[Comprehensive Classics] Detective Mary

Mary's second half of the night was safe and dreamless.

The violin movement never stops, from Brahms' Sonata in G major to his other movements, and then other musicians' works.The melodious and gentle sound of the violin lingered in Mary's ears, dispelling all nightmares and demons until she fell into a deep sleep.

She opened her eyes in a daze, and it took a while to react from her deep sleep.Mary vaguely remembered that she wanted to say something to Mr. Holmes last night, but after the song ended, he just used his usual calm posture to persuade Mary to go to rest, because there were still many things to deal with by dawn.

Maybe it was because she was too tired, or Holmes' words were quite convincing, so Mary had to temporarily give up her plan to talk and go back to her room to rest.

After sleeping until now, Mary turned her head and looked out the window. The sun was rising so high that it seemed to be almost noon.

Mary had never slept so late, but she made an exception for a long sleep, which finally made her feel like she had recovered half of her energy.

When she sat up, she heard small whispers coming in through the crack of the door.

"Sherlock Holmes is too much," said Watson, the doctor lowered his voice, sounding like he had a headache, "It's fine to play the piano at midnight at home, but you have to play the piano all night at other people's homes, so I can't understand that everyone is already nervous. It's been a whole day!"

"I think Mr. Holmes's music is so beautiful that it doesn't matter if you play it all night," Irene said with a smile. "And doctor, you really don't understand how you say that."

Watson sounded very surprised: "Compared with Holmes, you think I am incomprehensible? With all due respect, Miss Irene, maybe my intelligence is far inferior to that of a detective, but you can look down on me greatly. Isn't it obvious for whom Holmes played the violin?"

Mary: "..."

Irene teased: "It's a big misunderstanding to say that I look down on you. It's just that I think your efforts to pursue Miss Morstan seem to be far behind."

Watson: "..."

Mary couldn't help but burst out laughing.

When she smiled in the bedroom, people outside the door knew that Mary was awake.

Erin knocked on the door and pushed open a narrow crack: "Mary, how do you feel?"

Mary: "I'm fine, don't worry about me. Just a little hungry. Is Miss Morstan all right?"

Watson felt that Mary heard what he said just now clearly, and he was a little embarrassed.He cleared his throat: "I'm going to see Miss Morstan."

Irene opened the bedroom door after he left.

"I have ordered the cook to reserve food for you," she said softly, "Cream soup and beef stew, I hope you like it. I have rested for a whole night, and it is time to replenish my strength."

Yeah.

Since entering Blackwood Mansion, Mary has only eaten some fruit and drank some milk.It's okay not to mention food, but when food is mentioned, she immediately feels hungry.

With an appetite comes a desire to think and move forward.After grooming and changing into neat clothes, Mary sat at the dining table with Irene.

Holding up the spoon, she looked at the gurgling beef stew in the stone pot, the warm red meat soaked in the viscous soup, and felt very hungry.Mary took a deep breath, and the whole dining room smelled of beef, butter, and bread.

The taste of food is also... the taste of being alive.

And she walked out of Blackwood's majestic underground palace alive, but Dawson—

Thinking back to the bloody scene that day, Mary felt the shadow crawling over her heart again.

Irene held Mary's hand worriedly: "Mary? Let's eat first."

Mary suddenly recovered.

Yes, let's eat first.

What happened can no longer be changed, and it is better to avenge Dawson than to grieve here.Blackwood is not dead yet, nor has he been arrested, and Mary knows that all she can do for Dawson is to uphold justice.

He died to protect himself, and also to ensure that Mr. Holmes tracked down the case, so Mary must do her best to assist Sherlock Holmes. This is fulfilling Dawson's last wish and the only way to let him rest in peace.

"I am fine."

So Mary suppressed the grief in her heart. She couldn't be sad and collapsed. If she couldn't move forward, Miss Morstan would be even more sad.Mary cheered up: "Help me get a piece of bread, Irene."

Erin smiled with satisfaction: "Okay."

At the dinner table, the two quickly communicated about the current situation.When she returned yesterday, Irene was afraid that Blackwood would vent her anger and hurt Mary's family after she escaped, so she took Catherine and Lydia from Mary's apartment immediately.The two girls are resting in the guest room, and they don't know what happened.

In the same way, Miss Morstan should also be resting, and Watson should be comforting her now.

As for Holmes...

Mary saw Sherlock Holmes himself when she had had her fill.

He was still wearing the same black coat as last night. When Mary entered the drawing room, Holmes was standing by the window looking at the street, thinking about something.

Hearing footsteps, before Irene could speak, Holmes said without turning his head: "Your behavior is right, Ms. Adler."

Erin was taken aback: "What?"

Holmes: "Blackwood has been driven to a corner, and he is likely to make a final counterattack."

