The Silent Seven
General Summary
The Trenchcoat Brigade:
The Silent Seven
Monday
August 19th
2002
August 19th
2002
A spate of recent crimes have had clues left at the scene which the police investigation team do not seem to have noticed. Litmus pieces together images from different newspaper and tv images. He finds subtle connections that mean nothing to most detectives:
- Video pan of the scene in the aftermath of a bank robbery showed seven pennies left in an otherwise empty safe. Investigators did make a note of it in case the pennies were left in a particular pattern (they were not) or had useful fingerprints/chemical traces (they did not), but tentatively concluded that the pennies were left behind as unimportant. Additionally at this scene, the perpetrators attempted to break into one specific private lockbox ... the owner confirms that nothing is missing. Litmus believes that the actual lockbox theft was of the lockbox five slots above, at the top of the vault. He thinks the "attempted break-in" is a distraction to send investigators down the wrong trail.
- A murdered man had, in total, seven buttons cut from his coat and shirt. Where are the buttons? How could one button from the shirt sleeve but no damage to the coat cuffs, two buttons from the front of the coat, one button from the outer pocket, a pocket from the shirt under the knot of the tie, and the two buttons closest to the wearer's belly button all have vanished in the struggle?
- A dying gangster gasped the word "seven" when the police captured him during an attempted burglary. His watch had been stopped at 7:50, even though the burglary was attempted after eight o'clock that evening.
And now an eccentric, elderly, upper-middle-class man named Henry Marchand has died of his own homemade anti-burglar device. Litmus suspects this is also part of the chain of sevens, although when he approaches his fellows in the Trenchcoat Brigade he is still uncertain as to what fueled his hunch.
Complication: Marchand was a member of SAFEGUARD, retired only because advancing age made his memory too unreliable for strict security practices. The Trenchcoat Brigade is tasked with performing SAFEGUARD's own investigation of the scene.
They find, after some searching of the apartment, no notes or hints as to the SAFEGUARD's past. They do, however, find a pair of six-sided dice -- one weighted to always come up 5, the other weighted to always come up 2 -- and a strange puzzle piece covered in tiny letters in random orientations!
Character(s) interacted with
The Trenchcoat Brigade befriended Dr. George Lukens during the early course of their investigation. George was an old chum of the late Henry Marchand. Long ago he inherited what The Shadow recognizes as one of the old Secret Seven rings. George says it came with several other objects in the estate of his late grandfather, and he did not get around to digging it out until after he retired from his medical practice. George says that Henry got interested in some odd feature or other of the ring, which might sound like the start of an old French crime movie from teh fifties, but! George insists that Henry never asked to borrow the ring or anything silly like that. No. Henry wanted George to have the ring digitally scanned by some of those archaeology lads at the university, something about some history project Henry's great-nephew was doing?
George suspects that someone broke into his apartment the night of Henry's memorial service, probably intending to kill George -- he says he has never smoked, but he smelled heavy incense when he finally made it home the next afternoon. He is very upset because of course his neighbors think he is being paranoid, but he won't enter his apartment until the young men in the masks and the trenchcoats are absolutely certain that his life is not in danger.
- Litmus
- Kitsune a.k.a. Agent Chameleon
The Shadow
Created Content
The Silent Seven
This organization has been defeated by The Shadow before -- by "Lamont Cranston", early in his career. He was never able to track down all of the "family heirloom" signet rings which are passed down from mentor to protege. To make matters worse, sometime after he defeated the then-current ruling Secret Seven, their signet rings vanished into the evidence lockup system of the Chicago Police Department. Among the artifacts of past casework which "Cranston" passed down to Andru Vandevik were pieces from a ring that may have carried the number 33 although the metal was too pitted to be certain of either digit.
The Silent Seven are controlled by whichever individuals possess the signet rings numbered 1 through 7. These are the "Secret Seven". Each will claim to have inherited the ring from a distant ancestor, never directly from a parent. Each will someday bequeath their ring to an even-tempered, patient, inventive young person of the appropriate social caste. All surviving members of the Secret Seven work in tandem to train the new protege, including the retiring mentor if possible.
An additional "Faithful Fifty" are members of the Silent Seven with their own "signet rings". The number on these rings is not reflective of importance within the organization, a practice possibly copied from the Card Shark Syndicate's Deck Agents. All of the Faithful Fifty are theoretical equals in service to the Secret Seven.
By February of 2002, this organization had been truly exposed and destroyed, all members deceased or arrested. Their signet rings and their hidden communication network vanished into the possession of Trenchcoat Brigade and SAFEGUARD.
Related Reports
Henry Marchand lived in a small but well-appointed apartment on a middle floor of a fifty-story apartment building. Few of the building units are managed on a traditional "lease" setup; most units are owned outright by their residents. A limited housing association for the building manages external upkeep and runs the secure lobby. Owners are responsible for their own janitorial and maintenance issues. This building does not have a roof observatory or other rooftop access into the building. All residents, staff, and visitors are expected to access the building through the lobby on the ground floor. Years ago when the building was new, a second access through the subway system connection in the subbasement was an idea that proved problematic once it was in use; the subbasement was permanently sealed off in the 1980s.
An internal fire escape allows anyone to enter from any floor, but will only permit exit on the ground floor. It sits at one of the most reinforced sections of the eastern wall, directly opposite the elevator bank. Each elevator shaft travels to different floors: two cars (sharing a shaft on parallel tracks) go to the even-numbered floors only, another two cars (sharing a different shaft on parallel tracks) go to the odd-numbered floors only, one shaft has a single car which travels up to the penthouses. All elevators can reach the lobby and the laundry room in the basement.
The top five levels of the entire building are four penthouse apartments, each taking one corner. Penthouses have balconies, other apartments do not.
Some building maintenance spaces exist on the 44th floor. They are heavily secured because they contain utility and safety equipment for the entire building. Access requires correct ID for a city employee and the building maintenance, and usually requires arrangements made ahead of time. Any entry outside the schedule will cause multiple alarms to sound.
Each apartment above the 3rd floor and below the 44th floor is a two-story apartment, with alternating base levels: apartment 703 has its entry floor on odd numbered level 7, for example, but its lower rooms are surrounded by the upper rooms of apartments 601 and 603 while its upper rooms are surrounded by the lower rooms of apartments 801 and 803.
Marchand's odd-floor apartment has a living room, small dining room, kitchenette, and a butler's room (a small guest room with a minimal bathroom attached) on floor 39. His home office, master bedroom and bathroom, and a sitting room are on floor 40. The master bedroom, sitting room, "butler's room", and the downstairs living room each have a window. Since Marchand is so far above ground level, he does not have bars on his windows ... but he did install sensors and traps in case of intruders. Was he concerned about metahuman thieves?
Notes
The series of crimes each turned out to have a puzzle piece for any searcher who rolls more than 3 RAPs on a "Clue 15" roll.
An embedded SAFEGUARD agent who knew Henry Marchand from his active days has lost all of his secure methods to contact SAFEGUARD. This agent has been trying to sneak out copies of the Silent Seven's coded plans ... one piece at a time. His efforts are what got Marchand killed.
Other than Henry Marchand, the victims in the pattern Litmus detected are not connected except through their insurance agencies -- and at that, the actual connection is a set of three sisters, each working under their married names, who operate as secretaries for these insurance agencies. The sisters are part of the Faithful Fifty within the Silent Seven organization.
Full decoded text of Secret Plans:
Silent Seven move control center
to hidden lair between floors three
and four in the Strivers Row bldg * Alert
the faithful fifty to arrange a midnight
theft of all vehicles parked near eighth avenue
to distract attention *So orders Number One
Comments