Ch.158Chapter 158 – The Crawling Man (9)

“Haa, haa…”

– Clatter, clatter…

As the sun hanging in the midday sky was slowly setting. Professor Presbury’s mansion.

“Where is it…? Where on earth is it…”

Inside, in the professor’s private laboratory, an unidentified figure wearing a hat backwards was sweating profusely while searching for something.

“Damn it… I’m sure he kept it somewhere around here…”

– Creeeeak…

“Damn it, damn it…”

He was so focused that he didn’t even hear the door opening right behind him.

– Click…!

“………!”

As a result, he only realized something was wrong when the previously dark room suddenly lit up brightly.

“Wh-what…”

“It would be better if you stayed still. Mr. Gregory Freud.”

“Raise your hands slowly and get on your knees. I must inform you that if you reach inside your coat, we cannot guarantee your safety.”

The man, who had been reaching toward the inside of his coat while staring in shock at Sharlotte Holmes and Zia Lestrade who had somehow entered the laboratory and were now pointing guns at him, quietly lowered his hands after hearing those words.

“Ugh…”

Then, with a resigned expression, the man called Gregory Freud lowered his head.

“…Judging by your expression, you seem to know what you’ve done wrong.”

“Wh-what have I done?”

“Are you trying to deny it? Then let me tell you directly. The vile acts you’ve been committing over the past few months.”

As Sharlotte glared at him coldly and spoke in a stern voice, Freud broke into a cold sweat and attempted to defend himself.

“I-I was just…”

“You’ve been using my mother’s theories and scholarship to experiment on Professor Presbury, your academic advisor, all this time.”

“Ah…”

“The reason was to get your hands on the professor whom you’ve had feelings for. Isn’t that right?”

But after hearing what followed, Freud quietly closed his mouth.

“Drawing out repressed desires from the unconscious… You really thought to use a theory designed for psychological treatment for such a despicable purpose.”

“Wh-what do you know about your mother’s theories…”

“I’m not speaking from my own opinion, but rather from your perspective. At the very least, you understood those repressed desires as ‘sexual urges,’ and therefore planned to regularly put the professor into an ‘unconscious’ state.”

“D-do you have any evidence…?”

When he asked that with an indignant expression, Sharlotte quietly smiled and answered.

“Of course I do.”

“…What?”

“In my opinion, this should be sufficient…?”

As she pulled out flasks containing red liquid from her breast pocket, Freud’s face instantly turned pale.

“Wh-where did you get those…”

“They were stored in the warehouse. I secured them one step ahead of you finding them.”

“………”

“While pretending to be common aphrodisiacs on the market, these are actually drugs that induce an unconscious state, aren’t they?”

After saying that, Sharlotte quietly shook the flask and muttered.

“I just received a telegram from the doctor friend I asked to investigate. He tried experimenting with serum aphrodisiacs available on the market but couldn’t find any significant results.”

“………”

“So what’s in here isn’t animal serum at the very least. I wondered if it might be a drug that affects the mind, and you’ve been caught red-handed.”

Freud, who had been wearing a blank expression, quietly began to grind his teeth.

“Of course, it wouldn’t have mattered much since I could have asked Watson to analyze the components. Anyway, you delivered this to the professor through some method, making him inject it into his body regularly, didn’t you?”

“………”

“And using your position as an assistant, you visited the professor alone while he was in an unconscious state and performed acts close to brainwashing.”

After finishing her words, Sharlotte narrowed her eyes and looked at him.

“Honestly, it makes me sick.”

“…If that’s what you think, I have nothing to say.”

Freud, now wearing a resigned expression, responded to her sarcasm in a low voice.

“But… I wanted to have the professor so badly, even if I had to do that…”

“……..”

“I tried to tell him sincerely so many times… but the professor wouldn’t even pretend to listen… and treated me more coldly as days went by…”

“…I can’t listen to this anymore.”

Lestrade interrupted his words.

“I’m arresting you on charges of illegal drug abuse and sexual assault. You have the right to remain silent…”

“…Wait a moment.”

“What is it?”

But this time, Sharlotte, who was standing beside her, interrupted her words.

“While his actions are disgusting, unfortunately they aren’t criminal.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“…Come in.”

Eventually saying that, Sharlotte quietly opened the door.

– Creeeeak…

“It’s time to end this farce.”

The person who quietly entered the room with their gaze lowered was.

“Isn’t that right? Professor?”

“……..!”

Surprisingly, it was Professor Presbury, wearing heavier makeup than usual and with a slightly flushed face.

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“P-Professor…”

“………”

“H-how are you here…?”

Freud, staring blankly at the professor who had appeared before him, began to mutter with a dazed expression.

“It’s quite funny to ask how someone came to their own home.”

“B-but… I heard the professor had a late seminar tonight…”

“…I brought him on the way here. With his permission, of course.”

Hearing that, Freud looked at Sharlotte with a dumbfounded expression.

“You’re wondering why I did this?”

“……….”

“How about having the professor explain directly?”

He then turned his gaze to the professor, who had been keeping his head down.

