Editor's Note 2

Sometime after midnight on the night of 1 August, Dr. Nishi dispatched the following note to Captain Leon Susenko of the New Babbage Canal district:

"Captain, this evening I have made very strange discoveries in New Babbage, which have led me to an island. Too much to explain now. But I think I know how my Father's cabinet was pulled off course. Does the name Alexander Eliott [sic] mean anything? I have spoken with one of the steamkids and he reports sightings of a were in New Babbage. They are afraid to leave the Imperial but by daylight. Pieces are fitting together. I know I should not try to write when I am so...please, when you may, contact me. I feel I may be near the crux of this thing."

Considering the entries to Dr. Nishi's typescript journal that follow this peculiar message, it seems most likely that she wrote this immediately after having discovered, with Artemisia Paine, the body of Alexander Eliot in the attic of Loki Absinthe (Loki Eliot, proprietor). This would have been the evening after she "chanced" to speak with the orphan Victor Wunderlich ("Wunder") outside the old Imperial theatre, as he was leaving New Babbage for Caledon. It was Victor Wunderlich, during this encounter, who first spoke to her of a "monster," a "werewolf" in New Babbage, and set her and Miss Paine on the trail that led them to the body of A. Eliott, and then to the Imperial, and finally to Nemo Beach. I believe this is the same night that Dr. Nishi resumed her drinking, though she might have remained sober until the following day. I was away from Caledon at the time, investigating a case in Steelhead, but I booked passage to New Babbage as soon as Miss Paine contacted me regarding these ominous developments and Dr. Nishi's increasingly erratic behaviour.

——— Bellatrix S. Bracken