Mary's Nineteenth Century

Now that I have doubts about Mrs. Roman's true gender, what should I do next?

Mary's first instinct was to wrap her masculine pretense a little tighter.

Lesson learned, she can't make Roman's little mistakes.There is no end to learning, and the skills that men should master in this era are indispensable.

Then again?

Do you want to peel off Roman's hidden secrets layer by layer like peeling an onion?

It is better to let nature take its course.

Mary thought it over and decided not to rush in.

the reason is simple.Assuming the truth is as she guessed, Roman is a man disguised as a woman, and combined with this person's unparalleled intelligence, it is not difficult to infer that his purpose in coming to the United States is not pure.

Roman, 90.00% nine is just a pseudonym.

His real name and appearance are hidden, and he is more or less doing intelligence-related work.

There is a saying that is good, few people who engage in intelligence end well.

This kind of person has only one word clearly engraved on his forehead-trouble.

Mary is not afraid of trouble, and is willing to wish Roman a smooth sailing even when there is no conflict of interests and positions, but she is clear-headed and not dazzled by curiosity.

My original intention of coming to the United States was to realize the identity of Mark Minton.

Not only is it buying a house in Boston to fabricate a past, but it is also necessary to leave a behind-the-scenes trick to perfect the home of the original body.

Since there are many things to do, let's uncover the crimes of the Hermes Society first.As for Roman's little secret, leave it to time.

The next day, the sun rose.

Everything is as usual, nothing has changed.

"I plan to go to the Hermes exchange meeting tonight."

Mary talked about her plans to track down the counterfeiters after breakfast.

"Balch is a Harvard graduate who runs a paper manufacturing company in Boston. It's all public information. Now that he's shown interest in inventors, I might as well approach him."

If the Hermes Society is involved in the production of counterfeit coins, this group will definitely not easily attract strangers.

Mary knew very well that she did not have the magical charm that would make people dizzy. Even if Balch tried to lure her into a gang, at least it would take a few months of testing.

"Several months are too long, there is no need to waste time like this. Being close to Balch, I can infer his whereabouts from details such as his eating habits and clothes stains."

Falsification needs space.

Finding the manufacturing site means finding half of the evidence.

If you want to steal core documents such as accounts, you have to enter Balch's residence first.

Mycroft agreed with this plan, "I will keep an eye on Simon, the ancient coin seller. If we work together, the efficiency will be faster, and maybe we will get the same result by different routes."

Regarding the specific operation steps to keep an eye on, is it necessary to find other helpers, and why can Mrs. Roman find other helpers in Boston?

At the moment, Mycroft didn't say anything, and Mary didn't ask.

The two looked at each other without saying or asking, as if they had reached a certain tacit understanding in silence.

"be careful."

In the end, Mycroft just said, "Don't forget, some gangsters broke up Bella's house."

Even if it is a mob, there are many people.

It's hard for a person to fight with two fists and four feet, but don't be careful and get beaten.

"I'll be careful, and so are you."

Mary didn't say much, and there was another advantage of splitting up.

Balch, like most men of this era, does not think women are of much use.

In this way, with Mr. Minton diverting his attention, Mrs. Roman's pursuit will be smoother.

Or track, or monitor, or secretly track down.

Four days have passed, and life in Boston is like a gurgling stream, calm and without any waves.This city does not seem to have a mysterious sea at all, and there is no breeding of crime and death because of money interests.

What about the facts?

By approaching Balch, Mary locked the town of Crown, which is west of Boston.

There are many factories gathered in this area, such as tanneries, garment factories, logging factories and so on.

The smell of leather, the color of clothing fuel, and the wood chips left over from wood processing all left traces on Balch's clothes, shoe soles, and carriage wheels.

The paper mill that Bolch apparently operated was east of Boston.

One east and the other west, two diametrically opposite positions have become Balch's long-term stays, and there must be some kind of connection.

Before you head out to find out, take the time to do one more thing.

Mary is well versed in the essence of acting, and she will inevitably talk about recent arrangements when she contacts Balch.

In a seven-point true and three-point false conversation, she revealed her plan to buy a house in Boston and wandered around to look at the house.

This itinerary is not afraid of other people's investigation.Whether it is to strive for realism or to have actual needs, in the end a real estate was indeed finalized.

Not the one in Waller on Herb Road, but a Victorian in the Back Bay.

"You finally made a normal decision."

Lawyer Spring assisted with various house purchase procedures. The environment in the Back Bay area is excellent, and there are no other disadvantages except that it is a bit expensive.

Mary: What is normal?

