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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047-The-Book-of-Masks/cid/2445940-The-Nets-of-Hal-Swann
by Seuzz
Rated: 18+ · Interactive · Fantasy · #1510047
A mysterious book allows you to disguise yourself as anyone.
This choice: Use one of your other leads  •  Go Back...
Chapter #77

The Nets of Hal Swann

    by: Seuzz
Hal Swann has bequeathed you two local projects in Cambridge, but he has other pots boiling merrily away.

He was late chasing the trail Frank and Joe left for him because he was frantically trying to stop a local plot involving the Cambridge rowing team. He was foiled there, and just this morning he woke to the ghastly news that a girl had been found dead down by the river. That was one reason he was (comparatively) heedless in rushing to London to find Frank and Joe: aside from his fraternal concern for their safety, he wanted their help in bringing the malefactors to justice.

But that murder rattled loose some other speculations in his febrile imagination. The famous Cambridge-Oxford rowing contest is coming up, and if the Cambridge team was willing to invoke occult help—as it appears they were—then it's a dead certainty (in Hal's mind) that the Oxford team is up to the same kind of thing. Fane is likely in back of both, and if you followed Hal's hunch to the other university, you might snag a lead into Fane down there.

Unfortunately, Oxford is very dangerous territory for you. Margaret Dillon, one of the most powerful of the Stellae, has her house there, and though you have done your best to construct foolproof disguises, you are still shy about testing them in the most terrifying possible circumstances.

And she's not alone, either. Hal's own mentor, Fyodor Chernomyrdin, is visiting her, so it would be impossible to dive into Oxford under Hal's face without stopping to pay your respects.

But there's another hook that Hal has floating in the waters: a house in Kensington, where the husband and wife both work for Fane. Have they anything to do with the occult side of Fane, or are they just exploitive capitalist parasites? Even if they are only the latter, they are both very well off (naturally), and would make a good local substitute for the Strausslers.

Then there are the other possibilities that exist further afield ...
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