Chapter 7 Act IV The Rejuvenated Puppet

Hawthorne couldn't take care of his gentlemanly demeanor.With the footwork of an urchin escaping from a classroom door, he leapt out from the nearest door here in a panic! —the door, from which Mr. Puppeteer staggered out with a snail's pace—was not far from the door, where the elevator was.At this time, the two parallel elevators, the one on the left, happened to be slowly ascending.Hawthorne threw his keen eyes into this elevator, and he saw an extra-large toe of a shoe through the door gap of the closing elevator—it was the toe of that Mr. Puppet's shoe! Fortunately, the elevator on the right is going from top to bottom.Hawthorne lifted the corner of his robe and hurriedly jumped in.Coincidentally, he was the only passenger in this elevator. When the driver respectfully asked him which floor he was on, Hawthorne said anxiously without thinking: "The third floor!"

Arriving at the third floor, in the quiet corridor, there is absolutely no mysterious shadow of the puppet Mr.Hawthorne walked back to the elevator on the left and rang the bell. ——This is the elevator that is going up immediately——He asked the driver in this elevator, and the answer was: the gentleman in the old suit and the mustache immediately went straight up to the sixth floor. So, Hawthorne also took the elevator to follow and went straight to the sixth floor. After searching randomly on the sixth floor for a while, he and that "old friend" still had "one side".Panting in panic, he grabbed a waiter, sketched the puppet's appearance, and asked him if he had ever seen such a person.

"Yes, yes." The waiter answered without hesitation. "Now, where has he gone?" Hawthorne asked nervously. "I saw him hurry up the elevator on the left and down the elevator on the right." Hawthorne was dumbfounded. When the waiter walked away, he stood alone in front of the elevator, burning with anxiety.He reached out and scratched at his hair, nearly pulling it out by the roots! — Don't forget, gentlemen, that his hair could have been pulled out by the roots. — On the one hand, he was cursing softly and viciously: "Damn beast! I want you to wait!"

After a while of restlessness, he suddenly remembered: Oh!What happened to that unlucky painting?Shouldn't there be problems so quickly?Thinking of this, he immediately remembered the so-called "tune the tiger away from the mountain" often mentioned in old novels, and he felt that there was no further delay.He hurriedly pressed the bell of the elevator, and then descended from the sixth floor to the third floor. In the elevator, the driver looked at Hawthorne, wondering if this dignified and unsettled gentleman had invented a new urban pastime, whether he had used the elevator as a car instead of a car. What about holding a summer "drive"?

Returning to Room 349, I saw that the room was quiet, and the humorous gesture of "stealing the silver pot" in the first half of the sentence was still invisible.The main reason is that the "silver pot" was not "stolen"!This made Hawthorne put a heart that had been lifted from the elevator back into the cavity.However, at that time, the sound of his beating drum knocking on the door and his panic-stricken expression had already shocked that timid collector and that fox-faced friend from Suzhou! That night, Hawthorne lived in the bedroom at No. 352 that he specially allocated, and did not return to his apartment on Irvine Road; this must be attributed to the invisible retention of Mr. Puppet.

On the bed, he fiddled with his brain cells like a calculation.He was thinking:— Today, I suddenly met this mysterious Mr. Puppet, which was completely unexpected. Will Mr. Puppet recognize his face? Judging by his leisurely appearance, he doesn't seem to recognize his own face, does he? If he really didn't know each other, why was he running around in circles in the elevator again? Assuming he has recognized his own face, then perhaps he has been greatly taken aback, so in the elevator, he improvised a large set of magic tricks. One thing is completely incomprehensible, why did he enshrine his temporary portrait in the window of the tailor shop? — Hawthorne felt unable to find the answer.

Finally, he remembered a conversation during the day, and remembered that the timid collector said: "He-this one-legged thief-has more than a thousand followers, and he has never seen any of them. Leader, what kind of person is he!" From the above few sentences, Hawthorne found a peculiar conclusion: Lu Ping set up the puppet to let his henchmen recognize his temporary disguise. This seems to be the only possible answer.Although this answer seems too bizarre, but also a bit far-fetched.But what better reason than this bizarre and far-fetched answer above? In short, this night, Hawthorne's head represented the appearance window of the tailor shop; he let the Mr. Puppeteer dance round and round on his brain for a whole night.

