders. One has to ask, why knowledge of this drawing hadn't at least suggested questions to Mr Sprocket as to what might have been happening to these children? Would a timely intervention have changed the events we see today? We will never know. However, the ever knowledgable mayor did assist in one respect, the name Winslow Lewis found on the Masonic dedication related to a Mr./ Lewis who was famed throughout the USA for introducing lighthouses based upon the Lewis lamp that he had designed, though there is some dispute over how much of the design was actually his own. He ventured that there was a lighthouse to be found on Nemo Beach. There is in fact a third piece of evidence in the loft, one that I must admit I overlooked at first though now it stares me in the face as soon as I enter that foreboding room. Just to the right of the image of the child is a circle, a stain that looks like blood, and the shape of a man half in and half out of the circle as if emerging or being drawn in to a hole. He holds something in his hand, a rock? It is not clear, a black shadow or crack emerges from the hole.

Both the original images carry the same masonic style crest, the circle enclosing a pyramid which in turn encloses the seal of the Linden family, the hand and eye. To what do we attribute this connection? Are these mysterious sects masonic lodges? and what of the text behind the images, is that an earlier grafitti? All I can say is that the quote appears to be from the speeches of George Washington.

"Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation."

How true that is turning out to be, do not trust someone until they have earned that trust.

The next day I was chatting with Ms. Taterbug xxxxxx (her surname escapes me for the present) a visitor to the town who was looking both for the police and the newspaper. As we discussed our own investigations and I gave her directions a small boy with an enormous pack upon his back ran past. It was Wunder, Mr. Eliott's errand boy, I was glad to see him alive but fear I may have scared him as in my eagerness to ask about his absence I persued him across babbage, but of course, these children are both agile and wiley and he gave me the slip on the roof of the lodge and I never caught sight of him again. At least we know that at that time he had not met the same fate as Mr Cannings.

Forgive me if my notes are not in good order here, these events being logged mostly for my own sake are as I recall them and not necessarily in strict chronology.