The mists closed in around me as I stepped out of the building that my office was located in, locking the door behind me. I pulled up the collar of my coat and tugged down my hat more firmly onto my head. The rain had eased to a light drizzle, beading across my hat and coat, droplets slowly rolling down. Ahead of me stretched the narrow street that wound its way through that part of the city. According to the drip in the bucket back in the office, it was around the middle of the day. That meant the glow of the street lamps were barely needed. The dark gloom had lightened yet all around the mists still curled.

For those new to the city, the ever-present rain did take some getting used to. To those of us who had always lived there it was a way of life that we simply accepted. It was not something that could be changed in any case.

I started out down the street. Off in the distance a dog barked at something, but beyond that it was generally quiet. The neighbourhood was for the most part that way, for which I was often grateful. It was a decent, respectable part of the city, full of hard-working types, most of whom laboured away in the dwarven run factories down city a level or two.

As I walked, the mists and clouds above me for a moment broke apart and I caught a glimpse through them of not the sky but another place. Another world, maybe. None are certain as to what causes it, or why. It is a phenomenon that at times you can catch a glimpse of if you are lucky. Or unlucky, as some see it, a view of somewhere unreachable, unattainable even if it does appear to be almost at arm's length. It is just a part of the nature of what Spire is, of where it is, touching as it does upon many worlds and cities.

I had seen it before only a handful of times and so my footsteps slowed as I studied the view appearing before me, that of a glimpse of towering buildings, seemingly of crystal construction. Over the surface of them could be seen vines, crawling across it, covered in bright flowers of a multitude of hues. I could almost smell the scent wafting from them it was so close and real.

Then it was gone, as quick as it had appeared, a subtle reminder of where we were and where we could never be.

It took me a few minutes to walk the length of Baybury North of Third Street, from my office to the far end, the tight packed buildings along its length looming all around me, casting their long shadows. From the windows of some, hints of light shone, adding a little more illumination. Most remained quiet, and dark.

As I neared the end of the street where it joined up with other streets that led to the main thoroughfare, the broad road that wound its way up Spire, the noise around me began to pick up. In a lot of ways Spire can be pictured as a screw, if you could consider a construct a couple of kilometres wide and many more kilometres high as a screw. The main thoroughfare functions much like the threads on the outside of the screw, by means of which people can move up - or down - the various levels that make up the city. It is a slow old route to take, but a reliable one. There is a faster way to travel between the levels of the city, by means of the central shaft. Not many take that, and for good reason.

A couple more streets followed, winding in their maze-like nature towards the Baybury thoroughfare. An automobile purred on passed me at one point on the walk, a red Gessler of some model that I did not know, bright enough to be seen in the mists. It was all but silent as it drove along and the first indication I had of it was when the lights from it came from behind me to illuminate the mists. It slowed as it neared me, before picking up pace again as it went on by. I saw it halt at the end of the street ahead of me before it turned, out onto the busy thoroughfare, merging with the traffic flowing along it. The direction it had turned would take it down city, deeper into the mists.

The thoroughfare was broad, four lanes across on either side, with a central strip running down the middle on which grass and trees grew, separating the traffic heading up or down city. It was lined with buildings on either side and was much better lit than the back streets I had been walking along. More than a few of the lights shone onto giant billboards that perched atop the shops and offices that crowded along the length of the road, advertising all manner of items, of automobiles and beverages, of soaps and electrical appliances and more besides.

There were quite a lot of people walking along the pavements on either side of the thoroughfare, or taking the raised bridges that crossed over it, men in coats and hats and women who carried umbrellas to keep the rain off. For the most part they were humans and dwarves, the two most common races to inhabit that part of Spire, but here and there others stood out in the crowd. The bulky ogres and tree like trolls who towered over everyone else. The shorter forms of goblins and gnomes. The shaggy wolven, the proud satyr and many others, of varied forms and shapes and sizes. Spire takes in all types and they have to make a home of it here.

Automobiles and lorries whirred quietly along the road, their lights shining off puddles of water that collected on the surface of it. Just down the side of the road from where I had entered had been built an autotrolley stop. On either side of the road tracks had been laid and above them wires were strung. Trolley cars ran along them, one side ascending, the other side descending. It was by this means that most people travelled through Spire. If you rode on it long enough - for hours at least - you could reach the end of the line, either above, where it terminated just beneath where Them Above lived, right at the upper limits of the mists, or below, where the mists became too dark to travel any deeper into.

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I made my way down to the autotrolley stop, taking shelter under the cover there. A young dark-haired woman with a perambulator waited there as well, and a serious looking dwarf, seated and with his head buried in a newspaper. A curl of smoke rose up from the pipe that he had clenched between his teeth. The good thing about the autotrolley services is that it is reliable. Run by dwarves, naturally. You need not wait more than ten minutes for the next one to turn up. In this case it was only four minutes before one came trundling along on the tracks, the wires it was hooked up to that powered it sparking above. The dwarf folded up his newspaper at its approach, rising to his feet and tucking it under his arm.

