Chapter 33 behind the scenes

Showa forty-three years, November 2, Saturday. After that fire, Lanzi and I stepped into the territory of "Evil Mansion" for the first time.Because I found that part of the stone wall had collapsed, I climbed over and entered. The woods around the building are still lush and lush after the disaster, and have not changed, casting thick shade on the wide courtyard.We walked through the weeds under the natural circular ceiling formed by the tangle of branches and leaves, turning into the driveway leading to the gate.Although the broad leaves of the woods were stained with a slight tea-brown color, other than that, no major changes were felt.

However, when I came to the position where I could see the building, the scene before my eyes was completely different from before, with a gloomy and disgusting feeling.More than half of that huge building disappeared, and the west wing of the main building and the "Black Building" were all reduced to rubble, as if they were ruins covered with strange rocks and rocks. Extending from the parking lot, the central part of the clock tower to the east wing, it still maintains its original appearance, but it is just a simple black block like a city wall.The windows are hollows without rain-shielding windows and glass, and the interior of the building can be seen.Although some of the walls have been demolished, completely burnt waste piles can still be seen.

The water spray in the vestibule no longer exists. In order to dig out the remains of Engel and the others, my father hired an excavator to destroy them.All the marble was removed, and after excavating the part that used to be a swamp, four rusted gasoline barrels appeared, as Seiichiro admitted. It is incredible that there were bones in three of the gasoline barrels. The other bucket is empty... Lanzi and I walked towards the entrance without a door, and the outer walls around the driveway were also smoked into pitch black.If you look carefully, you will find that moss has begun to grow everywhere.

I looked up at the dilapidated clock tower. Two-thirds of the dial seemed to have been licked by black smoke, and it was also pitch black. Although the long and short hands were still there, they had ceased to tell the time. This time, the pointer will always stop at that moment! When Lanzi stepped into the porch terrace, she stopped and looked up.We both wore jeans that were easy to move around and not afraid of getting dirty.She has fully recovered her former health, and her thick hair is tied into a ponytail at the back of her head so as not to obstruct her sight. "Li people," Lan Zi covered her eyes with her hands because of the dazzling, "the shape of this driveway space is very strange, did I tell you before?"

"No, I don't remember. What's weird?" I, too, looked up at the strange wreckage of the driveway roof jutting into the blue sky. "There is no room for wrong cars, and there is no arch to shelter from the rain. From the top of the clock tower to here, it is like a cliff." "It should have been designed like this!" "No!" Lan Zi said ambiguously, and continued to move forward. I follow behind her.In the small hall, the statue of the horse and the armor were also missing. One side of the door inside was burned, and the other side was half burned, and it fell obliquely between the floor and the wall.

"What's wrong?" "The main purpose is to allow people who fall from the clock tower to fall straight to the ground without hindrance on the way." "How is it possible!" I walked around to her in surprise. Lanzi, who entered the lobby, continued to walk towards the grand staircase. Some unburned wallpaper hung on the walls and ceiling, and only the metal skeleton of the art lamp remained. The handrail of the staircase was also melted. The wreckage, with no room to step on it, is really dangerous. We climbed up cautiously. Lan Zi smiled narrowly: "What do you think we are here today? We are here to find the twelve diamonds hidden on the clock tower."

"What?" This surprised me even more, and I stopped in my tracks because I hadn't heard her mention it at all. Lanzi found that the armor lying at the bottom of the stairs was pressed against the blackened wood and smashed walls, all parts were twisted due to the heat, hands and feet were missing, almost burnt black and discolored, almost an unsightly tragedy. "Wait a minute!" I hurried up the stairs from behind her, "Did you say in front of everyone that there is no legendary diamond in this mansion?" "That's a lie." Lanzi didn't seem to care about what he said before.

"Cheat? What lie? What's going on?" She didn't answer, just chuckled and went upstairs slowly, looking around at the remains of the fire scene. I gave up my heart and followed her closely. On the way, a girder and wall stone fell, and it took me a lot of effort to cross it. "Won't the walls and ceiling come down?" "Then you can see the sky, the scenery must be good!" Although nervous, we finally arrived at the mechanical room of the clock tower between talking and laughing.The mechanical room was devastated beyond imagination from the number dials outside, probably because of the chimney effect, from which all the smoke, heat, and flames rose upwards!

"In a place like this, can you find diamonds?" "No problem, let's go up to the roof." I climbed up the deformed iron ladder and kicked down the iron door on the way to the inner stairs of the mechanical room. Because the back button of the door was deformed, I couldn't push the iron door open. "Are the diamonds outside?" I asked slightly surprised as I walked out the door first.Because, when it comes to what is on the roof, all you can think of are lightning rods or chimneys. "No problem." Lanzi said cheerfully, helping me untie the backpack I carried on the narrow stone platform.

Inside were boots, rubber gloves, and climbing ropes for life.I looked at my feet, and the shoes and trousers were stained black from the carbonized building materials inside the mansion. "The mechanical room is destroyed like this, I think there should be no problem, but just to be cautious, I still have to wear this." Following her instructions, I put on gloves and long shoes, and complained: "I am responsible for the dangerous things, at least I should give an explanation!" "I'm just going to explain it now." She smiled. "This clock tower, no, the correct way to say it is the big clock outside the tower. It has an automatic mechanism to kill people who want to steal diamonds."