Mary understood immediately.

"You think he might attack us at any cost," she said.

"Yes."

Holmes turned his head, and the detective's stern face carried a bit of seriousness: "I have asked the newsboy to invite Inspector Lestrade, and asked him to bring the police. Before Blackwood is really arrested, we must ensure that several Lady's safety."

Mary: "Thank you, sir."

Holmes lowered his head indistinctly.

He looked at Mary, still scrutinizing her.But Mary had never been afraid of Sherlock Holmes' eyes, and she didn't speak until the detective confirmed that Mary was safe and sound: "I hope you had a good night's sleep last night, Miss Mary."

Mary hooked her lips.

The movement from last night is still in my ears, how can Mary not sleep well?She closed her eyes with the selfless protection and thoughtful comfort of a gentleman, and... deeper emotions.

Sherlock Holmes is Sherlock Holmes, he knows all the knowledge to solve the case, and uses the sharpest eyes to penetrate people's hearts, so he can naturally understand what kind of medicine can heal a deeply hurt heart.

The medicine is love.

"I slept well," Mary said with an almost sweet smile, "thank you for the music too, sir, it dispelled all the terrible dreams and restlessness for me."

Holmes, standing by the window, did not answer immediately.

He was silent for a moment, then nodded: "That's good."

——On the surface, there is no difference between the two people's conversation and communication.Holmes is still the calm and even cold Holmes, and Mary is still the polite and enthusiastic Mary.But not even Ms. Irene Adler, who was a bystander, could miss the concern and slight relief under the detective's gaze.

Coupled with Mary's eyes suddenly lit up, what kind of affection is this.

Eileen is a contentment.

Since the two of them had such a tacit understanding, she didn't spoil the atmosphere by making noises.Irene spoke in a timely manner: "I'll ask the two Miss Bennets to come down. They must also be very worried about Mary's safety. I just ask Mr. Holmes not to talk about the case later, so as not to frighten them."

"It's okay." Mary shook her head.

"Hey?"

"Since Catherine and Lydia may also be attacked by Blackwood," Mary said, "then they must know what kind of danger they may face, so as to be psychologically prepared. I do have many clues to communicate with Mr. Holmes, that is, ... In front of my two younger sisters, please be tactful."

The two youngest Bennet girls had been terrified all night.

Mary hadn't come back for so long, and she couldn't even go home when she came back. Doctor Watson even stopped them from seeing her, and Catherine lost her temper with Watson for this.

Seeing that she was fine now, the two were relieved, and they couldn't help asking what happened.

In addition to the ladies of the Bennet family, Watson and Miss Morstan were also invited to the living room by Irene.After all the staff arrived, Mary simply relayed Blackwood's true intentions to everyone—of course, considering the emotions of the two younger sisters, Mary consciously omitted all bloody and terrifying narratives, even Blackwood's intention was to find a The woman he chose gave birth to the so-called outer god, which was also vaguely mentioned.

This also caused the two ladies to exclaim.Fortunately, Sherlock Holmes, who holds most of the clues and is extremely intelligent, has deduced everything almost without Marie's words.

"If Blackwood hadn't lied," Marie concluded, "he should have pinned all his hopes on the last assembly, which had been ruined."

"He's not going to give up," said Holmes. "Blackwood is bound to make a comeback."

"I don't know……"

In the middle of speaking, Mary glanced at Catherine and Lydia, but hesitated to speak.

She didn't want to frighten her younger sisters, but she wanted them to know what kind of danger they were facing. It was Mary who said it herself. As the older sister, Mary had no choice but to continue to say: "The worms and... eyes in the underground altar, what is it? what?!"

After witnessing the terrible scene in the altar, Mary immediately understood why Sykes and Henry Deckard went mad under the illusion of the devil's heel.Even a complete materialist like Mary could not help but feel frightened and almost collapsed, let alone the people of the Victorian period.

After calming down and thinking about it carefully, Mary felt that it might not be unexplainable by science.

Sure enough, Watson showed an indescribably complicated expression before Mr. Holmes answered Mary's question.

"My God," said the doctor, "you've got the point, Miss Mary. It's a good thing you haven't been to Baker Street lately, and if you don't hang Blackwood, Mrs. Hudson will drive us both out of the house." gone."

Holmes snorted: "She won't."

Watson: "Don't underestimate how much a lady hates bugs, especially when you have a whole house full of bottles and jars."

It is simply relying on Mrs. Hudson's love for the two young people as she loves her son.However, Holmes' "willfulness" is always of profound value.He took out a notebook from his arms, and Mary frowned, it was stolen by the detective from the scene of Henry Deckard's death before.

"Blackwood hopes that he can summon Azathoth in the real world," he opened the notebook, and stayed on the page of the monster that Mary mistakenly thought was an amoeba. "This is one of the incarnations of Azathoth." Sardar Hegla. So, Miss Mary."