The trolley ground to a halt before us with a squeak and a grinding of wheels. The doors into it hissed open and the trolley lowered down to match the level of the stop. A couple of passengers stepped out of it before the young woman pushed her perambulator in. The dwarf followed and last of all I boarded. A conductor waited at the entrance beside the driver, a grey-haired man in the immaculate uniform of the trolley car company. I passed him a couple of coins, took my ticket from him and moved down the back of the trolley. At that time of day, it was mostly unoccupied and so I was able to find myself an empty seat in the second last row.

I slid into it, leant back into the seat, folded my arms across my chest and let my eyes close. There was a hiss as the trolley rose up again and then a faint jerk as it started forward again, trundling along the track.

I let my mind idle as I rode the trolley car. It was going to be a good half an hour before we climbed up to the level of the city that I wanted to go to. I tried not to mull too much over the case as it was still too early in the investigation to get any impressions. It didn't do to jump to any conclusions until I had investigated more and had a fuller picture of what was going on. Opinions formed in haste could be hard to shake, even in the face of later evidence, and if you went looking for clues to match preconceived opinions then you were liable to miss the clues that were actually there.

The trolley made its stops along the route and people got off and on. After a short ride, there was a change to the trolley as it hit the incline that began the climb upwards to the next level of the city. The level I had left behind, Baybury, and those around it were mostly residential, broken up only by the offices and shops that lined the main thoroughfare, and those that used the trolley marked that. They were everyday citizens going about their lives. I ignored them and got on with my rest.

The seat beside me creaked as someone sat down in it, just after we began the climb. I cracked open an eye partially, surprised by that for the trolley was nowhere near to being full. A man sat there, one in a grey suit, coat and hat. He could have sat anywhere he wanted. Instead he had sat alongside me. I thought perhaps it was his favoured seat, one that he sat in all the time that he rode the trolley. There are creatures of habit out there that do that. At least I thought that until he spoke, that was.

"Good day Mister Stone," he said softly, speaking in low tones so that no one else could hear him.

Both eyes opened and I sat up, taking a closer look at the man. He had caught my attention. Now that I observed him in more detail, I could see that his skin of his face was pale, too pale, and it had a stretched appearance to it, pulled tight across his head. A working stiff then, one of the dearly returned. From what I could see, he appeared to be a wight. I didn't know many of them, as they move in different circles, but he was not one of those few that I did know.

I gave him a cautious nod in reply. "Good day."

The wight didn't look at me. Instead he stared ahead, out through the front window of the trolley car, watching the road ahead through the rain as we climbed up around the outside of Spire. "I come bringing a message," he said, still speaking in low tones. "It is best that you do not dig too deeply into matters. You may disturb things best left buried." He spoke in a pleasant, if dry, conversational tone, almost as if we were discussing some mundane daily matter. Like the weather.

It wasn't the first time that I had been warned off a case. Never before had it been done so politely, openly and by such a messenger as the wight.

"I am investigating a number of matters currently," I replied. "To which do you refer?"

There wasn't much doubt in my mind as to which one it was though. The other couple of cases I was looking into were minor, unassuming things, not the type of matters to bring out such a warning.

A low chuckle came from the wight. It had a rattling noise to it. "You know to which I refer, Mister Stone. Find the missing man, but don't go beyond that. It would be better for you if it were to remain that way."

Now there was the threat that I had expected, if one delivered in a manner more like a friendly warning. "Who sent you?" I asked.

"Come now, Mister Stone, you know that I can't tell you that."

"Can you at least give me your name then?"

He at last turned towards me and I stared into the pale, unblinking eyes of a dead man. "You can call me Mister White."

No sooner had he spoken that he was up, and moving off, down the trolley car towards the entrance as it ground to a halt at another stop. He looked back down the trolley towards me, gave half a nod and then stepped out, back into the rain of Spire.

I sat there, staring after him. Mister White. That was far too much of a coincidence to be one. They knew of Miss White then. More, they knew of her alias, and that it was she who had hired me. And for what purpose. Yet they didn't want me to stop investigating for her, only that I took care to not poke too deep when doing so. Meaning that they did want me to succeed in the case but they were worried by what else I might accidentally uncover.

I had run across some unusual situations in my time. That was right up there with it.

Only as the trolley jerked away again along its route did I spot the plain envelope that Mister White had left behind on the seat when he got up. I picked it up and with a great deal of caution opened it.

A pile of dollar notes greeted me, a rather fat wad of them, along with a short note written up on a typewriter.

All expenses for Miss White will be covered. Try Stefan Rex.