Stargazer's Clue: A Detective's Quest Through Time and Space

The room was dimly lit and smelled of leather. The walls were covered in books, some with titles that I recognized, others written in a script I could not read. Names like Thucydides, Aristotle, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Plutarch and Euripides filled the shelves. I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my eyes. It had been a long day of interrogating the suspects and their testimonies had yielded nothing useful.

I considered the case for a moment: The emperor had hired me to investigate the theft of an ancient relic from his palace vault. The police had suspected that a thief had stolen it during the festivities of the new moon festival and so they had checked everyone's whereabouts during that time using surveillance cameras but found no leads whatsoever. No one could have entered or left the palace without being detected by these cameras which covered every inch of the building perimeter. Their only conclusion was that someone must have used magic to steal it and there was only one person who could have done that: Stargazer.

Stargazer was an old man who lived in a small house near the river on the outskirts of the city. He was famous for his ability to see into the future but he had never agreed to any interviews or public appearances and preferred to keep to himself so as not to attract undue attention which seemed odd because he was so famous that even little children knew his name. When questioned he always smiled mysteriously and quoted verses from one of his many books on astrology before returning to his work in his garden where he spent most of his time tending his cabbages and herbs that he used for making medicines. Therefore when I showed up at his door asking him to surrender himself for questioning, he seemed unsurprised.

"Of course," he said with a smile as he closed the door behind him, "I've been expecting you."

He led me through a narrow path between rows of vegetables then through a beaded curtain towards a small room with walls covered in strange geometric patterns painted in white against black background. In its center sat an old table with a crystal ball resting on it beneath a single candle flame that cast weird shadows around the room dancing over Stargazer's face as if they were ghosts present at some séance or something equally weird. His eyes glowed red in their sockets like embers just waiting for someone to blow them out with a puff of air and I shuddered involuntarily when I saw them clearly illuminated by the light of candle flame.

"Is this your place?" I asked while taking off my jacket and rolling up my sleeves which went almost all the way up to my elbows past my wiry biceps showing off my tattoos under them as if I were trying to intimidate him with them but there was no point because Stargazer wasn't intimidated by anyone or anything except perhaps Death itself so showing off my tattoos wouldn't have scared him even if I'd covered my entire body with them like some kind of psycho killer from one those old movies about serial killers or something equally creepy like that.

"Yes," Stargazer replied as he turned away from me and walked towards one wall where there stood an antique looking cabinet with several drawers built into it. He opened one of them and took out two leather bound notebooks then returned towards me holding them out for me to take them but I ignored them instead staring intensely at him almost willing him to look away first until finally after nearly ten minutes we both broke eye contact simultaneously looking down at the floor in front of us.

"These notebooks are full of astrological charts," I said after clearing my throat "They tell you what will happen tomorrow, next month and next year correct?"

"Yes," Stargazer replied as he shuffled towards me still keeping his eyes averted as if not wanting to look directly at me "But they don't always tell me everything."

"You're saying they aren't 100% accurate?"