Could it be that the decisions she made in the past were against common sense?Or in the eyes of others, they are all full and full?

Of course, Lawyer Spring didn't mention much, his client asked for trouble to enter the Hermes exchange meeting.Anyway, it would have been wise not to buy Waller Reggie's house, or you'd be in trouble at any point.

"Follow-up procedures, please hurry up."

Mary did not refute Spring, and let the lawyer breathe a sigh of relief. "By the way, just now you mentioned that Dr. Jekyll came to the United States?"

Dr. Jekyll, the same doctor who previously identified peanut allergy and favism in the Oliver London case.

His superb medical skills are admirable, and what is even more admirable is his character.

For example, he fights crimes personally and is willing to undertake various anatomical work; for example, he is not afraid of criminals and has taken the lead in exposing various hidden crimes several times.

"Yes, Dr. Jekyll will arrive in Boston about tonight."

Lawyer Spring didn't know why, "Mr. Minton, are you going to have dinner together? Didn't you say you have other arrangements later?"

Mary smiled and shook her head, "I'm just asking by the way, and we will get together if we have time. I was in London before, and I couldn't thank Dr. Jekyll in person for his hard work in solving the case."

This is Oliver's case, Jekyll is the anatomist, and Mary is one of the investigators.

The two were unable to meet each other.

The results of the autopsy were conveyed by Watson, and after the case was solved, Dr. Jekyll had a job and left London, and Mary happened to come to the United States.

Lawyer Spring didn't know the details, but he always felt that Mr. Minton didn't seem to be asking by the way.

Mary didn't stay long, and she wouldn't tell the lawyer that she asked about Jekyll because there would soon be a big case in Boston that he would take the lead in uncovering.

For things like exposing counterfeiting cases, the unknown Mrs. Roman is not suitable, and Mary herself wants to live a clean life, so it is better to hand over all the credit.

Before that, it is necessary to find evidence.

I rented a very ordinary carriage, and changed into the old clothes of the garment factory workers.Head to the west of Boston to find out if there is a hidden Balch counterfeiting base in the town of Crown.

Close to Crown Town, you can see rows of chimneys in the distance.

Various workshops are scattered all over the town, surrounded by rivers and small forests.

If there is a counterfeiting base here, it is undoubtedly a big hermit hidden in the city.

In the evening, the factory closed.

The workers went home one after another. After a hard day's work, ordinary workers inevitably looked tired.

What if it is not an ordinary worker?

The two coachmen looked left and right, vigilantly afraid that someone would discover a certain secret, and instead of heading for the main road home, they drove toward the depths of the woods in the small town.

Mary turned around the small town of Crown Crown for a few times, but didn't find anything unusual for the time being, but found a carriage driving out of the woods.

The two coachmen wore ordinary coachman clothes, but they couldn't hide a certain smell on them-the smell of gang members.If you get close, you can find that there is a muddy smell on its clothes.

The carriage drove out of the woods, as if it had completed a certain task.It didn't enter Crown Town again, but took the main road and headed straight for the main city of Boston.

Weird!

Mary watched the carriage go away, and came to the edge of the grove it had just left.According to the locals, the grove is not large, and there are no wild animals or hunters living in it.

Since there is nothing, how can there be gangsters driving in and out in a hurry?

According to the traces of the wheels on the ground, it can be judged that one and only one carriage entered the woods recently.

When the carriage reached a certain location, it was no longer convenient to continue entering the forest, so two people got out of the carriage and walked.The footprints left by the two on the muddy ground were deep, as if they were lifting something heavy.

Seeing the sky darken.

Mary didn't intend to turn around at all, but took out the kerosene lamp from her backpack, lit the lamp and continued to go into the forest to see what was going on.

As the saying goes, thieves don't go empty-handed, oh no, they come here, they should stick to the end to find out the truth, and they must find out the purpose of the gangsters entering the woods.

Following the footprints, 1.1 meters deep into the woods.

As far as I can see, there are mostly trees that have lost their leaves and stand shivering in the cold winter wind.

The north wind blows.

The sound of the wind passing through the dead branches and dead trees is a bit like the wailing of the dying trees.

'Crack, click——'

In the weird wind, there was another, more weird sound.

The sound of the change is not loud.

r/;>Mary's footsteps suddenly stopped. This sound was someone digging.

Combined with factors such as gang members, deserted forests, heavy objects, etc., a possibility can be deduced smoothly, maybe a corpse was buried here.

Now, is someone exhuming the body?

Winter night, wind and cold.

Desolate grove, a fresh rectangular earth pit.

Mycroft dug into the earth as quickly as he could, with the collapsible shovel.

