Chapter 22 Chapter 21 Heaven Has Eyes

Ellery was awakened by the violent shaking. "Get up!" Dijuna yelled into his ear, "Someone is coming for you." Ellery flicked his clothes with sleepy eyes. The visitor turned out to be a boy delivering a letter, holding a huge manila envelope in his arms. "It was sent by Major Bryant, Mr. Quinn," he said, "and told me to tell you it's just been printed." He put the paper bag on the table, turned and walked out, whistling. Ellery tore open the brown paper bag.Inside were a dozen slightly curled, half-dried photographs.These photos show the last moments of the one-armed Woody, who has been so unpleasant lately.

"Ah," said Ellery cheerfully, "the Major is a rare gentleman, Dijuna, a priceless treasure. He always knows what you need. . . . Oh." He carefully examined the series of photographs with little difference... It was incredible that these photographs were almost exactly the same as those recorded when Buck Horne was killed.Except for Woody's different appearance from the former, especially his conspicuous broken arm, the situation presented in the photo is not much different from what Quinn and his son saw in the Major's screening room a month ago. The camera once again captured the dynamics and expressions of the horse and the man on the horse when the bullet hit the victim.The horse's long body is also parallel to the runway; Woody's body is also leaning slightly to the inside at the northeast turn of the runway.

"Nothing special," said Ellery to himself. "A complete copy of the previous murder. The appearance is just a repetition. Knights always follow the laws of nature—hopefully." He picked up a Stare at the most representative photo for a long time-Woody on it is obviously dead.In the photo taken from the front, the angle of the one-armed knight's tilt to the south was exactly thirty degrees. Because Woody was wearing a variegated vest and the sleeve of the stump of the broken arm, it was difficult to identify the location of the bullet hole.But judging from the expression of the deceased, it was clear when he was shot.

Ellery put down the photo and thought about it, mechanically munching on the breakfast that Dijuna brought over. "When did the officer leave?" he asked Tijuna while chewing. "He left a long time ago," Di Juna said, "When will you catch him?" "Catch who?" "Murderer! . . . killing people everywhere," Dijuna said worriedly. "I think he should be fried." "Fried?" "Electric chair! You won't let him get away with it, will you?" "Am I God?" said Ellery. "Dijuna, you put such a terrible burden on my thin shoulders. But I was thinking—no, I know—someone was following Let's race. Come on, have some coffee, boy. Did dad say he's going to the screening room this afternoon?"

Early in the afternoon, Ellery arrived in the screening room of Major Kirby's news department. He found that Officer Quinn was also sitting here.The old man had dark rings around his eyes and numerous new wrinkles.Major Bryant left for a moment. "We may be able to see something from the documentary they filmed last night." Officer Quinn said dejectedly. "Have you found that .25?" The old man stared blankly at the snow-white curtain: "I told you, it's absolutely impossible...no." "I admit it's a puzzling conundrum," Ellery whispered. "The answer must be dead simple. I'm sure of it. Evidently everything is contrived, and it's going on... Dr. Boddy is sure Wood Was Dee shot at the angle?"

"Told me this morning, shot from top to bottom at an angle, exactly the same angle as Horn was shot at." Major Bryant walked in with a smile: "Are you ready, gentlemen?" Officer Quinn nodded. "Play it, Joey," he said, sitting down next to Ellery. The room darkened immediately, and the loudspeaker next to the screen played sound. Subtitles flashed on the screen—a news production company, followed by a short text briefing a second murder in the same location and in "exactly the same circumstances" within four weeks. They watched silently.Various scenes and various sounds appeared one after another.They saw Grant again, heard his announcer call; saw the east gate open, Woody and the horses enter the field, circle the field, stop, Grant announced the opening again, the starting gun was fired into the air, Woody responded by firing, and the horses start running...

All shots are sharp and dull.Even Woody fell from his horse to the runway, the horses trampled on the corpse, and the chaos at the scene was the same as before, and there was nothing special about it. When the film was over, the lights came back on.Several people stood still and stared at the empty screen in a daze. "Okay," hummed Officer Quinn, "it all came to nothing! Should have known. I'm sorry, Major, for giving you a lot of trouble. I think we should go..." At this moment, Ellery's eyes suddenly looked extremely restless.He suddenly turned around and said to Major Kobe: "I don't know if it's my own illusion or other reasons, Major, I always feel that this video is longer than the one we saw in the Horn case. Is that so?"

"Huh?" The major was taken aback for a moment. "Oh! Much longer, Mr. Quinn. At least twice as long." "What's the matter?" "Oh, you see, the film we saw a month ago was the finished product of the official screening after editing. It has been screened, cut, edited, subtitled, sound-matched and so on. But what was shown just now was just our working script, It wasn't carefully edited." Ellery stood up. "Could you please explain a little bit more? I have to admit I don't understand the difference between the two." "Why are you asking this?" Officer Quinn asked unhappily, "Could it be that we..."