"What agency?" "That is to say, suppose someone hides a diamond on the number plate of a clock. What kind of posture will this person take when he wants to stick out the front of the number plate?" "Well... First, reach out and grab the iron frame around the clock, step on the groove of the iron frame under the number plate with your toes, and then reach out and grab the long or short needle." "It should be like this!" Lanzi nodded, "At this time, the switch of the needle seat is turned on, and the automatic killing machine is also activated immediately, that is, the internal electrostatic starter instantly releases a large amount of current, which flows to the iron frame and pointer around the digital disk. , through the conduction of the two, the person holding the pointer becomes a conductor, and shocks due to electric shock. "Another point is that the cover under the number plate will open, and an automatic puppet will jump out of it. The puppet will quickly hit the person's lower abdomen. With the multiplication effect of the current, the person who grabs the number plate will immediately fall to the ground." I was so shocked that I could hardly breathe, I stared at Lanzi's bright face, "Really?" "Of course it's true! That's why I prepared non-conductive boots and rubber gloves for safety." "Is the mechanism set inside the clock designed to kill people by electrocution?" "No, it should be just the degree of deterrence. The person who fell to death did not have any traces of burns on his body. Although the human body has a resistance effect, the AC voltage used at home is about 100 volts, which can cause slight burns, so Should be less than a hundred volts. If direct current, less than twenty milliamperes." "Such an institution caused the death of several people?" "It's clearly written on it!" "Written clearly? What are you writing?" "It's on the back of the clock's number plate, the clock maker Allenby's signature board! It says 'Please think of death'." Lanzi smiled, nudging my back, and made me face the edge of the building, "Clock Tower The structure of the clock tower was designed and manufactured by Engel on purpose by a British clock master, that is to say, the clock tower itself is a death trap. Alright, let’s start work, the sky is getting dark.” I tightened the climbing rope around my waist, and according to the sequence I just said, I carefully reached in front of the digital dial, and then tightly tied the other end of the climbing rope to the nearby chimney. At first, I poked my head out of the left corner of the clock tower, looking down as far as I could because I would feel dizzy from the height.The woods spread before my eyes, and the gentle wind passed by my ears, but it threatened me instead. When the preparations were completed, Lanzi handed me a screwdriver from behind, "Use this screwdriver to dig out the round stones between the Roman numerals showing the time on the number plate. There are twelve in total. If it is dangerous , It doesn’t matter if the diamond falls to the ground.” "Oh, so that's it, the diamond is hidden in the back?" I made up my mind, and stretched my upper body as far as possible in front of the clock tower, then put my fingers and toes between the grooves of the iron frame, and stretched my hands towards the long hands of the clock. Sure enough, the mechanical device has been damaged, so there is nothing to worry about. According to Lanzi, I straightened my arms and took out the rough black stones marking the dots in the middle of the time.On the way, turn around to the right side of the tower and continue the same operation.Each stone was tightly embedded on the number plate, so only three stones were successfully taken out, and all the others fell to the ground. I tried to observe the hollows after removing the pebbles.However, nothing was found on the glass number plate. "There are no diamonds at all!" The end of the homework that made me sweat all over, but most of it was a cold sweat from fear. "Thank you!" Lanzi handed over the towel, "Go downstairs to find the fallen stones." Back in Xuankai, we split up and searched around the terrace to recover all the stones.Each one is about four centimeters in diameter, just the right size to hold in the palm of your hand. "It's just this kind of stone!" I was quite dissatisfied with the result, "If you want to eat it, ostrich eggs are much more delicious! These stones are heavy and troublesome." Lanzi carefully wiped the stones with a cloth, and then laid them on the ground. She looked at the stones with shining eyes. "Sherlock Holmes once commented on diamonds in a certain event: 'Diamonds are nothing but carbon crystals of forty grains'." "I know that due to the extremely high pressure underground, the same substance that forms coal will also form diamond crystals. However, diamonds are beautiful jewels that make many female friends covet. Planting stones that are everywhere is useless at all." "Liren," Lan Zi put her hands on her hips, stood up, and stared at me while suppressing a smile. I don't understand why Lanzi is so happy. She said: "These twelve stones are not pure mineral crystals, don't you understand? These should be decorated with the 'moonstone' on the Louis XIV gold necklace diamonds." I listened, and there was an explosion of pure white light in my retina.On this day, although he was frightened several times by her, this time was the worst. "Are these dirty, black stones diamonds?" "These are the rough diamonds." Lanzi finally laughed out loud. "The rough diamonds are dark brown or gray like this. As long as they are polished, they can show dazzling light." "I don't believe it!" Apart from this sentence, I didn't know what to say, I just stared dumbfounded at the stones lined up on the ground. "How do you know these are diamonds?" "Because there are various clues, but the most important clue is the note left by Ikutaro. It has the name 'Verne' on it, right? Did you notice it?" "why?" "There's a 'Black Diamond' novel by Jules Verne, and these should be Black Diamonds." "Really...?" I felt my throat dry and murmured, "What should I do with these diamonds? If they are sold off, they should be worth hundreds of millions, or even billions!" "We have a lot of time, let's think about it slowly! On the one hand, there are legal issues, and on the other hand, who is the owner must be carefully investigated in advance. Moreover, in order to return these diamonds, we may have to travel a long time." A trip to France, because these gems are supposed to be the treasures of the French royal family. All in all, it's all very interesting." Lanzi carefully stored the rough diamonds in her backpack. This incident with many victims has come to an end.With so many people killed, even if we can't say that we won fiercely, we still got diamonds after all, so we should be considered to have defeated Hans Engel, a mysterious foreigner. After all this trouble, I will probably never come to this mansion again in the future!When I was about to say goodbye to the "Evil Mansion", I looked up at the black clock tower standing above the ruins for the last time. Lanzi said in a low voice: "Li people, I have said before that 'some things in the world are too obvious and too big to enter our field of vision.', but now I suddenly thought that maybe Engel really wanted to hide Yes, it is the building itself. It is neither the woman Olga nor her parentage nor the dazzling diamonds that he wants to keep secret at the end of time, but this cursed mansion. itself……"

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