Mermaid Reef

Ball collapsed in his one-person box.

The door was open, and his upper body was still leaning against the edge of the bed, his head tilted to the side, his face looking like chalk.

Grey, whitish.

The ferocious and distorted face, plus the original wrinkles, are like the brushstrokes of the devil, and an oil painting called pain is painted.

One of the scariest colors is made of blood.

The ceiling of the box, the oak wall panels used for sound insulation on all sides, and the velvet curtains... were all stained with blood spattered, and the blood was still slowly flowing down, converging into puddles on the floor .

John stood at the door of the box, looking dazed.

The puddles in front of me actually coincided with the scene at Calais Station in France.

The roof of the platform is leaking, and water drops are falling on the ground...

At that time, the banker Bauer stepped into a puddle, and even his socks were soaked. He cursed, but because of the arrival of Count Legris, he had to give up his seat, so he could only vent his anger on the conductor carrying the luggage.

"what!"

The exclamation of the train conductor, Mr. Sanger, awakened the detective.

When the secretary of the banker who came afterward saw the situation in the box, his face was already ugly beyond description.

John reached for Ball's neck, but his pulse was gone.

The body was still warm, and there was a bloody smell in the box.

"What happened when you left just now?" John stood up, grabbed the banker's secretary and asked.

"He, he's bleeding...not dead, I swear!"

The secretary originally had a head of curly hair, but now the hair was all stuck to his sweaty forehead, and he looked like a squirrel that had fallen into water. His brown eyes were full of despair and panic.Those two big front teeth rattled, and his whole body trembled uncontrollably.

"The butler of Earl Legris can testify for me! We couldn't knock on the door, and we didn't hear the voice inside, so we called the conductor to force open the door with a key... There was a chain on the inside of the door, but when we opened the door, the smell of blood It's like...we immediately asked the conductor to open the door, and we have asked this gentleman to guard the door since then."

The secretary looked at the conductor in the first-class car, who also nodded with a pale face: "Mr. Ball was in this posture at the time, but he was still awake. He was asking for help, but he couldn't make any sound..."

The conductor already knew about the gold coins of doom, so he was so nervous that he didn't even dare to touch any of the items in the compartment.

He stammered as he described the banker's dying struggles.

"Just after the earl's butler and the secretary decided to go to the dining car for help, blood suddenly gushed out like a fountain. In just a few seconds, Mr. Ball... passed away." The conductor tried his best to describe the terrible scene. The fact that he didn't spit it out on the spot is already the result of his nerves being tougher than ordinary people.

John also saw that fatal wound.

Right on Ball's chest.

"The heart is gone."

A voice came from behind.

John turned his head and saw Gemil standing in the corridor.

The detective pressed lightly on the banker's chest through his clothes, and despite the ribs blocking him, he felt the abnormal indentation under the palm.

—Gamil was right.

This method of death completely defeated the people present.

They can accept that a person is stabbed to death by a knife, killed by a wooden warehouse, strangled to death...but what kind of bizarre way of death is the disappearance of the heart?

"When you came here before, was Ball's chest bleeding?" John continued to ask.

The secretary shook his head desperately: "No, it's his limbs. He can't move, as if his hands and feet were cut off by a very thin thread."

The secretary's back was leaning tightly against the door of the next room, as if he didn't have the courage to take a second look inside.

John's eyes quickly scanned the objects in the room, as well as the posture of the corpse.

——The people in the room seemed to have seen something terrible, and suddenly jumped up. He grabbed something at hand and wanted to hit something that would run.

Broken ashtrays, pipes.

Then the banker tried to flee to the door, his hand had already reached the chain beside the door, and then he was dragged back, the ring on his hand left a scratch on the wall panel.

The scratches are from top to bottom. It can be seen that Ball was dragged heavily to the ground at such a high speed that his right hand didn't even have time to swing to attack the enemy behind him, and he directly dragged out such a long trace.

After Ball climbed up again, he was pushed down again by a force, and the edge of the bed blocked his body.

Then he ushered in the greatest fear before death. His limbs were cut open by strange sharp things, bleeding profusely, but these wounds were not fatal.

Covering his hands with a handkerchief, John raised the dead body's head and examined its jaw and neck.

"The vocal cords were severed."

The wound was thinner, and only a little bleeding stopped.

The deadly part is the chest.

The corpses are like slaves and prisoners of war who are put on the altar. First, the tendons of the hands and feet are cut off, then the vocal cords are cut, and finally the heart is dug out and offered to the gods.

John stood up and looked around the room, then found a ball of paper from under the bed.

The paper was already soaked in blood and crumbled again.

At this time, Mr. Sanger, the conductor, and the banker's secretary all stood far away, and only Gemil was left at the door of the box.

John pointed to the ball of paper with a pleading expression.

From the conversation in the dining car just now, the detective believes that Gemil doesn't like the ancient god sleeping in America very much, so he would rather erase the breath on the gold coin to prevent the power of Jason and the ancient god from being in the medium of gold coins for a long time. To entangle, to deepen the connection.

This approach can be interpreted as possessiveness and brutality from a human perspective, but John dare not ignore the second possibility behind it—that is, the ancient god is powerful and dangerous, and Gemil is not sure that he can defeat him, so Even if it was a little risky, Gemil didn't intend to let Jason try it out.

Gemil doesn't care about the life and death of humans on this train.

But Gemil must be happy to "solve" these doomed gold coins, avoid blood sacrifice of too many gold coins, and one day sail across the ocean to "awaken" the ancient god in America.

After clearing up the situation, John confidently counted on the help of the evil god.