"Please, father. How's it going, Major?" The major said: "When we are filming on-site, we are indiscriminately filming the entire process of the event. Of course, this uses a lot of film - many times more than the length stipulated for newsreels. A reel of film is about Six to eight news topics. So after the film is developed, the editor will be busy. They have to screen frame by frame, keep what they think is meaningful, and cut the rest. Parts of the book were concatenated and edited into a short, summarized, and time-spanning overview of events." Ellery blinked in the direction of the screen: "That means..." He said in a weird tone, "The documentary about the Horn case we saw earlier was not a complete record of the scene, not everything was in it of?"

"Of course not," said the major in bewilderment. "Oh, God!" Ellery groaned, pulling his hair, "so it's not reliable. Boy, I'm almost confused by your technique. If anyone knows a little about film editing At least common sense is enough... Dad, do you understand? Major, what do you do with all the waste film you cut?" "Oh," Major Bryant said, frowning in confusion, "I don't know...the pieces fell on the cutting room floor. We should all have saved them. We have volumes and volumes in our archives. Rolls of scrap film. We..."

"Enough, enough!" cried Ellery, jumping to his feet. "I'm too ignorant... Major, I want to see those scrap films!" "It's not difficult," said the major, "but you'll have to give me some time. Gotta connect the pieces. But it'll look like a no-brainer..." "Just overnight," said Ellery stubbornly. However, they only waited for more than an hour in the screening room.A lot of things are still waiting for Officer Quinn to deal with at the police station, so Officer Quinn has been busy on the phone during the waiting period.Ellery kept smoking, trying to suppress his agitation. Finally the major came back, he gestured, and the small screening room went dark again. This screening has no sound.The picture was as chaotic and incoherent as Major Kirby had forewarned.But Quinn and his son watched it with gusto, as if watching a high-level art film. It was particularly chaotic at the beginning, as if the person who edited the film was a lunatic, and according to his confused mind, he connected the film without logic; the scene of riots in several auditoriums was repeated several times; The police in the distance maintain order; the countless stretched necks; the countless wide-eyed eyes; the chaotic and restless crowd seems to be hired by a mentally ill director to shoot a nightmare.There's a long shot of Curly Grant fiddling with his glass pellet launcher and then swinging it at a target.And then, the distant shot of Maas's box—obviously a refocusing lens was used, because the image is so sharp.The Quinns see themselves sitting peacefully on screen; also Di Juna, Kit Horn, Marla Gay and Tommy Black, Tony Mars, Julian Hunt in the back row .These are all shots before Horn was shot, and the atmosphere at the scene was still very relaxed... After a while, the camera panned back, and they found that it was a moment before the shooting.Tony Mass is about to stand up, perhaps agitated; for a second or two Julian Hunt is blocked; then Mass moves away and Julian Hunt can be seen sitting quietly in the original There are...some shots that were intentionally shot to set the mood—and were cut purely because the editor didn't think it mattered.There is a shot of the bow-legged Hank Boone, the quintessential wilderness boy, running out to gather the horses after the murder; The horses miraculously calm down; one stubbornly refuses to drink; Boone, looking impatient, turns behind the horse's rear end; the fellow is a seasoned horse thief; he whips the horse hard horse; a cowboy runs into the camera, snatches the whip from Boone, turns to pat the horse's back, and quickly quiets it; a police officer spots the cowboy and orders him to—from gesture It can be seen in the picture - back in the cowboy line; Boone swayed and went back to his work... And there is a shot of Crazy Bill Grant's dumbfounded expression - the murder happened the bust at the time; and how he later ran up to the body from the opposite side of the field—the camera panned down and the body was trampled to pieces... There were flashes of some big shots who had secretly asked for news The studios cut their footage so as not to expose their faces in inappropriate situations and create a "public impression of mediocrity and stupidity".There are also many shots taken during the subsequent search. The Quinns sat in the screening room for almost three quarters of an hour.When the lights came back on and the screens dimmed, neither of them had anything to say: Ellery's hunch had apparently proven meaningless.Officer Quinn lamented the ruthless waste of an hour of his precious time.He stood up, stuffed a large pinch of snuff into his nostrils angrily, sneezed loudly trembling all over, his face was flushed, and his eyes were full of tears. "Ah - sneeze!" After another sneeze broke out, he rubbed his nose vigorously.After finishing himself, he turned to stare at Ellery, "That's it, I have to go." Ellery closed his eyes and slung his long legs over the edge of the front seat, looking comfortable and relaxed. "I'm leaving, I said." Officer Quinn repeated angrily. "I heard you the first time you said it, my venerable father." Ellery articulated, opened his eyes, and stood up shaking as if waking from a big dream. Sergeant Quinn and the major looked at him inexplicably. He smiled and extended his hand to the major: "Do you know what you did today, major?" Major Kobe shook that hand in puzzlement: "What did I do?" "You restored my faith in film technology. What day is it today? Sunday? It's a day of faith! It's almost enough to make people go to Judaism and worship Moses. No, of course you can't go to religion, that would be That's paranoid, isn't it? I'm a misfit, sort of a skeptic, I believe." He grinned, and shook Major Kirby's hand violently, confusing him. Good day, bless the man who invented film technology. God bless him. . . . Dad, don't just stand there staring! We've got plenty of work to do, fun work!"