Hgestor has a minion!

Sniffer the Hund

He had always wanted to be a detective.

Just like the ones in the old movies, you know? The black-and-white, the film noir. The enigmatic detective in his smoky office, hat tipped low over his eyes, a cigarette smoldering to dust in a tray on the desk. The kind of office with a frosted glass window on the door, the detective's name spelled out clear as a beacon to the hopeless.

The detective would be the kind of moody, brooding gentleman that the police helped and clashed with in equal measure. Or else he'd be the type who'd go against the police, who'd involve himself whether they liked it or not. The type who people would find hope from. The type that the lovely lady (because there was always one) was enchanted by, because the detective--if no-one else--wanted to put an end to the crimes, wanted to solve the cases, wanted to bring some light into the dull world.

Well, he thought nowadays, that was kind of a pipe dream, after all.

It's located in a dingy old office building. Many of its offices are barely rented out anymore, given that this is the side of town that doesn't exactly have a lot of up-and-coming entrepreneurs or even businesspeople. It might make it strange, then, to wander past one of the doors in the office building and find a door with a frosted window and neat script on it reading:

Hgestor, PI

There wasn't anything romantic about it. There was trying to scrape together enough money to pay rent for his office, enough money to pay for rent for his apartment, enough money to feed Sniffer, to pay his assistant a meagre wage and then enough money to feed himself. The film noir, the detective and crime novels never got into the monotony of living, where if you didn't have money you went out on the streets.

Hgestor wasn't the type of detective who the police would come to. He was the kind of detective that an old lady who'd lost her cat would come to. He didn't have a big break, he had small ones in bigger cases such as investigating this cheating husband or this cheating wife or, if he was really lucky, he got to work on things to do with property or claims or.

It paid the bills.

But it wasn't his dream.

By this time in his life, he was getting tired, a man headed into his thirties with an addiction to coffee and a love of the classics. His office wasn't smoky because he didn't smoke, it was just messy, and his assistant Calth griped at him all the time to fix up his paperwork, to update his records, but it got done just fine, thank you.

(Because Calth was doing it for him. And he'd lament the boy's days off immensely.)

It was an innocuous day when it happened. A chance appeared.

Mysterious thief sends warning letter

Hgestor damn near fell out of his chair while he was reading the paper.

Mysterious thief. After a little digging and questioning, he found out. This thief had been small-time up until now, but he'd sent a letter each time. A calling card.

His dream rushed back to meet him. It wasn't exactly a film noir, but wasn't there something exciting and daring? If he thought about a showdown with a famous thief, if he thought about them facing each other in a dusty, dark museum, that anticipation while waiting to catch him...

This was it.

For a criminal (a self-proclaimed charming thief) waiting in the darkness of a museum toying with a diamond, aspiring to a dream of a dashing liberator, Hgestor would be a godsend.

Credits

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Everything else by haphazard