One thing can be decided, Hawthorne thought: In any case, that small suit and tailor shop must be a lair of that Mr. "Grand Thief", that is without a doubt.He remembered that in the not-too-distant past, those police detectives all over Shanghai had tried their best to search for this "Grand Thief"'s lair.They are like a group of beheaded flies that have scrambled around.As a result, they were like catching tropical fish in the Arctic Ocean, and they didn't even find a small splash.Now, if he reports his discovery to the government, asks for a warrant, and surrounds the clothing store, at least one of the lairs of that Mr. "Grand Thief" can be destroyed; It is also a pleasant thing to live with a few of his feathered followers.But it's not right, it seems a very stupid thing to do it like this, to move the "grass" and startle the "snake" away!Still don't find a proper way.

In the end, he gave up the strategy of surrounding the clothing store.But, no matter what, he wanted to go to the puppet's mansion again to find some additional clues. The next morning, the first thing he did was go to No. 349 to see if anything happened.With a very solemn gesture, he warned Han Qiguo's master and servant, saying: He has found out that Lu Ping's gangsters have sneaked into this hotel.Therefore, they must not allow anyone to break into this room casually.After finishing speaking, he still walked out of the Oriental Hotel in the most leisurely and gentlemanly manner, and went to visit that Mr. Puppet again.

This old Chinese bureaucratic gentleman walked carefully and respectfully to the "office" of the "foreign lord" with his ghosts in mind.But when he looked up, he was stunned! It turns out that some new tricks have already taken place here. how?Is Mr. Puppet going out? --no. Mr. Puppet in the window is not far away from his duty, but he has changed a new posture.Ah!Like the "gentlemen" of our metropolis, he has so many faces!And its transformation is very fast!Today, he is no longer wearing the soap-selling suit of yesterday, he has put on a very beautiful one.The trouser seam is ironed straight and straight; it can almost replace a dense ruler.The leather shoes, polished so brightly, almost blinded many narrow eyes.His "face" has been carefully trimmed by the beauty salon, and his mustache has long been shaved off.His hair is so well trimmed that it can compete with women, and it seems that he can smell the fragrance of hairspray even through the glass. ——Also, he probably once took some high-efficiency rejuvenating tonic.You see: just overnight, he has become so young, fair and handsome.Between his lapels, there are carnation flowers, small silk handkerchiefs, and imported ink pens.In one hand, he is holding a cigarette of the highest quality in the most graceful posture; in the other arm, he is "spiritually" holding a so-called "foreign book" in bronzing letters that is thick enough to make his relatives in the country dazed. Book"——Although no one knows, is the content of this book really difficult?Or is it just a frightening "book without words"?Although no one knows, this Mr. Puppet, does he know the difficult words in this book, or only the words in the book know him? ——In short, his embroidered "fashion" fully possesses all the necessary demeanors for ordinary college students who are dressed up on weekends and go to the park or meet their lover in a coffee shop. --Ah!He got smarter today!Yes!He must change his style of work, so that the so-called progressive idols of the opposite sex who are enshrined in the glass windows of the "Three Companies" will throw their dark circles at him!To put it simply, the Mr. Puppet of today is completely different from the Mr. Puppet of yesterday.If yesterday's Mr. Puppet belonged to the "Chaplin" type, then today's Mr. Puppet has become a "Rock" type.

Hawthorne outside the window opened his sharp eyes wide and looked at the puppet from the middle of the double-glazed glass for a while. He saw a small feature.That is, yesterday's puppet was wearing a red tie; today's puppet is also wearing a red tie; moreover, even the pattern on the tie is the same as yesterday.Hawthorne looked at the dazzling red tie, and a thought flashed in his mind.He thought: Missing him overnight, I thought it was too far-fetched at first, but looking at it now, maybe it’s a little bit interesting, right?Could this red tie be another sign that Mr. Puppet specially left for his followers? He raised Mr. Yu Youren's beard again, and sneered at the puppet: "You evil thing! No matter what kind of tricks you are doing, no matter what, I already know your face; at least, I already know your mark .Okay! I'll wait here and watch you use the twelve and a half tricks one by one." The young old gentleman jumped into a rickshaw excitedly, and while the rickshaw driver was rushing back to the Oriental Hotel, he was still thinking silently: "Just wait for that abominable thing to show its tricks, maybe, I can 'do what I can' and play with him." He was very happy thinking about it, but he didn't expect that the development of the current drama was so fast that it was completely beyond his expectation.