A Wizard's Survival Guide to the 20th Century

They were in the interrogation room of the Lausanne Police Station. Mr. Stryker, who had been bandaged all over his body, was sitting on a chair. The bandage on his neck was particularly eye-catching.

His hand tendons were severed and he was unable to write. In most cases, he could only nod or shake his head to answer questions. Logically speaking, interrogating such a person was contrary to the Bill of Rights... But now we don't care about these, so the bill Let's put things aside first.

The middle-aged man with a short beard nodded slowly.

"Yeah."

"The police learned from the owner of the tavern that Mr. Stark might have had a conflict with a steel worker named Steve Rogers. Is this true?"

"Nod or shake your head."

Mr. Stryker lowered his head. He did not meet Ruisdao's eyes. After hesitating for a moment, he nodded again.

"Is it true that Steve Rogers killed Stark?"

"Similarly, nod or shake your head."

Reese didn't pause. After he finished speaking, he looked over. He saw Steve's body pause slightly, as if he was deeply entangled, but in the end, he nodded slowly again.

Reese put down the file and sighed.

Stryker noticed a strange atmosphere across the interrogation table. Reese had asked him many questions before, and he answered them cautiously. Logically speaking, the other party should not show such an expression.

"You did a great job, Mr. Striker."

At this moment, Reese began to explain his doubts. His voice sounded like an emotionless narrative: "You are more cunning than the police officers thought at the beginning. At first, we thought you were silent at best." You said that, but in fact you are pointing us in the wrong direction."

Stryker's face was obviously stunned for a moment. Under his neck, which was wrapped in thick gauze, he swallowed a mouthful of saliva, causing a sharp pain like a knife in his neck.

Immediately afterwards, he saw Reese standing up, and a sense of fear surged into Stryker's heart, but Reese's actions were different from what he thought again. Reese spoke softly, and there was no sullenness in his voice.

"Do you want to know how I found out? It's very simple. I looked through the previous transcripts and found that although your attitude has always been very cooperative, there are very few places where your answers are contradictory."

"For example, Roger once confused the victim of the first case with the suspect of the second case, but you still nodded."

"For another example, Steve Rogers does not exist at all. This is a character I made up at random."

Reese shook his head and asked.

"You feel to me like...an untrained person trying his best."

"You had your vocal cords cut, you were beaten and sent here and the police found out. Is this actually a trick?"

After these words fell, the room fell silent again. On the other side of the interrogation table, Stryker opened his mouth, and finally lowered his head in silence, like a silent shadow.

He didn't nod or shake his head, but Reese vaguely noticed that this was probably not a deliberate strategy.

"What's going on in the labor federation?"

Stryker was silent.

"The one who hurt you was one of your own, right?"

Rhys asked.

Needless to say, Stryker also didn't respond, as if he had turned into a soulless corpse.

The air was filled with quiet bacteria, and the stasis made it difficult to breathe. For a moment, even Reese himself felt stressed.

Until someone knocked on the door outside, announcing that the interrogation was over.

Reese stood up, looked over from the corner of his eye, and spat out a weak voice.

"What are you insisting on..."

……

Waiting outside the door was Cruz, leaning against the wall, cigar smoke rising.

"It has been proven that Stryker's testimony so far is not credible." Reese said to the other party.

"However, his arrest is unlikely to be a ploy."

"why."

"The Federation of Labor could definitely send someone smarter," Reese said.

At this time, a police officer waiting nearby came over to ask about the situation. Reese told him that the interrogation was over and that Stryker was not as cooperative as he appeared.

The police officer looked a little surprised. After all, a wounded person in such an embarrassing situation as Stryker always makes people subconsciously believe him.

But his surprise disappeared in an instant. He and another police officer also entered the interrogation room. They were taking Stryker back to the ward. The latter's wound had not fully healed and needed rest and dressing.

Reese and Cruise left together and walked down the stairs.

After a moment, Reese spoke carefully.

"However, his answers are not entirely meaningless."

Cruise took a drag on his cigar: "Specifically?"

"The police asked him many questions, not all of which were false. Some of the things he said were consistent with subsequent investigations."

Thanks to the natural advantages of Hampton's language, they had another way to extract information from Mr. Stryker.

The specific operation is: put twenty-six cards with different letters written on them in front of him, and order him to spell out the words by pointing to the letters in order.

Of course, this method also has flaws, that is, the efficiency is too low and it consumes too much time and energy to spell long sentences.

After Stryker recovered somewhat, the police only used this method to interrogate him three times.

The first time is: who else among you is a wizard.

Stryker replied that he didn't know. This answer did not surprise the police. Wizards usually keep their identities secret.

The second time is: what does the union intend to do, when and where.

Stryker answered that there was a general strike, mainly targeting steel workers. He didn't know the specific time. The location was naturally Lausanne, in the third neighborhood.

The third time the police department decided to go further, this time the question was: who were the other union officials and who killed the three police officers.

Stryker did not answer this time, and the police tried several times since then, but the result was still the same.

Since Stryker was not an ordinary person, out of consideration of the social situation, the police station had to postpone his interrogation and start its own investigation, only allowing him to confirm by nodding and shaking his head.

In the following period, Stryker seemed to cooperate a lot, and he even gave the address of one of the suspects.

"This can lead to the conclusion that Stryker does not seem to take the betrayal very seriously. He can tell us about the strike, and even a few inconsequential arrests are not a big deal to him. "Reese analyzed.

"It just goes to show that these things don't matter."

"And the reason why he misled us was just to conceal the few things that were important to him—perhaps that was the senior wizard hidden in the trade unions."

"So I think we can start with the fact that his answers are contradictory."