“W-well… the truth is…”

In the silence that followed, Professor Presbury began to stammer.

“…I knew you were doing s-strange things to me.”

“Huh?”

At those words, Freud, who had been sweating nervously with a helpless expression, opened his eyes wide.

“I-I remember the first day you did something strange. I was dozing off while working… didn’t you whisper in my ear that I would start liking you from now on…”

“…….”

“And after that, you visited regularly and… umm…”

And a strange atmosphere began to flow around them.

“B-but… you should have fallen into an unconscious state because of the drug…?”

“Drug? Unconscious…? I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

“Excuse me, Mr. Freud. You seem to be misunderstanding something.”

As Freud muttered in a dumbfounded voice amidst that atmosphere, Sharlotte interjected with a look of contempt.

“Did you really think that strange drug you got from who knows where, while it might make the professor tired, would guarantee a brainwashing effect?”

“W-when one falls into the unconscious… repressed desires…”

“I see you understand your mother’s theory even less than I do? Please come to your senses.”

At those words, Gregory Freud quietly clenched his teeth and flushed.

“Well, I suppose it makes sense since you mistook putting someone to sleep with drugs for an unconscious state. You should have read the books more properly.”

“…B-but. There was definitely an effect.”

He began to make excuses in a trembling voice.

“I whispered for him to love me every single day without fail. And then one day, the professor really started to love me…!”

“……..”

“O-of course… he was only affectionate when under hypnosis… but that was enough for me. The time that state lasted kept getting longer as days went by…”

At that, the professor, for some reason, lowered his head deeply with his ears turning red.

“I-I’ll accept my punishment. After all, I essentially brainwashed the professor forcibly…”

“Did you seek legal advice for that?”

“N-no. The gray-haired professor I met earlier… just told me to go to the mansion. He said everything would be resolved if I did…”

“…Tsk.”

Ignoring her, Sharlotte, who had been interrogating Freud, frowned deeply upon hearing his testimony.

“I-I… understood that as a hint to destroy the evidence…”

“So you already knew everything…”

“B-but… I still don’t understand. How does the professor remember everything if he was under hypnosis…?”

“…You still don’t get it?”

Eventually, with an expression suggesting she couldn’t bear it anymore, she raised her voice.

“Professor Presbury was never affected by your creepy brainwashing from the beginning.”

“Then…?”

“…He went along with it knowingly. Of his own free will.”

Freud’s mouth began to gape open.

“W-why wouldn’t I like it… A young person 30 years my junior coming after me saying they like me…”

“……..”

“But I’m inherently introverted so I didn’t have a chance to express myself… and you seemed to be misunderstanding something…”

In front of him, the professor muttered quietly with a face as red as a radish.

“…I thought it would be better to go along with it, and after playing along a few times, I missed the timing to reveal the truth.”

“T-then…?”

Glancing at his student, she eventually whispered in a shrinking voice.

“…I-I like you. Freud.”

And right after that, the mansion began to be enveloped in heavy silence.

“…I’ll go to the bathroom. I didn’t get to finish earlier.”

In that silence, Lestrade, with a transcendent expression, quietly left the scene along with the cat that had been trembling inside her clothes.

“Excuse me, but I’ll search the mansion a bit more.”

“”………””

“There are still a few points I can’t quite understand…”

Eventually, as Sharlotte too muttered that and left the mansion, a strange atmosphere began to emanate between the two left behind.

“Um… Freud.”

“…Yes?”

“I’ll forgive what you’ve done to me so far…”

In that atmosphere, the professor began to whisper in a low voice to Gregory Freud, who had been frozen stiff.

“Can’t you just be a normal assistant from now on…?”

“………”

“…And give me less stimulating orders. I-it feels a bit strange doing such things at my age.”

After a long silence that followed, the words that Freud uttered with a trembling voice were as follows:

“G-get down.”

“…Yes.”

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Meanwhile, at that time, in the mansion’s bathroom.

“…Kitty, don’t you think this was a truly absurd case?”

“Meow…”

Lestrade, who was about to get up after finishing her business, asked in a low voice to the cat that had been curled up inside her clothes.

“But why have you been trembling so much?”

“………”

“…Is there something scary?”

Then, noticing that the creature was looking into the void with a terrified expression, she began to look worried.

“Poor thing…”

Seeing the creature looking like a rain-soaked kitten, her sympathy and maternal instinct activated simultaneously, and she stroked the one nestled in her arms and quietly leaned her head in.

– Crackle…

But, at the very moment her lips touched the creature’s mouth.

“Mmph…!?”

Suddenly, sparks began to fly and the cat started to emit a bright flash.

“……!?!?”

As a result, she, who had been startled and tried to get up, sat back down due to the sudden weight applied to her body.

“…….”

What entered her sight was Issac Adler with a blank expression, poking his head out from inside her clothes.

– Smooch…

Realizing that her bare skin and lips were in contact with him, the officer’s eyes became dazed.

“”…………””

Zia Lestrade’s first kiss happened in such an absurd manner.