Since Mary had warned Holmes beforehand to be tactful and considerate of her two younger sisters, the detective merely tapped the pages of his notebook and looked at her.

Mary: "........."

Needless to say, Mary also understood—Blackwood kept saying that she wanted Mary to give birth to the incarnation of some foreign god, is this thing?

She showed a hard-to-look expression, and Holmes turned forward again, and the page stayed on the illusion of countless eyes drawn by Henry.

"These eyeballs," continued Holmes, "are related to those worms."

After speaking, he turned the notebook back again.Sherlock Holmes actually continued his records and research directly in Henry Deckard's notebook. Compared with the Irish workers who only used a few pages to try to regain their sanity through text combing, Holmes' notebook is neat and complete, densely packed Memorized almost the entire notebook.

"It took a lot of work to identify those dehydrated reptile corpses, but it is even more difficult to find their relationship with beliefs. Look here," Holmes pointed to one of the notes, "The Shaggai Zerg, the belief is exactly Asator Sada Hegra, one of his avatars. Look here again."

He quickly judged Mary's reading speed, waited until he finished one of the pages, and then turned the page again.

Turning the page this time, the worm drawn by Sherlock Holmes comes to life and leaps directly into Mary's eyes.The worms she saw in the underground altar were scaled up and presented in front of her eyes, and the lines on her body were clearly visible. Even if it was just a painting, Mary still felt a little sick.

She looked away: "What is this?"

Holmes: "A worm from South America. It is not difficult to identify the type of worm, but the difficulty is to identify the type of fungus."

Mary: "Fungi? Why is there still a problem with fungi?"

Holmes: "Please turn to the next page."

Mary did so, and on the next page, Holmes drew in detail the eyeballs hanging on the walls of the subterranean altar... no, not technically eyeballs.

Under dim conditions, and so far away from the walls and ceiling, it felt as if the flesh of the worm had fallen off, leaving bloodshot eyes one by one.But in Holmes's pen, what he described in detail is not the eyeball, but a fungal creature that looks exactly like the eyeball.

"Also from South America, the locals call it 'Eye of Hell', but there is no biologically confirmed name," Holmes explained. "The worms selected by Blackwood are phototaxis, and the 'Eye of Hell' is a local A devil-like fungus in tribes. It parasitizes bugs and reptiles, uses the bodies of creatures as its petri dishes, and controls their movements and nerves."

When Holmes finished speaking, all the girls present, except Mary, couldn't help covering their mouths.Biology in the Victorian era was far less 21st century, and in the late nineteenth century, the habits of the creature still sound like demons reincarnated.

But Mary has the basics of 21st century biology - among other things, always on the Discovery Channel!The more exotic the creature, the easier it is to be reported by popular science, although Mary has never heard of any "hell's eye" fungus, which sounds as illusory as the devil's heel.But when it comes to controlling parasites or fungi in the mother's body, she has heard a lot.

Moreover, Holmes would not stop explaining just because of the horrified expressions of the girls: "The fungus will absorb the nutrients in the petri dish, and then grow itself perfectly. In the body of the worm, after absorbing the rich nutrients, it is the same as the indigestible part." Congealed into a ball, it looks like an eyeball. And those parts that cannot be digested still retain the phototaxis of the worm."

"So, when I walked into the altar with the firefly," she said, "the worms, who were essentially lifeless, crawled over under the manipulation of the fungus, and revealed themselves."

"That's right."

Holmes said firmly: "I think what Blackwood has been cultivating may be the perfect 'Shaggai Zerg' in his mind, that is, the fungal clusters you have seen with your own eyes."

"That……"

Mary couldn't help thinking of Dawson who had been fed a lot of worms. She suppressed the discomfort and continued to ask, "Are these fungi poisonous?"

Holmes: "Not poisonous, so far as I know."

Mary: "But when Blackwood was experimenting with the sacrifice, he poured the worm with the potion into the 'sacrifice''s mouth, and then--"

She could not go on, but Holmes understood what Mary meant.

He detoured from the underground waterway to the corridor, and naturally passed through the bloody prison.Even Sherlock Holmes, who has always been cold, still showed disgust when he mentioned Blackwood's inhuman atrocities.

"It is a pity," declared Holmes contemptuously, "that he knows so much of the occult and of chemistry, but of no real biological science. If the victim went mad after drinking the worm, it must have been a potion." As for the worms and fungus themselves, there will be no negative effects other than a possible stomachache from being unclean.”

When Erin heard this, she was so shocked that she could hardly speak.

She cleared her throat and found her own voice: "You must have read a lot of folk myths and legends, detective?"