Jason must have stayed in the dining car to prevent the gold coins from killing again, and Gemil came to look for the thing that inspired the power of the doom gold coins.

The detective's ingenuity really played a role (no, Gemil had read detective novels and knew that the paper balls found at the scene of human murders were important clues).

After he made a pleading gesture, the ball of paper automatically floated up and spread out.

Like turning back time, the bloodstains disappeared, and messy handwriting appeared on the paper.

Not a suicide note, but a record made after realizing something was wrong.

After the banker Bauer knocked his head in the library today, he started to think of something wrong.

"...I found that I had forgotten the exact number of gold coins in this bag, and I couldn't recall it no matter how I recalled it."

The handwriting on the paper gradually became scrambled, foreshadowing the banker's fearful heart.

Bauer couldn't figure out why he hadn't discovered it all the time, but John wasn't surprised. He knew from Dr. Abel that human memory would be blinded by mysterious forces, and he wouldn't be able to detect those abnormalities at all.

Ball wrote a paragraph on the paper corresponding to the number of coins sold and the money he received.

With such careful statistics, even the most stupid people will know that something is wrong.

Unless it is not a small bag of gold coins, but a sack of gold coins, it is impossible to sell it back and forth several times, and it has not been sold out.

Banker Bauer remembered that the antique box he used to hold gold coins could only hold fifty gold coins at most.

As a result, he still has more than 20 pieces by his side.

He also sold some gold coins to the American Automobile Dealer today!

"Curse, curse cannot exist, someone must be playing tricks..."

When Ball wrote here, he drew a long broken line, and then enlarged and repeated three lines.

"I don't know, I don't know anything, what is going on?"

The handwriting was completely messed up, and then the whole piece of paper was crumpled up by an invisible force, soaked in blood again, and fell back to the bottom of the bed.

"When he started to check the gold coins again anxiously, he found that there was another error in the number of gold coins?" John began to reason.

According to the testimony of the Italian passenger, the banker counted the number of gold coins when he left the library, and did not say that there were few gold coins.

Bauer returned to the box with "he didn't think there were any missing" gold coins. His head hurt more and more, and then he suddenly woke up and began to count the number of gold coins. The more he counted, the more wrong he would be. again.

"...Then he found out how many pieces were inexplicably missing from his memory?"

(The gold coins run to those first-class passengers by themselves).

"Bauer panicked. He began to believe that the gold coins were really cursed, and he was afraid that the American businessman who bought the gold coins would die, so he hid in the room and refused to come out... No! Unless he is a complete miser and miser, otherwise He should have made a wise choice."

John walked to the window, and sure enough, he found some traces near the window frame.

The window was sliding up and down, and the brass-rimmed window frame was scratched by something. John took out a magnifying glass and determined that it was gold and silver powder.

The people threw it out in a panic, but the speed of the train was slightly different from the speed of the throwing, and traces were scratched.

"Probably a box," whispered the detective.

Bauer threw the box of gold coins out of the car window in horror.

Then he locked the car windows and doors, and calmed down alone in the box.

Unfortunately, bad luck still came.

John thought for a while, then raised his head and asked, "That ancient god, the evil god who sleeps on another continent, is his name Tonatiu?"

Tonatiu is the sun god in Aztec mythology, an ancient civilization in Central America.

Native Americans sacrificed the hearts of prisoners of war to Him.

"That's not its real name...but, yes, that's what humans call it."

Gemil stared at the detective as if he watched a grass sprout or a chick hatch.

——Although it is a humble creature, it can create miracles under the power given by life.

Humans are so interesting!Even if there are only minor details, they can see through the mysterious traces that they cannot touch.

Although weak, it can "see" the essence of the world in various ways.

They "saw" tiny deadly bacteria, "saw" worlds beyond this planet, and grasped some trivial laws of the universe to build their ant nests bigger and better.

Gemil asked himself, if he hadn't been close to Jensen, he certainly wouldn't have been able to appreciate the fun of anthropology.

Is the basis of anthropophysics to understand human beings?

No, to keep the ants alive.

This will bring more surprises.

John's back was cold, and he hurriedly asked: "What is that invisible thing that killed the banker?"

"It's very complicated. You can see it as a formless evil god's family. If there are enough blood sacrifices, it will become more and more complete... Now it's just a broken thing, something made up of the wailing and resentment of the dead, dominated by cursed gold coins its will."

Gemil's answer made the detective suddenly wake up.

So the previous cases were caused by this thing.

Pushing people off wagons, drowning people in fountains, scaring people into heart attacks, setting them on fire...

"What's the matter with choking to death?"

"It's so easy to affect the will of humans, to make them go into a trance, and mistakenly eat what should be spit out, without it needing to show up."

John looked up suddenly: "Bauer threw the gold coins, but he was still dead. The box of gold coins returned to this train again, and returned to Bauer, but there was nothing suspicious in the box. I suspect that the box containing gold coins It is an antique that inspires the power of doom gold coins. It should be made of gold. It can be seen from the traces on the window frame... This thing is more dangerous than gold coins. We must let all passengers check their luggage. Let’s start with Mr. Bauer’s secretary Start there."

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The author has something to say:

Gemil: You look at these humans in the dining car, you can’t let them die casually, too many deaths will wake up Tonatiu

Gemil: We still need to find the key item that activates the doom gold coin, but we can’t use our eyes to search for an item with the power of an ancient god when we hide our power, it will hide

Jason: Let the detective go, don't let the detective die

Jensen: We don't even have to pay this time, the detective will do it himself