He didn't want to recall why he had to do this kind of digging, the depressing physical work was not for him.But the United States is a magical place, enough to give people various tests.

The reality is that he has to dig.

After four days of tracking, he discovered a fire related to Simon, an ancient coin dealer.

While tracing the source of the fire, they caught up with gangsters who entered the woods in strange shapes and forms, and the gang buried a coffin.

'Boom! '

The shovel finally hit the coffin lid.

The next moment, Mycroft suddenly looked up.

No other footsteps were heard in the woods, but suddenly a group of lights approached indistinctly and quickly.

Is the visitor alive?

If it's a ghost, it's not scary, but I don't want gang members to go and come back.

Mary held the kerosene lamp close to the source of the digging.

Approached, only to see the mound, but not the diggers.I glanced at the footprints on the ground, and there was a shoe print of a woman's shoe of a familiar size.There is still something that I don't understand, and I turn to look at the dark woods.

"Good evening, ma'am. It's me."

Mary didn't call people by name directly, or obeyed some unspoken rules of the cemetery, and didn't call people's names casually.

behind a big tree.

Mycroft looked carefully and determined who was coming under the light of the kerosene lamp, and only then did he reveal his figure. "Good evening, sir. It seems that we have indeed reached the same goal by different routes."

Who said no?

The discovery of Crown Town is enough to prove that there is a problem here, and now a coffin has been found.

The two just breathed a sigh of relief.

At this time, a strange noise came from the pit.

'Stab——', 'Woo——'.

It's the nails scratching the coffin boards, and the gagged but still trying to speak out.

"Nobody died."

"The person is not dead?"

Mary and Mycroft immediately went to pry the lid off the coffin.

One minute later, the coffin board was lifted, and there lay a young man gagged with sackcloth and tied into strips lying inside.

The man braced his weak body, tried his best to glance at the two of them, and passed out from exhaustion.

"The pulse is weak, but the trauma is not fatal."

Mary quickly untied the unknown man and checked his physical condition, "The group tried to bury him alive but failed. This man is really lucky, the god of death didn't catch him."

Mycroft helped, and together they lifted the unconscious man out of the coffin.

At the moment, for some reason, maybe it was his delusion, maybe his intuition, he always felt that Mr. Minton's words just now were a little strange.

Buried alive and rescued, the gentleman in the coffin is indeed a lucky one, so what's so strange about a casual sigh?

Mycroft's doubts were fleeting.

He couldn't find the answer, just as he couldn't find anything wrong with Mr. Minton's face at this time, this momentary strange feeling was buried deep in his heart.

"Going back to the city, I urgently need to find a reliable doctor."

Mycroft quickly found out which hospital had no trace of gangsters, and Balch and Simon couldn't find anything unusual right now.

"Don't worry, doctor, I have a good candidate."

Mary immediately thought of Dr. Jekyll, and it was better to come early than to come at a good time, and this would be a good time to cure the sick and save lives.

However, there is one more thing to do before leaving.

Mary took out a paintbrush and a small bottle of blood-red ink from her backpack, "Instead of leaving directly, it is better to close the coffin lid and leave something in the coffin by the way. In case the group comes back to review the corpse, I can give them a surprise."

To put it simply, the ropes that bound the victims and the rags that gagged were left behind, and the original coffin scene was meticulously restored.

Of course, a few lines of blood must be left in the coffin to create the illusion that the victim mutated into a monster like a vampire and teleported out of the coffin.

If the buryer returns and reopens the coffin lid, he will find that the body has disappeared as soon as he opens it.

It wasn't stolen, but the corpse was heavily cursed, and I don't know what kind of monster it turned into to take revenge on the murderer.In the [-]th century, many people believed in this kind of strange tale.

"How about this proposal? It is more conducive to buying us time to solve the case, rather than alarming the enemy."

Mary held up a brush stained with blood-red ink in one hand, and asked with a smile, "Ma'am, what words do you think we should leave in the coffin?"

The light from the kerosene lamp was dim and unreal.

At this time, it can be clearly seen that the ink of the blood-red brush is falling under the influence of gravity.Tick ​​tock, drop by drop like blood dripping on the coffin board.

Mycroft supported the unconscious victim with one hand, while looking at the person who was smiling at him.

Suddenly, I don't know what to say.What kind of person was the Mr. Minton he knew?

The next moment, Mycroft no longer restrained himself from smiling slowly. "This proposal is great. It would be better to leave some unforgettable spells."

The wind blows.

Tick-tock, another drop of bright red ink dripped on the coffin board.