Holmes raised his eyebrows: "Unfortunately not, Miss Irene. This is also the root cause of my lack of progress-in the end, I did not find out the clues in folklore, but turned to my family for help. Found the answer."

"astronomy?"

Upon hearing this, Watson was even more shocked: "That's why you took the globe from my room? Holmes, you don't even know that the earth revolves around the sun!"

"Because I don't allow useless knowledge to occupy my brain."

Holmes responded unceremoniously: "For this reason, I added a lot of astronomical knowledge and read the research of the ancient ancestors, so that I was able to find out the answer. The Azathoth that Blackwood believes in does not come from legends, but randomly. As people become more curious and in-depth study of the sky, ancient scientists identified 'alien creatures'."

Well, at this point, Mary probably understands what's going on.

Since ancient times, people's longing for the sky and beyond the sky has always been endless.The associations and legends related to aliens are still widely discussed until the 21st century, and before the second industrial revolution, while countless astronomers came to basic conclusions, there were researches that were skewed and thus did not remain in history. The scholar under the name is not surprising at all.

Imagine the mysterious phenomena in the universe as gods, and connect them with the creatures on the earth-the universe is so big, who can say that his observations are wrong?

From this point of view, Blackwood is indeed a person who is good at thinking.What he said to Mary at Pemberley Manor may not be a lie, at least the part that expresses the insignificance of human beings before the universe is true.

However, like those ancient scientists, because of the limitations of the times, he not only went astray, but also embarked on an extremely terrible path.

In the [-]th century, the topics of extraterrestrial beings and existence beyond the earth really should not appear in the scope of discussion of ordinary people.And Sherlock Holmes is famous for his astronomy knowledge level is about zero, which can be regarded as Blackwood's mistake, just hitting the detective's weakness.

"Is there really such an alien creature?" Catherine's eyes widened. "That is to say, besides us, there are other creatures living in the sky?"

Holmes sneered a few times: "The astronomical legends that have never been left in history are almost only fragments. I checked the originals, and the reasoning and research of the Illuminati are full of loopholes. Assuming that the 'god' he believes in really exists, Blackwood is not It might be possible."

The detective roughly explained the research at hand, and when Mary was about to ask how to continue the investigation, the newsboy who had received the news before finally brought Inspector Lestrade over.

The inspector brought a small team of detectives, and said directly after entering the door: "I left three police officers at Ms. Adler's house, and I ask the ladies not to go out easily until Blackwood is caught."

Erin nodded: "How's the situation, Inspector?"

Lestrade's expression was very ugly. Obviously, the huge underground world created by the Illuminati was tantamount to a severe slap in the face of Scotland Yard.The cult organization directly built a palace underground, and they didn't know anything about it.

"Miss Morstan," Inspector Lestrade wiped his face heavily, "I must ask you to go to the police station to identify the body."

Miss Morstan: "..."

She closed her eyes and said nothing for a long time.It wasn't until Mary touched Miss Morstan's arm worriedly that the strong Irish girl opened her eyes: "I see."

"It's not without good news." Lestrade forced a smile, pretending to be relaxed, "at least one survived. When we found him, the sacrificial ceremony hadn't started yet. The guy was stripped naked and tied to the ground , it’s nothing serious.”

Survive one?

Mary was still a little confused at first, but she suddenly realized when she heard the word sacrificial ceremony: "Wickham?!"

Without thinking, Lydia blurted out, "He's not dead—uh."

Mary: "..."

other people:"…………"

Even if it's the truth, it shouldn't be said at this time, okay?And it turned out to be Lydia Bennet, the silly girl who was deeply infatuated with Wickham herself said this sentence, and the dramatic effect is perfect.

As soon as she interrupted, the solemn atmosphere dissipated quite a bit.

Mary looked at Morstan and said solemnly, "I'll accompany you."

Not only to send Dawson off for the last time, but to take this opportunity, Mary wants to keep Wickham completely away from her and her sister's life.

The author has something to say: Materialism is materialism if you say it is materialism, you can force materialism if you are not materialistic, it is funny by hand.

Some girls guessed in the article that Mary should not know the knowledge of grams, and she really didn't understand her.Otherwise, the plot can't be promoted at all. If the mysticism is too high, it's either a crazy plan, or it's not afraid at all. Can this group still run [Huh].

There were countless long comments in yesterday's chapter, and Jiang Hua was stunned.Thank you very much for your affirmation, girls. You, Jiang Hua, are really scratching your head for the relationship line. It’s great that everyone likes quq, hug the girls one by one and hold them high!

Lydia’s final reaction in this chapter comes from a conversation with my friends——

Jiyou: This case is almost over.

Me: That’s about it, let’s deal with Wickham in the next chapter.

Jiyou (sent a shocked emoji): He's not dead yet? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

So real!So the speed of light is used in this chapter [you tm