The following days are an incessant ballet of observations, deductions, and manipulations. You let Holmes pursue his own leads, shadowing him like a ghost, subtly correcting his mistakes, guiding him toward the truth without ever fully revealing your own conclusions. You study the mechanisms left behind by the vanished clockmaker, not as isolated riddles, but as pieces of a much larger puzzle. Your fingers, deft and precise, handle the tiny gears, the hands, the dials, reading in their silence a tale of political intrigue and betrayal.
You find a tiny mark, almost invisible to the naked eye, engraved inside a mechanism: a secret symbol known only to members of a clandestine society tied to the royal court. You follow this lead, uncovering a series of secret meetings, masked rendezvous, and encrypted correspondences. You see the full picture emerging, with macabre precision. The culprit is not the one Holmes suspects.
It is Lord Ashworth, an influential member of the secret society, who used the clockmaker to transmit coded messages and eliminated him once he suspected his loyalty. You saw through the mystery even before Holmes began to scratch the surface. A cold sense of satisfaction runs through you. You have succeeded—not only in solving the case, but more importantly, in surpassing Holmes—even if, for now, you keep the truth to yourself.
The game continues. You wait patiently for the right moment to reveal your cards, savoring your silent victory. Holmes's gaze, tinged with admiration and suspicion, confirms that you have achieved your goal: to catch his attention, to fascinate him, and to draw him into a game where he is no longer the master, but a pawn.